Lodge, Moneyglass Demesne, 40 Duneane Road, Toomebridge, Co Antrim, BT41 3PP

Lodge at Moneyglass Demesne

A detached single-storey Italianate gate lodge erected around 1855, most likely designed by Sir Charles Lanyon. The building marks the eastern entrance to Moneyglass estate and, despite being in poor repair, conveys the character of the original estate and house, of which only the portico now remains. The lodge forms an important feature within the suite of buildings comprising this large rural estate.

The building is rectangular in plan with a hipped roof featuring deep overhanging eaves. A rendered chimney rises from the centre with cavetto moulded coping. The walls are rendered over random rubble with rusticated quoins. The principal elevation faces north and is three bays wide, with a central round-headed entrance opening flanked by single windows. The entrance has a rusticated keystone but the door is missing. The round-arched windows on the north elevation have moulded sandstone architraves, rusticated keystones, and masonry sills. To the other elevations, the windows are square-headed with painted sandstone architraves and timber-framed tripartite windows divided vertically. Much of the timber framing is incomplete and glass is absent from most windows; partial moving sash frames remain. The east and west elevations are identical, each with a central square-headed window. The south elevation is blank. The roof is covered in natural slate, and the rainwater goods are ogee-profiled cast iron.

The setting includes a pair of rusticated sandstone gate pillars with square overhanging coping connected by ashlar walling to an inner pair of smaller similar gate pillars containing modern steel security gates. The boundary to Duneane Road is marked by random rubble stone walling.

The lodge lies within the eighteenth-century Moneyglass demesne, a rural estate owned by the Jones family. It appears on the 1857 Ordnance Survey map, replacing an earlier lodge marked on the 1833 map. According to contemporary sources, Kenrick Morres Hamilton-Jones employed Charles Lanyon to design two new gate lodges around this period, with the main lodge (at Moneyglass House) confirmed as his work and this lodge likely designed by him as well.