Lodge at Benburb Bridge, 180 Maydown Road, Benburb, Dungannon, Co Tyrone

Gate lodge, built circa 1830s, located on the west side of Maydown Road on the north side of Maydown Bridge, by the River Blackwater, at the entrance to a footpath leading to Benburb Castle, County Tyrone.

This is a rare early example of a simple, rectangularly planned gate lodge. Detached, three-bay, single-storey building of rectangular plan, it is neatly proportioned and retains the majority of its original historic fabric. A later corrugated iron roof abutment has been added to the north elevation.

The hipped roof is covered in natural slate with angled ridge tiles, cast-iron gutters on masonry eaves, and cast-iron downpipes. There is a central rendered chimneystack with masonry coping. The walls are built in a mixture of undressed limestone and sandstone with occasional cementitious mortar joints, laid in coursed rubble.

The principal elevation faces east. This front elevation has a single square-headed door opening centrally placed between two windows with projecting masonry sills. The windows throughout are generally square-headed with a mixture of masonry and slate sills, though at the time of survey all openings were boarded up across all elevations and could not be inspected directly. The south elevation has a central round-headed window opening with a partial red brick flush surround and a slate sill. The west elevation has a window opening to the south with a partial red brick flush surround, plain reveals, and a masonry sill, and a square-headed door opening to the north containing a painted timber surround and a timber-sheeted door.

The lodge is set back from the road and bounded by a limestone wall with masonry coping. The boundary piers to the north and south also have masonry coping. A steel gate is positioned between the south elevation and the southernmost pier, set perpendicular to a cast-iron gate that opens onto a footpath leading east.

The setting of the lodge is intact, its complexity reflecting previous links to the Benburb Castle estate, Castle Cottage, and the nearby mill on the River Blackwater.

The lodge is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833, at the head of a drive leading westwards along the River Blackwater, which appears to have terminated at the mill on the western side of the bend in the river. The valuation of 1835 records that the lodge and the mill formed part of a large single plot that also included Benburb Castle — the early 17th century bawn overlooking the river directly east of the mill. In the late 18th or, more probably, the early 19th century, a dwelling known as Castle Cottage was built within the bawn, likely to serve as the agent's residence for the Powerscourt estate. On the face of it, the lodge would appear to have been built to serve as the back entrance to Castle Cottage, as one would expect of a gentry residence; however, the drive leading from it does not appear to have served the castle but rather the mill, or had at least come to do so by 1833. If the lodge was in fact built to serve the mill, it is likely to have been the work of the firm of Jackson, Eyre and Co., who had been leasing the mill since 1776. It seems more plausible, however, that its original relationship was with Castle Cottage, though evidence for a connecting drive between the two is lacking. Captain George Darley Cranfield, who was employed as the Powerscourt agent until 1844, is noted as the occupant of Castle Cottage in the 1835 valuation, but the lodge itself is not recorded in connection with either the cottage or the mill at that date.

From 1838, Castle Cottage was leased by Thomas Eyre, a member of the milling family. Thomas landscaped the grounds around the castle, and a number of new paths are visible on the revised Ordnance Survey map of 1857–59, though no apparent connection is shown between these and the drive from the lodge, which still appears to have served as a route to the mill. Following Thomas Eyre's death in 1847, the lease encompassing both the Cottage and the lodge passed to his brother, John Eyre of nearby Maydown House. In the valuation book of 1859, the building is specifically described for the first time as a gate lodge, still in John Eyre's hands. By around 1863 it formed part of a separate plot being leased directly from the estate by Hildebrand C. Oaks. In 1865 this holding passed to Richard Brush, another Powerscourt agent who lived at Benburb House on the village's main street. By 1870 the plot had been subdivided, with the eastern portion including the lodge passing to Robert McKean (or McKane).

Seven years later, the entire Benburb estate was sold to Belfast businessman James Bruce, who in the following decade built the present red brick manor house to the north-east of the old castle site. From this point the lodge and its accompanying gateway assumed the role of a back entrance to the new mansion, and it is marked for the first time as a lodge on the 1905 Ordnance Survey map. From 1895 the valuation records supply the names of occupants of the building, beginning with James Murphy, succeeded by Hugh Taylor in 1898, George McQuaid in 1928, Matthew McCarroll (possibly 1937), Constable or Constance Alexander (1941), James Loughran (1943), and Joseph Gorman in 1948. Mr Gorman is recorded as still living there in 1972, by which time ownership of the dwelling had passed, in line with ownership of the Manor House, to the Servites, the Roman Catholic order who purchased the property in 1949. The lodge appears to have been vacated around 1980.

A local tradition holds that this building was constructed as a lock house for the Ulster Canal, but this is considered very unlikely, as lock houses built for that purpose have a very distinct plan form featuring a prominent canted bay to the front, which this building does not possess.