The Keepers Lodge, Mussenden Road, Castlerock, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4RP

The Keeper's Lodge, Mussenden Road, Castlerock

This is a detached, symmetrical, three-bay, one-and-a-half-storey stone building on the north side of Mussenden Road, set within its own landscaped grounds to the east of Downhill House and Bishop's Gate. It was built around 1880–1885 and has a complex history: it began as a non-denominational school established in 1824, was converted into a gamekeeper's house around 1885, and was extensively renovated and extended around 1987. It is listed partly for its group value with the other listed structures on the Downhill Estate.

Historical Background

The school on this site was established in 1824 by the Kildare Place Society, a Dublin-based organisation founded in 1811 to provide non-denominational education for the poor. The building cost £119. Sir James Robertson Bruce, the second baronet of Downhill, donated the land and subsidised the teachers' salaries. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1835 record that the school was built of stone and lime, was slated, but had an earthen floor. Boys and girls were separated by a central wall and each entered through doors in the end gables. Children paid a penny halfpenny per week to learn reading, writing and arithmetic, with a further penny for spelling. A Sunday school also operated in the building from 9 to 11 o'clock, after which the children attended their respective places of worship. The building appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1831 (captioned "School") and on the second edition of 1848 (captioned "Hibernian School"), though the positioning on the first edition appears to be inaccurate.

In 1872, the third baronet, Sir Henry Hervey Bruce, built a new school in a neighbouring townland and the old school fell into disuse. By 1885 the building had been remodelled for domestic use by Sir Henry Hervey Bruce as a gamekeeper's house, valued at £3 in the valuation records for that year. This remodelling was part of a broader programme of estate improvements carried out in the 1870s and 1880s. The third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904 shows that a rear extension and kennels were added to the site during this remodelling, and the building may also have been raised at this time. The kennels, now demolished, are captioned to the rear of the building on the 1904 map.

The first recorded occupier of the converted house around 1885 was Samuel Gray, the estate gamekeeper. Occupiers changed frequently over the years, though Gray returned on several occasions and is recorded as resident in the 1911 census, married with three young children and employing a sixteen-year-old domestic servant from Lisburn. The house was then classified as second class with seven rooms. By the time of the First General Revaluation in 1933–34, the estate carpenter and caretaker John Cunningham was living there. At that time the accommodation comprised a reception room, kitchen and scullery on the ground floor and three bedrooms on the upper floor, with a single-storey return at the rear; the former kennels were then being used as a chicken house.

The building was listed in 1977. A survey photograph from 1975 shows the central pedimented breakfront was rendered at that time, with a small pitched-roof porch featuring a gothic doorway forming the main entrance. In the early 1990s the render and original porch were removed and a large canopy porch with supporting pillars was erected in their place. A large rear extension and conservatory were also added, and the former kennel block was demolished and replaced with a new rubblestone outbuilding.

Exterior

The building has a hipped natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and a pair of red brick chimneystacks with octagonal clay pots. Cast-iron guttering sits on a red brick eaves course, and cast-iron downpipes are fitted throughout. The walls are of random coursed and snecked rubble basalt with squared basalt quoins. Single wall-head dormers have been added to both side elevations and a further two to the rear elevation, all added around 1987.

The symmetrical front elevation is four windows wide and features a gabled, shallow entrance breakfront. At attic level, the breakfront has a circular oculus formed in red brick with a circular window containing leaded coloured glazing. The two window openings to either side of the breakfront are set into shallow round-arched recesses with gauged red brick arches connected by painted masonry impost courses. The window openings throughout have gauged red brick flat-arched heads, painted masonry sills, and replacement 6-over-6 timber sash windows with part-exposed sash boxes.

The entrance is formed by a replacement square-headed door opening in red brick, fitted with a replacement timber panelled and glazed door that opens onto a terracotta-tiled platform reached by three steps. This entrance is sheltered by a timber-sheeted, gable-fronted canopy supported on a pair of masonry Doric columns. While most replacement materials have been sympathetic in character, this front porch is considered to detract from the front elevation.

The west side elevation has an off-centre ground-floor window opening with a gauged red brick head and a replacement multi-pane timber casement window. A centrally placed wall-head dormer has timber sheeting and a timber casement window dropping below eaves level. The east side elevation mirrors the west but has a 6-over-6 timber sash window to the ground floor only.

The rear elevation is abutted by a multi-bay, one-and-a-half-storey stone extension added around 1987, built in rubble basalt and detailed in keeping with the original block. This extension has a timber oriel window to the rear gable and a timber conservatory abutting the re-entrant angle to the east.

Setting

The house is accessed from Mussenden Road via a long, winding cobblelock drive through mature landscaped gardens. The grounds are enclosed to the road by rubble basalt walls with stacked coping. Cobblelock surfacing encircles the house, and a further detached stone structure stands to the rear.