The Lodge, 1 Donaghadee Road, Groomsport, Co Down, BT19 6LG

The Lodge is an asymmetrical two-storey Victorian house with attic and basement, built around 1865 on Donaghadee Road in Groomsport, opposite Groomsport Parish Church. It is constructed from Scrabo sandstone and represents a fine example of the florid High Victorian style.

The house is rectangular on plan with a slightly projecting gabled right bay and central projecting steeply gabled porch. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black angled clay ridge tiles, and the porch features two courses of fish scale slates. Octagonal chimneystacks are grouped in twos and threes, supported on sandstone bases. The main house has ornate timber bargeboards, whilst the porch is detailed with cast-iron bargeboards. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods with fleur-de-lys fixings are set over exposed rafter ends and eaves board.

The walling is ashlar sandstone over a chamfered plinth set with cast-iron ventilation grilles. Windows are predominantly grouped in sets of two and three 1/1 timber sashes, divided by sandstone transoms and mullions in ashlar sandstone surrounds with flush chamfered sills. Some original glazing survives. The principal east-facing elevation has openings to each floor at each bay arranged about the central porch, which is profiled with offsets at either side. The first floor central window is a single 2/2 sash, and a diminutive 1/1 sash lights the attic to the right gable. The porch has door openings to either side, each comprising a shouldered opening with stop-end chamfered reveal and timber sheeted door accessed by three stone steps with reproduction metal railings. The left entrance door retains a figurative knocker and decorative strap-hinges. The front elevation of the porch includes a four-centred arched Y-tracery window. The left gable has a window at each floor, including an attic window; that to the ground floor is contained in a canted bay. The return to the left is set back slightly and has two windows to the first floor and a projecting bay window to the ground floor. The rear elevation is largely obscured by a substantial modern extension of no architectural interest; the exposed section is yellow brick. The right gable is abutted by a lower two-storey extension.

The house was originally built as a residence for the District Curate of Groomsport Church and first appears in valuation records in 1867. It was initially occupied by Reverend A.H. McCausland, the District Curate, until 1880 when the church acquired its own rector, who chose to reside at Albertville instead. By 1885, The Lodge had become the residence of Mrs John Perceval Maxwell, widow of the Maxwell family associated with Groomsport House, serving as a dower house. Selina Maxwell owned and occupied the property by 1906. Around 1900, during a period when Campbell Gardiner occupied the house, he built new stables measuring 40 feet by 17 and a half feet, which raised the property's valuation to £36.15 shillings. The building is now in use as a commercial clinic.

The setting has been substantially altered by inappropriate modern development. The house is set back from the road with a large paved parking area to the front, accessed via modern steel gates and enclosed from the road by roughcast and modern stone and yellow brick boundary walls. Modern buildings encroach on either side, though the lodge remains prominent due to its scale. Despite the loss of its original domestic setting and the construction of a large modern extension to the rear, the architectural qualities of the principal elevation survive as a good example of Victorian detailing and proportion.