Front gate lodge to Drumalis Retreat Centre, 49 Glenarm Road, Larne, Co Antrim, BT40 1DT

Front Gate Lodge to Drumalis Retreat Centre

A late Victorian gate lodge and entrance screen, designed by architect Samuel P. Close between 1888 and 1890 for Hugh Smiley. The lodge and gates form an impressive and contemporary entrance to Drumalis, with both structures demonstrating considerable architectural ambition and ornamental detail characteristic of their period.

The gate lodge is a single-storey building of irregular plan with hipped roofs. Eaves project to form a shallow veranda on most of the perimeter, filled with wrought iron trellis work of arcaded design. The trelliswork is supported on small square concrete pads at ground level and fixed to the eaves above, constructed of plain sections but with decorative flower-head details over joints to main rails.

The roof is of Bangor blue slates in regular courses with lead ridge coverings. A single centrally placed chimney of painted stucco with offset base and battered cap carries three original Victorian pots. Cast iron gutters and downpipes run beneath a wooden fascia, with overhanging eaves and painted wooden flush panelled soffits.

The walls are rendered in dry dash using small washed pebbles, with vertical painted stucco strips at each projecting corner. A plinth with moulded top runs around the building.

The main entrance faces west. The west front is four openings wide, comprising two windows in a projecting front return to the left, with one window and the entrance doorway to the right. Windows are segmental-headed timber sliding sashes, vertically hung with 1 over 1 panes and horns. They have moulded stucco surrounds, continuous cill course, and string course between windows at impost level. Moulded archivolts and roll mouldings edge the reveals.

The front door is a four-panel varnished timber with segmental top, set within a moulded segmental arched surround abutted by two sets of string courses. It is surmounted by a painted wooden gabled canopy roof on brackets, with an open fretted gable spandrel panel bearing an acroterion pattern, acroterion cresting to the apex, and tongued and grooved sheeting to the underside of the canopy.

The north elevation features two windows as described above, to the side of the hipped front block on the right, with a later lean-to porch to the left linking the front block to a projecting hipped outhouse at the extreme left. The lean-to porch has a corrugated perspex roof and timber ledged door with inauthentic painted rendered surround. One small segmental-headed window is set in the outhouse.

The east elevation shows a double-pile roof form, hipped as previously, over the main block spanning three windows wide. A single window sits to the left, with a coupled pair to the right having raised cills and stepped string course. A projecting outhouse at the extreme right has a lower eaves line. The wrought iron trellis extends from the far left to the edge of the coupled windows.

The south elevation contains two windows in the side of the hipped front block with one window in the recessed side wall of a rear return to the right. The wrought iron trellis extends from end to end, stepping back for the rear return.

The lodge stands to the north side of the entrance driveway, set back with a lawn between it and the drive. Lawns extend to the north and east, with a concrete area to the west behind the front boundary wall and hedge. The setting is secluded yet easily viewed from the main road and driveway.

Adjacent to the lodge stands the gate screen. This comprises a large pair of sandstone piers with ornamental ironwork gates, flanked by smaller sandstone piers containing pedestrian side gates. The central piers are of ashlar stonework with moulded bases, cornices, frieze, and pyramidal capstones with moulded tops. The smaller piers are similar but without frieze, bearing acroteria finials. Bronze oval plaques on each central pier are inscribed 'Drumalis Retreat House' on the left and 'Convent of the Cross and Passion' on the right. Gates are painted black with finials detailed in white.

To each side of the gateway, low stone walls of snecked basalt with sandstone copings are surmounted by iron railings detailed as gates, curving forward to terminate in square sandstone ashlar piers at pavement level. These end piers are similar to the gate piers but without cornice or frieze and bearing lower capstones of simplified form. Beyond the end piers, front boundary walls of snecked basalt with long and short basalt copings terminate to the left in a monolithic sandstone pier with moulded capstone, and continue to the right without a terminating pier, returning up the side of the Drumalis site.