The Lodge, Seapark House, 109 Shore Road, Greenisland, Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, BT38 8TZ

The Lodge, Seapark House

A detached three-bay single-storey Italianate gate lodge built around 1865 to designs by Thomas Jackson, located at the west entrance to Seapark estate on Shore Road, Greenisland. The building was commissioned by Thomas Greer, who also employed Jackson to remodel the main house, Seapark House. It was built to replace an earlier lodge shown on the 1832 and 1857 Ordnance Survey maps.

The lodge is rectangular in plan with a hipped natural slate roof and blue and black clay ridge tiles. It features deep overhanging eaves with panelled soffit supported on scrolled modillion brackets. A single rendered chimney with recessed panels and bracketed cornice rises through the roof, topped with replacement clay pots. The rendered walls are finished with horizontal banded rustication over a moulded plinth, with diamond-pointed rusticated quoins at the corners.

The principal elevation faces north and contains a central bay with a replacement square-headed four-panelled timber entrance door flanked by pilasters and surmounted by a portico supported by two Ionic columns, each flanked on the outer side by square Tuscan piers. The outer bays each contain a single window. Windows throughout are replacement round-arched-headed timber-framed 2/2 sliding sashes flanked by pilasters with dentilled impost surmounted by moulded archivolt with keyblock and moulded sills over panelled aprons. The east elevation contains a central pair of windows with a shared pilaster. The west elevation mirrors this arrangement. The south elevation is largely abutted by an extension and is blank where exposed.

A flat-roofed single-storey link block connects to an extension. The lodge sits within the estate boundary, accessed through a pair of original cast-iron gates supported on square pillars with rubble crenellations. The boundary to Shore Road consists of roughly coursed walling. To the north, the estate boundary comprises a smooth rendered plinth wall surmounted by cast-iron railing with a pair of recent cast-iron gates supported on square pillars with banded rustication and concrete capping. Belfast Lough lies to the east.

Rainwater goods are cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes.

Historical records show that the Townland Valuation of 1836 records a lodge valued at £1 13 shillings at Seapark, then occupied by Reverend John Cheyne (later revised to John Owden). Griffith's Valuation of 1859 records John Owden as occupier with a gardener's house and office (lodge) valued at £2. Valuation Revisions of 1929 show William Murphy as the occupier of the gate lodge, valued at £4.

The lodge remains a fitting entrance to the main house and has group value with the other listed buildings and structures within the Seapark estate.