Gate Screen, Stuart Hall Demesne, Mountjoy Road, Stewartstown, Co Tyrone, BT71 5AE

A refined gatescreen comprising fine wrought iron gates supported on ashlar sandstone pillars and flanked by curving railing screens, forming part of an important surviving group of estate structures at Stuart Hall Demesne.

This is the current main entrance to the demesne, accessed from Mountjoy Road to the north of Stuart Hall. The gatescreen comprises a central double gateway with fine wrought iron gates supported on ashlar sandstone pillars and flanked by curving dwarf walls terminating in columns and surmounted by matching railings. The pillars are square and set on moulded plinths. The shaft has rectangular recessed panels divided from smaller panels above by a moulded string course. The cap has a moulded cornice and curves up to a point. The gates are framed in two stages: a lower section where the uprights alternate with quatrefoils topped by spear-tips, and an upper section where the uprights continue and spear points top the gate. The railings are spear-tipped with panels of four held between strapping and supported by every fifth upright.

The entrance to the demesne leads via a relatively short drive to the long circular drive that sweeps around the west of the walled garden and continues to the modern bungalow. From its scale, this appears to have been secondary to the more grand entrance off the Castlefarm Road to the west, which links to the circular drive and must have originally been the main entrance but is now kept locked. The demesne is well-wooded and some of the original landscape features survive.

Stuart Hall itself was built around 1760 by Andrew Thomas Stewart, later Viscount Castle Stewart from 1793 and Earl Castle Stewart after 1800. Beginning as a typically uncomplicated rectangular Georgian block, the building was extended in 1860 with a somewhat ill-conceived Baronial tower to the south-east, and a castellated parapet was applied to the original section in an effort to lend unity to the whole. The property was badly damaged by a bomb in 1974 and demolished in the 1980s, replaced by the present bungalow. The outbuildings appear to be largely contemporary with the house, with a distinctive quarter-circle plan form shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34. The first valuation of 1835 graded most of the complex as old at that date. The walled garden is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833–34 and includes a date stone of 1832. The decorative folly towers are shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1853 and are consistent with the later Baronial additions and embellishments to the house made by the 4th Earl of Castle Stewart in 1860.