GP Surgery, Gate Lodge, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast, County Down, BT8 8BH

Gate Lodge, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast

This is a symmetrical single-storey three-bay red-brick gate lodge, built in 1927 as part of the Purdysburn Villa Colony Asylum complex. It now functions as a doctor's surgery at the entrance to Knockbracken Healthcare Park, west of the Saintfield Road in the borough of Castlereagh. The building was designed by the Belfast architects Tulloch and Fitzsimons, who had served as architects to the villa colony since its inception in 1902, when the practice traded as Graeme, Watt and Tulloch. The lodge has been described by Dean as 'a very fine Lutyenesque Arts-and-Crafts style lodge'.

The plan is rectangular, comprising two intersecting bays, with a full-length extension to the front and a flat-roof brick extension to the rear. The hipped natural slate roof has terracotta ridge tiles and rises to a point at the centre, where it is surmounted by a red-brick clustered chimneystack on a masonry plinth. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are carried on projecting timber eaves, with cast-iron hoppers and downpipes throughout.

The walls are in Flemish-bonded red-brick on a chamfered plinth. The full-length extension to the southeast has a timber frieze, corner pilasters, and openings divided by pilasters on a masonry plinth. The rear windows are 6/6 timber-framed sliding sash with horns, exposed sash boxes, and projecting masonry sills; the southeast extension has 1/1 timber casements.

The principal elevation faces southeast. Originally it had a flat-roofed open verandah across the full width, which has since been infilled — one of the principal alterations that compromises the original design. In its current form this elevation is five openings wide, with bolection-moulded half-panelled timber doors with transom lights at far left and right, that on the left accessed via three masonry steps. The original facade, now housed within the entrance lobby, retains the outline of the original entrance door in the recessed bay to the left, with a raised block surround and keystone.

The southwest elevation has a 6/6 window; the recessed entrance bay to the right has a 1/1 window. The northwest (rear) elevation has a projecting bay at the centre, one window wide to both the southwest and northeast elevations. To the right is a blocked doorway, accessed by two masonry steps, alongside a diminutive 1/1 window; the left side of this elevation is blank. The projecting bay is abutted by the modern single-storey brick extension to the rear, which is of no architectural interest. The northeast elevation has a 6/6 window at the centre and a diminutive timber-framed window to the left, with a recessed entrance bay to the left featuring a masonry stepped plinth and a 1/1 window. Originally the lodge had squared pane windows throughout.

The lodge is sited to the north side of the entrance from Saintfield Road, to the east of the 275-acre parkland estate on which Knockbracken Healthcare Park stands. It is surrounded by mature trees and accessed via a pathway to the northwest. A low brick wall with masonry plinth encloses a planted area to the front, with four conifers. The mature parkland setting is largely unspoiled.

The boundary to the road on the east retains the original cast-iron railings and box gate piers in typical late-Victorian style. The curved railing panels have spike finials, with painted ball finials to the lower railings. The ornate cast-iron box gate piers are of standard design, with a 'rope' frame on a plinth and ornate pierced cast-iron panels, surmounted by a corniced pointed cap with ornate cast-iron foliage to the top. The entrance arrangement appears to have been modified to suit modern traffic requirements.

The gate lodge is first shown, uncaptioned, on the fifth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920–31. It was built as part of a phase of expansion around 1927 during which three villas and a medical superintendent's residence were also erected, with contractors Mick Roberts and Armstrong carrying out the works.

The broader Purdysburn estate has a rich and complex history. Following the deaths of Narcissus and Emily Batt, the house and demesne of 295 acres were sold in 1894 to Belfast Corporation for £29,500, to be used as a lunatic asylum. The house was adapted for this purpose by architects Jackson and Tilley following a competition they won in 1897. In 1900 the Management Committee of the Lunatic Asylum decided, on the advice of their Medical Superintendent Dr William Graham, to build a new asylum on the site using the Villa Colony principle, which would allow patients to be accommodated in homely villas and permit classification according to mental and physical condition. Tulloch and Fitzsimons of Belfast were appointed architects, but as work progressed the committee also drew on the expertise of George Thomas Hine, Consulting Architect to the English Lunacy Commissioners from 1897. Hine was a specialist in asylum architecture — in 1887 he had won the competition for the enormous London County Council asylum at Claybury in Essex, whose compact arrow plan became the model for asylum design. His later designs, particularly Long Grove in Epsom (1903–7) and Purdysburn (1907–13), often feature dispersed units, and Purdysburn is one of the only mental illness facilities to make use of the colony design. The supervising architects for the Purdysburn colony were Graeme Watt and Tulloch.

