Entrance Gate & Lodges, Castle Upton, Antrim Road, Templepatrick, Co Antrim, BT39 0AH

A formally designed entrance gateway incorporating concealed gatehouses, forming the main entrance to Castle Upton Estate. The building was designed by respected British architect Edward Blore in a confident Picturesque style with mock crenellations, machicolations, and arrow loops, representing an early example of the Norman Revival. Despite these romantic elements, the building displays rigid symmetry, which is enhanced by the twin lodges and wing walls to either side. The structure is a prominent roadside feature within the rural settlement of Templepatrick, contributing much to the character of the village and conveying a sense of the grandeur of the estate beyond. The structure is of vital significance to the wider group value of the Castle Upton Estate.

Constructed in 1837 to designs by Edward Blore, this is a double-height castellated entrance gateway leading to the castle estate. The gate is square in plan, flanked by wing walls concealing single-storey gatehouses to either side. The roof is concealed by a crenellated parapet. The walling is squared rock-faced basalt with ashlar sandstone dressings throughout, set over a chamfered plinth. A moulded string course runs at parapet level.

The gateway sits directly on the north side of the Antrim Road within Templepatrick village. The south and north elevations are identical, each consisting of a round-headed double-height entrance arch with chamfered ashlar surround and hood mould, contained within a square-headed recess with mock machicolations beneath the string course. The flanking piers are of finely dressed basalt with contrasting quoins and have arrow loops at ground floor level. The entrance gates are timber-panelled with cast iron strap hinges.

The east and west elevations are identical except for an ashlar granite chimneystack on a moulded corbel to the east. Both elevations are blank. The interior is of ashlar sandstone with a pair of deep round-headed recesses to either side. The ceiling is ruled-and-lined plaster over stone corbels, and the floor is cobbled. Square-headed timber-panelled doors to the adjoining gatehouses are located within each northern recess. A carriage bollard stands at the north-east corner.

The lower castellated screen walls are of rock-faced basalt, each containing an arrow loop and terminating with an ashlar buttress with stepped offsets. Thereafter the estate wall continues in squared uncoursed basalt with cut basalt saddleback coping.

The gatehouses are each single-storey with multiple bays and lean-to natural slate roofs. The walling is uncoursed squared basalt. Windows are replacement timber lattice-frame side-hung casements with chamfered ashlar stone surrounds and flush cills. Doors are replacement timber-panelled and dressed as windows. Rainwater goods are cast iron with castellated hopper heads.

According to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1838, Upton Castle was the seat of Viscount Templeton, proprietor of the village of Templepatrick. It was erected in 1611 as Castle Norton, built by Sir Robert Norton (who was granted the estate by James I) on the site of the ancient fourteenth-century castle of the Knights of St John. The Upton family purchased the estate in the mid-seventeenth century, when the name was changed to Upton Castle. The OS Memoirs record that Viscount Templeton was making improvements to the estate in 1838, including a battlemented wall to the boundary with the village, and had "lately commenced a magnificent entrance, somewhat resembling a barbican in the Saxon style of Architecture. It is punched granite, with white porphyry quoins, mouldings and pinnacles", the work being carried out by Mr Blore of London—Edward Blore, who completed John Nash's Buckingham Palace. The 1st edition Ordnance Survey map of 1837 appears to show an earlier T-plan gatehouse to the west of where the current one stands.

The structure was refurbished around 2000 by Hearth Housing Association.