Lodge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single-storey two-bay gate lodge, built c.1850 and located on the Moyallan Road, opposite the eastern entrance to Bannvale House. Rectangular on plan.

Roofless, with vestiges of exposed profiled timber rafter tails. No rainwater goods. Brick chimneystack located on the central party wall, now concealed by vegetation. Walling is generally coursed basalt, built to courses in places, with granite quoins. Windows have painted brick dressings, boarded to principal elevation, otherwise gone (internal inspection reveals vestiges of segmental-headed multi-pane sashes.) Granite cills.

Principal elevation faces south-west, and is symmetrically arranged with a window to either side of a central entrance (no door).

North west elevation is partially concealed by vegetation, but has one window opening.

Rear elevation (north east) is built into a bank and is inaccessible.

South east elevation has a single window opening.

Setting:
The lodge is located opposite the former east entrance to Bannvale House, now in administrative use. It is situated parallel to a busy road, set slightly back and having wooded banks to either side with curved stone retaining walls. Farmland to rear.

Roof: Roofless
Walling: Basalt
Windows: Vestiges of timber sash, otherwise gone
RWG: No rainwater goods.

Historical information

Bannvale House dates from the early nineteenth century and is one of a series of linen bleachers’ mansions to be built along the Bann between Banbridge and Moyallon, reflecting this area’s rise as one of the most important inland manufacturing areas in Ireland of the period. (Rankin) During the course of its life a number of gate lodges have been added to the estate. Two now remain of the original three lodges, the present building dating from c.1850 and a later lodge from c.1880. The current ‘Gate Lodge’ is first shown, captioned, on the second edition OS map of 1858, together with an earlier, uncaptioned, lodge that was eventually demolished in the 1930s.

A gate lodge is listed in Griffith’s Valuation (1864) at a time when additions and improvements were being made to the property by William Uprichard and the valuation of the buildings on the estate rose from £36 to £56.

Annual Revisions list the building simply as a ‘house’ leased from William Uprichard, which is unoccupied for some years and is valued at £1.5s. At the time of the 1901 census the occupier was James Donaldson, a gardener and domestic servant from County Derry who was living with his wife and two children of 11 and 1. His wife and older child had been born in Tyrone. Donaldson was followed by John Jackson (1902), John Wilson (1904) William James Gracey (1904) and Daniel Commerford in 1911. Commerford was an Oxford-born coachman who lived with his County Down wife and their three young children. Subsequent occupiers were Henry Guigan (1918) and James Boyce (1920)

In 1934 the lodge was the home of Joseph Vaughan and is revalued in the First General Revaluation at £3.10s reduced to £2.5s on appeal. It consists of a kitchen, scullery, bedroom and 2 attics. The rent was 2s free of taxes and the house was in ‘good position and repair’ However, an inspection in 1935 found the house very damp and old and the attic not fit to use. Subsequent occupiers were Robert Nicholson in 1938 and James Cranston (n.d.) The house had become the property of the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority by 1955 when Bannvale became a unit for boys with special needs.

The present (Bannvale) house is thought to have been built by James Uprichard in the early years of the nineteenth century - an original lease of 1809 bears the name of James Uprichard of Bannvale. (PRONI) In common with many of the prominent linen families of the Bann Valley the Uprichards were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and Bannvale remained in the Uprichard family for more than a hundred years.

James Uprichard, and his younger brothers Thomas and Henry, were the founders of the linen bleaching company J, T and H Uprichard, having acquired a bleach works at Springvale in Lawrencetown soon after 1830. Funds to acquire the works were released by selling some of their land at Bannvale to Hugh Dunbar who then established the linen thread mill at Gilford. The bleach works at Bannvale appears to have fallen into disuse after Springvale was acquired. Springvale Bleach Works was a highly successful enterprise and was expanded by William Uprichard in 1884 at a cost of £10,000. It eventually closed in 1955. (Rankin)

On James Uprichard’s death in 1840 the house passed to his second son William, remaining in the ownership of the Uprichards until the early decades of the twentieth century. Henry Albert Uprichard inherited the property on his father’s death in 1884 but the house was let out to a number of tenants in the 1890s, the Uprichard’s preferring nearby Elmfield Castle as their main residence. Henry Albert Uprichard died in November 1901 and left Bannvale to his second son, also called Henry Albert, together with a share in Springvale Bleach Works, although Henry Albert junior was, by this time, working as a tea merchant in the firm founded by his grandfather, Forster Green & Co, in due course becoming Managing Director of the firm. (Will of Henry Albert Uprichard)

Henry Albert Uprichard (1880-1916) lived in the house intermittently in the early years of the twentieth century but by 1911 the house had been let to a widow, Anne Jane Kane, and her two daughters who kept a single domestic servant. Kane would appear to have been a relative by marriage of the Uprichards. Henry Albert’s brother William was married to Nancy Kane, daughter of the Rector of Tullylish. (Rankin)

Major Henry Albert Uprichard was Commander of the 2nd Battalion of the West Down regiment of the Ulster Volunteer Force. He joined up when the war started, like many of his colleagues n the UVF, and was killed in action in the attack on Thiepval in July 1916. He is commemorated by the Major Uprichard Memorial Orange Hall, Tullylish. Uprichard had been a wealthy man, having inherited a proportion of his grandfather’s fortune, and was an enthusiastic polo player and rode at steeplechase and point-to-point meetings, hunting with the County Down staghounds and the Iveagh harriers. (Rankin) After the death of Major Uprichard the house was sold but was used as an orthopaedic hospital for wounded soldiers from the autumn of 1916, extending the facilities offered at nearby Dunbarton House by another 30 beds. (Valuation Records) Bannvale house is now used as an administration building for the Southern Health and Social Care Trust. The former gate lodge is now derelict.

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/3/48C Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
7. PRONI VAL/12/B/21/8A-F Annual Revisions (1866-1930)
8. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/3A – Annual Revisions (1923-29)
9. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/25 – First General Revaluation (1936-57)
10. PRONI VAL/3/D/4/12/C/4 – First General Revaluation (1933-57)
11. PRONI Will of Henry Albert Uprichard, died 11th November 1901
12. PRONI D959/3/1/3A – Lease and release James Uprichard, Bannvale (1809)
13. 1901 census online
14. 1911 census online

Secondary Sources

1. 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
D. Plan Form
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A simple single-storey two-bay gate lodge, built c.1860 and located opposite the former east entrance to Bannvale House (HB17/01/031A), which is now in use as administrative quarters for a health trust. Although roofless, with no internal features surviving, some historic character survives and there is group value with the main house and the other lodge (HB17/01/031C).

General comments

Please note this record has been renumbered it was previously recorded as HB17/01/030