Gate Lodge to Loreto Convent, Castlerock Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 3JZ

Gate Lodge to Loreto Convent, Castlerock Road, Coleraine

This is a two-bay, one-and-a-half-storey Victorian gate lodge built in 1877, situated on the north side of Castlerock Road in Coleraine town centre. It was designed by the Belfast-based architects Young & Mackenzie and constructed by the building firm J. Lowry & Sons. The lodge was built as part of a wider commission for Hugh Anderson, Chairman of Coleraine's Town Commission and a partner in the wine and spirit merchant company Anderson & Stewart. It was planned alongside the associated mansion house, Tievtara (now the convent building), with the first designs drawn as early as 1874, construction beginning in 1877 and the work completed by 1880. The listing extends to the gate lodge itself, the adjacent building to the east, and the original gate screen.

Architectural Description

The lodge follows a T-shaped plan, with a projecting open porch to the west and a canted bay to the south. The roof is hipped and gabled, covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles, leaded valleys, and a rendered chimneystack with a moulded cap. The eaves overhang on exposed rafter tails with cast-iron ogee rainwater goods, and the gable has plain bargeboards on profiled brackets. The external walls are painted smooth render over a contrasting chamfered plinth. Windows throughout are uPVC replacements set in moulded architraves with projecting painted sills.

The principal elevation faces west. It comprises a projecting gabled bay to the left, flush with an open porch at the centre that sits beneath a catslide slate roof. The right-hand bay is a single window wide. The gabled bay has a round-headed window at attic level above paired windows at ground floor; these ground-floor windows have continuous sills and are surmounted by a plain frieze with a moulded cornice. The porch is open to the south, accessed by two stone steps, and retains its original floor of terracotta and black square tiles. The entrance door is uPVC and is set at an oblique angle into the re-entrant angle of the porch.

The north elevation has a window left of centre, also surmounted by a plain frieze and moulded cornice, with a diminutive window opening to its left. The east elevation was only partially viewed during inspection, but the projecting gabled bay to the right has a window at first-floor level. The south elevation has a canted bay to the centre that partially breaks the eaves line.

Setting

The lodge is situated to the east side of the entrance to Loreto Convent and chapel on Castlerock Road. A small yard to the rear is enclosed by painted smooth render walls and accessed from the south by a modern timber-sheeted door. Directly to the east is a two-storey rock-faced blackstone building with red brick dressings, belonging to the school.

The original gate screen and boundary walls to the south are of considerable interest. They consist of ashlar stone plinth walls with chamfered tops surmounted by decorative composite iron railings with barley-twist heads. At the centre, square ashlar stone piers with corniced pointed caps support the original entrance gates, which are detailed to match the railings. The site has a variety of mature trees, with the chapel, convent, and school buildings lying to the north of the lodge.

Historical Background

When first completed, Tievtara and its gate lodge were jointly valued at £75 5s. It was not until 1887 that the two were valued separately; in that year the gate lodge, including its adjoining blackstone extension, was assessed at £5. The first recorded occupant of the lodge was a Mr. James Burke, though the occupancy changed frequently over the following decade.

Hugh Anderson died in 1899, leaving administration of Tievtara and the gate lodge to Daisy Stewart, daughter of his business partner John Stewart. She did not reside at the property and sold it to a Major Mellon, a retired Welsh soldier, who occupied it only briefly before putting the site up for sale again. By the time of the third edition of the Ordnance Survey maps in 1904, the gate lodge was already shown in its current layout, indicating that no major alteration to the plan has taken place in the last century of its history.

The property was purchased by the Reverend Father Convery P.P. in 1904, and in 1906 it was acquired by the Ursuline Order, who converted the former mansion into a convent school for the education of girls. Under Ursuline ownership, the combined value of the convent and gate lodge rose from £65 in 1907 to £105 5s. by 1911. In 1930, administration of the convent school passed to the Loreto Nuns of Omagh. Under the First General Revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the total value of the Loreto Convent School and its associated buildings was set at £175. Following major extension works that resulted in the construction of the majority of the modern school buildings surrounding the original house, the combined site value rose to £3,060 in 1968.

The gate lodge was listed in 1977. Writing in 1994, Dean described it as "a big late-Victorian exercise in the Picturesque on an L-plan." Although mid-20th-century interior alterations resulted in the loss of much of the original internal fabric, the retention of the original gate screen and boundary walls has maintained the essential Victorian character of the ensemble. At the time of field inspection, the gate lodge was occupied by the Loreto nuns as a separate dwelling.

The lodge has group value with Loreto Convent and its associated chapel, together forming an important group of considerable local interest and social importance. The original gate screen and the adjacent basalt building add further to the interest of the site, providing a fitting and largely intact Victorian entrance to the convent complex.