East Lodge, 11 Banbridge Road, Gilford Castle Estate, Gilford, CRAIGAVON, Co Down, BT63 6DJ

East Lodge, Gilford Castle Estate, Banbridge Road, Gilford

This is a gate lodge built around 1870 at the east farm entrance to Gilford Castle, situated on the Banbridge Road east of Gilford. It was probably designed by William Spence, the Scottish architect — resident in Glasgow — who is credited with designing Gilford Castle itself and its outbuildings. The lodge is currently vacant, under separate ownership from the castle, and recorded as derelict.

The building is a symmetrical single-storey-with-attic structure of three bays, rectangular on plan, with a central gabled breakfront that breaks the eaves line. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles, and there are dressed sandstone chimneystacks to the gables. The overhanging eaves carry a decorative fretted timber fascia with plain bargeboards and uPVC rainwater goods. The walls are painted brick throughout.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrical, with a window to either side of the central breakfront. The breakfront contains a timber sheeted door with an ornate cast iron knocker and a camber-arched overlight; above this, at attic level, is a narrow round-arched two-pane window with a horizontal glazing bar. The windows generally are 2/2 camber-arched timber casement replacements with painted masonry sills. The south gable has a single central window. The rear elevation has boarded-up openings and a less ornate fascia board, with a door to the right side and a window to its left. The north gable is blank.

The lodge's simple ornamentation consists of the decorative bargeboards and the slight camber to the window heads. The gate piers nearby echo this modest Gothic character.

The lodge is set close to a pair of rusticated ashlar sandstone gate piers which have been damaged and are now without their caps or gates. To the right side is a full-height timber pedestrian gate with Gothic apertures, set into an ashlar stone surround contained within tall flanking entrance walls of rubble stone built to courses with stone soldier coping. The setting is a demesne landscape, with a busy road immediately to the north and parkland to the south.

Historical background

The lodge was the only gate lodge provided when Gilford Castle was rebuilt in the early 1870s. The demesne occupies a loop of the River Bann and is accessible from the north only, which determined its siting. An earlier gatehouse to the west was demolished in the late 19th century. The lodge first appears, labelled, on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–2, at the end of the entrance driveway known as the Farm Entrance, which led directly to the castle's stable courtyard and would have been the route used by coach passengers arriving from Belfast.

The lodge enters valuation records around 1874, grouped with a groom's house and tower and other outbuildings, collectively valued at £50. It was deleted from valuation records in 1887 and thereafter assessed as part of the castle's offices and outbuildings. By 1904, when the estate was purchased by Katherine Carleton, the lodge was grouped with coachmen's, grooms' and gardeners' apartments and offices, valued separately from the main house at £50 because they were described as "cut off from castle." The First General Revaluation of the 1930s records the gate lodge as a single-storey rectangular structure with a porch and an outbuilding to the rear. At that time it was occupied by William James Hewitt under a service tenancy from James F. Wright, the occupier of Gilford House. The accommodation comprised two bedrooms, a reception room and a kitchen, and the valuer described the house as an "old, fairly good building and finish."

Gilford Castle itself was completed in the early 1870s as a residence for Benjamin Dickson, a partner in the local linen thread company of Dunbar McMaster. The castle replaced a much earlier building on the site. The first castle at Gilford is thought to have been built by William Johnston, a captain in the Royal Irish Dragoons, who inherited part of the Gilford estates from the grandson of Captain John Magill — a soldier in Cromwell's army and the early proprietor of Gilford, from whom the town's name derives. Johnston was knighted in 1714 and became 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. When Richard Johnston's son William died in 1841 the baronetcy became extinct, and William's younger sister Catherine sold the castle and demesne to Benjamin Dickson, who built the present castle. The old castle fell into decay and was demolished in the 1860s prior to the completion of the new building; it had stood on the south side of the present Castle Street, close to the road and on the edge of the demesne.

The new Gilford Castle, designed in the Scottish Baronial style, was begun sometime after 1861 and was in progress in the late 1860s. William Spence also designed Elmfield, a house for Dickson's brother James. Benjamin and James Dickson were partners in the Dunbar McMaster linen thread company, on which the growth and prosperity of Gilford town was largely founded. The new castle was more centrally placed within the demesne and allowed for a grand drive entrance. It illustrates the use of newly acquired commercial wealth to emulate the landed gentry, positioning one of Gilford's most prominent businessmen within a ready-made historical context through the use of the Scottish Baronial style and a site with deep connections to the town's earliest proprietor.

Benjamin Dickson does not, however, appear to have ever inhabited the castle; he is never listed in valuation records as the occupier, and local tradition holds that when he showed the house to his new fiancée she disliked it so strongly that she refused to live in it. The castle first appears in valuation records in the mid-1860s at a valuation of £200. The Dickson brothers dissolved their partnership with McMaster in 1866; a legal dispute followed, eventually won by McMaster. The Dicksons subsequently entered into partnership with their brother-in-law Thomas Ferguson of Banbridge to form Dickson, Ferguson & Co., a power-loom weaving company, from which the Dicksons retired in 1883.

No occupier is recorded for the castle until 1887, when it became home to Percy Jocelyn McMaster, younger brother of Hugh Dunbar McMaster, proprietor of Gilford Mill, who was himself resident at nearby Dunbarton House. McMaster let the castle from Benjamin Dickson; it was revalued in 1887 in two portions, each valued at £75. This 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 and six children, his 14-year-old daughter working as a seamstress.

In 1904 the house and demesne was purchased by Katherine Carleton for £15,000. The valuer noted that the cost of construction to Benjamin Dickson had been approximately £42,000 and that the price paid by Carleton represented "the value of the land alone, the castle being given for nothing." Katherine Carleton became the castle's first long-term resident since it 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 today.

By 1934 the castle's accommodation comprised two reception rooms, a billiards room, library, study, two kitchens, two pantries, a scullery, larder and dairy on the ground floor; 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's woods, lakes, rivers and proximity to major transport routes made the demesne well suited to military training. Nissen huts were erected within the grounds and in 1943 a squadron of American troops, together with their medical detachment, was housed in the demesne, the detachment constructing 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 and a further 1 rood and 15 perches in July 1941.

Although the castle and its demesne are considered a fine and largely intact example of Scottish Baronial architecture, and are of historic significance as a monument to the success of the local linen industry, the gate lodge itself has been compromised by alterations and does not meet the statutory and policy tests for listing as a building of special architectural or historic interest.