Gate Lodge, Greenmount Lodge, 38 Greenmount Road, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT79 0QU

Gate Lodge, Greenmount Lodge

This is a detached two-bay single-storey rendered gate lodge, built around 1830. Now derelict, it stands halfway down the tree-lined avenue leading to the rebuilt Greenmount Lodge, set perpendicular to the avenue with its north side elevation fronting onto it.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing east, with a hipped natural slate roof fitted with black clay ridge tiles and a central tooled stone ashlar chimneystack. Projecting stone eaves form lintels to the central door openings. The structure comprises rubble stone walling beneath ruled and lined pigmented lime render, with rusticated lime render quoins to the east front and north side elevations. The surviving remnants of the pigmented lime render finish with its decorative lion's head plaques and rusticated quoins are clear evidence of the level of decoration and craftsmanship employed in this building.

The east elevation is a four-bay composition of symmetrical design, featuring a pair of central square-headed door openings with a single gothic-arched window opening to either side. Stone eaves form the lintels, with Gibbsian lime rendered surrounds on squared plinth blocks. The timber frames have lost their doors. A lion's head roundel plaque formed in lime render is positioned between the door openings. The pointed-headed window openings are formed in red brick with stone sills and render hood moulding (to the left window only). The left window incorporates a multi-pane timber sash with Y-tracery to the upper sash.

The south side elevation is a single bay with corrugated iron patching to the roof and an iron ridge to stone eaves. Rubble stone walling retains some rusticated render quoins. A central square-headed window opening in red brick has a timber lintel, stone sill, and side-hung 8/8 timber sash window.

The west rear elevation is blind, with red brick eaves and rubble stone walling featuring a carved stone drain spout to the left.

The north side elevation fronting onto the avenue has a central pointed-headed window opening with render hood moulding and stone sill, now blocked up in concrete block. A free-standing tall rendered pier stands to the east. Iron ridges run to the natural slate roof at the stone-lined eaves. The eaves stone continues east to form a lintel over the opening between the house and pier. A matching tall square-plan pier exists on the opposite side of the avenue to the north, both featuring lion's head roundel plaques. A previously lime-rendered rubble stone wall extends along the avenue to the east, now filled in with rubble stone.

The semi-detached plan form and separate pedestrian gate are both very unusual features for a gate lodge. This is a diminutive but accomplished composition, retaining the original character of a fine nineteenth-century estate lodge.

The building appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, alongside Greenmount house. The 1852 map shows a similar building on the opposite side of the road and another gate lodge approximately 200 yards away to the north. The Ordnance Survey memoirs for the parish record that John Galbraith Esquire of Greenmount was a local landlord. Griffith's Valuation of 1858 records Jane Galbraith as the occupier of Greenmount, with the property—a house, offices and land—leased from the Earl of Belmore, valued at £27. Valuation Revisions show the occupier changed to John L Galbraith in 1874, Robert Orr Clements in 1882, and William Lanvin in 1926, with the building valuation decreasing to £20 by 1882. Two lodges at Greenmount are mentioned in contemporary sources, though one authority believed both to have been demolished.