34 College Gardens, Belfast

34 College Gardens, Belfast

This is a single-storey gate lodge with attic, designed by John Lanyon in 1879 as a porter's lodge for Methodist College. It is built of red brick in Flemish bond with sandstone dressings and marks the western entrance to College Gardens on the corner of Lisburn Road, standing adjacent to a sandstone gate screen.

The building is asymmetrical in plan, rectangular with a circa 1960s single-storey flat-roofed extension to the northeast. The main roof comprises intersecting gables covered in Bangor Blue natural slates with bands of Westmoreland green in fish-scale pattern. A stair tower at the north corner is surmounted by a conical roof in the same fish-scale slate, capped by a simple iron finial. A single-storey canted bay to the College Gardens elevation has a hipped roof with identical slate detailing and decorative lead flashing to the abutment. The roofs are finished with red terracotta crested ridge tiles and sandstone copings to raised verges with trefoil carved gablets at kneelers; apex stones are plain. Twin octagonal dressed sandstone chimneys are set at 90 degrees to the main gable. A continuous dressed sandstone corbelled eaves course runs around the building, with replacement metal profiled gutters and circular section downpipes.

The principal northwest elevation facing Lisburn Road features a shouldered ground floor opening with a diagonally sheeted timber door decorated with cast iron brackets and a lion-head knocker (possibly original). To the right of the door is a stepped buttress with an original leaded light to its recess. A window to the left of the door has an attic window aligned directly above. Quatrefoil dressed sandstone plaques bearing the 'WCB' monogram (Wesleyan Methodist College) embellish both the northwest and southeast elevations. The trefoil arched attic windows are centred on the gables, paired to the northwest and southeast elevations and divided by dwarf sandstone columns. The attic windows feature coloured and lattice leaded single-glazed fixed lights over replacement side-hung timber-framed double-glazed casements. The columns and surrounds to all openings have been largely repaired with cement render; original surrounds are presumed to have been sandstone to match those surviving to the stair turret. Relieving arches in red brick soldier or header courses sit above the openings.

The southwest elevation is gabled with a symmetrically placed single-storey canted bay having a carved sandstone cornice to its eaves and otherwise fully rendered in cement. Three windows to the bay lack over-lights, with one attic window above. The southeast elevation mirrors the form of the principal elevation but without a door. The northeast elevation is largely occupied by the flat-roofed single-storey extension in matching red brick Flemish bond. A segmental-headed door here is completely blocked up and cement rendered; a uPVC side-hung double-glazed casement window serves the chamfered corner.

Three slot windows serve the stair tower: one retains original leaded glass but is boarded up inside; another remains open but is fitted with translucent glass; the third is blocked up. The southwest elevation retains an original attic window with a metal-framed hopper below the fixed light. A continuous plat band at impost level to ground floor windows and a chamfered base plinth are now entirely covered in cement render.

The building is set back from the road with lawns to its northwest and southwest frontages. Mature hedging lines the perimeter along these frontages and also forms the southeast boundary with No. 33 College Gardens. Metal and timber fencing separates the property from a tarmacked car park to its northeast. The lodge is located within the Queens Conservation Area.