Entrance Screen, Narrow Water Demesne, Warrenpoint Road, Newry, Co Down, BT34 2PN

Entrance Screen, Narrow Water Demesne

This gate screen provides the entrance to Narrow Water Castle Demesne on the north side of Warrenpoint Road near Newry. It was designed by Newry architect Thomas Duff and erected in 1837, constructed in local granite to complement the original Narrow Water Castle which stands directly opposite.

The screen is symmetrical in composition, consisting of a pair of central gate piers set back from the road with screens that sweep outward to matching outer piers positioned at the roadside on either side. The inner gate piers are built of squared granite rubble blocks laid in courses and square in plan. Each has stepped and embattled copings slightly advanced on small moulded corbels. The front and rear faces of each inner pier have an arrow loop opening executed in dressed granite. Masonry gate jambs occupy the inner faces, though the actual gates have been lost. The outer piers are identical in construction to the inner ones but have arrow loops on their inward-facing cheeks only. The connecting screens consist of random granite rubble brought to courses with stepped and embattled coping. The canted corners and sections of walling returning to the roadside each feature an arrow loop identical to those in the piers, all with splayed redbrick reveals to the rear. A rubble stone estate wall runs along the length of the Warrenpoint Road boundary. The wall improves in quality as it approaches the screen, with a short length on either side of the outer piers being higher and featuring arrow loops like the screen itself—two on the left side and one on the right. The stonework to the right screen was reconstructed in the 1980s in coarser rubble with heavy sand and cement repointing.

The entrance first appears on the 1860 Ordnance Survey map, along with a small building, presumably a gate lodge, which is explicitly recorded on the 1901–02 map. According to Deane's gazetteer, the lodge dates to around 1905 and was designed by Vincent Craig, replacing an earlier structure. The gates disappeared during the Second World War. Following a terrorist bombing in 1979, the lodge was demolished and the right-hand half of the screen with its associated towers were rebuilt. A survey slide from the Historic Monuments of Building and Building Heritage records shows the lodge and screen prior to this reconstruction, with the right gate pier reinstated.

The lodge, as documented in earlier surveys, had its gable to the road with the outer pier abutting its front left corner and the returning screen wall forming its left principal elevation. It possessed a pitched natural slate roof with a coursed granite rubble chimney on its left pitch and a raised crow-stepped front gable. The front gable contained a window to each floor, each with a segmental head and containing a pair of 1/1 sliding sash windows with horns and dressed granite cills. The left elevation was two bays wide with an embattled parapet and pitched copings at the wall head. A canted bay window filled the left bay, positioned in the angle of the returning screen wall and similarly detailed to the front gable windows with a 1/1 sliding sash window to each of its three cheeks. The right bay had an arrow loop on its left side and a Tudor-headed doorway in painted timber on its right. The lodge walls were of masonry similar to the screen.