Gate Lodge, Moyallon House, 132 Stramore Road, Moyallen, Portadown, CRAIGAVON, BT63 5JZ

Gate Lodge, Moyallon House, c.1870–1871

This is a symmetrical three-bay, one-and-a-half-storey Victorian gate lodge built around 1870–1871 in the Gothic Revival style, constructed in blackstone and located to the west of the main entrance to Moyallon House, on the north side of Stramore Road north of Gilford. It is one of two gate lodges built as part of improvements carried out to the house and demesne by John Grubb Richardson between 1863 and 1871, with the architect tentatively identified as Thomas Jackson and Son.

The original lodge has a rectangular plan. Its roof is steeply pitched and covered with geometrically laid natural slates with blue and black angled ridge tiles. There are central yellow-brick chimneystacks with tall clay pots, front and rear rooflights, and plain bargeboards to the gables. The eaves overhang and carry cast-iron ogee-profile rainwater goods. The walls are built of rock-faced blackstone laid in rough courses on a chamfered yellow-brick plinth, with yellow and brown brick quoins. Windows are bipartite timber casements in painted or yellow-brick surrounds with projecting painted sills; the attic windows have four-centred arched heads.

The principal elevation faces south and is dominated by a steeply pitched central gable containing a window, beneath which is a two-panelled timber door in a painted brick surround fitted with brass door furniture and surmounted by a four-centred arched-headed transom light. The entrance is reached via two granite steps, with a window to either side of the door.

The west gable is abutted by a full-height extension in blackstone, which has two windows to the first floor front. At ground floor level on the west side there is a flat-roof porch opening to the east, which is boarded. This extension is in turn abutted by a modern annexe considered to be of no architectural interest. The north elevation has a timber casement window with a yellow-brick diamond motif above it. The rear north elevation has a modern two-storey return to the centre, also considered to be of no interest, with windows to the left and right, each having yellow-brick surrounds and diamond motifs above. The east gable has a window to the centre at attic level and, at ground floor centre, a pointed-headed blind entrance of yellow brick with yellow and brown brick surround.

The building has been modified in recent years by the addition of a full-height extension to the rear, a modern two-storey flat-roof annexe to the west, and a two-storey return to the rear, all of which alter the original proportions and detract from the building's character. The double-height extension to the north facade was designed by architect William C. Callaghan of Portadown. Despite these changes, much of the original architectural detailing survives intact.

The lodge sits within a setting of some note. To its east and rear is a gravelled yard accessed from the south through rock-faced blackstone square gate piers with pointed caps and iron gates. There is a two-storey rubble stone barn to the west. To the front is a lawned garden accessed from the east through a yellow-brick round-headed arch. The listing extent includes the gate lodge, the archway, and the pillars.

Historical context

Moyallon House itself is a linen mansion first built in 1794 by Thomas Christy Wakefield (1772–1861), a descendant of the Christy family who had settled Moyallon townland in 1675 after coming from Scotland, and who are thought to have introduced the linen trade into the area. A group of closely related Quakers had settled along the River Bann between Moyallon and Lawrencetown in the years following that first settlement, building mansion houses that reflected the growing success of the linen manufacture and trade. A house is known to have existed on the site by 1781, when the nearby Friends Meeting House was built; the meeting house trust deed of that year included a gift by Thomas Christy of a right of way from his gates to the meeting house, which continues to provide access to this day. Thomas Christy Wakefield had previously lived in another house nearby, also called Moyallon House, which had been destroyed by fire.

The house is shown as 'Moyallan' on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, which also depicts the main house and a service courtyard to the south that has survived. The Townland Valuation of 1826–40 records the property as belonging to Mr Thomas Wakefield, comprising a mansion house with cellars valued at £40 7s, with dimensions of 49 by 38 by 27 feet, and a number of single and two-storey outbuildings including a turf house, potato house, stables and lofts, a coach house, cow house, and privy. By the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, the house is designated 'Moyallan Ho[use]' and a threshing machine is also noted within its curtilage. Griffith's Valuation records that ownership had by then passed to John Grubb Richardson, who held the house in fee.

In August 1863, the valuation of the buildings was raised from £55 to £100 because the dwelling house was being rebuilt, enlarged, and given new wings, with new offices and gate lodges also in progress. The third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–02 shows the new house with its gate lodges and additional outbuildings. Thomas Jackson, a Quaker architect, was well known to the Richardsons, having designed meeting houses in Belfast and Lisburn, and is thought by Dean to be responsible for the gatehouses at Moyallon.

