East Lodge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A symmetrical single-storey with attic three-bay gate lodge, built c.1870 and located at the east farm entrance to Gilford Castle (HB17/01/002A), on the Banbridge Road east of Gilford. Rectangular on plan with central gabled breakfront breaking eaves.

Pitched natural slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles and dressed sandstone chimneystacks to gables. Decorative fretted timber fascia with plain bargeboards and uPVC rainwater goods on overhanging eaves. Walling is painted brick throughout. Windows are 2/2 camber-arched timber casement replacements with painted masonry sills, unless otherwise stated.

Symmetrical principal elevation faces east and has a window to either side of central breakfront, which contains a timber sheeted door with ornate cast iron knocker and camber-arched overlight, surmounted at attic level by a narrow round-arched two pane window with horizontal glazing bar.

South gable has a single central window.

Rear elevation has boarded openings and less ornate fascia board. Door to right side and window to its left.

North gable is blank.

Setting

The lodge is set near a pair of rusticated ashlar sandstone gate piers, without gates. The piers have been damaged and are without caps. To right side is a full-height timber pedestrian gate with Gothic apertures set into an ashlar stone surround contained within tall flanking entrance walls of rubble stone built to courses with stone soldier coping. Demesne
setting with busy road directly to north. Parkland to south.

Roof: Natural slate
Walling: Brick
Windows: Timber
RWG: uPVC

Historical information

The gate lodge at Gilford Castle was built c.1870, probably to designs by William Spence, the architect of the Castle and outbuildings. The lodge was the only gate house provided for the new castle, as the demesne nestles in a loop of the Bann river and is not accessible from any direction but the north. An earlier gate house to the west was demolished in the late nineteenth century.

The ‘Lodge’ at Gilford Castle is first shown, captioned, on the third edition OS map of 1901-2 at the end of an entrance driveway known as the ‘Farm Entrance’ which leads directly to Gilford Castle’s stable courtyard and would have been the entrance used by coach passengers arriving from Belfast. The lodge and driveway were newly-created when Gilford Castle was rebuilt in the early 1870s, the lodge replacing an earlier building that stood at the entrance driveway further to the west. The gate lodge enters valuation records c.1874 and is grouped together with a groom’s house/tower and other outbuildings which together are valued at £50. The gate house was deleted from valuation records in 1887 and appears to have been valued from then on as part of the offices or outbuildings belonging to the castle. In 1904, when the house was purchased by Katherine Carleton, the gate lodge was grouped with coachmans’, grooms’ and gardeners’ apartments and offices which are valued separately from the main house at £50 because they are ‘cut off from castle’.

The ‘gate lodge’ is listed in the First General Revaluation of the 1930s as a single-storey rectangular structure with a porch and an outbuilding to the rear. The occupier is William James Hewitt and he has a service tenancy from the occupier of Gilford House, James F Wright. The accommodation comprises two bedrooms, a reception room and a kitchen. The valuer describes the house as an ‘old, fairly good building and finish’.

Gilford Castle was completed in the early 1870s as a residence for Benjamin Dickson, a partner in the local linen thread company of Dunbar McMaster. The house replaced a much earlier castle built by a descendant of Gilford’s earliest proprietor. However, the current house was seldom lived in until the ancestors of the present owners acquired the property in the early twentieth century.

The first castle at Gilford is thought to have been built by William Johnston, a captain in the Royal Irish Dragoons who inherited part of the Gilford estates from the grandson of Captain John Magill, a soldier in Cromwell’s army who was the early proprietor of Gilford and from whom the name of the town derives. (Logan) The first castle was probably built in the early 1700’s by Johnston who then went on to be knighted in 1714 and to become High Sheriff of Down in 1717 and of Armagh in 1721. After his death in 1722 the castle and estates passed to his son Richard, and his grandson also Richard, but with the death of Richard Johnston’s son William in 1841 the baronetcy became extinct and the castle and demesne were sold by William’s younger sister Catherine to Benjamin Dickson who built the present castle. The old castle fell into decay and was demolished in the 1860’s prior to the completion of the new building. The old castle stood on the south side of the present Castle Street close to the road and on the edge of the demesne.

The new Gilford Castle, in the Scottish baronial style, was begun sometime after 1861 and was in progress in the late 1860s. The designer is said to have been William Spence, a Scottish architect resident in Glasgow who also designed a house, Elmfield, for Dickson’s brother James. Benjamin and James Dickson were partners in the Dunbar McMaster linen thread company on which the growth and prosperity of Gilford town was largely founded. (Valuation Records; www.dia.ie) The new castle was much more centrally placed within the demesne and surrounding countryside and allowed for a grand drive entrance. The castle illustrates the use of ‘new money’ to emulate the landed gentry and position one of Gilford’s most prominent businessmen within a ready-made historical context, through the use of a Scottish baronial style and a site known for its connection back to Gilford’s early proprietor. However, Benjamin Dickson does not appear to have ever inhabited the castle. He is never listed in valuation records as the occupier and local folklore has it that when Dickson showed the house to his new fiancé she hated it so much that she refused to live in it. (Graham) The castle is first listed in valuation records in the mid-1860s at a valuation of £200.

