Lodge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Detached three-bay single-storey rendered gate lodge, built c.1880, facing west to the avenue. Hipped natural slate roof with raised lead ridges, a central rendered chimneystack with clay pots and plastic guttering supported on wrought-iron drive-through brackets to eaves with a pronounced blocking course. Rendered walling with a splayed plinth course and a full-width hood moulding to the front elevation. Square-headed window openings with 2/2 timber sash windows (horizontal panes) and stone sills. A central square-headed door opening having a replacement vertically-sheeted hardwood door. Replacement timber casement windows to other elevations. A detached painted brick outhouse located to the rear with pitched natural slate roof.

Roof: Natural slate
Walling: Cement render
Windows: Timber sash
RWG: Cast-iron

Historical information

The property first appears captioned ‘Creevenagh House’ on the second edition OS Map (1854). A ‘Gate Lodge’ and ‘Summer House’ are also captioned and outbuildings and a formal garden are shown.

Griffith’s Valuation lists the property as a house, offices, gate lodge and land, being occupied by the Hon Andrew Stewart and leased from Thomas Auchinleck and value it at £60.0.0. In the Valuation Revisions the occupiers are the Auchinleck family throughout and the value rises to £78.10.0, then £80.10.0 in 1871 and £84.10.0 in 1883 when a new addition is built.

Rowan comments; “Built by the Auchinleck family, presumably about 1810, long, low, and two-storeyed, rendered, with stone quoins and wide overhanging eaves. Three-bay, though given unusual scale by the use of tri-partite windows throughout, with a polygonal single-storey central porch. The interior is unusually handsome: a complete neo-classical villa with a double return staircase symmetrically planned on the axis of the hall, fine Grecian plasterwork, and a heavily architectural character to the doors and fireplaces of the main rooms. The hall floor is paved in Italian marble – black, white and terracotta-red with scenes of the seven ages of man.” (p.449)

Dean mentions that the most famous son of the Auchinleck family was to be Field Marshall Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck. (p.140)

Primary Sources:

PRONI OS/6/6/35/1-3 – Ordnance Survey Maps (1833, 1854, 1906)
PRONI VAL/2/B/6/28 – Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
PRONI VAL/1/A/6/35 – Townland Valuation Map
PRONI VAL/2/B/626/B – Townland Valuation Records (1828-40)
PRONI VAL/12/D/6/41/36/A-L – Annual Revision Records (1860-1929)

Secondary Sources:

Dean, J A K ‘The Gate Lodges of Ulster – A Gazetteer’, Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1994
Rowan, A ‘The Buildings of Ireland: North West Ulster’, Penguin Books, 1979

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Detached three-bay single-storey rendered gate lodge, built c.1880. Of some interest in respect of the demesne, it is a late and common type and not of special architectural or historic interest.