The Hermitage

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single storey rubble masonry structure of rustic form built into the south face of a hillock with an earthen mounded roof over the main chamber to the east end, and an entrance passage and retaining wall to the west end. Entrance faces approximately south.

Roofs covered with grassed earth roughly flat to the passage but domically mounded, of hexagonal shape, to the main chamber, over a covering of rubber sheet. The crown of the domical mound is covered with a small hexagonal cap of dark coloured perspex.
Walls of limestone rubble, incorporating also some glacially shaped river-worn rocks which gives a contrived naturalistic appearance. Entrance doorway is narrow and comprises a roughly formed shouldered arched opening containing a modern flat steel trellis-work door and frame.
Two main faces of the main domical roofed chamber each contain a window opening, one roughly triangular arched, the other roughly segmental arched, each containing a recessed modern flat steel trellis-work grille. Between the two arched openings is a prominent rustic buttress.

SETTING: The structure stands within the demesne of Loughgall Manor House, located within a wooded area, surrounded by trees, and reached by a rough path off an estate road. The hermitage is one of the most evocative estate structures, built of crude stines which seem to grow from an outcrop of rocksset in a woodland clearing. The distinction betweeen natural and manmade is made deliberately evocative and ambiguous in the structures

Historical information

Precise date of building not recorded but it is marked on the OS map of 1860. It does not appear to be identified on the OS map of 1834 but stylistically it may be taken to date from at least the early 19th century, and possibly as early as the late 18th century.
Only three have been identified to date in Northern Ireland in the estates at Loughgall, Tollymore and Rostrevor.
References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1860, Co Armagh 8.
2. Howley, James: The Follies and Garden Buildings of Ireland, (Yale 1993) .
Secondary Sources
1. DOENI, Loughgall: A Conservation Village (Belfast, 1993), p 5.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
Z. Rarity
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is a late Georgian folly in the form of a rustic-style 'hermitage' which retains most of its original features and its original character. It is a typical example of the 'Picturesque' movement in garden and landscape design of the time and is a comparatively rare type within that movement in Northern Ireland. Only three have been identified to date in Northern Ireland in the estates at Loughgall, Tollymore and Rostrevor.