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The Mussenden Temple Collection.

The temple was built in 1785 and forms part of the Downhill Demesne. The demesne was formerly part of the estate of Frederick, 4th Earl of Bristol, who served as the Church of Ireland Lord Bishop of Derry from 1768 until 1803. Constructed as a library and modelled from the Temple of Vesta in the Forum Romanum in Rome, it is dedicated to the memory of Bishop Lord Bristol's cousin Frideswide Mussenden.

Over the years the erosion of the cliff face at Downhill has brought Mussenden Temple ever closer to the edge, and in 1997 The National Trust carried out cliff stabilisation work to prevent the loss of the building.

The inscription around the building reads:

"Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis 
e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem." 

"Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore 
The troubled sailor, and hear the tempests roar."
The quotation is from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 2.1–2.


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