East gate lodge to Ballylough House, 51 Castlecat Road, Bushmills, Co. Antrim, BT57 8TN

East Gate Lodge to Ballylough House

This is a one and a half storey gate lodge positioned at the eastern entrance to the Ballylough House demesne, roughly 1.9 kilometres south of Bushmills centre, on the west side of Castlecat Road in a rural setting.

The building has a basically rectangular plan with a projecting gabled single-storey porch to the front and two single-storey lean-tos to the rear. The main section features a gabled roof covered in slate, supported by a series of curving timber brackets that create a pronounced overhang, with plain timber bargeboards and a central brick chimneystack. Some slates are missing on the west end of the north side of the roof and close to the chimney on the south side. The walls of the main section and the larger kitchen lean-to are finished in painted roughcast, while the smaller outside WC lean-to is in painted brick and the porch is in plain painted render. Both the porch and larger lean-to are slated; the WC has a corrugated asbestos roof. The building appears to have been vacated around 2011 and shows signs of disrepair. It is registered as a Cast Iron and Related Goods (CI RW) item.

The front elevation faces roughly north and is symmetrical. A central gabled porch features a fixed light window in the gable and a doorway flanked with sidelights on the west side. The doorway has a circa 1970s timber and glazed door. To the left and right of the porch on the main façade are windows, each with one over two timber sash frames. Both the east and west gables have centrally positioned windows to each level, all with six over three timber sash frames. On the south rear elevation, the kitchen lean-to has a window with a metal frame on its south-facing side and a doorway with plain sheeted timber door to the east. The WC lean-to has a door on its south side. There is a small high-level ventilation opening on the main façade between the lean-tos.

The lodge is enclosed from the road by a relatively low roughcast-rendered wall with rough rubble coping. The walls curve into a gate screen which has round vernacular-like roughcast-covered piers with stone caps and wrought-iron gates decorated with spearhead motifs.

Historical development

The lintel of the original front entrance, now an inner doorway within the porch, is inscribed with the date 1813. This same doorway features a pair of Tuscan-style pilaster jambs, Classical details that contrast with the building's present picturesque appearance. This suggests the lodge was remodelled and possibly heightened at some point, likely in the 1840s or 1850s. Documentary evidence relating to such changes is lacking, as the valuation books of the 1830s and 1850s contain none of the usual detailed dimensions. However, the 1813 construction date does coincide with other works within the wider Ballylough demesne, as the main house itself is believed to have been remodelled and had its roof raised in 1815, whilst the western or 'Drum' gate lodge was constructed around this time. All of this work was undertaken by Reverend Alexander Traill (1755–1831), Archdeacon of Connor, who acquired the property from Alexander Thomas Stewart in 1789.

The lodge appears on the 1832 Ordnance Survey map but is labelled as a gate lodge only on the revised map of 1857. The porch and kitchen lean-to are shown on the 1904 OS map, whilst the WC lean-to appears to be present on the 1922 map, though this is difficult to confirm given the scale of the survey. The porch does not appear on the 1972 map, though it exists in the building today, suggesting this is simply an oversight in that particular survey.

It is difficult to trace the occupants of the building through nineteenth and early twentieth century valuation books, as it is not recorded individually but only as part of the wider Ballylough House estate. The lodge was occupied until around 2011.

The building originally lay within the townland of Cavan, whose southwestern corner once extended further into the Ballylough demesne. The boundary was altered at some point in the later nineteenth century, and the lodge is now located in the townland of Ballylough More.

This gate lodge represents a rare example of a palimpsest in gate lodge terms. The accompanying gate screen dates to the mid to later nineteenth century and combines vernacular-style rounded piers with decorative handcrafted wrought-iron gates, all sympathetic to the lodge itself and equally well-preserved.