Gate Lodge 68 Main Street, Portglenone, Ballymena, Co Antrim, BT44 8HS

Gate Lodge, North Entrance to Portglenone House

This is a small detached one-and-a-half storey, two-bay rendered Victorian gate lodge, built around 1870, situated on the west side of the former north entrance drive to Portglenone House. It is listed together with its associated gate piers, boundary walls, walled gardens and summerhouse. The lodge first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map dating from around 1900, although its construction is believed to have been associated with extensive repairs and improvements carried out around 1866 by Robert Jackson Alexander, grandson of the original builder of the main house. Those works, valued at approximately £2,800, were designed by the architect Fitzgibbon Louch, a well-connected Irish architect based in Londonderry between 1859 and 1870. The "new stables" he built across the north drive from the lodge were later demolished when the present supermarket was created.

Portglenone House itself was built in 1810 for Nathaniel Alexander, Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and a member of a mercantile family from Londonderry. He was a cousin of the 2nd Earl of Caledon and uncle of the future Archbishop of Armagh, William Alexander. The classical house replaced Portglenone Castle, the remains of which are scheduled nearby. The walled gardens and orchards to the north of the house were laid out by the time of the first edition Ordnance Survey map in 1835, with the lower walled garden and its summerhouse appearing by the second edition of the 1850s. In 1948, Major Robert Christopher Alexander sold the house and grounds to the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance (Trappists). The house continues in use as the monastic guesthouse, while the lower walled garden serves as a private garden for the monks. The adjoining Abbey of Our Lady of Bethlehem was built in 1948 to designs by Paul Murray and remains in use by the Cistercian community. Since the 1990s the gate lodge has been the residence of a retired diocesan priest. In the 1901 census it was occupied by Neil Kenney, one of the demesne's gardeners, and his two unmarried daughters.

The lodge is arranged on an L-plan, with a lower single-storey return to the west gable, which incorporates a lean-to kitchen extension and is built into the wall of the adjoining walled garden. A second walled garden lies to the south. The principal elevation faces east, with the south bay projecting and gabled, and the north bay fully abutted at ground floor by a lean-to porch sitting in the re-entrant angle. The porch is a particularly attractive feature, with a monopitched fish-scale slate roof with rounded exposed rafter tails, and a turned painted timber framework with stop-end chamfered timber braced panels below.

The roof is pitched natural slate with angled ridge tiles and plastic gutters on timber-sheeted eaves with cast-iron downpipes. The cement-rendered chimneystack has a concrete coping to the party wall and terracotta pots. Gables have timber bargeboards with sheeted soffits, moulded brackets and finials. Walling is roughcast cement-render with flat-rendered quoin-banding over a smooth-rendered plinth course. Windows are generally round-headed, except where noted, with stone sills and rendered moulded surrounds and keystones, fitted with one-over-one painted timber sliding sash windows with horns.

On the principal east elevation the south bay has paired windows at ground floor, with a shorter single window above a stepped moulded string-course in the gable. The north bay has a single window within the porch. The single square-headed door opening is in the re-entrant flank, with a chamfered moulded reveal, containing a timber-sheeted replacement door. The south elevation has a central window at ground floor, with the stepped string-course continued from the east elevation and a smooth-rendered blind roundel at first floor. A monopitched slated kitchen extension on the south elevation of the return has a skylight and an adjoining door lobby. The west elevation is largely blank, with a single square-headed one-over-one timber sliding sash to the left side of the gable, and the single-storey return elevation is entirely blank. The north elevation has a straight string-course continued from the east elevation and a single window to the first-floor gable.

The lodge is internally largely authentic to its original layout and character. Externally, its neatly proportioned form and ornamental detailing clearly identify it as an estate building.

The setting has been significantly compromised. The north entrance drive has been lost to the construction of a recent supermarket and car park, the entrance drive surface now continues hard up against the east elevation, and the adjacent gate piers have been relocated. The lodge now sits to the west side of the entrance to the supermarket car park, outside recent steel gates. Despite this, the lodge and surviving gate piers remain important as legible evidence of the historic estate layout. To the north is a historic block-and-sneck basalt boundary wall with sandstone coping extending west towards Bann Bridge, rising at its east end to a square pier with a moulded sandstone cornice and plain frieze. A lower gate-screen wall extends towards the lodge and terminates in a rebuilt second pier; the historic gates are no longer extant. To the east of the former driveway are two further gate piers with replacement steel gates and a curved gate-screen wall. A small enclosed garden lies to the south of the lodge, with a courtyard to the north containing an engaged monopitched shed.

The lodge is engaged to the northeast corner of the upper walled garden. Rubble basalt piers adjacent to the lodge to the north have been infilled with red brick. The walling of the upper walled garden is mostly rubble basalt externally, with an internal facing of red brick in English garden wall bond over a rubble plinth; there are areas of blockwork and concrete rebuilding that represent heavy-handed later repairs. The east wall retains the foundations and drain of former glasshouses in its north section, and the south section has a differentiated construction of regular rectangular red brick niches infilled flush with rubble basalt. There is a principal entrance in the south wall and a smaller gate with a raised brick surround leading to the second walled garden.

The lower walled garden adjoins at the southeast corner. It has similar wall construction in mostly block-and-sneck basalt, with a chamfered southeast corner and walls rising to either end of the west wall. There is a large entrance to the north end of the east wall, with smaller gates in each of the other walls — that to the south with a sandstone surround, the others with brick surrounds. The interior is laid out as a garden with a lowered wooded section to the west. At the centre of the upper terrace is an ornamental pond, and extant foundations of former glasshouses survive against the north wall.

The summerhouse stands against the south wall of the lower garden, canted to the north elevation, with a natural slate roof with leaded hips and a cement-rendered chimneystack integral to the boundary wall. Its rendered walls have an overhanging north porch on timber piloti over a sandstone patio, with double-leaf timber doors with glazed panels above timber aprons and a timber architrave.

Together, the gate lodge, gate piers and walled gardens significantly enhance the group value of this important registered demesne, and collectively provide important evidence of the legibility of the historic estate landscape.