Gate Lodge, Moyallon House, 68 Moyallen Road, Moyallen, Portadown, CRAIGAVON, BT63 5JY

Gate Lodge, Moyallon House, 68 Moyallen Road, Moyallen, Portadown

This is a one-and-a-half storey gate lodge with attached gate screen, built around 1863 in a picturesque blend of cottage ornée and classical styles, and attributed to the architect Thomas Jackson and Sons. It stands on the west side of Moyallen Road at the east entrance to the Moyallon House estate, and forms part of a coherent and historically significant estate group. The lodge contributes to the completeness and historic interest of that group, and is an important feature within a wider historic environment defined by its associations with the linen trade.

Architectural Description

The lodge is L-shaped on plan, with a later extension to the rear, and is two bays wide on its principal east-facing elevation. The roofs are pitched and covered in natural slate, with single-lap slates to the south pitch and scalloped slates to the dormer. Roll-top ridge tiles finish the roof ridges, and there are plain bargeboards to the gables and dormers. A central pale yellow brick chimneystack rises with three terracotta pots. Half-round cast iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout.

The walling varies by elevation: the south elevation is built in coursed basalt rubble, while all other elevations are rendered in a ruled-and-lined finish. The principal east elevation has stucco quoins and a moulded stucco plinth. The original windows on the ground floor of the principal elevation are tripartite cast-iron lattice-framed units with internal secondary glazing; all other windows have been replaced with uPVC casements.

The windows on the principal elevation are elaborately detailed with ornate classical stucco surrounds. Those at attic level have semi-circular heads incorporating fleur-de-lys detail inset with fan moulding, and moulded sills carried on corbels. Secondary elevations have plainer long-and-short stucco architraves.

The principal east elevation is divided into two bays. The left bay is gabled and defined by quoins at either side, with a window to each floor. The right bay features a dummy entrance: a timber door incised with decorative detailing, with a four-centred arched overlight, set within a stucco long-and-short architrave with a pendant hood mould and key block. To the right of this dummy door is a ground floor window surmounted by a wall-head dormer.

The south elevation has a later lean-to glazed timber porch addition abutting it centrally. To the right of the porch is a bipartite window; to the left is a former four-centred arched opening dressed in brick, now infilled with a uPVC window set over a rendered apron panel. The original brick-dressed door opening survives within the porch, and brick quoins above it mark the extent of the original elevation; the section beyond is built in uncoursed basalt rubble, indicating the extent of the later extension.

The rear elevation is plainly detailed, with a window to each floor at the return and to the left bay, where the upper floor window is a dormer. A modern rear door to the north cheek of the return is surmounted by a modern metal canopy. The north gable is abutted by the east wall of the walled garden, which also serves as the estate boundary wall, and is lit by a single window at attic level only.

Gate Screen

The gate screen abuts the south-eastern corner of the lodge and is constructed in ashlar sandstone. It comprises dressed stone piers with moulded caps topped with ball finials, with modern timber carriage gates. To the right of the carriage gates is a gabled wicket opening in dressed stone with trefoil detail to the apex, fitted with an ornate Tudorbethan-style latticework wicket gate — an unusual and distinctive feature.

Setting

The lodge is positioned at the eastern entrance to the Moyallon House estate, at the end of a sweeping tree-lined gravel drive. The entrance opens onto a pavement that sits slightly below the level of the road, which has been raised. To the rear is a concrete yard occupying the east end of the walled garden, enclosed on all sides by a tall rubble stone wall. The yard is accessed from the drive through a pair of cast-iron gates on plain square piers with pyramidal caps.

Historical Context

Moyallon House is a linen mansion built in 1794 and still occupied today by descendants of the Quaker linen dynasty that first established the estate in the late 18th century. The house was originally built by Thomas Christy Wakefield (1772–1861), a descendant of the Christy family who had settled the Moyallon townland in 1675 after migrating from Scotland. The Christy family are credited with introducing the linen trade into the area. In subsequent years a group of closely related Quaker families settled along the River Bann between Moyallon and Lawrencetown, building mansion houses that reflected the increasing prosperity generated by 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 recorded the gift by Thomas Christy of a right of way from his gates to the meeting house, an access route that continues to be used today. Thomas Christy Wakefield had previously lived in another house nearby also called Moyallon House, which had been destroyed by fire, before building the present house in 1794.

