Hilltown Lodge, 3 Castlewellan Road, Hilltown, Newry, Co Down, BT34 5UX

Hilltown Lodge is an attractive and imposing late 18th-century country house, set within mature gardens on the south side of Castlewellan Road. The listing covers the main house together with its contemporary pavilion, outbuildings, yard, gates and boundary walling.

The main block is two storeys and three bays, symmetrical in composition, with a pavilion to the right (west) and a farmyard beyond. The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta ridges and granite skews, served by cast iron cyma recta rainwater goods. There are two rendered red brick chimneys, one to each gable, though the left one is in a state of collapse.

The principal (north) elevation faces the road and is lined rendered random rubble stone, dressed with stepped stucco quoins, a chamfered advanced basecourse, and an advanced plain ashlar eaves course. The central bay is half the width of the flanking bays and contains the main entrance. Two granite steps lead up to a pair of original four-panelled painted timber doors. The panels, both top and bottom, are smaller than the middle panels; all are bead moulded with an astragal applied. The left door retains its original handle and lock; the right door has a Victorian knocker and a letterbox.

The doorcase is an elaborate stucco composition. To either side of the door jambs — the right jamb has a doorbell — are boarded-up sidelights with advanced cills and blank apron panels below. Above the door opening is a frieze that steps inward over the door, decorated with a bead moulding to the bottom and a scotia moulding to the top. The fanlight above the door is semicircular-headed, with a metal peacock-tailed design and a moulded architrave. Framing the fanlight over the sidelights are three moulded segmental tympanum panels. The whole doorcase assembly is set within reeded and fluted pilasters with plain capitals, which support a moulded archivolt.

The ground-floor windows in the left and right bays — two per bay — are all boarded up, each with a run-moulded rectangular architrave and a granite cill. At first floor there are five 6/6 sliding sash windows without horns, aligned with the windows below but diminished in height.

Abutting the left side of the front elevation are the remains of a ruinous extension: a short, single-storey random rubble wall containing a spoke-headed sliding sash window, now infilled with concrete blockwork, with brick dressings and a granite cill. This section appears to be one storey and one bay in size and continues as an outsweeping curtain wall, now largely ruinous. It appears to have been cosmetic in purpose, added to balance the pavilion on the right (west).

The left (east) gable is rendered and blank. At ground-floor level on its right side it is abutted by the extension described above. Its east wall is also blank. Its south (rear) wall is abutted by a red brick extension with a corrugated asbestos mono-pitched roof, and there is a smaller lean-to immediately behind that. The east wall of this part has a 2/2 horizontally divided sliding sash window with a granite cill.

The rear elevation is largely obscured at its centre by a single-storey lean-to. The rendered portions to either side contain, to the left, a boarded-up window and a masonry-infilled window; to the right, a six-panelled door with transom over, itself in a state of collapse, approached by a flight of concrete steps, followed by another boarded-up window. At first floor there are five equally spaced 6/6 sliding sash windows in very poor condition, aligned with the ground-floor openings but diminished in height. All have granite cills, rendered brick reveals and heads; internal shutters are visible. The lean-to has a mono-pitched natural slate roof whose upper edge meets the main block at first-floor window cill level. Its walls match the main facade render and it has a framed and sheeted door with a transom to the centre of its south face, approached by steps from the rear garden. Both cheeks are blank, though the left cheek may contain an infilled window.

The right (west) gable of the main block is abutted at ground floor by the west pavilion and is blank above.

The pavilion plays an important compositional role, advancing forward into the front garden to frame the house. It is single storey where it abuts the house and rises to two storeys at the west end, where the ground level falls. The roof is pitched natural slate, aligned west to east. The front wall is rendered with a raised blocking course and a chamfered basecourse. Projecting from the centre of the pavilion's front elevation is a gabled return. The remaining wall to its left contains a semicircular-headed window with a granite cill, now sheeted over with its head infilled. The left cheek of the advancing return is blank. The front gable is pedimented and framed in ashlar granite skews, with a concrete blockwork chimney to centre. The bulk of the gable wall is filled by a large semicircular-headed recessed panel — possibly once a window — which has been roughly re-rendered. A platband crosses the gable at the springing of the arch head and partially wraps around to the left cheek. A rubble stone wall sweeps out from the right-hand corner of this gable to enclose the front garden.

Turning the right corner from the pavilion return's front gable, the building becomes a two-storey outbuilding fronting the yard. The right cheek of the return is painted and wet-dashed. At ground-floor left it has a large sheeted-over window, and to the right it is partly abutted by a lean-to porch, which also abuts part of the main pavilion. At first floor, over the porch roof, is a small semicircular-headed window with a granite cill. A hand-operated water pump stands at ground-floor left. The porch walls are of handmade brick; its north-facing gable end has a painted sheeted timber door, and its right cheek has a small two-paned window.

The right portion of the main pavilion is set back slightly from the left portion. It is abutted by the porch at ground-floor left and has a door at right, with a modern sheeted loading door directly above. Its right gable is abutted by the larger outbuilding. The rear elevation of the pavilion is roughly constructed and reads as a two-storey outbuilding. At extreme right is a single modern top-hung timber window; the remainder of the ground floor is filled with four plain, unevenly spaced windows. At first floor are two small openings with sheeted timber shutters, both modern insertions with concrete reveals.

The outbuilding within the farmyard is two storeys high with a pitched natural slate roof, a brick eaves course, and random rubble stone walls, whitewashed to the front. Its north-facing front elevation onto the farmyard has, at ground floor, a pair of large sheeted timber doors to the right of centre, and two sets of similar but lower doors to the left half of the facade, with a small painted sheeted timber pedestrian door at the extreme right. At first floor there are single sheeted timber openings to left and right, and a fixed 3×4-paned window to centre. The left gable, abutted by the pavilion, has an exposed section above that is cement rendered. The rear elevation has a painted sheeted timber door at extreme ground-floor right and three openings at first floor, their timbers gone but retaining brick dressings. The right gable has three ventilation slots at ground floor and a sheeted loading door at first floor, all with brick dressings.

The front garden is enclosed to the road by a rendered rubble stone wall, at each end of which is a pair of wrought iron gates hung on plain piers with pyramidal caps. The gates have plain verticals with dog bars to the bottom, held in place by a curved brace. Where the two gates meet at the top, there is an iron horn and latch to secure them. The front garden itself consists of an overgrown drive, a lawn, and some very mature shrubs and bushes. It is separated from the farmyard by a rubble stone wall that sweeps out from the front of the pavilion gable. To the rear is a field that may once have been a rear garden.

The documentary history of the house is well evidenced. A plan commissioned by the Downshire family, attributed to R.F. Brettingham and dated to around 1790, shows a building similar to the present one but wider and more elaborately decorated; whilst elements may have been incorporated into the existing structure, that particular design was never executed. The earliest plan of the existing building is by Charles Lilley, dated 1789, and shows the main block with a central porch to the north, the west pavilion with its north return, and an L-shaped pavilion to the east. The house was evidently built soon afterwards, as it appears on Byer's map of 1797 and an estate map of 1803. According to Rankin, the front of the house was rendered around 1830, at which time the present entrance was ornamented — a change that may account for the loss of the earlier porch. The 1834 Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows the east pavilion in outline only, suggesting it was never completed, a circumstance consistent with the ruinous curtain wall visible today.