Gate Lodge Of Wilmont, Lady Dixon Park, Belfast

Gate Lodge of Wilmont, Lady Dixon Park, Belfast

This is a red brick late Victorian gate lodge built between 1862 and 1901, marking the southernmost entrance to Lady Dixon Park. It was possibly designed by Thomas Jackson. The building is single storey with an attic, topped with a natural Welsh slate roof featuring heavy overhanging eaves with decorative bargeboards and chimneys rising from the gable ends.

The original lodge is symmetrical and largely rectangular in plan, facing south. It has a substantial extension to the north added around 1998 to designs by Harry Bunker. This modern extension mirrors the original gabled form with a connecting duo pitched roof set at 90 degrees and having a platform ridge, effectively doubling the footprint of the original gate lodge. A former small return was demolished to make way for the extension's construction.

The walls are built in red brick Flemish bond with painted brick dressings and toothed quoins. The base plinth has a chamfered top edge. Yellow brick appears to form the painted base plinth, quoins, window and door surrounds at the main red brick walls. Windows are slim profile double-glazed sliding sashes with segmental arched 2/2 panes to the south elevation with timber slips, and round arched timber framed casements to the gable ends. All openings have stop-chamfered reveals. The central entrance door on the south elevation is four-panelled and timber framed with slim profiled double glazed upper panels and a plain fanlight; it appears to be a modern replacement.

The decorative bargeboards to the east and west ends are supported on curved brackets and feature a large-scale scalloped profile with a trefoil-like form and carved roundels at the eaves, ridge and purlins, all highlighted in black and white. Replacement timber sheeting to the eaves soffit and smooth render to the verge are painted white in contrast to black eaves and bargeboards.

Square-based two-stage chimneys rise from external chimneybreasts. These appear to have been rebuilt in red brick with yellow brick diamond motif and string courses below a splayed chimney cap in reconstituted stone and circular pot. The ridge is flashed in lead with a roll-top at the apex, with small black clay ridge tiles to the far east and west sides beyond the chimneys.

The east elevation is gabled with toothed quoins returned from the north and south elevations at the outer corners. A projecting chimneybreast is placed centrally with matching quoins to the lower half, tapering to meet the attic window surround. A projecting band of four courses of painted brick sits between the ground floor and attic. A slit window to the left of the chimneybreast at ground floor is a timber framed fixed light, single glazed and divided vertically into three panes, with a painted cill and plain jambs and soldier coursed brick head. The west elevation mirrors the form of the east elevation but without a ground floor window. The north elevation is abutted by the modern extension, with a slight recess marking the change between new and old, which appears lower and reads as a shadow before the modern gabled form projects at the far north.

The roof materials include natural Welsh slate, aluminium ogee gutters and circular section downpipes.

The gate lodge is set within an extensive 134 acre parkland demesne, now a public park, on the west side of Upper Malone Road. The park is today known as Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park after the then owners who gifted it to Belfast Corporation in 1959. The lodge is surrounded by precast concrete brick pavers to the west, with mature planting and shrubs along the side of the path on the south and east sides. The front garden is bounded by low level timber picket fencing. A driveway entrance lies to the west with a modern brick retaining wall continued along the north end of the site. Modern brick gate pillars and gates set adjacent to the gate lodge mark the southern entrance to Lady Dixon Park, leading to a public car park and the former stables and outbuildings, now converted to a modern café, offices and storage for park maintenance vehicles.

The gate lodge has group value with Wilmont House, the former stable block and walled garden, and although no longer within the current boundary, the former estate workers' dwellings of Wilmont Cottages mark the north-west corner of the park and relate to the style and character of the gate lodge.