Gates and gate screen at Dunmore Lodge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey house on an asymmetrical plan, with a gateway and screen attached. Gateway faces west; main entrance to house faces north.

Entrance front to house has smooth rendered walls; roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses, with a portion in fish-scale slates; timber fascia boards; cast iron rainwater goods; rectangular metal windows; glazed and panelled door. Gables of similar walling with similar windows to entrance front; rear elevation of similar character.

Gateway and screen comprises a set of four square smooth rendered panelled piers with moulded cornices and sandstone plinths, containing a central pair of original iron gates decoratively treated, mounted on square-plan openwork iron secondary posts with ball finials; to each side of that are twin pedestrian gates with similar iron secondary posts. Extending to the south beyond the end stone pier is a curving screen linked to the house, comprising a low plinth wall, of sandstone smooth rendered, surmounted by spear-headed railings. Extending to the north beyond the other outer stone pier is a screen wall of basalt rubble with ramped concrete coping.

SETTING: The house and gateway are located along a driveway off the main road, approached by a bridge over the former railway line. The house and gateway are surrounded by grassed areas and trees. To the rear of the house is a small yard bounded by basalt rubble walls and containing a basalt rubble outbuilding with smooth rendered entrance gable.

Historical information

Built by the O'Neill family as a gate lodge to Shane's Castle estate; precise date of building not known but it appears on the OS map of 1858. An old photograph shows that originally it was a 1½ storey building with ornamental timber barge boards, tall octagonal stone chimneys, and other details comparable with other lodges to the estate which have been attributed to the architect James Sands; stylistically this lodge also may be dated probably to the 1840s and may also be a work by Sands who is known to have been connected with the estate in 1848. Now cut off from the main part of the estate since the deerpark was taken over by the Forest Service; date when house modernised not recorded.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1858, Co Antrim 49 (marked as 'Gate Lodge').
2. OS Map 1902, Co Antrim 49 (marked as 'Dunmore Lodge').
3. Original photograph in Green Collection, Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

Secondary Sources
1. J.A.K. Dean, The Gate Lodges of Ulster (Belfast, 1994), p 27 (reproduces Green photograph).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

A fine set of iron gates and gate screen that still has group value with the other listed buildings on the Shane's Castle estate even though it no longer leads directly to the centre of the estate..

General comments

This record was originally numbered as HB20/04/060.