Gate screen, Scarvagh House, 31 Old Mill Road, Scarva, CRAIGAVON, Co Down, BT63 6NL

Gate screen, built around 1835, forming the principal northern entrance to Scarvagh House, south of Scarva, County Down. The screen stands at the head of a lime avenue and represents the main visible indicator from a public road of the character and quality of the demesne beyond.

The gate screen is symmetrically composed and consists of a pair of tall, ornate composite cast- and wrought-iron gates hung between finely dressed, V-jointed granite piers. Each pier is slightly tapered and capped with a pedestal carved with a Greek key pattern — a decorative motif fashionable in the early 19th century. The pedestals formerly supported urns, which have since been lost. The piers are flanked by screen walls of random rubble stone, which have a sweeping profile and are each pierced by a square-headed pedestrian opening with a dressed granite surround and matching iron gates. The estate's rubble stone boundary wall abuts the screen on both sides and curves away from the entrance along the Old Mill Road. With the exception of the missing ball finials, all original fabric survives.

The gate screen occupies a rural setting sheltered by mature trees. It leads to the lime avenue, which passes through the wooded part of the demesne southward to Scarvagh House.

Although stylistically distinct from the house itself, the gate screen is of considerable importance within the group and its landscape setting.

The gate screen was installed as part of a newly laid-out driveway to Scarvagh House around 1835. It does not appear on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 — which shows the house already established in much its present plan form, with an orchard, formal garden, and the ancient earthwork known as the Dane's Cast nearby — but is first recorded on the second edition map of 1860. The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 notes two gate houses in connection with the property, suggesting the screen was added shortly after the 1834 survey was completed.

Scarvagh House is thought to have been built around 1717 by Myles Reilly, though Gilbert Camblin suggests a date of around 1740 by Myles's son John Reilly. Local tradition holds that Reilly was granted as much land as he could walk and plant with acorns in a day, in recognition of his services to the Williamite army in the 1690s. The Reillys were a branch of the ancient House of O'Reilly, Prince of Breffni, though the prefix "O" had been dropped by the mid-18th century.

John Reilly's son, also John Reilly (1745–1804), became Chief Commissioner of Public Accounts, Member of Parliament for Blessington, High Sheriff of County Down in 1776, and High Sheriff of County Armagh in 1783. He married a Miss Lushington in 1773, and the property subsequently passed to their son, John Lushington Reilly. Lushington Reilly (died 1842), who became High Sheriff of County Down in 1810 and married Louisa Temple in 1807, is believed to be responsible for much of the present appearance of the house and for the addition of the gate screen. According to the Archaeological Survey of County Down, Lushington Reilly added two double-height wings to the original main block in the early 19th century, forming a forecourt to the original house, and carried out interior alterations in a Gothic Revival style, along with a north-west extension. Between 1834 and 1860, the south façade of the main block was remodelled in a Jacobean style and further internal decoration in a contemporary style took place.

Lushington Reilly's heir was John Temple Reilly. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 lists Scarvagh House as the home of John T. Reilly in fee, valued at £30 and later raised to £48, indicating improvements were made around this time. The valuation records a house, offices, gate lodges, land, a new porch, four two-storey outbuildings, one single-storey outbuilding, and gate houses.

The 1901 census records the occupant as John Temple Reilly DL JP, living with his Galway-born wife, daughter, sister, niece, and three servants — a cook, a housemaid, and a kitchen maid. The house at that time had sixteen rooms and twenty outbuildings and was classified as first class. Subsequent occupiers included Sir John Tuthing (spelling uncertain) in 1905, and Henry Thomson in 1906 — of Henry Thomson & Co., wholesale wine and spirit merchants, and Member of Parliament for Newry from 1880 to 1885. The valuation was raised to £60 in 1907, suggesting further improvements or additions, and in 1910 a new drainage system was installed to designs by architect and engineer William Samuel Barber. At the time of the 1911 census, Henry Thomson JP DL, a retired merchant, was living at the house with his wife, a nurse, and three servants. Thomson died on 30 December 1916 while still resident, and the house passed to a relative, possibly a son, Henry B. Thomson, in 1926. Before the Second World War, the property came into the hands of Alfred Buller, who continued the tradition of opening the grounds each year for the Scarva "sham fight." The most recent historic maps from the 1960s and 1970s show that numerous outbuildings had been added near the main house. More recent work has included the refurbishment of the east and west wings for rental purposes.