Here we have a picture-map of The Skinners’ Company buildings in County Londonderry, showing Dungiven bawn and Crossault bawn. On the right-hand side we have the buildings erected by Sir Edward Doddington who didn’t start afresh: he came as a retired soldier and was granted lands by King James; but when the London Companies took over, he stayed on as the Agent of the Skinners.

The buildings were originally an Augustinian priory built in the twelfth century to which the O’Cahan clan had added a medieval tower-house. After garrisoning this site as a soldier, Doddington then converted it to domestic dwellings, he re-roofed the ruined church, he added various features to the medieval castle, and he built a two-and-a-half storey house immediately adjacent to it. He died in 1618 but his widow continued to live there until the 1670s.

Archaeological excavations have shown that the Doddington house burned down and collapsed, and all memory of it vanished from record until it was archaeologically excavated in the 1980s. This gives us a marvellous insight into what stood there at the time. Doddington obviously spent a small fortune - £500 (a lot of money at the time) is recorded in the construction costs; and the archaeological evidence shows imported polychrome Dutch tiles, marvellous English metalwork, all various pieces of artefacts such as games, toys, fragments of everyday life - all of which have been buried by later use of the church as a burial ground.