Walled Garden, Gilford Castle Estate, 5 Banbridge Road, Gilford, Co Down, BT63 6DJ

Walled Garden, Gilford Castle Estate, dating from around 1870

This large walled garden was built around 1870 as part of the Gilford Castle demesne and is first recorded on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–2. It sits to the east of the main house, accessed by two unpaved avenues running through mature woodland, and forms part of a group of structures associated with the running of a 19th-century country house. The architect of the wider estate, including the castle itself, is said to have been William Spence, a Scottish architect based in Glasgow, though his involvement with the garden specifically is unconfirmed.

The garden is rectangular in plan and enclosed on three sides — to the north-west, north-east, and south-east — by high red brick walls laid in English Garden Wall bond, topped with overhanging brick coping that is shallowly ramped in places, with stone ball finials at the north-west and south-west corners. The main entrance is in the south-west elevation, where a lower brick plinth wall carries tall spear-headed cast-iron railings. The entrance gate is timber, with stop-end chamfered lattice to the lower portion and a series of timber uprights to the upper portion, finished with a bronze knob. It is set within a tooled ashlar masonry surround with pole moulding. On the north-east side, a wide rectangular opening with a brick lintel has been infilled with a modern gate.

Beyond this north-east gate, outside the main enclosure, stand the remains of a lean-to glasshouse facing south, with an ancillary range to the rear containing potting sheds and a boiler house, the boiler of which remains in situ. The glasshouse has a lean-to slate roof, brick walling, a tall brick chimney, and timber sheeted doors, with the remains of timber window frames still visible. A valuer's notebook entry from 1917 records a plan and dimensions of the glasshouse, and field inspection has revealed the remains of a hot water heating system within the associated potting sheds.

Internally, the garden has a south-facing sloping aspect and is divided on each axis by a path. The southern portion is given over to orchards, with a supporting structure for fruit trees carried on slender cast-iron piers with knobs. The north-east area retains the remains of ornamental planting.

The garden contributes to the group value of the Gilford Castle structures and is one of increasingly few such gardens surviving in something close to original condition.

The wider Gilford Castle estate, of which this garden forms part, is of considerable historical interest. The present castle was built in the Scottish Baronial style in the late 1860s, replacing an earlier castle that had fallen into decay and was demolished in the 1860s. It was built by Benjamin Dickson, who had grown wealthy as a partner in the local linen thread company of Dunbar McMaster. The new castle was designed to place one of Gilford's most prominent businessmen within the traditions of the landed gentry, on a site with connections stretching back to the town's earliest proprietors.

The first castle at Gilford is thought to have been built in the early 1700s by William Johnston, a captain in the Royal Irish Dragoons who had inherited part of the Gilford estates from the grandson of Captain John Magill, a soldier in Cromwell's army who was the early proprietor of Gilford and from whom the name of the town is said to derive. Johnston was knighted in 1714 and served as High Sheriff of Down in 1717 and of Armagh in 1721. After his death in 1722 the castle and estates passed to his son Richard and then his grandson, also Richard, but with the death of Richard Johnston's son William in 1841 the baronetcy became extinct. William's younger sister Catherine sold the castle and demesne to Benjamin Dickson, who proceeded to build the present castle. The old castle stood on the south side of what is now Castle Street, close to the road and on the edge of the demesne, and was demolished prior to the completion of the new building in the 1860s.

The new Gilford Castle was positioned more centrally within the demesne, allowing for a grand drive entrance. Despite the considerable outlay — the cost to Benjamin Dickson was recorded by a later valuer as approximately £42,000 — he apparently never inhabited it. He is never listed in valuation records as the occupier, and local folklore holds that his fiancée refused to live there. The Dickson brothers had dissolved their partnership with McMaster in 1866, a separation that led to a legal dispute eventually won by McMaster. The brothers subsequently went into partnership with their brother-in-law Thomas Ferguson of Banbridge to form Dickson, Ferguson and Co., a power-loom weaving company, from which they retired in 1883.

The castle first appears in valuation records around 1870 at a valuation of £200. No occupier is recorded until 1887, when Percy Jocelyn McMaster — younger brother of Hugh Dunbar McMaster, proprietor of Gilford Mill — took up residence, leasing from Benjamin Dickson. The house was revalued that year in two portions, each valued at £75. McMaster's tenancy was short-lived, and by 1891 the house was again vacant. A tenant named Purcell occupied the castle for a period around 1896, but the 1901 census records the only occupant as the gardener and caretaker, James Emerson, who lived there with his wife, six children, and a 14-year-old daughter working as a seamstress.

In 1904 the house and demesne was purchased by Katherine Carleton for £15,000. The valuer at that time noted that the price paid was effectively the value of the land alone, the castle itself being given for nothing. Katherine Carleton became the first long-term resident since the castle had been built. The 1911 census records the 54-year-old spinster living there with a female companion and two domestic servants — a cook and a parlourmaid. In 1918 the house was purchased by James F. Wright, whose descendants continue to live in the castle.

By 1934 the accommodation comprised two reception rooms, a billiards room, library, study, two kitchens, two pantries, a scullery, larder, and dairy on the ground floor, with six bedrooms, two dressing rooms, two bathrooms, a nursery, a sewing room, and three maids' rooms on the first floor, and two attic rooms on the second floor.

During the Second World War, Gilford Castle demesne was used for military purposes. Nissen huts were erected in the grounds, and in 1943 the demesne housed a squadron of American troops together with their medical detachment, who built a temporary hospital to the rear of the castle. Valuation records confirm that 35 acres of land were requisitioned by the War Department in October 1940, with a further 1 rood and 15 perches requisitioned in July 1941.

The castle is currently a private family home.