Gate Lodges, Pellipar Estate, Ballyquin Road, Dungiven, Co Londonderry

A pair of symmetrical gate lodges of the later Georgian period, built around 1797 or shortly thereafter, in neo-classical style. The lodges are constructed in sandstone ashlar with bold detailing and stand on either side of an entrance avenue leading north from Pellipar House on the Ballyquin Road near Dungiven.

The lodges are single-storey buildings, identical in design, with their pedimented entrances facing each other across the avenue. Each entrance elevation is three bays wide and symmetrically composed, featuring a bold pedimented breakfront centrepiece with a round-headed door opening. The windows are set in shallow recesses, with similarly treated single windows on either side, which have comparatively low sandstone cills. A flat plain band at arch springing level runs across all facades. The top of each wall has a plain corbel projection which originally supported gutters, now missing. Each gable contains a centrally arched window with a wide shallow recess. The rear elevation features three blank arched recesses, also with wide shallow recesses, though the west lodge is partially obscured by a later lean-to brick extension. The walls are built of fine ashlar sandstone with thin joints and have no plinth. The roofs are hipped and slated with ridge and hip tiles. Each lodge has a central chimney lined with brick and faced with ashlar stone. The entrance doors originally had plain semicircular fanlights but are now missing, as are all window frames. The stone pediments have simply formed sloping copings and horizontal elements completing the triangle with good projection; the external bottom angles are cut off in a blunt but pragmatic manner rather than coming to a point.

Between the lodges lies a pleasingly designed curving screen wall surmounted by decorative railing, connecting to the outer corners of each lodge. The central pair of wrought-iron gates consists of delicate round verticals which are doubled below the middle rail, each terminating in a well-crafted decorative finial. On either side of the gates stand two square ashlar sandstone piers approximately two metres high with flattish moulded coping and shallow blocking piece on top (one now missing). The curving wall straightens before meeting the wall of each lodge and has a simple weathered and overhanging coping in which the railings are secured.

The east lodge stands parallel and close to the verge of Ballyquin Road, where the avenue passing through the gates opens onto a wide gravel space permitting vehicles to turn easily towards Dungiven. Remnants of mature beech trees remain, and the setting, though somewhat overgrown and little used, presents a charming approach to Pellipar House. The avenue winds through the estate towards the house, increasing in width and passing over a broad low parapeted bridge.

The lodges are likely contemporary with Pellipar House, built by Robert Ogilby around 1797, though John McCluskey's Statistical Reports of 1821 reference "two elegant lodges erected at its entrance" in the context of improvements made around 1820, suggesting they may date to that later period and be contemporary with two additional wings added to the house circa 1820. The lodges appear on the 1832 Ordnance Survey map and are referenced in Griffith's Valuation of 1858. They remained in use until approximately 1960. The building is recorded as derelict.