East gate lodge & entrance gates

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single storey Italianate gate lodge and matching gate screen of c.1850 by Charles Lanyon at the main (east) entrance to Ballywalter Park. There is a large 1990s flat roofed extension to rear of the lodge. The screen and lodge are set on the west side of Springvale Road, roughly half a mile south of Ballywalter, with a similar but plainer gate screen on the opposite side of the road.

In 1967 Alistair Rowan described this lodge as; ‘A perfectly symmetrical suave building on a cruciform plan in fawn-coloured sandstone and stucco. Dominating is the three semicircular-arched [S facing] “porte-cochere”, with archivolts springing from square piers to scrolled keystones. In the gable over a roundel with the Mulholland crest, an escallop gules. The sides of the porch have shouldered arches and pretty pierced balustrades. There are paired scrolled brackets to eaves, repeated as purlin ends to gables. To the side elevations are tall semicircular headed windows with margined glazing set into recesses. Flanking are smaller subsidiary lights in Venetian vein. Uniting the composition a moulded stringcourse at arch springing level. At the junction of ridges is a big square panelled chimney stack with bracketed cornice’.

Since then a large flat roofed extension has been added to the NE corner with two smallish windows (much in the style of original windows) and a timber and glazed rear door. A tall ward enclosing a yard at the SE corner, built presumably at the same time as the extension, has been demolished recently.

Entrance gates

A few yards to the E of this gate lodge are the main entrance gates. These were described by Rowan in 1967 as ‘impressive’ with ‘extensive walled quadrants...contained by big stone pillars. These frame iron railings containing wicket gates which flank the big carriage gates in matching robust and decorative [‘spear head’] cast iron. Each sandstone pillar is built up with deeply rusticated panelled blocks off a carved plinth. A plain frieze is surmounted by a moulded capping. Pretty scrolled volutes to the gate stops’.

Since then little has changed, though there appears to have been only ever one wicket gate rather than ‘wicket gates’. Part of the quadrant wall to the N side collapsed recently after being hit by a car, but the stone from the wall has been saved and the damaged portion will be reconstructed soon.

On the other side of the Springvale Road, directly opposite this entrance, is another gate screen with much more simple, understated, pillars, but containing similar ‘spear head’ gates. The pillars are flanked by railings on a low wall.

Historical information

Ballywalter Park estate, originally known as Ballymagowan and then as Springvale, was purchased by Belfast linen magnate Andrew Mulholland in 1846 for £23,500. Shortly after this he commissioned his fellow Belfast city councillor, Charles Lanyon, to extend and remodel the existing Springvale House (built probably in the early 1700s and added to c.1810) as well as adding two gate lodges and, presumably, the gates. The lodge itself was a model which had been used by Lanyon at Eglantine in Hillsborough in c.1845 and which he was to use again at Moneyglass and Dunderave in Co. Antrim. A large flat roofed extension has been added recently and the whole building has been renovated. It is currently unoccupied. Another lodge at the original western entrance to the estate, possibly also by Lanyon, has been demolished in recent times.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI OS/6/3/12/1 OS maps, Down 12, 1834
2 PRONI VAL/1B/39 First valuation, Ballywalter, c.1834-38
3 PRONI VAL/2B/3/9 Second valuation, Ballywalter, c.1859
4 PRONI OS/6/3/12/2 OS maps, Down 12, 1860
5 PRONI VAL/12B/23/6a-f Annual valuation revision books, Ballywalter, 1866-1929

Secondary sources
1 Lord Dunleath et al, 'Ballywalter Park' (UAHS 1985)
2 Alistair Rowan, "Ballywalter Park, Co. Down- I, II" in 'Country Life', vol.CXLI, No.3652, 2nd March 1967, pp.456-60: No.3653, 9th March 1967, pp.516-20
3 J.A.K. Dean, 'The Gate lodges of Ulster- a gazetteer', pp.11, 23, 63, 74
4 Derek Patton, "The Village of Ballywalter- A brief history" in 'Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society No.14' (1990), pp.10-15
5 A.J. Hughes and R.J. Hannan 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland Vol. Two, County Down II- The Ards', (QUB, 1992), pp.71-73

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
V. Authorship

Evaluation

Single storey Italianate gate lodge and matching gate screen of c.1850 by Charles Lanyon at the main (east) entrance to Ballywalter Park. There is a large 1990s flat roofed extension to rear of the lodge, and on the opposite side of the road there is a similar but plainer gate screen.

General comments

This property was previously noted under ref. no. HB24/04/026.