A dwelling already on the site, known as Glenavon, was adapted for 30 patients, and two further villas were built in 1902–3 for chronic cases, with two more completed in 1906. In 1907 the Asylum Committee authorised plans for four more villas, two churches, a recreation hall, and a mortuary. Work began in 1908, with considerable alterations to the contours of the site carried out using patient labour. The estimated cost was £81,000, with contractors H and J Martin and Messrs Robert Corry Ltd. By the 1911 census, five villas were occupied by patients — four newly built, each housing around 55 patients, and one adapted from the former house on the site housing 33. A further 171 patients were accommodated in Purdysburn House itself. The total number of patients had almost tripled since the 1901 census, driven largely by a more than fourfold increase in female patients; only male patients were housed in the villas, while Purdysburn House became reserved for women.

In 1911 the tender of Messrs Robert Corry Ltd was accepted for two further villas at a cost of £9,790, and by 1913 these had been occupied by working patients transferred from Grosvenor Road Asylum. Further additions were designed by Tulloch and Fitzsimons in 1924–5, 1933–6, and 1938–9. By 1937 there were 17 villas accommodating 1,320 patients, together with a hospital for 146 and a sanatorium for 22 patients.

A Fever Hospital — later known as Belvoir Park Hospital — was also built on part of the estate to the west of the house to designs by Young and Mackenzie, opening in 1906 under the terms of the City of Belfast Hospitals Act of 1903. It served as the main regional centre for oncology until its closure in 2006, when cancer treatment was transferred to the City Hospital.

Belfast's earlier asylum, built on the site now occupied by the Royal Victoria Hospital, had been constructed in 1829 and was of a prison-like design with numerous single cells, small heavily barred windows, and high surrounding walls. It was enlarged in 1860 but could accommodate only 346 patients. Those who could not be admitted were sent to workhouses or, if considered dangerous, to gaol. Mental disorders were classified into just four categories — curable lunatics, incurable lunatics, epileptics, and idiots — and it was not until 1895 that epileptics began to be treated in infirmaries rather than asylums. The old asylum closed in 1917 and was demolished in the 1920s.

By 1929, the Purdysburn mansion house and courtyard buildings accommodated over 150 female patients. The hospital block for sick or infirm patients contained 100 beds — 50 male and 50 female — along with Medical Officers', Matron's, and Nurses' apartments, a laboratory, and dental rooms. The villas were self-contained home-like structures, each with its own kitchen and designed for 55 patients. Within the grounds were a dairy and poultry farm in which patients were encouraged to work, and an orchard and walled gardens that produced fruit, jam, and vegetables for patients — over 8 tons of jam was made on site in 1929 alone. It was a matter of considerable civic pride at the time that, in contrast to the old Grosvenor Road asylum, there were no bars on the windows at Purdysburn, no wall around the estate, and the entrance gates were always open.

The initial purchase at Purdysburn was 295 acres from the representatives of Robert Narcissus Batt. In 1902 a further 88 acres, the site of the present buildings, was acquired from Mr John Morrow. Further purchases of adjoining land in 1904, 1911, 1917, and 1919 brought the total owned by the Corporation to 554 acres, of which 65 acres were allocated for the Infectious Diseases Hospital.

In the 1990s the site was renamed Knockbracken Healthcare Park to dispel negative associations with the Purdysburn name. Patient numbers peaked at over 1,800 in the mid-1950s and now stand at around 300, reflecting changes in mental health provision and a greater emphasis on community-based treatment. The site is now shared with around thirty voluntary organisations working in the healthcare field, and the headquarters of the Belfast Trust is also located here.

The gate lodge is of interest principally for its association with the Knockbracken Healthcare Park and the history of Purdysburn Villa Colony, but retains few features of architectural interest in its current altered state. The original cast-iron entrance gate piers and railings remain as the most significant surviving historic elements on site.