"ROSE COTTAGE" and walling, 43 MIDDLE PARK ROAD, GORTACLEE, CUSHENDALL, Ballymena, CO.ANTRIM

Rose Cottage, also known as 43 Middle Park Road, Gortaclee, Cushendall, is a detached, asymmetrical, four-bay, single-storey former gate lodge with attic, built between 1832 and 1857 and now used as a private dwelling. The listing extends to the house and its boundary walling.

The building was constructed as the gate lodge to Mount Edwards House, the main house of the Cuppage family's estate, which has since been demolished. It is rectangular on plan, rendered throughout, and faces south on a corner site. The hipped natural slate roof has rolled lead ridges and a single rendered chimneystack with terracotta pots. Cast-iron guttering is fixed to a timber box fascia beneath overhanging eaves, with cast-iron downpipes. The external walls are painted render with a painted rendered plinth course and rusticated quoins.

All window openings are square-headed with painted masonry sills. The front (south) elevation is four bays wide with an off-centre square-headed door opening. The windows are replacement timber sliding sash windows with geometric glazing bars and angled horns, with partially exposed sash boxes. The door is a replacement half-glazed timber panelled door, which opens onto a concrete step to a small front area. The west side elevation, set at a lower level than the garden, has two bays with replacement 3/6 timber sliding sash windows. The rear elevation has a more irregular arrangement of openings, including two small windows near the eaves serving the attic storey, fitted with replacement side-hung timber casement windows. A further ground floor window also has a replacement timber casement window, and a square-headed door opening to the right carries a replacement half-glazed timber panelled door opening onto a concrete-paved rear yard. The east side elevation has a single window opening to the left, glazed to match the front elevation.

The building retains its original composition throughout, with largely appropriate replacement detailing. Its elegant proportions and decorative geometric glazing bars give it a distinctive mid-19th-century character that sets it apart from surrounding buildings.

The boundary walling adds to the overall interest of the listing. The site occupies a corner at the junction of Middle Park Road and a concrete-paved private road. It is enclosed by low rendered walls with rubblestone coping and a replacement steel pedestrian gate hung on two rendered piers. A detached garage to the rear, built in 1989, is designed sympathetically with quoins to complement the cottage. Lawns lie to the west.

Historical background

Mount Edwards House, to which Rose Cottage originally served as a gate lodge, was recorded as early as 1819 in Mason's Parochial Survey of Ireland, which noted it was occupied by a Mr Samuel Boyd and described it as one of the old farmhouses built by gentlemen who received land grants from the Antrim family. Mason recorded that Boyd's family had held the land for some generations and that, since Boyd took occupation, considerable improvements had been made to gardening, planting, fencing, farming and outbuildings, with an intention expressed to rebuild the house itself. C. E. B. Brett suggested that Rose Cottage was erected around 1825 as part of these improvements by Boyd, but this is contradicted by the fact that the gate lodge does not appear on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1830–38 described Mount Edwards House at that time as a single-storey, plain, old house not in very good repair.

The gate lodge was constructed between 1832 and 1857, after the site had passed to General Alexander Cuppage (died 1847). The Cuppage family were prominent local landowners who were responsible for raising Mount Edwards House by a storey and for building the gate lodge at the entrance to the estate. The gate lodge first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857, depicted in its current rectangular layout. That map also shows that Mount Edwards House originally had a pair of lodges: a second lodge stood opposite Rose Cottage but was replaced with a modern two-storey house in the late 20th century.

Griffith's Valuation of 1859 recorded Rose Cottage with a total rateable value of £1 5 shillings and noted that the building was leased by the Cuppage family to a Ms Margaret McKenzie. The McKenzie family continued to reside there until around 1889, when a Mr Robert Emerson took possession. The Emerson family, who were employed as farmers by the Cuppage family, remained at Rose Cottage until at least the 1970s. The 1911 Census classified the building as a second-class dwelling with four rooms, and recorded a large number of outbuildings including a stable, two cow houses, a piggery and a barn. Thomas Emerson purchased the building outright from the Cuppage family, as recorded by the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), which increased the rateable value to £2 10 shillings. Emerson was recorded as both occupant and owner through the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), by the end of which the value stood at £4 10 shillings.

By 1972, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's guide for the Glens of Antrim noted that Mount Edwards House had been reduced to a simple two-storey farmhouse, distinguished from others in the district only by its substantial depth in relation to its width, and described it as a building of more antiquity than architectural merit. Rose Cottage was listed in 1980. J. A. K. Dean, writing in The Gate Lodges of Ulster (1994), described the surviving lodge as a standard single-storey, hipped-roof building of three bays with a nice octagonal lattice glazing bar pattern to the windows.

In 1989 Rose Cottage underwent an extensive renovation, which included the construction of the modern garage to the north of the property, replacement of the natural slate roof and timber fascias, installation of cast-iron rainwater goods, and the fitting of new timber sliding sash window frames throughout. The 1989 garage is the only major alteration to the site and was designed to complement the cottage, including sympathetic quoins. At the time of the most recent survey, the building continued in use as a private dwelling.