Termon, Carrickmore, Co Tyrone
Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978) Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 272. “(Beresford, sub Waterford, M/PB; Alexander/IFR) A three storey late Georgian house built 1815 as a rectory by Rev C.C. Beresford, whose crest appears in the dining room ceiling. Three bay front, with projecting porch; four bay rear elevation, with large windows on ground floor. After Disestablishment, it became the property of Rev C.C. Beresford’s daughter, Charlotte, wife of Rev Samuel Alexander.”
see https://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2024/04/termon-house.html
The Alexanders of Termon were kinsmen of the Alexanders, Earls of Caledon.THE REV SAMUEL ALEXANDER (1808-89), Rector of Termonmaguirc, County Tyrone, 1851-56, married, in 1839, Charlotte Frances, daughter of the Rev Charles Cobbe Beresford (son of the Rt Hon John de la Poer Beresford), and had issue,
John Adam (1854-1907);
CHARLES MURRAY, of whom we treat;
Henry George Samuel;
Amelia Henrietta; Charlotte Frances Selina; Frances Sophia.
The second son,
CHARLES MURRAY ALEXANDER JP (1845-1902), of Termon House, Carrickmore, County Tyrone, and Enagh, County Londonderry, Colonel, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, wedded, in 1888, Mary Anna Catherine, daughter of Robert William Lowry, of Pomeroy House, County Tyrone, and had issue,
CHARLES ADAM MURRAY, his heir;
Charlotte Frances; Mary Anna Catherine Letitia; Emily Geale Hester Lowry.
Colonel Alexander’s son and heir,
CHARLES ADAM MURRAY ALEXANDER MC JP DL (1889-1958), of Termon House, and Pomeroy House, both in County Tyrone, married, in 1918, Gladys Sylvia MacGregor, daughter of Major Thomas MacGregor Greer, and had issue,
Evelyn Ruth Dorinda Mary;
Margaret Sylvia Daphne.
TERMON HOUSE, Carrickmore, County Tyrone, is a late-Georgian mansion of 1815.
It comprises three storeys, and was built as a glebe house for the Rev Charles Cobbe Beresford.
This glebe house, which served as the rectory and vicarage for the parish of Termonmaguirc, was in the diocese of Armagh, and in the patronage of the Marquess of Waterford.
It cost £3,293 to build in 1815, equivalent to about £243,000 in 2024.
Termon House’s entrance front comprises three bays, with a projecting porch; while the rear elevation has four bays, with two large windows on the ground floor.
Following the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, Termon was inherited by the Rector’s youngest daughter, Charlotte Frances Beresford (1812-90), wife of the Rev Samuel Alexander.
The Alexander’s sold Termon in the mid-1980s.
Is Termon House vacant or derelict today and when was it last inhabited?
www.nihgt.org/resources/pdf/Register_of_Parks_Gardens_Demesnes-NOV20.pdf TERMON (ATHENRY), County Tyrone (AP FERMANAGH AND OMAGH 07) T/063 REGISTERED GRADE A Regency era parkland (95 acres/38.3ha) with house of 1815 (Listed HB 11/19/003), now derelict, lying 1.08 miles (1.74km) south-east of Carrickmore and 3.9 miles (6.26km) west of Pomeroy. Notable for its very fine mature trees in woodlands and parkland screens that retain its original layout. Known originally as Athenry, the townland name, subsequently as Termon, the house, built on the site of an earlier dwelling, was built as a rectory, though its size is more that of a grand country house, being an austere cube-like west-facing block of three-storeys over a basement with a three bay front of widely spaced windows and four bay rere elevation. It has a hipped roof, projecting porch and large part two, part-single storey wing. Much of the ground floor to the south was covered by a lean-to conservatory, the outline of which is still visible. Built 1815 for the Rev. Charles Cobbe Beresford (1770-1850), then Rector of Termonmaguirke, mostly at his own cost (£3,293), the Board of First Fruits contributing a small percentage (£100). In 1850 the property was inherited by Beresford’s daughter Charlotte Frances, who had married the Rev. Samuel Alexander (1808-89), who in turn was Rector of Termonmaguirke until 1898. By this stage the family had inherited Termon on disestablishment and later owned by their son Col. Charles Murray (1845-1902) and then his son, Major Charles Adam Murray (1889-1958). Just north of the house are the outbuildings arranged around a roughly square yard, many of these buildings being contemporary with the house; they include coach houses, stables, turf house, cow house, larder, harness room, and office rooms. On the north-west side of the yard is the walled garden (2.56 acres/0.95ha), a roughly long rectangular area with north-west south-east axis. It had a slip garden on its west side. The area is now used for grazing; a beech hedge and some fruit trees survive on garden walls. The Statistical Survey (1802) mentions that Sir John Stewart ‘1st Baronet of Athenree‘ (1757-1826), Attorney-General of Ireland (1799-1803), whose father Rev. Hugh Stewart was Rector of Termon. had ‘planted with taste and judgment in a mountainous situation’, but this appears to be a reference to Ballygawley Park, where he lived, not Termon. The planting at Termon/Athenry looks to have been professionally laid out by a landscape gardener at the one time for the new house in 1815, with well defined open lawns or meadows, good screens and woodlands of oak and beech. The park is divided centrally by the Camowen River which flows north-east to south-west, its banks heavily wooded and dissected by driveways and paths with four bridges and two summer houses, one each side of the river – an area of noted beauty. Other smaller streams in the demesne flow into the Camowen and there was an oval pond in the east of the park. An artificial lake (1.15 acres/0.46ha), made in the 1840s, possibly as famine relief, lies north-west of the house on the edge of the pleasure grounds, and would at one time have been visible from the house rere. It had a boat house (demolished in the 1980s) on its south-west side and the lake was fed by sluices which remain, though since the 1970s the lake has become silted up and overgrown. The pleasure grounds, now overgrown, extended around the house on the south and east sides, originally neat lawns with a network of paths with beds containing flowers, shrubs and exotic trees, some of which survive in the undergrowth. Other paths and former driveways circuit the park woods, some leading to a well-preserved Neolithic period Portal Grave (Scheduled TYR 036:002). There are two entrances into the park; the main approach drive to the Register of Parks, Gardens and Demesnes of Special Historic Interest (NI) – November 2020 house enters from the south and arcs through the park to the house; the other service entry starts at the west and runs east. There are two ‘gate lodges’ off Termon Road, one at the main gateway to the south, and another at the rear entrance to the north. The former has the appearance of a modern bungalow, suggesting that the original lodge has either been completely demolished or extended and modernised out of recognition, whilst that to the north, a small plain single-storey house with gabled ends, appears original. A new house was built north-west of thre walled garden in 1970. SMR: TYR 36:2 megalith, portal grave. Private.
Irish Historic Houses 
