FRONT GATE LODGE AT STRANMILLIS COLLEGE

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single-storey gate lodge and gate screen, dated 1933 at the front entrance to Stranmillis College, Belfast designed by the well known Ministry of Finance Architect Roland Ingleby Smith. Located adjacent to the Stranmillis and Ormeau Road embankment approx. 2.5 km S of the city centre. The lodge is rectangular in plan with a curved screen wall and railings attached to the E. The gate screen is located directly south of the lodge at the front access road to the college (E); it consists of gates for vehicular and pedestrian access mounted on tall piers.

Gate Screen
Materials:

Piers: Portland Stone
Railings and gates: Replacement painted metal

Gateway with twin piers, for vehicular access, flanked by smaller piers for pedestrians. Main piers are tall and square in section with moulded capstones supporting stone urns. The smaller piers are also square section with plain moulded capstones. Gates are plainly detailed replacement painted metal with narrow square section uprights and a deep mid-rail. Low boundary walling in coursed basalt to each side of the gateway with plainly detailed iron railings. Front gate lodge is to the N of the gates set behind the boundary wall and railings.

Gate Lodge
Materials:

Roof: Green glazed clay tiles (black asphalt to flat roof projection)
RWG: Cast metal
Walls: Rustic brown clay brick
Windows: Replacement painted timber multi-paned casements

Exterior Description

Front elevation (E)
The front elevation has an entrance door to the left and a curved projecting bay with flat roof attached to the right-hand side of the door way.(The projecting bay continues in a curved profile northwards where it becomes a free-standing garden wall with semi-circular arched opening with concrete coping and brick header courses). The entrance door is replacement painted boarded timber with a long rectangular glazed panel. The curved bay has 3 no. window openings, centrally located in a symmetrical composition; consisting of a larger portrait style window in the centre flanked by 2 no. smaller square windows. There is 1 no. landscape style window opening on the S cheek of the projecting bay. Window openings are generally square-headed with painted concrete cills; flat segmental arched openings to the doorway and larger window openings. The brickwork is Flemish bond with thick mortar joints. There are deep over-hanging eaves with painted timber soffit and fascias and painted metal rain water goods. The roof is hipped with green glazed clay tiles covering and half-rounded green clay hip and ridge tiles. There are 2 no. plain tall brown brick chimneys, symmetrically positioned on the ridge with plain concrete caps and yellow clay pots.

Rear elevation (W)
The rear elevation is symmetrical with 4 no. evenly spaced window openings with flat segmental arch headed openings and painted concrete calls. Windows have 16 no. panes.

Side elevation (N)
Side elevation has 1 no. window opening with flat segmental arched head, painted concrete cills and 16 no. panes. There is a door opening on the north cheek of the curved projecting bay. The door is a replacement painted boarded timber with long rectangular glazed panel and a full length painted boarded timber side panel to the right-hand side. The side panel is glazed to upper half. The doorway has a concrete lintel (possibly originally had a canopy attached -now removed).

Side elevation (S)
Side elevation (S) has 1 no. window opening similar to the N elevation.

The lodge is set back slightly from the road and is bounded to the E by a low coursed basalt wall with original painted metal railings. The railings are plainly detailed with thin square section uprights and larger square section posts bedded into rectangular sections of cut Portland stone placed at intervals along the top of the wall. There are decorative fluted finials at the tops of the posts and curvilinear support stays at the back. There is a tall square brown brick pier with plain concrete cap where the curved screen wall of the lodge connects to the E boundary wall and railings. There is a similar pier to the S of the lodge where the lodge railings connect to the main gate screen. The site is lawned with an area of hard surfacing to the S entrance finished in brushed concrete. There is a bank of mature fir trees to the W.

Historical information

Background - The Stranmillis demesne is of early 17th century origin. In 1606, Arthur Chichester, later 1st Earl of Donegall, leased the area to Sir Moses Hill, who in 1611 built a house overlooking the Lagan on the site of the present outbuildings (later known as ‘Sir Moses’s Cellars’) to the west of Stranmillis House. The Hills gave up their lease in c.1667 and the Donegalls created a deer park on the site, with what is now the Stranmillis Road acting as a horse course enclosing the eastern and southern boundaries of the park, and the Malone Road, then the main route to Dublin, marking its western limit.

