Ballyhanedin is a townland in the civil parish of Banagher in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It is located a 3km from the village of Feeny,C6106 : Ballyhanedin Townland 3 km from Feeny, Ireland online at geograph.org.uk (accessed 3 March 2008)Banagher, Derry: Townlands or streets at ireland.com/ancestor/fuses/townlands (accessed 3 March 2008) and is situated within Causeway Coast and Glens district.
It lies on the A6 Belfast to Derry road.The Munreery Climbing Lane online at roadimprovements.roadsni.gov.uk (accessed 3 March 2008) Although it is only a townland, Ballyhanedin has a boundary sign which shows where it begins.C5711 View south-east from Ballyhanedin 5 km from Claudy, Ireland, showing Ballyhanedin sign and drum gateposts, online at geograph.org.uk (accessed 3 March 2008)
History The townland was settled in the seventeenth century by the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers of the City of London. A report in the Company's archives reports a deputation which surveyed its Estates in 1820:Banagher Presbyterian online at historyfromheadstones.com (accessed 3 March 2008)
The Court of the Fishmongers' Company decided to build two new Presbyterian Church meeting houses in the Classical Greek style, with dressings of Dungiven sandstone. The Court voted £2,200 for the building at Banagher, which was constructed over three years and opened in 1834.
An Ordnance Survey memoir of Banagher from the 1830s, says that the new meeting house was:
Griffith's valuation of Ireland, completed in 1864, shows some thirty tenements in Ballyhanedin, including one occupied by the Reverend Robert Rogers. The other surnames of those then occupying property in the township were Allen, Brazil, Christie, Cole, Connor, Dogherty, Duddy, Evans, Hewston, Lyons, McClusky, McKeever, McLenihan, McLoughlin, Monteith, Mulfawl, Nutt, Rosborough (eight tenements), Sherrard, Simpson, Walker and Williams.Griffith's valuation of Ireland for Banagher, County Derry, online at failteromhat.com (accessed 3 March 2008)
Present day Much of the townland is rural. Photographs of this area some miles out of Feeny are online at geograph.org.uk and include a windswept hill to the north of the junction of Ballyhanedin Road and Glenshane Road.C6006 Ballyhanedin Townland 4 km from Feeny, Ireland online at geograph.org.uk (accessed 3 March 2008) Some of the fields have substantial drum-shaped stone gateposts, which are common in Northern Ireland.
As part of the Munreery Climbing Lane road scheme, completed in 2005 to improve the A6 Glenshane Road west of Dungiven, the former 'Bennett junction' at the Ballyhanedin crossroads, which dated from the 1960s, was replaced by a 'ghost island' layout.
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