The present-day Tamlaghtfinlagan Church of Ireland which was built in 1795 with funds from the Bishop of Derry and the Hon. John Beresford, traces its name back through a series of ecclesiastical buildings to the foundation of an Abbey in the locality in 580 AD. This was located not far from the present church, the first Abbot here was Findluganus, a follower of St. Columba. The present church is the final resting place of Blind John McCurry, the itinerant fiddler whom Jane Ross heard playing outside the Burns & Laird Shipping office in Limavady. The melody he was playing so captivated her that she noted it down and later passed it with her song collection to George Petrie.

On the Main Street opposite the Model Farm which is now an Independent Hospital, stands the Presbyterian Church which was built in 1827. Designed by the English architect Richard Suter (1797-1883) it was extremely contemporary for its time. He was employed as a surveyor for the Fishmonger's Guild and also designed Banagher Church, the Model Farm, the Lancastrian School, The Company Agents House, a range of houses on the Main Street, the lodge in the Presbyterian churchyard and the Dispensary.

The architecture of the Presbyterian Church so impressed William Makepeace Thackery that he commented on it while passing through the village during his Tour of Ireland in 1842: "In Ballykelly, besides numerous simple, stout, brick-built dwellings for the peasantry, with their shining windows and trim garden-plots, is a Presbyterian meeting-house, so well-built, substantial, and handsome, so different from the lean, pretentious, sham-Gothic ecclesiastical edifices which have been erected in late years in Ireland, that it can't fail to strike the tourist who has made architecture his study or his pleasure. The gentleman's seats in the district are numerous and handsome; and the whole movement along the road betokened cheerfulness and prosperous activity".