Gate Lodge, St Luke's Hospital, Loughgall Road, Armagh, Co. Armagh, BT61 7NQ

Gate Lodge, St Luke's Hospital

An asymmetrical early nineteenth-century single-storey three-bay gate lodge with gate screen, constructed around 1825 to designs by Francis Johnston and William Murray. The building marks the former entrance to what is now St Luke's Hospital on the Loughgall Road at the north side of Armagh City. Along with the adjacent former Asylum, this lodge is the sole surviving example of Johnston and Murray's asylum work in Northern Ireland, the comparable buildings in Belfast and Londonderry having been demolished.

The lodge is rectangular on plan without abutments. It has a hipped natural slate roof, patched in places, with angled hip and ridge tiles and two limestone chimneystacks—the western stack built on a brick base, the eastern on a stone base. Ashlar limestone eaves support cast iron rainwater goods. The walling is limestone rubble bedded in lime mortar, built to courses on the front and sides with random construction to the rear. Dressed sweeping chamfered quoins appear at all corners. All openings have dressed long-and-short limestone surrounds and projecting ashlar cills, except where otherwise stated.

The principal elevation faces north and is asymmetrical in composition, with a door opening positioned right of centre, a window opening to the right of the door, and two window openings to the left. Each side elevation contains a single window opening. The rear elevation has one window opening formed in brick. All openings are currently infilled with concrete blocks.

The lodge was originally smaller than its present form; an additional bay and chimney were added during its history. When first recorded on the 1835 Ordnance Survey, it was depicted as a small square-plan building. The contemporary Townland Valuations did not value the lodge separately but recorded the combined value of the asylum and its grounds at £200; this practice continued between the 1830s and 1972.

Francis Johnston (1760–1829) and William Murray (1789–1849) were Dublin-based architects. Johnston served as architect to the Board of Works and was responsible for the design of the General Post Office in Dublin. During the 1820s, he designed a series of buildings for the Commissioners for the Erection of Lunatic Asylums. William Murray became Johnston's assistant in 1822, and together they designed the standard layout of the Lunatic Asylums in Belfast, Londonderry, and Armagh. The gate lodge possessed a standard plan used at all three locations: a three-bay symmetrical and two-roomed design.

Like the adjoining hospital (originally the Lunatic Asylum, built 1820–25), the lodge is characterised by restrained but elegant detailing in distinctive Armagh limestone, characteristic of early nineteenth-century institutional architecture.

The lodge is now disused and no longer occupied. All windows and openings have been blocked up with concrete blocks. The original entrance is no longer in use; a new entrance to the hospital site has been created to the south, with a secondary entrance to the north. The lodge remains prominently set along the Loughgall Road, however, and contributes to the integrity of the historic hospital group.

The setting preserves important features of the original composition. The lodge is positioned at the former main entrance to St Luke's Hospital, now blocked off by four dwarf bollards. Opposite the lodge stands a tall rectangular entrance screen in dressed Armagh limestone, featuring the same swept-chamfer detail to corners and supporting the remains of an original lamp standard. The stone boundary wall to the site abuts the gate screen to the north and the lodge to the south; the south section of this wall has been rebuilt. The avenue is now grassed over, although trees indicate its former sweep.