Green Gale Lodge, Mourne Park, 200 Newry Road, Killkeel, Newry, Co Down, BT34 4JZ

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

1 ¾ storey / three bay picturesque late-Victorian gate lodge with associated out buildings. Main façade faces east onto entrance drive, just behind the Green Gates (HB15/05/005A).

Natural slate roof with intersecting pitches and red clay crested ridges (part missing). Slating is embellished by two bands of three courses of fish scaled slates. Eaves are overhanging with exposed decorated rafter tails over a moulded brick double corbel course. Verges also project with decorative bargeboards, different in design on each gable. Three red brick decorative chimneys: one on party wall between left and centre bays (as viewed from driveway at east), and second on right bay ridge and third on rear end gable. Rainwater goods are cast iron, semicircular in profile (part missing) with matching downpipes.

Walls are of coarsely dressed granite blocks laid randomly, on a similar projecting plinth which has a chamfered brick coping. Punched finely dressed flush quoins. All pointing is weather struck cement. Stone lintels to openings are in one piece with a stopped pole chamfer arris mould; reveals are similarly detailed but in brick.

Principal façade faces east to the driveway and is three bays wide, with an advanced and gabled right-hand bay. Central bay is narrow and contains the front entrance. The door is four panelled with stop-end chamfered arrises, with a rectangular one-pane transom over. It is protected by a decorative painted timber open porch entered from the left side and built in the angle formed by the middle and right hand bays. Its roof is partly hipped and natural slated, with bracketed eaves (no gutters). Its timbers rest on an advanced granite base course (with chamfered brick coping). The entrance opening on left cheek is flanked by one panel on each side; the front section (to east) is four panels wide. Each panel is two stages, the lower stage is open in the form of an arch springing from a decorative bracket on the side of each post and the upper stage has a decorative pierced panel. Granite threshold and paving of red quarry tiles. The porch ceiling is painted sheeted timber.

All windows are painted timber 2/2 (vertically divided) sliding sashes unless otherwise stated. Flush granite cills have steeply sloping top face. All windows have red brick dressings. Ground floor left is a single window. Right bay has a canted single-storey bay with a flat roof bounded by a moulded granite coping. It has a 2/2 sash window to centre, and 1/1 window on each cheek.

At first floor left is a gabled window. To centre, over door, is a small 2/2 window. To right bay is a gabled window. The gabled first floor windows have semicircular brick arch heads with a one-piece dressed stone tympanum block. Barge boards to left hand gable are plain. Those to right gable are in the style of a hammer beam truss.

The left (south) elevation is two bays wide. The right one is wider than the left and forms an advanced gable with bay, detailed as the right bay of the main elevation (but with plain bargeboards). The left hand bay has a 2/2 sash window on ground floor and a similar gabled window to first floor. Both first floor windows have semicircular brick heads as main façade.

The rear elevation consists of two bays. Each is in the form of a blank gable, the right one of which advances. The framed and sheeted back door is at the right end of the left hand gable and has a segmental brick headed transom light. Wall to the left of the door is abutted by a single storey return. The advanced cheek of the right-hand bay is blank. The yard wall continued to the right of the right-hand gable.

The small return abutting the left bay has a natural slate roof with crested clay ridges, plain barge boards and half-round rainwater goods. The walls are of coursed random rubble with finely-dressed and stepped quoins (but built integral with the main block). Its end gable has a shuttered window with segmental brick head, stepped brick jambs and granite cill. Its right cheek has a door at each end (again with shallow brick heads) and a shuttered window to centre (detailed as that on gable). The left cheek has a similar window just right of centre.

The north elevation is two bays wide. Both are gabled and have hammer-beam style bargeboards , but neither is advanced beyond the other. There is one window to each bay on each floor, detailed as those to main façade. The wall between the ground floor windows is abutted by a 2m high yard wall containing sheeted carriage gates hung on square ashlar granite piers.

To rear is a large walled yard and in it are ruinous kennels to north, and a derelict outhouse to east (detailed as return to main block). Against the inside face of the boundary wall to the main road is a range of carriage houses with an insitu concrete roof partly supported by pieces of cast-iron railway line. All these buildings are substantial and stone built.

Historical information

Although the gate screen is shown, the lodge is not shown on the 1859 OS 6” map. First depicted on the 1901 edition, indicating a late 19th century construction date. Deane suggests a date of around 1890.

Primary Sources:
1. PRONI- OS 6/3/55/2 (1834 map) (Down sheet 55).
2. OS 6/3/55/3 (1901 map) (Down sheet 55).

Secondary Sources:
1. J.A.K. Deane, The Gate Lodges of Ulster-a Gazetteer, p.86 (Belfast 1994).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A substantial and attractive gate lodge with good Victorian estate-style detailing. Part of the overall composition of gates and flanking walls and an integral part of the demesne architecture.