The Lodge at Glencree, 68 Old Mountfield Road, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT79 7EH

The Lodge at Glencree is a detached three-bay single-storey-over-raised-basement gate lodge built around 1840, located north of Old Mountfield Road in Omagh. It represents a good and unusual example of the picturesque style, with a symmetrical façade that contrasts markedly with the informal and asymmetrical appearance of the adjacent Glencree House.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing west, with a slightly projecting lean-to storm porch to the west elevation. It has a hipped artificial slate roof with round blue and black clay ridge and hip tiles, a replacement brick chimney stack to the centre ridge, and half-round painted cast-iron gutters on projecting eaves. The walling is painted render. Windows are generally square-headed painted timber 2/2 sashes with painted reveals and stone sills. Doors are vertically sheeted painted timber.

The principal west elevation is symmetrically arranged around the storm porch, which features a square-headed door opening with painted masonry threshold and concrete step. The door is flanked on each side by pointed arch-headed multi-light casement windows with intersecting and geometric tracery, painted reveals and stone sills. This ornamental fenestration lends the small structure a cottage orné appearance. The north elevation has a single window to the right end, with a segmental arch-headed door to the basement level at the left, and S-shaped painted wrought-iron pattress-plates to each end of the basement walling. The rear east elevation is abutted by a lean-to store shed at the right end of the basement; the exposed section has a single window to the right end and a replacement timber casement to the left end, with a single segmental arch-headed timber casement with sill at basement level to the left end. The south elevation is abutted to the left end by a lean-to greenhouse; the exposed section has a single window to the centre, with an S-shaped pattress-plate at basement level to the right end.

The lodge is situated on a steeply sloping site facing the tarmac drive to Glencree House to the north, set back from Old Mountfield Road to the south by coved rendered plinth walls with modern metal railings over and modern square gate pillars.

The lodge first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1854, captioned "Gate Lodge". Griffith's Valuation records the house as "Glencree" in 1858, described as "house, offices and land", with Alfred Gahan as occupier and Elizabeth Hamilton as lessor. The building was valued at £10 initially and revised to £17 at an unknown date. The Valuation Revisions from 1860 to 1903 record Lewis M. Buchanan (later Major Buchanan) as lessor, with various changes of occupier. The lodge shares certain similarities with the Strand Road Lodge at Richmond, County Londonderry. It occupies a location that reflects the post-1743 development pattern of Omagh; following a major fire that destroyed the town in May 1743, prosperous merchants relocated out of town to build houses in private secluded sites such as Glencree. While Glencree House has been modernised, the quaint gate lodge remains untouched.