Dunbarton Lodge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single storey three-bay Victorian lodge built c.1845. Rectangular plan with single storey abutment to the north east. Located off Dunbarton Street north west of the village centre, adjacent to the gates to the rear entrance of Gilford Primary School.

Natural slate hipped roof with leaded hips and ridge. Replacement uPVC rainwater goods. Rendered chimney with plain corbelled cornice. Shaped eaves brackets. Ruled and lined painted render; contrasting flush finished quoins and plinth. Replacement top hung timber casement windows with 6/6 panes; painted masonry cill. Timber door with four bolection moulded panels with replacement ironmongery; square-headed replacement over light.

The principal elevation faces north-west and is symmetrically arranged. Centrally positioned door with single window to either side.

The north-east elevation is asymmetrically arranged. Modern 'half' door to centre (upper portion glazed); single-storey flat roofed extension to left of no interest. Modern rooflight to the roof pitch.

The south-east (rear) elevation is blank and completely cement rendered. Former abutting cinema building removed.

The south-west elevation has a single central horizontal multi-paned window.

Setting:

Set off the main street largely secluded from public view. A coursed rubble masonry wall abuts the north east elevation which adjoins on the gated rear entrance of the neighbouring primary school. Immediately to the rear is a car wash.

Roofing: Natural slate
Walling: Render
Windows: Replacement timber
RWG: Replacement uPVC

Historical information

The dwelling was built c.1845 as one of two gate lodges to Dunbarton House, the former residence of Hugh Dunbar. The second gate house is at 68 Dunbarton Road (HB17/01/015E) beside the Presbyterian Meeting House (HB17/01/016) and is the only one of the two gatehouses to be described by Dean in his ‘Gate Lodges of Ulster’. The gate lodge is first shown, uncaptioned, on the second edition OS map of 1858 and dimensions are given in Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64). It is not separately valued, however, in Annual Revisions up to 1930.

Dunbarton House dates from c.1845 and may be the work of Thomas Jackson who designed a number of houses for wealthy clients in the area. The house was built by Hugh Dunbar (1789-1847) and overlooks the Dunbar McMaster mill in Gilford. (Rankin)

The history of Gilford in the nineteenth century is inextricably linked with the fortunes of the spinning mill, one of the largest in Ireland in the 1840s and the driver of economic growth and social development in the nineteenth century. Hugh Dunbar was the descendant of a linen family, his grandfather having leased a property at Huntley from the Whyte’s of Loughbrickland, where Hugh was manufacturing thread and his hand-loom weavers produced linen cloth. In 1834 the competition from mill-spun yarns, produced by the new wet-spinning process was such that Dunbar was compelled to start his own spinning mill or go out of business. Dunbar chose Gilford as the centre of his new enterprise and Dunbar McMaster & Co spinning mill opened in 1839, Dunbar having gone into partnership with John Walsh McMaster of Armagh. (Logan; Rankin)

Hugh Dunbar died in 1847, shortly after completing his new mansion and in 1858 John Walsh McMaster bought out Dunbar’s surviving relatives and acquired both the mill and Dunbarton House which was his home from at least 1860. Dunbarton House is first shown, captioned, on the second edition OS map of 1858 and is a large mansion house in substantial grounds with a row of outbuildings to the rear and a formal garden to the south-east. The house is first listed in Griffith’s Valuation as the residence of John Walsh McMaster, valued at £67. Dimensions are given for a 2½ storey house with porch flanked by single storey bays. Eight outbuildings are noted and the two gatehouses.

John Walsh McMaster died in 1872 and Dunbarton then passed to McMaster’s eldest son Hugh Dunbar McMaster who was resident in the 22-room mansion at the time of the 1901 census when he was 57. Hugh lived with his Indian-born wife and three daughters aged from 7 to 15. Dunbar McMaster also had at least two sons who had probably been sent away to school, most likely in England. The couple employed a Parisian governess and had a small staff comprising a cook and two housemaids. Interestingly, Dunbar McMaster, himself an Episcopalian, employed a servant from each of the major denominations, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic. In the year of the census, 1901, Dunbar, McMaster & Co was subsumed with the Barbours into the Linen Thread Company Limited with production continuing at Gilford until the 1980s.

After Hugh Dunbar McMaster’s death in 1907, Dunbarton House lay vacant for a time and in 1915 it was converted into a hospital for wounded soldiers run by the Ulster Volunteer Force and staffed by the U.V.F’s Nursing Corps. By May 1915 the house was providing beds for 214 patients and in the autumn of 1916 an annex of 30 beds was opened in nearby Bannvale House. An illuminated address of thanks, signed by Winston Churchill, was sent to Dunbarton House by the War Office. (Rankin) The last resident to be noted in Annual Revisions was John Archibald Dickie, in 1921, but the house later became the property of the Moodie family, Mr Moodie being proprietor of the mill. The main house remains in private ownership and is still in domestic use today. The gate lodge is no longer part of the estate and is a privately owned dwelling.

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)

Secondary Sources

1. Logan, R A “A Window on the Past, A History of Gilford County Down” Banbridge Chronicle, (n.d.)
2. Rankin, K “The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley, The story of their families” Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2007

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A single-storey three-bay Victorian lodge built c.1845. The gate lodge has retained its general proportions and character although it has lost a significant amount of detailing as a result of modernizing. Extended to the side, and with an attic conversion, much historic fabric has been lost, although the original plan and appearance are discernable. External and internal alterations have detracted from the architectural and historic interest of the building but it survives as part of the buildings associated with Dunbarton House (HB17/01/015A).

General comments

Previously recorded as HB17/01/014