Gate Screen, Kilwarlin Moravian Church, Hillsborough, Co. Down, BT26 6DZ

The gate screen to Kilwarlin Moravian Church complex was erected around 1855 on the south side of Kilwarlin Road. It forms part of a unique church complex alongside the also-listed Moravian Church, Manse and Hall, and holds considerable social and historical interest to the local community.

The gate screen is an unusual and well-proportioned composition of decorative cast-iron gates and railings supported on quality stone work. The central feature consists of a pair of carriage gates with pine cone finials, mounted on painted tooled sandstone ashlar pillars with capstones and ball finials bearing a Greek key raised motif. Matching cast-iron wicket gates flank either side, each supported on lower piers with identical detailing. Low rendered screen walls extend on either side, topped with matching cast-iron railings set into coping stone. The south elevation displays exposed vermiculated sandstone blocks. The screen walls terminate at each end with tall rustic piers that continue as quadrant walls of rock-faced sandstone ashlar, finished with large quartzite boulders as coping.

The gate screen first appeared on the second edition Ordnance Survey map in 1858. Historical records suggest it was built around 1855, sometime after the Moravian Church building itself was reconstructed in 1834 by Reverend Basil Zula. Although Zula died in 1844, it remains uncertain whether the gate screen was commissioned by him or by a later patron. The screen may have been designed to reflect Zula's curious nature: he had landscaped the church setting as a battle garden representing the famous clash at Thermopylae, and his additions at Kilwarlin included other exotic oddities. The gate pattern—with its Greek key pattern bands and pine cone finials—appears consistent with this individual aesthetic vision.

A small single-storey gabled gate lodge also appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1858. It has been modified in recent decades with the addition of a steel beam and garage doors. An oval plaque attached to the lodge bears a biblical quotation from 1 Chronicles 29.14: "OF THINE OWN HAVE WE GIVEN THEE O LORD." The lodge was valued at £1 15s in Griffith's Valuation, and from 1878 onwards it was recorded with additional small properties including a workshop and shed, valued together at £3 10s. Throughout this period until 1930, the gate lodge housed successive individuals who maintained the church and its grounds. Today it survives as a private residence. The former Verger's cottage to the west was heavily refurbished around 2000, with the removal of its roof and all external and internal fabric.

The gate screen remains well maintained and provides a fitting entrance to this architecturally and historically significant church complex.