Front Gate Lodge At Stranmillis College, Stranmillis Road, Belfast

Front Gate Lodge and Gate Screen, Stranmillis College, Stranmillis Road, Belfast. Dated 1933, designed by Roland Ingleby Smith of the Ministry of Finance Architects, with Thomas F.O. Rippingham also credited. The lodge and gate screen stand at the principal entrance to what is now Stranmillis University College, approximately 2.5 kilometres south of Belfast city centre, adjacent to the Stranmillis and Ormeau Road embankment. The listing covers the lodge, walling, railings, and gate screen as a group.

The gate screen was erected in 1930 to align with the college's new main building, which had been completed the previous year, creating a direct vista from Stranmillis Road to the main building. The accompanying lodge was added in 1933. Together, though physically connected only by a boundary wall, the two structures are visually unified through the use of stone similar to that of the gate piers, incorporated into the coursed low basalt wall of the lodge.

Gate Screen

The gate screen sits directly south of the lodge at the front access road to the college. It consists of a gateway with twin tall square Portland stone piers for vehicular access, each topped with moulded capstones supporting stone urns, flanked by smaller square-section piers with plain moulded capstones for pedestrian access. The gates themselves are plainly detailed replacement painted metal with narrow square-section uprights and a deep mid-rail. Low boundary walling in coursed basalt runs to each side of the gateway, with plainly detailed iron railings above.

Originally the gate screen comprised six Portland stone piers, but alterations carried out after 1969, necessitated by the widening of the drive, resulted in two of the original square Portland stone piers being removed along with the original gates and short side walls, with the positions of the surviving piers also altered.

Front Gate Lodge

The lodge is a single-storey building, rectangular in plan, with a curved screen wall and railings attached to the east. It is designed in a restrained neo-Georgian style and is intact both externally and internally, retaining its original distinctive plan form.

Materials: The roof is finished in green glazed clay tiles with black asphalt to the flat roof projection. Rainwater goods are cast metal. Walls are rustic brown clay brick. Windows are replacement painted timber multi-paned casements.

Front elevation (east): The front elevation features an entrance door to the left and a curved projecting bay with a flat roof to the right. The projecting bay continues northwards in a curved profile to become a free-standing garden wall, complete with a semi-circular arched opening, concrete coping, and brick header courses. The entrance door is a replacement painted boarded timber door with a long rectangular glazed panel. The curved bay contains three window openings in a symmetrical composition: a larger portrait-format window in the centre flanked by two smaller square windows. There is one landscape-format window opening on the south cheek of the projecting bay. Window openings are generally square-headed with painted concrete cills, with flat segmental arched openings to the doorway and the larger window openings. The brickwork is laid in Flemish bond with thick mortar joints. Deep overhanging eaves are finished with painted timber soffit and fascias and painted metal rainwater goods. The hipped roof is covered in green glazed clay tiles with half-rounded green clay hip and ridge tiles. Two plain tall brown brick chimneys are symmetrically positioned on the ridge, each with a plain concrete cap and yellow clay pots.

Rear elevation (west): The rear elevation is symmetrical, with four evenly spaced window openings with flat segmental arched heads, painted concrete cills, and windows of 16 panes each.

North side elevation: There is one window opening with a flat segmental arched head, painted concrete cill, and 16 panes. A door opening is located on the north cheek of the curved projecting bay. The door is a replacement painted boarded timber door with a long rectangular glazed panel, accompanied by a full-length painted boarded timber side panel to the right, glazed to its upper half. The doorway has a concrete lintel; evidence suggests a canopy was originally attached but has since been removed.

South side elevation: One window opening, similar in character to that on the north elevation.

Boundary treatment: The lodge is set back slightly from the road and bounded to the east by a low coursed basalt wall with original painted metal railings. The railings are plainly detailed with thin square-section uprights and larger square-section posts bedded into rectangular sections of cut Portland stone placed at intervals along the top of the wall. The posts have decorative fluted finials and curvilinear support stays to the rear. A tall square brown brick pier with a plain concrete cap marks the point where the curved screen wall of the lodge meets the eastern boundary wall and railings. A similar pier stands to the south of the lodge where the lodge railings connect to the main gate screen. The southern section of the screen wall extending from the lodge was taken down at the time of the alterations to the gateway; the present rubble wall and railings were erected afterwards to re-enclose the site.

Setting: The site is lawned, with an area of brushed concrete hard surfacing to the south entrance. A bank of mature fir trees stands to the west.

Design history: Surviving documentation from 1930 shows that Smith originally planned an overtly neo-Georgian octagonal structure, single-storey with an attic, gently curving alternate wall facets, and a copper-clad domed roof with oculi and a central chimney stack. A note on this drawing — possibly in Smith's own hand — records that the scheme was considered more suited to a "millionaire's estate". A subsequent drawing shows the building much as it appears today, though with the lower curved section to the east flush with the sides of the main block, and the large east-elevation window set within a recess.

Historical background: The Stranmillis demesne has its origins in the early 17th century. In 1606, Arthur Chichester, later 1st Earl of Donegall, leased the area to Sir Moses Hill, who in 1611 built a house overlooking the Lagan on the site of the present outbuildings — later known as "Sir Moses's Cellars" — to the west of Stranmillis House. The Hills surrendered their lease around 1667, after which the Donegalls created a deer park on the site. What is now Stranmillis Road served as a horse course enclosing the eastern and southern boundaries of the park, while the Malone Road, then the main route to Dublin, marked its western limit.

From 1770 the Donegalls began dividing "The Course" into plots leased to farmers. A Belfast merchant family, the Blacks, leased 40 acres at the southern end of the site and built a summer residence there, replaced by a larger house in 1801. Following the sale of the Donegall estate from the early 1820s, the Blacks acquired the freehold and in 1857 sold the property to Thomas G. Batt (died 1861), of the Batt family of Purdysburn House. He promptly rebuilt the house in Jacobean Revival style to designs by Lanyon and Lynn. After Batt's death, Stranmillis passed to William Murphy, a linen manufacturer. Timber merchant Sir Daniel Dixon acquired it in the 1880s, followed by Walter Henry Wilson, a director of Harland and Wolff, in the 1890s. Around 1902 it was purchased by James McConnell, a brick manufacturer.

In 1919 the estate was bought by Queen's University for £13,500. Queen's sold it in 1922 to the newly established Northern Ireland Ministry of Finance for £15,000 as the site for a new teacher training college. The college extended the old mansion in 1922–24 to designs by the Ministry's Chief Architect, Roland Ingleby Smith, and added the impressive neo-Georgian main building to the north-east in 1926–29, also by Ingleby Smith, assisted by Thomas F.O. Rippingham. Rippingham, who later succeeded Smith as Ministry of Finance Chief Architect, designed the Principal's House ("Lagan Lodge") built to the south-east in 1934, the Henry Garrett Building in 1944 (extended 1953), and the back lodge in 1949. A large Modern Style complex containing halls of residence and a dining centre was erected on the western side of the grounds in 1966–68, with the "Central Building" — including a circular music department — built to the south-west of the main building in 1968–70. Further buildings have since been added to the north-west and south-east.

The pre-1832 drive to the north and its picturesque lodge of around 1860, designed by Lanyon and Lynn, survived the creation of the new entrance by some years, with the lodge still standing in 1937.