Gate Lodge to Hawthorn Hill

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A restored and extended single-storey/ two-bay gate lodge aligned NE-SW on the E side of Drumintee Road.

Pyramidal natural slate roof with cement skews and central granite chimney with moulded stone string course and coping. Overhanging eaves with timber soffit and brackets, supporting ogee-metal rainwater goods. Walls are coursed granite rubble. All openings have segmental brick relieving arches and granite cills.

Principal elevation faces NW to road. At centre is a timber-sheeted door with strap hinges and cast-iron door furniture. It is accessed by a single granite step. Flanking door to either side is a geometrically glazed cast-iron window with central mullion.

Side elevations are identical - each has two equally spaced windows. All are side-hung margin-paned lattice windows.
Rear elevation is abutted to centre by a modern glazed link block; the exposed section is blank. Link has a pitched natural slate roof with central French doors to each elevation, flanked by full height windows. It leads to an extension, which is of a scale in keeping with the main block.

Extension has a similar detailed roof with cement-dashed and painted walls with a smooth rendered and painted basecourse. All windows are modern top-hung casements; side elevations each have two equally spaced windows (those NE elevation are larger). Rear elevation has a pair of casements set to left.

Setting:

The gate lodge fronts the road, directly opposite the front drive to Hawthorn Hill (now Slieve Gullion Forest Park). It is set within mature gardens to rear and enclosed to either side by a curving rubble stone wall with stone copings.

Historical information

This building was erected c.1845, on the site of an earlier lodge built soon after the construction of Hawthorn Hill house in 1815 (HB16/15/002A). It is captioned ‘gate lodge’ on the 1861 OS map.

Hawthorn Hill was built c1815, by Hunt Walsh Chambre (the family is buried in Killevy churchyard, HB16/14/042). During civil unrest in the 1920s the house was burnt down – its rateable valuation decreases from £52 to £12 in the 1923 Valuation entry and the house is downgraded to an office. It was subsequently reconstructed in its present form.

In 1968 the Chambre family sold the estate to the Forestry Commission and the house was used until recently as its headquarters.

Primary sources:
1. OS 6” map, 2nd edition, Co Armagh sheet 29 (PRONI OS/6/2/29/2).

Secondary sources:
1. J A K Dean, ‘The Gate Lodges of Ulster’, p.38 (Belfast, 1994).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A restored and extended single-storey/ two-bay gate lodge. An attractive roadside gate-lodge to Hawthorn Hill (HB16/15/002A) occupying an historic site. Picturesque in style with distinctive geometric patterned glazing bars to the windows.