Greengate Lodge

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 1½ storey gate lodge of asymmetrical layout with steep pitched roofs and elaborate ornamental timber bargeboards to oversailing eaves incorporating trefoil motifs. Entrance elevation faces south-east.

Roofs of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; metal rainwater goods. Smooth cement rendered walls, lined, painted white, with rectangular and segmental-arched window openings containing modern replacement timber windows, fixed light with top-hung vents. Main chimney rendered; moulded cornice with dentils; two modern pots. Later single storey flat-roofed extensions to front and rear, including a porch enclosing the original main entrance; original main entrance segmental-headed containing 6-panel door. The building is much bereft of original detail and quality but retains a shield motif surmounted by a Tudor label moulding in the apex of the north-east gable.

SETTING: The building stands in a rural area with a modern gateway attached, leading to a former country house estate now used as an industrial complex. It faces directly onto the approach road and driveway, with a lawn to the rear.

Historical information

Built as a gate lodge to the Langford Lodge estate owned by the Pakenham family in the 19th century. Precise date of building not recorded, and architect not known, but it was probably built soon after the 1858 OS map was published; a different lodge, situated on the opposite side of the driveway is shown on the 1858 map.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1901-2, Co Antrim 58 (called Greengate Lodge).
Secondary Sources
1. J.A.K. Dean, The Gate Lodges of Ulster (Belfast, 1994), p 19 (although an erroneous date is given).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a 19th century gate lodge which is of some local interest as a relic of the 19th century development of the Langford Lodge estate but which has had its original qualities as a work of architecture eroded by inappropriate later alterations.