Alexandra Park Lodge and gate screens, 19 Castleton Gardens, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 3BY

Alexandra Park Lodge and Gate Screens, 19 Castleton Gardens, Belfast

This is a detached, two-bay, one-and-a-half-storey Gothic Revival gate lodge built in 1887 to the designs of Josiah Corbett Bretland, the Belfast city surveyor, and constructed by Hugh Todd at a cost of £528 between July 1887 and February 1888. It was erected as the entrance lodge to Alexandra Park, and the listing covers the lodge itself, the yard walling, gate screens, piers, gates and railings. Together with the ornate sandstone gate piers and screens at Castleton Gardens and Alexandra Avenue, the lodge forms an important group illustrating the civic ambition behind Belfast's Victorian public parks.

Architectural Description

The lodge follows a T-shaped plan, with a projecting gable to the north-east, a single-storey projecting entrance porch to the north, and an enclosed courtyard to the south-west. It sits to the north-west of Alexandra Park, parallel to Castleton Gardens and directly adjacent to the sandstone Gothic Revival gateway of 1887.

The walls are built of squared and snecked rusticated sandstone with dressed margins, a projecting chamfered plinth course, and ashlar sandstone dressings. The roof is steeply pitched in natural slate with angled clay ridge tiles, raised verges with flat stone copings, kneelers, and a moulded eaves course. There is a dormer to the north-east. Rainwater goods are ogee-moulded cast iron, discharging to square-section downpipes with decorative brackets. The two-stage chimney stacks to the south-east and south-west are finished in rusticated stonework with dressed margins, chamfered stone copings, and octagonal terracotta chimney pots with decorative cappings.

Throughout the building, openings take the form of shouldered arched surrounds with chamfered ashlar dressings and splayed integral sills, fitted with one-over-one timber sliding sash windows. The principal front elevation faces north-east and comprises a one-and-a-half-storey gabled bay alongside a single-storey canted bay with a hipped slate roof and a saw-tooth decorative ogee-moulded gutter. A single-storey entrance porch with a mono-pitch slate roof adjoins the gabled bay to the north. The entrance door is diagonal sheeted timber, approached over a stone threshold and stone-flagged step. A pair of first-floor windows sit beneath a pointed relief arch.

The south-east elevation is a gable end with a projecting chimney stack to the east and a stone wall to the west with flat stone coping that encloses the courtyard. Pairs of windows appear at both ground and first floor. The south-west elevation has a narrowly projecting chimney stack supported on an ashlar cornice at first-floor level, with ground-floor windows beneath segment-headed relief arches, a stepped wall to the enclosed courtyard, and a diagonal timber-sheeted courtyard door. The north-west elevation is a gable-ended bay with the single-storey entrance porch adjoining; pairs of ground-floor windows beneath pointed relief arches, and a window to the entrance porch.

Gate Piers and Screens

The gateway at Castleton Gardens consists of four square-plan piers forming both the pedestrian and vehicular entrance to Alexandra Park. A further gateway at the corner of Alexandra Avenue and Parkside Gardens, to the south of the park, comprises two square-plan piers. All piers are three-stage, built in rusticated pink sandstone with ashlar limestone dressings and caps, a projecting plinth with ovolo moulding, and limestone colonettes with sculpted capitals. The piers carry pointed-arch gables with decorative insets and three-stage skewed copings. The south-west pier at the Castleton Gardens gateway is topped with a fleur-de-lis finial. Decorative metal gates hang between the piers at both gateways. Metal railings extend to the north-east along Alexandra Park, and a stone wall extends to the south-west.

The architectural historian J. A. K. Dean described the gateway piers as "four superb Gothic Revival square piers in pink sandstone dressed with smooth limestone. Engaged colonettes, each having a variety of exquisitely sculpted capitals of foliage, roses, convolvulus, ferns, berries, nuts, fruit and things; culminating in buff sandstone poppy finials over cappings with lancet gablets." He described the lodge itself as "one-and-a-half-storey, T-shaped on plan in uncoursed squared quarry-faced limestone. All openings have dressed stone shouldered arches. Single storey canted bay and lean-to hall, below a dinky dormer in a steeply-pitched roof behind skewtable gables."

Setting

The lodge is situated to the north-west of Alexandra Park. Timber-sheeted fencing encloses a private garden to the north-east and south-east, with mature trees and hedging to the south-east. Metal railings form the boundary with Castleton Gardens to the north-west, with lawns and a gravel laneway and paths to the rear to the south-west.

Historical Context

Alexandra Park was created under the Public Parks Act of 1869, which required towns of a certain size to establish public parks for the recreational use of their working classes. Belfast's first public park, Ormeau Park, had been established in 1871, and the laying out of Alexandra Park alongside the smaller suburban Woodvale Park represented a further important development in the social history of the city, demonstrating how the Corporation provided amenities for the health and benefit of Belfast's working population.

By 1882 there was a growing movement demanding a public park for north Belfast. Several sites were considered, and the current site at Castleton — originally seven acres — was granted to the Corporation by Sir John Preston on 10 July 1885 at a cost of £981. Additional land was subsequently acquired from the York Street Flax Spinning Company and the Jennymount Flax Spinning Company, on the condition that the course of the park's stream not be diverted, as it supplied water to the firms' mills. The park was initially to be named Princess Park following the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Belfast in 1885, but was renamed Alexandra Park later that year.

The park was laid out to designs by a Mr Fisher, whose original plans were amended and approved by Bretland as city surveyor. Although Fisher was responsible for the layout of the park and its gardens, the sandstone Gothic Revival gate piers are likely to have been designed by Bretland, as they are identical to the entrance to Woodvale Park, which Bretland designed in 1887. Bretland (1846–1921) was an English-born architect who moved to Belfast in 1867 to become assistant to the previous city surveyor, whom he succeeded in 1884. The Dictionary of Irish Architects records that "as city surveyor he was involved in major improvements to the city at a time of rapid expansion."

The minute book of the Belfast Parks Committee records that tenders for the supply and fixing of the gates and gate piers at the new park were submitted in February 1886, with George Rankin's tender of £93 being accepted. The following month, Messrs Riddell & Co. were contracted to supply the railings around the park at a cost of £120. Bretland submitted plans for the gate lodge to the Parks Committee on 4 May 1887, just days before Alexandra Park was officially opened on 7 May. Less than a fortnight after opening, the park was closed following vandalism to its property. The lodge was ready for occupation by the park superintendent in February 1888. It was recorded on a detailed Ordnance Survey map of the area dated 1904, depicted in its current T-shaped layout. The gateway and lodge were listed in 1988.

Alterations

The roof was replaced in natural slate in 1989. By 1994 the building had been gutted by fire and had fallen into an advanced state of disrepair, described by Dean at that time as an empty shell. The derelict lodge underwent extensive restoration by Hearth Housing in 1997–98, which included repair of the chimneys, installation of new cast-iron rainwater goods, installation of new sliding sash windows, and reconstruction of the interior including the addition of a new staircase.