'Lodge' at Strabane Grammar School, 4 Liskey Road, Milltown, Strabane, Co Tyrone BT82 8NW

This is a one-and-a-half-storey picturesque gate lodge, built around 1836 to designs by the architect William Vitruvius Morrison. It was originally constructed to serve Milltown House — now the site of Strabane Grammar School — and stands at the entrance to the school grounds on the east side of Liskey Road, less than half a mile south of Strabane town centre. The building is currently used by the school as a language laboratory and music practice space. Despite its distinguished origins, it has lost most of its original window frames, its once-impressive Tudoresque chimneys, and much of its internal detailing, and is not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.

The building is roughly L-shaped in plan, with the original section to the north and a later extension to the south. A projecting gabled porch faces to the front. The walls of the original section are built in rubble stonework, with ashlar stone used for the quoins and a bevelled base course, and brick dressings around the openings. Interestingly, the quoins to the upper half of this section are in a more finely dressed stone of a different colour, which strongly suggests that this part of the building may have been raised in height at some point — an impression reinforced by changes visible in the stonework on the east gable. However, this does not appear to be supported by the historical record. The later south-facing extension is built in brick, with its south-facing gable and base course in rubble, while the porch is brick-built with an ashlar stone base course. The overhanging gabled roof is covered in asbestos tiles, with an artificial slate finish to the porch.

The front elevation, which faces roughly north, is symmetrical. At its centre sits the relatively large gabled porch, whose front gable features an open doorway with a Tudor-arched head. On both the east and west faces of the porch there is a semicircular-headed window opening fitted with a timber frame containing twin semicircular-headed lights and a small roundel above. Both windows have painted stone sills. The porch roof overhangs and is decorated with pierced ornamental bargeboarding in the ornée style, with curved soffits. To either side of the porch on the main front façade are relatively small square windows, each fitted with a recent timber frame and painted stone sill.

On the east gable of the main section, the ground floor has a window similar to those on the front but taller, and the upper floor has a window of similar size with a different but equally recent timber frame. On the west gable at ground floor level there is a single-storey hip-roofed canted bay window, with timber-framed windows on all faces: the central window has four lights, those on the outer faces have two lights each, and all have semicircular-headed upper lights. At first floor level on this gable there is a small window with a recent timber frame.

On the east face of the extension, the ground floor has a very small window with a recent timber frame, and the first floor has a larger window of similarly recent date. On the west face of the extension there are two windows of differing sizes, with a further window at upper floor level set within a gabled half-dormer with plain bargeboards and a finial. All these frames are recent timber examples. The south gable of the extension has a ground-floor doorway fitted with a recent flat-panel timber door.

On the still-exposed rear façade of the main section, there is a window at upper floor level set within a half-dormer similar to that on the west face of the extension. The main section's west gable has decorative bargeboards similar to those on the porch, along with a finial. The bargeboards to the east gable of the main section and to the gable of the extension are plain. Both the main section and the extension have curved soffits. There are two relatively recent rendered chimneystacks — one to the centre of the roof of the main section and one to the gable of the extension — both added after around 1970 as replacements for the original, more elaborate Tudoresque examples. Rainwater goods throughout are PVC-u.

Internally, the surviving detailing is late Victorian in character, suggesting the building underwent a significant overhaul sometime in the closing years of the 19th century.

The site's history is well documented. The Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34 shows the original Milltown Lodge in a different position, with the present site at the head of the drive undeveloped. Around this time, Milltown House had just passed into the hands of Major John Humphreys, following his appointment as agent to the Duke of Abercorn. Between 1834 and around 1836, Humphreys demolished the original dwelling and built the present Milltown Lodge (now incorporated into Strabane Grammar School). The revised Ordnance Survey map of 1857 shows the new house together with a gate lodge matching the shape of the present building. Documents within the Abercorn Papers record that both the house and the gate lodge were designed by William Vitruvius Morrison and built around 1836–39, with the lodge costing £120. The gate lodge is not mentioned in the second valuation of 1857; it first appears in the valuation records in 1890, with its occupant — a Thomas Chisholm — recorded for the first time six years after that, in 1896. The building continued to serve as the gate lodge for Milltown House until 1955, when the Harpur family — successors to the Humphreys — sold the entire property to Tyrone County Council for use as a new non-denominational grammar school for boys and girls: Strabane Grammar School.