John Grubb Richardson was a descendant of the Richardsons of Lisnagarvey, among the earliest plantation settlers in the area, recorded there in 1610. Many generations of the family were involved in making and marketing linen, initially in Glenmore and Lambeg and eventually in Liverpool, Philadelphia, New York, and the model village of Bessbrook. John Grubb Richardson was one of seven sons of James Nicholson Richardson, founder of the company J. N. Richardson, Sons and Owden Ltd, a successful bleaching and warehousing firm. Richardson purchased from Lord Charlemont the Mount Caulfield estate in Armagh, where his cousins the Nicholsons had already established a spinning mill, and from 1845 he built the model village of Bessbrook, initially around spinning mills and eventually weaving factories, providing houses, a school, churches, and a shop, but with no access to alcohol in keeping with Quaker temperance principles. In 1853 Richardson married Jane Marion Wakefield of Moyallon House, and the property eventually passed to the couple on the death of her father. In 1863 Richardson inherited an estate in County Tyrone, and the sale of this estate appears to have enabled him both to become sole owner of the Bessbrook works and village and to extend Moyallon House. A further gatehouse and a gas works were added to the estate in 1871, increasing the valuation to £140. The gas works was subsequently demolished in 1910, reducing the valuation to £125.

John Grubb Richardson died in 1890, leaving his widow in residence until her death in 1909. Jane Richardson had two stepchildren and seven children of her own. One of them, Thomas Wakefield Richardson, took over the house on his mother's death. He is recorded in the 1901 census, his mother being away from home at the time; he was in residence with his English wife, a cook, and a Quaker housemaid. By the 1911 census, Richardson and his wife were again away, but their staff had grown to include a cook, a lady's maid, a housemaid, a kitchen maid, and a parlourmaid. The house passed to his widow Hilda after Thomas Wakefield Richardson's death; as the couple had no children, in 1945 it became the property of their nephew Alexander Reginald Wakefield Richardson.

The First General Revaluation of 1933–34 valued the house at £118. At that time the ground floor accommodation comprised a dining room, drawing room, library, morning room, flower room, cloakroom, billiards room, bedroom, butler's pantry, servants' hall, scullery, two kitchens, servants' bedroom, two cloakrooms, bootrooms, three pantries, and a larder. The first floor had seven bedrooms, a sitting room, a bathroom with hot and cold water, and a water closet. The second floor had six servants' bedrooms, a bathroom, and a boxroom. Outbuildings included a glass-walled museum (since demolished), a laundry with a drying room and loft containing three servants' bedrooms, three steam-heated greenhouses, stabling, four motor houses (one with two rooms over), stores, and agricultural buildings. The house had its own electric lighting, and the grounds included two grass tennis courts and a croquet lawn.

Alexander Richardson and his wife Marianne had four children at Moyallon, but in the 1940s two of their children died of typhoid and a further child died shortly afterwards. Because of the associations of the house with these events, Alexander, Marianne, and their son Hugh moved to a nearby Richardson property called The Grange. The furniture in the then-vacant Moyallon House was auctioned and the premises was leased to the Department of Health and Social Services as a residential special care school, as shown on Ordnance Survey maps from the 1960s and 1970s. A fine marble fireplace was removed during this period and installed at Derrymore House, Bessbrook, a property that had been donated by the Richardsons to the National Trust. In the 1970s the house was occupied by a Mrs Mathers who ran it as a guest house, after which it stood vacant for some years before being renovated as a family home in the early 1980s.

Ownership has remained within the same family lineage, descended from the Christys who first built the house in 1794, representing a remarkable continuity. The south wing, now known as The Lodge, was developed into three self-contained flats in the 1990s by architect William C. Callaghan of Portadown. As part of that development, a verandah of wood and glass visible in early survey photographs was removed and replaced with a single-storey flat-roofed extension.

Despite the alterations that have affected the gate lodge in recent years, it retains much of its original architectural detailing and remains a good example of its type. It also retains its group value as part of the wider Moyallon House complex, and is of local historical and industrial archaeological interest as part of an estate associated with the Quaker linen industry of the Bann Valley.