Front gate lodge to Drumalis Retreat Centre

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single-storey gate lodge of irregular plan, with hipped roofs, and with eaves projecting to form a shallow veranda filled with wrought iron trellis work, around most of perimeter.

Roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; lead ridge coverings. One chimney, centrally placed, painted stucco, offset base, battered cap; three pots, original Victorian. Cast iron gutters and downpipes; wooden fascia; overhanging eaves, painted wooden flush panelled soffits. Walls dry dash render using small washed pebbles; vertical painted stucco strip at each projecting corner to house; plinth around building with moulded top.

Main entrance faces west. West front four openings wide: two windows in projecting front return to left, with one window and entrance doorway to right. Windows segmental headed timber sliding sash, vertically hung, 1 over 1, with horns; moulded stucco surrounds, with continuous cill course, and string course between windows at impost level; moulded archivolts; roll mouldings to edge of reveals otherwise unmoulded. Front door, four panel varnished timber with segmental top, set in moulded segmental arched surround abutted by two sets of string courses, surmounted by painted wooden gabled canopy roof on brackets with open fretted gable spandrel panel with acroterion pattern; acroterion cresting to apex; tongued and grooved sheeting to underside of canopy. Across the window to left of door, and returning forward to continue across two windows of front return, wrought iron trellis work of arcaded design, supported on small square concrete pads on the ground and fixed to the eaves at the top; constructed of plain sections but with decorative flower-head details over joints to main rails.

North elevation: two windows, as previous, to side of hipped front block on right, with later lean-to porch to left of front block, linking it to projecting hipped outhouse at extreme left; one small window, as previous, in outhouse; corrugated perspex roof to lean-to porch, with timber ledged door; inauthentic painted rendered surround to door and upward return of adjacent string course on front block to right; wrought iron trellis, as previous, across side of front block.

East elevation: double-pile roof form, hipped, as previous, over main block to three windows wide; a single window, as previous, to the left, with a coupled pair to the right with raised cills and stepped string course. Projecting forward slightly to extreme right, side wall of outhouse with lower eaves line. Wrought iron trellis extends from extreme left to edge of coupled windows only.

South elevation: two windows, as previous, in side of hipped front block with one window in recessed side wall of rear return to right. Wrought iron trellis, as previous, extends from end to end, stepping back for rear return.

The building stands to the north side of the entrance driveway leading to Drumalis and set back from the driveway with a lawn between. There are lawns to the north and east; concrete area to the west behind front boundary wall and hedge. The
setting is secluded but the building is also easily viewed from the main road and the driveway.

Adjacent is the gate screen to the Drumalis property: a large pair of sandstone piers with gates of ornamental ironwork flanked by a set of smaller sandstone piers containing smaller pedestrian side gates. Large central piers, of ashlar stonework, with moulded bases, cornices, frieze, pyramidal capstones with moulded tops. Smaller piers similar, without frieze, but bearing acroteria finials to top of capstone. Bronze oval plaque on each central pier, inscribed ‘Drumalis Retreat House’ to left, and ‘Convent of the Cross and Passion’ to the right. Gates painted black with finials detailed in white. To each side of gateway, low stone walls of snecked basalt with sandstone copings, surmounted by iron railings, detailed as gates, curving forward to terminate in square sandstone ashlar piers at pavement; end piers similar to gate piers but without cornice or frieze and bearing lower capstones of simplified form. Beyond end piers, front boundary walls of snecked basalt with long and short basalt copings, terminates to left in monolithic sandstone pier with moulded capstone; continues to right without terminating pier and returns up side of Drumalis site.

Historical information

Designed by Samuel P. Close, architect, for Hugh Smiley, and dating from 1888-90.

References - Primary

1. PRONI D/1898/1/6 (as originally catalogued), Stephens Papers, Detailed estimate for porch, tower and porter’s lodge at Drumalis Larne, 1888-90.

Secondary

J.A.K. Dean, The Gate Lodges of Ulster (UAHS, Belfast, 1994), p 10.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

An example of a late Victorian gate lodge and entrance screen contemporary with the main development of the property to which they lead, and designed by the same architect, which together provide an impressive entrance to the property.