Former Gate Lodge, 1 Ann Street, Gilford, Craigavon, Co Down, BT63 6HX

A symmetrical two-bay single-storey former gate lodge, built around 1839 and now functioning as an end-terrace house, stands directly east of Gilford Mill. The building is located at the east entrance to the mill complex on Ann Street, northwest of Gilford town centre, and is part of a terrace of eight houses.

The lodge is square on plan with a hipped natural slate roof featuring angled ridge tiles and a finial. The leaded hips have been removed. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods run from the eaves. The walling is painted smooth render with raised quoins at the corners and a plinth. The principal south-facing elevation is symmetrically arranged with a window on either side of a replacement six-panelled timber door with a square-headed overlight. The west gable displays two blocked-up window openings and raised quoins at the corner. A flat-roofed extension has been added to the left, featuring lined painted render and a blocked-up door opening. The north elevation (rear extension) has lined painted render, a flat roof, top-hung windows and metal rainwater goods. The east gable is abutted by an adjoining building. Windows throughout are replacement timber casements.

A large rubble stone mill building stands to the rear. The property features ornate cast-iron gates and boundary railings adjacent to the house, with square gate posts and arches over pedestrian gates.

The lodge was built and owned by the mill company, originally known as Dunbar and Thompson and later trading as Dunbar McMaster & Company Limited. It served as the gate lodge and reading room to the adjacent linen thread spinning mill. The mill complex was built in the late 1830s, and the gate lodge appears to date from the same period, first appearing uncaptioned on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858. Documentary evidence suggests the building originally had a flat roof, with the current hipped roof being a later modification shown in a photograph of the mill complex dating from 1900.

Hugh Dunbar, descendant of a linen manufacturing family, established his spinning mill at Gilford in 1839 following pressure from competition using the new wet-spinning process. He entered partnership with William Agnew Stewart and Robert Thompson to raise capital. The mill opened as Dunbar and Thompson in 1839, following Stewart's death in 1837. The mill was one of the largest in the country at the time and became an immediate success, attracting large numbers of workers to the town. Dunbar took his responsibilities as an employer seriously, providing social welfare support including a medical attendant and a school. He began building houses for his workforce almost immediately. The population of Gilford more than quadrupled between 1841 and 1851, from 643 to 2,814 people. By 1870 the mill employed over 2,000 workers, with 200 houses built between 1836 and 1862.

The gate lodge does not appear separately in valuation records and is included in the valuation of the mill complex itself. The 1901 census notes the building as the "gate lodge of mill" but records it as uninhabited at that date. The 1911 census describes it as "an office".

In 1879, following high import taxes on linen thread in the United States, Hugh Dunbar McMaster established a mill in Greenwich Village, New York, bringing workers and machinery from Ireland, with Hugh's brother John as manager. This emigration of workers had a significant impact on Gilford's population, which halved between 1871 and 1881. The company retained a worldwide reputation, the British Trade Journal of 1890 reporting exports of twine for salmon fishing to British Columbia, carpet threads, book-binder's threads, extra-strong threads for leather and thick cloths, and fine threads for sewing-machines and lace makers to the United States, Central and South America, Brazil, Australia and the British Colonies. The owners maintained a paternalistic interest in their workers and the town throughout much of the twentieth century. Decline in the Ulster linen industry eventually led to the mill's closure in the early 1980s. The building is currently uninhabited.