In 1770 the Donegalls began to divide the ‘The Course’ into plots that were leased to farmers, with a Belfast merchant family, the Blacks, leasing 40 acres at the southern end of the site. Here they built a summer residence, replaced by a larger house in 1801. With the selling off of the Donegall estate from the early 1820s, the Blacks acquired the freehold and in 1857 they sold the property to Thomas G. Batt (d.1861), one of the Batt family of Purdysburn House. Immediately afterwards he rebuilt the house in Jacobean Revival Style to designs by Lanyon and Lynn.

After Batt’s death Stranmillis was sold to William Murphy, a linen manufacturer, with timber merchant Sir Daniel Dixon acquiring it in the 1880s, followed by Walter Henry Wilson, a director of Harland & Wolff in the 1890s. In c.1902 it was bought by James McConnell, a brick manufacturer. In 1919 the estate was purchased by Queen’s University for £13,500, who sold it in 1922 to newly-established NI Ministry of Finance for £15,000 as the site for a new teacher training college.

The college extended the old mansion in 1922-24 to designs by the Ministry’s Chief Architect, Roland Ingleby Smith, and added the impressive Neo-Georgian Main Building to the north-east in 1926-29, also by Ingleby Smith assisted By Thomas F.O. Rippingham. Rippingham, who later succeeded as MoF Chief Architect, designed the Principal’s House (‘Lagan Lodge’) built to the south-east in 1934, the Henry Garrett Building in 1944 (extended 1953), and the back lodge in 1949. The large Modern Style complex containing halls of residence and a dining centre was erected on the western side of the grounds in 1966-68, with the ‘Central Building’ (complete with circular music department) built to the south-west of the Main Building, in 1968-1970. Since that time further buildings have been added to the north-west and south-east.

Front lodge and gate screen - The principal entrance, which is located a short distance south of the pre-1832 demesne drive, was created in 1930 to align with the new main building (completed the previous year), providing quick direct access to the latter and opening up a vista to Stranmillis Road. The gate screen was designed by Roland Ingleby Smith and originally consisted of six Portland stone piers, but was altered post-1969 (due to the widening of the drive) with two of the original square Portland stone piers removed along with the original gates and short side walls, with the positions of the surviving piers altered.

The accompanying lodge, also designed by Ingleby Smith, was added in 1933. Surviving documentation (dating from 1930) shows that Smith originally planned an overtly Neo-Georgian octagonal structure, single-storey with attic, gently curving alternate wall facets, and a copper-clad domed roof with oculi and a central chimney stack; tellingly, however, a note on this drawing (possibly by Smith himself) reveals that the scheme was more suited to a ‘millionaire’s estate’. A subsequent drawing shows the building much as present, but with the lower curved section to the east flush with the sides of the main block, and the large window to the eastern elevation set within a recess.

The southern section of the screen wall extending from the lodge was taken down at the time of the alterations to the neighbouring gateway, and the present rubble wall and railings erected afterwards to enclose the site once again.

The pre-1832 drive to the north and its picturesque c.1860 Lanyon & Lynn lodge, survived the advent of the new entrance by a number of years, with the lodge still standing in 1937.

References – Primary sources
1 OS maps, 1920, 1931, 1937, 1957, 1961, 1966, 1969
2 MBR FIN19/9/44-51 (1930)

Secondary sources
1 MBR AN/065 Garden file on Stranmillis House
2 Dean, J.A.K., ‘The Gate Lodges of Ulster, a gazetteer’, (Belfast, UAHS, 1994), p.29
3 Beale, George and Phoenix, Eamon, ‘Stran: Stranmillis College 1922-1998 – An Illustrated History’, (Belfast, 1998)

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
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
T. Historic Importance
V. Authorship
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Single-storey gate lodge and gate screen, dated c. 1933 at the front entrance to Stranmillis College, Belfast. Designed by the well known Ministry of Finance Architects R.I Smith & TFO Rippingham. Located adjacent to the Stranmillis and Ormeau Road embankment approx. 2.5 km S of the city centre, the lodge and gate screen still serve Stranmillis University College. The lodge is intact externally and internally with its original distinctive planform, featuring a curvilinear projecting bay and garden wall, hipped green glazed clay tile roof and deep over-hanging eaves. Designed in a restrained neo-Georgian style, the adjacent gate screen, erected in 1930 to align with the new main building, is much more grandiose in character. Physically connected via a boundary wall, the two structures are connected visually by the use of stone similar to that used in the entrance gate piers in the coursed low basalt wall of the lodge. Despite the replacement of the original windows to the lodge and replacement of the gates on the main gate screen, the structures retain their character and form an important group with the other listed buildings on the estate.