The Dickson brothers dissolved their partnership with McMaster in 1866, but were dissatisfied with the terms and a legal battle ensued eventually won by McMaster. They then went into partnership with their brother-in-law Thomas Ferguson of Banbridge to form the firm of Dickson, Ferguson & Co which was a power-loom weaving company. The Dicksons retired from the business in 1883. (Rankin)

No occupier is noted for the castle until 1887 when it became the home of Percy Jocelyn McMaster, the younger brother of Hugh Dunbar McMaster, proprietor of Gilford Mill, who was resident at nearby Dunbarton House. The house was let from Benjamin Dickson and was revalued the same year in two parts, the part occupied by McMaster valued at £75, and a further portion also valued at £75. However, McMaster’s tenancy was short-lived and by 1891 the house was again vacant. A tenant named Purcell inhabited the castle for some time around 1896 but the 1901 census records the only occupant as the gardener/caretaker, James Emerson, who occupied three rooms with his wife and six children, his 14-year-old daughter working as a seamstress. In 1904 the house and demesne was purchased by Katherine Carleton for £15,000, the valuer noting that the cost of the building to Benjamin Dickson had been about £42,000 and that the price paid by Carleton was ‘the value of the land alone, the castle being given for nothing’.

In Katherine Carleton, the castle found a long-term resident for the first time since it had been built and the 1911 census finds the 54-year-old spinster living at the castle with a female companion and two domestic servants, a cook and a parlourmaid. In 1918 the house was purchased by James F Wright, whose descendants continue to live in the castle today. In 1934 the accommodation comprised two reception rooms, a billiards room, library, study, two kitchens, two pantries, a scullery, larder and dairy. On the first floor were six bedrooms, two dressing rooms, two bathrooms, a nursery, a sewing room and three maids’ rooms. The second floor comprised two attic rooms.

During World War II most of Northern Ireland was a training ground for British and American troops and there was a large concentration of army personnel based in Gilford, which with its woods, lakes and rivers and proximity to major transport routes was ideally suited to military training purposes. The army made use of Nissen Huts erected for the purpose in Gilford Castle demesne, and in 1943 the demesne housed a squadron of US troops together with their medical detachment who built a temporary hospital to the rear of the castle. (Higgins) Valuation records show that 35 acres of land were requisitioned by the War Department in October 1940 and a further 1 rood and 15 perches in July 1941.

The castle is currently a family home, and the owner is a well-known local artist. (www.disovernorthernireland.com).
However, the gate lodge is currently vacant and is now under separate ownership. (Owner information)

References:
Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/26/1 First Edition OS Map 1834
2. PRONI OS/6/3/26/2 Second Edition OS map 1858
3. PRONI OS/6/3/26/3 Third Edition OS Map 1901-2
4. PRONI OS/6/3/26/4 Fourth Edition OS Map 1920-21
5. PRONI VAL/1/B/350 Townland Valuation (1828-40)
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/48A Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
7. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/25A-H Annual Revisions (1864-1930)
8. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/17A – Annual Revisions (1923-29)
9. PRONI VAL/12/A/3/9 – Valuer’s Notebook (1916-22)
10. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/2 – First General Revaluation (1936-57)
11. PRONI VAL/3/D/4/3/M/1 – Valuers RV Binders (1933-57)

Secondary Sources

1. Graham, F “The History of Gilford Presbyterian Church and other articles of local interest” 2006
2. Higgins, Beryl "Gilford During The Second World War"
3. Logan, R A “A Window on the Past, A History of Gilford County Down” Banbridge Chronicle, (n.d.)
4. Owner information
5. Rankin, K “The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley, The story of their families” Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2007
6. www.dia.ie – Dictionary of Irish Architects online
7. www.discovernorthernireland.com

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A gate lodge located at the east farm entrance to Gilford Castle estate (HB17/01/002A-E). Composed on a simple symmetrical plan about central gabled breakfront, the lodge is simply ornamented with decorative bargeboards and slight camber to windows. The gate piers support a timber gate which echoes the simple Gothic detailing of the lodge. Gilford Castle demesne is of interest as a fine and largely intact example of Scottish Baronial architecture; it is also of significance in an historical context, built on the proceeds of successful enterprise in the local linen industry at the height of its success. However, the lodge has been compromised by alterations and does not meet the statutory and policy tests as a building of special architectural or historic interest.