The Gate Lodge, 554 Antrim Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 5GJ

The Gate Lodge, 554 Antrim Road, Belfast

This is a detached, asymmetrical, two-storey Gothic Revival gate lodge built in approximately 1870 to designs by John Lanyon, son of Sir Charles Lanyon and a partner in the firm Lanyon, Lynn & Lanyon. It was constructed as the principal gate lodge to Belfast Castle, which Lanyon also designed as a dwelling for the Marquis of Donegall, built between 1868 and 1870. Both the castle and its gate lodge were designed in the Scots Baronial style, a fashionable idiom in the United Kingdom following the reconstruction of Balmoral Castle in that style between 1852 and 1856. Architectural historian Dean described Lanyon's lodge as "a magnificent tour de force and an apt introduction to [the] similarly styled mansion on the Cave Hill foothills beyond." The building is constructed of locally quarried Scrabo sandstone, with Scottish Giffnock sandstone used as a secondary material, and was contracted to the local building firm of W. B. McMaster. Construction costs for Belfast Castle and its associated buildings were originally estimated at £11,000, a figure that proved severely inadequate, leaving the Marquis of Donegall in serious debt. The project was rescued by the Marquis's son-in-law, Lord Ashley, who acted as guarantor and met the outstanding costs.

Although the lodge is no longer physically connected to Belfast Castle, its elaborate stone detailing and complex elevation treatments clearly echo the architectural character of the castle it once served. Together with the Chapel of the Resurrection, located nearby, the castle and gate lodge form an important group and a reminder of the Marquis of Donegall's legacy in Belfast.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing east onto Antrim Road, with a single-storey extension to the north and a projecting semi-circular bay window to the southeast. The roofs are steeply pitched in natural slate, set at varying heights behind crow-stepped gables, with terracotta crested ridge tiles and lead valleys. An ashlar sandstone profiled chimney stack, cruciform in plan, rises at an angle from the south corner of the principal east gable. The circular bay window is topped with a conical natural slate roof, surmounted by lead flashing and a decorative wrought-iron finial. Original nail-head cast-iron guttering is supported on a moulded sandstone ashlar eaves course, with cast-iron box downpipes.

The walling is random coursed, rock-faced sandstone ashlar, with a moulded trim to the plinth course, a flush sandstone ashlar string course, and a beak moulding between ground and first floor levels. The crow-stepped gables are in smooth sandstone ashlar with ball finials. Window openings are square-headed, surrounded by ashlar sandstone with stop-chamfered bowtell mouldings, splayed flush sills, and timber sash windows retaining historic glass.

The principal east elevation features a two-storey gable to the right and the semi-circular bay window with its conical roof to the left. Centred on the gable is a decoratively carved dressed sandstone plaque bearing a heraldic shield and monogram. The first floor has paired windows with single-pane timber sash windows with ogee horns, while the ground floor has 2/2 timber sash windows — curved where they meet the bay window — with steel security grilles. The elevation extends southward as a sandstone screen wall described below.

The south elevation has a gable to the right, which incorporates a square carved sandstone plaque with a heraldic shield and a single ground-floor window opening dressed in the same ashlar stone, and a recessed corner entrance portico to the left.

The west elevation has a two-storey gable to the left and a smaller gable to the right over the corner entrance portico. The gable over the entrance contains an uncarved square plaque. The portico is open to the south and west, supported at its corner by a squat sandstone circular column rising from a square plinth block and moulded base to a stiff-leaf capital. The openings to the portico have shouldered smooth sandstone ashlar arches with bowtell moulded heads and recessed corbels. Within the portico there is a single window opening to the west and a further shouldered door opening to the south, fitted with an original diagonally sheeted timber door with iron door furniture, opening onto a floor of black and terracotta clay tiles.

The north elevation is blank and is abutted by the single-storey flat-roofed extension, which has crenellations above its parapet and meets the east gable. This extension has a single door opening and a single window opening, both with concrete lintels over a timber door and timber casement window respectively.

The setting fronts directly onto Antrim Road, with the east elevation extending southward as a decorative sandstone screen wall, or rampart, featuring a crow-stepped gable over a voussoired round-arched pedestrian entrance with a hood moulding, foliate label stops, and a replacement steel gate. Above this gate a diminutive crow-stepped gable is surmounted by a ball finial. An original stone-paved section survives to the east elevation. An early 20th-century steel gate to the south provides vehicular access to a tarmac-paved parking area occupying much of the western part of the site.

In terms of its history, the lodge's original decorative iron and timber gate screen to the south side — which included octagonal gate piers each topped by a Donegall wolf bearing an armorial shield — was demolished in approximately 1940, following the widening of the Antrim Road and the development of post-war housing in the area.

Following the death of the 3rd Marquis of Donegall in 1883, Belfast Castle and its estate passed to his son-in-law, Antony Ashley-Cooper, Lord Ashley, the 8th Earl of Shaftesbury, who had married Lady Harriet Chichester in 1857. The Shaftesbury family retained Belfast Castle until 1934, when the 9th Earl of Shaftesbury granted the building and its 200-acre estate to Belfast Corporation, on the condition that the corporation purchase the site for £10,750 and that the mansion not be used as a hospital or institution. Belfast Castle was formally transferred to Belfast Corporation on 1 February 1935, having served as a private dwelling for only sixty-five years. The former gate lodge was subsequently acquired by Robert McIntyre, who rented it out as a private dwelling.

Annual Revisions set the total rateable value of the gate lodge at £15 in the late 19th century, when it was occupied by William Crates, a retired British Army artillery officer employed as gatekeeper to Belfast Castle. The 1901 census described the lodge as a second-class dwelling of four rooms. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland the rateable value remained at £15, rising to £17 and 10 shillings by the end of the Second Revaluation, which ran from 1956 to 1972. The lodge was listed in 1978.

The building continued in use as a private dwelling until 1992, when it was converted into offices for a local orthodontist surgery. At that time, local architect John S. Williamson converted the ground-floor sitting room and parlour into a waiting room, changed the first-floor bedrooms into a staff room, and constructed the flat-roofed extension to the north side of the building. Despite this conversion, much of the original detailing survives and the architectural character of the gate lodge has been sensitively preserved. At the time of the second survey it continued to be used as a dental surgery. The extent of the listing covers the lodge, its boundary wall, and gates.