The house appears as 'Moyallan' on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, which shows the main house and a service courtyard to the south that survives today. By the time of Griffith's Valuation, ownership had passed to John Grubb Richardson, who had married Jane Marion Wakefield of Moyallon House in 1853. In August 1863 the valuation record notes that the dwelling house was being 'rebuilt, enlarged and new wings added to it, also neat offices and gate lodges in progress', with the valuation raised from £55 to £100 accordingly. The present gate lodge dates from this period of remodelling. The lodge is first shown captioned on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–2, where it appears as a rectangular building beside the main entrance driveway.

In 1863 Richardson also inherited an estate in County Tyrone, the sale of which appears to have funded both the Moyallon improvements and his consolidation of full ownership of the model village and works at Bessbrook, which he had begun building from 1845. A further gate lodge and a gasworks were added to the Moyallon estate in 1871, increasing the valuation to £140. The gasworks was subsequently demolished in 1910.

The design of the gate lodge is attributed to Thomas Jackson and Son — an attribution supported by documentary research by Dean and Rankin — Jackson being an architect widely employed by Quaker families in the area and known to the Richardsons through his design of meeting houses in Belfast and Lisburn.

John Grubb Richardson was a descendant of the Richardsons of Lisnagarvey, recorded as plantation settlers there in 1610. His family had been involved in linen making and marketing for many generations, operating initially at Glenmore and Lambeg before expanding to Liverpool, Philadelphia, New York, and ultimately founding the model village of Bessbrook in Armagh around existing spinning mills and weaving factories. Bessbrook was developed with houses, a school, churches and a shop but no public house, in accordance with Quaker temperance principles. Richardson's father, James Nicholson Richardson, founded the firm J.N. Richardson, Sons & Owden Ltd, a successful bleaching and warehousing concern.

John Grubb Richardson died in 1890, leaving his widow Jane at Moyallon until her death in 1909. Their son Thomas Wakefield Richardson inherited the house, and is recorded there in the 1901 and 1911 censuses. He died without children, and the house passed to his widow Hilda before being inherited in 1945 by their nephew Alexander Reginald Wakefield Richardson.

By the time of the First General Revaluation of 1933–4, the main house was valued at £118 and recorded as having extensive accommodation: on the ground floor, a dining room, drawing room, library, morning room, flower room, cloakroom, billiards room, bedroom, butler's pantry, servants' hall, scullery, two kitchens, a servants' bedroom, two cloakrooms, bootrooms, three pantries and a larder. On the first floor were seven bedrooms, a sitting room, a bathroom with hot and cold water, and a WC. On the second floor were six servants' bedrooms, a bathroom and a boxroom. Outbuildings at that time included a glass-walled museum (now demolished), a laundry with drying room and loft containing three servants' bedrooms, three steam-heated greenhouses, stabling, four motor houses (one with two rooms above), stores and agricultural buildings. The house had its own electric lighting and the grounds included two grass tennis courts and a croquet lawn. The gate lodge itself does not appear separately in valuation records until the 1930s, when it is valued at £6 15s and described as containing three bedrooms, a parlour, kitchen, scullery and WC, occupied by James Ferris on a service tenancy.

In the 1940s, following the deaths of two of Alexander Richardson's children from typhoid and the subsequent death of a third child, the family moved to a nearby Richardson property called The Grange. The contents of Moyallon House were 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 mapping from the 1960s and 1970s. A fine marble fireplace was removed during this period and installed at Derrymore House, Bessbrook, a property donated by the Richardson family to the National Trust. In the 1970s the house was run 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 line in remarkable continuity since the Christy family first built on the site in 1794.

The south wing of the house, now known as 'The Lodge', was converted in the 1990s into three self-contained flats by architect William C. Callaghan of Portadown. As part of that development, a verandah of wood and glass visible in early survey photographs was demolished and replaced by a single-storey flat-roofed extension.