Gate Lodge Craigavon House, 121 Circular Rd, Strandtown, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT37 0RE

Gate Lodge, Craigavon House, 121 Circular Road, Strandtown, Belfast

This is a well-proportioned and finely detailed single-storey, symmetrical, three-bay Italianate gate lodge, most likely constructed in 1870 to designs by Thomas Jackson & Sons. It was built as the gate lodge for Craigavon House and sits on a level site on the east side of Circular Road, oriented north to south. The former Nightingale Wards, Clock Tower, and Walled Garden associated with Craigavon House lie to the north-east. The building has both historical and social significance through its association with Craigavon House and forms an important part of the group of buildings constituting the former Somme Hospital.

Architectural Description

The roof is hipped and clad in natural slate with rolled ridges. A centrally placed rendered chimney stack rises from it, featuring a projecting stepped cornice with dog-tooth moulding and two decorated terracotta pots. Metal rainwater goods are supported on scrolled brackets and carry a projecting blocking course. The walls are lined, painted, and rendered with moulded stucco detailing throughout.

Window openings are semi-circular stilted arches, each fitted with timber sliding sash windows with 1-over-1 panes. All openings have moulded and lugged architraves with slender engaged Ionic columns supporting the arched heads, and a diamond-headed keystone to the centre of each arch. The wall treatment is consistent across the elevations: smooth rendered and painted surfaces with a deep plinth topped by a rolled moulding and flat band, a deep string course at sill level, and a deep projecting platband with moulded projection at impost level to the window openings. The cornice comprises a projecting band with scrolled brackets carrying a projecting blocking course on which sits a metal ogee-shaped gutter.

Principal (North) Elevation

The principal elevation faces north. There is a single window opening to the east, with a recessed panel to the lower wall also recessed under a moulded sill. At the centre, a timber and glazed panelled door is set within a projecting porch with a natural slate hipped roof with a rolled ridge. The porch opening is semi-circular and stilted, with a moulded architrave, a pair of slender engaged Ionic columns supporting the arched head, a string course at the springing point, a small applied medallion below the string course at sill level, and a decorated keystone to the centre of the arch. The door opening itself has a shouldered moulded architrave with a medallion above. A single window to the west matches the eastern window as described.

East Elevation

The east elevation has rendered walls with pairs of 1-over-1 panes to sliding sash windows, all detailed as described above. A cast-iron downpipe is located to the north and a square-section metal downpipe to the south. The modern flat-roofed extension to the south is set back from the main block and contains a single window opening with a top-hung timber casement window, a precast concrete sill, painted rendered walls, a timber fascia, and a metal upstand to the flat roof. The projecting porch is visible to the north.

South Elevation

The south elevation shows the flat-roofed extension projecting from the main wall of the lodge, detailed as elsewhere. There is a window opening to the west with a deep sill and a timber side-hung window. At the centre is a square-headed door opening fitted with a painted timber flush door with a modern lever handle. A metal ogee-shaped gutter sits on a timber fascia with a circular metal downpipe to the east. A modern bulkhead light fitting is located to the east of the door opening.

West Elevation

The west elevation has the flat-roofed extension to the south with no openings, and details matching the rest of the building. The main lodge elevation mirrors the east elevation, and the projecting porch is visible to the north.

Materials

The roof is natural slate. Rainwater goods are metal. Walls are rendered and painted. Windows to the original gate lodge are timber sliding sashes; windows to the extension are timber casements.

Setting

The lodge sits slightly set back from the back of the footpath on the east side of Circular Road, with a modest strip of lawn to the front. A mature tree stands just to the north of the building, a remnant of the original landscaped gardens. To the west, the side and rear garden area is bounded by a modern timber fence with vertical painted boards. A hedge marks the southern boundary, with planting and a car park to the east serving a neighbouring day care facility.

Historical Context

The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 records that the area remained predominantly rural in character during the mid-19th century, with the Circular Road already laid out but few buildings yet developed nearby. With the rapid expansion of Belfast's industries and population in the latter half of the 19th century, new suburbs were established for the city's politicians, merchants, and professionals in the eastern townlands of Ballyhackamore, Strandtown, and Ballymisert.

The Irish Builder records that Craigavon House itself was constructed in 1870 to designs by Thomas Jackson & Sons. The Dictionary of Irish Architects describes Jackson (1807–1890) primarily as a domestic architect, "although he turned his hand to buildings of every type, commercial, industrial, educational and ecclesiastical." Having established his reputation as one of the leading domestic architects in the city, Jackson became the preferred architect to Belfast's merchant elite. Between the 1860s and 1870s he designed a number of suburban villas and mansions in East Belfast, including Glenmachan Tower, Glenmachan House, and Lismachan House.

Craigavon House originally possessed two gate lodges: one on the Circular Road and one at the Holywood Road entrance (now demolished). The Annual Revisions record that one lodge was constructed in 1870 along with the house — also to Jackson's design — whilst the other was built in 1875, though the valuer did not specify which date applied to the Circular Road lodge. Architectural historian J. A. K. Dean suggested the lodge was designed by W. H. Lynn around 1880, despite describing it as "displaying most of the architectural details of the house." However, given that the gate lodge bears a strong resemblance to the main body of Craigavon House in its Italianate style and in specific features — including its round-headed windows and colonnettes with composite capitals resting on a moulded string course — and that W. H. Lynn is believed to have been responsible for the glazed loggia and Neo-Palladian extension to the house, which dates from around 1880 and is starkly different in style to the lodge, it is considered most likely that the Circular Road gate lodge was constructed in 1870 to designs by Thomas Jackson. The Annual Revisions combined the rateable value of Craigavon House and its gate lodges at £236.

Dean described the lodge in the following terms: "Sturdy little lodge displaying most of the architectural details of the house. Tall, single-storey and perfectly symmetrical three-bay below a hipped roof. Below its own hipped roof is a projecting porch with an opening treated like the rest… all beautifully maintained, its stuccoed walls and detailing enhanced by contrasting colours."

By 1891 the Circular Road gate lodge (along with the coachman's house on the Holywood Road) was valued separately from Craigavon House for the first time, at £10, and was occupied by a Mr Thomas Seaton. In 1901 the lodge was home to James Clement, and the census described it as a second-class dwelling consisting of four rooms. Following the conversion of Craigavon House into a hospital in 1917, the former gate lodges were maintained as private dwellings leased to private tenants. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) the combined value of the hospital and its outbuildings was set at £530, rising to £1,600 by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72).

The gate lodge was first listed at Grade B in 1986. The single-storey flat-roofed extension had been added to the south side of the building by the 1980s. Whilst the former coachman's house on the Holywood Road has since been demolished, the Circular Road gate lodge remained in use as a private dwelling until recently. In 2005 it was converted from a private dwelling into office premises for a private medical consultancy.