Main Gate Lodge and Gates to Loughanmore, 53 Loughanmore Road, Dunadry, Antrim, Co Antrim, BT41 2HN

Main Gate Lodge and Gates to Loughanmore

This is an inter-war gate lodge of distinctive proportions in the Arts and Crafts style, built in 1929 to designs by the London architects Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie for C.L. MacKean as the new main entrance lodge to Loughanmore House, replacing an earlier oval lodge. The builder was William Laughlin of Antrim, with a tender price of £755. The contract specified that stone from the previous cottage would be re-used in the new structure, as would the stone and ironwork of the screen walls, balustrade piers and gates. The lodge stands in a pleasant rural setting and forms an attractive architectural group together with its adjoining gateway and boundary walls.

The lodge is a 1½-storey, 3-bay structure of blackstone rubble with a slated roof. The main entrance faces west, with a symmetrical elevation containing one window to each side of a central doorway. The roof is finished in Westmorland green slates in diminishing courses, with two segmental-roofed dormer windows, white-painted timber fascia and soffit. Two chimneys of snecked basalt rubble, one on each gable, each with two pots, project as buttresses to the gable extremities. Cast iron guttering runs across the face of the first-floor windows, though the central portion is missing; a cast iron downpipe is positioned to the right-hand side. Windows are rectangular metal small-paned casements in timber frames with lead cills, set in segmental arched openings. The entrance comprises a rectangular timber glazed and sheeted door in a wooden frame set in a segmental arched opening.

The north gable is of similar walling with two segmental-arched ground-floor windows and timber barge boards. The rear elevation is of similar character to the front, featuring one broad 5-light segmental-roofed dormer window to the first floor with casements and detailing matching the front, and guttering passing in front. A downpipe to the right-hand side stops short of ground level, as if originally discharging into a barrel. A central doorway with a rectangular sheeted door (now damaged) is located to the left of a ground-floor window, the segmental arched opening now closed with concrete blockwork following removal of the casement. The south gable mirrors the north gable.

The lodge stands alongside the recessed main gateway to Loughanmore, with its north gable facing the main road and the entrance front facing the driveway to the house. The driveway is flanked by mature trees on each side, which extend to the side and rear of the lodge. The rear garden or yard is now overgrown with vegetation. Derelict lean-to sheds of brick, timber boarding and corrugated iron sheeting stand against the boundary wall to the main road, including what was originally the outside toilet.

The gateway comprises a pair of double wrought iron gates with cast iron spear-head finials (in very rusted condition) mounted on a pair of large octagonal-section granite piers with panelled faces and moulded caps. Sandstone balustrading in Jacobean style sits on a low basalt plinth wall, extending to meet smaller polygonal snecked basalt piers with moulded sandstone caps. Beyond these extend snecked basalt screen walls with moulded granite or concrete copings; the right-hand screen wall angles forward to abut the end pier of the front boundary wall, whilst the left-hand wall links to the lodge buttress with another short run of screen wall abutting the north buttress and connecting with the corresponding pier of the front boundary wall to the east. The left-hand gate is damaged on its frame. End piers of the front boundary walls to each side of the gateway are square snecked basalt rubble with moulded concrete or granite caps. Boundary walls of basalt rubble with basalt rock copings extend considerable distances along the main road in both directions. Weathering has made identification of material specification sometimes difficult.