Gate Lodge to Hawthorn Hill, Drumintee Road, Killevy, Newry, Co Armagh, BT35 8DE

Gate Lodge to Hawthorn Hill

A restored and extended single-storey, two-bay gate lodge aligned north-east to south-west on the east side of Drumintee Road, Killevy. This attractive roadside lodge occupies a historic site opposite the front drive to Hawthorn Hill, now Slieve Gullion Forest Park.

The building is constructed of coursed granite rubble with a pyramidal natural slate roof, cement skews, and a central granite chimney featuring a moulded stone string course and coping. The eaves overhang, supported by timber brackets with timber soffit and ogee-metal rainwater goods. All openings have segmental brick relieving arches and granite cills.

The principal elevation faces north-west to the road. At its centre is a timber-sheeted door with strap hinges and cast-iron door furniture, accessed by a single granite step. Flanking the door on either side is a distinctive geometrically glazed cast-iron window with a central mullion and margin-paned lattice lights. The side elevations are identical, each containing two equally spaced side-hung margin-paned lattice windows. The rear elevation is partially abutted at centre by a modern glazed link block with a pitched natural slate roof. The link contains central French doors to each elevation, flanked by full-height windows, and leads to a sympathetically scaled extension with similar roof detailing, cement-dashed and painted walls, and a smooth rendered and painted basecourse. Windows to the extension are modern top-hung casements; the north-east elevation has larger casements than those on the other side elevation, and the rear elevation features a pair of casements positioned to the left.

The lodge was erected around 1845 on the site of an earlier lodge built shortly after Hawthorn Hill house was constructed in 1815 by Hunt Walsh Chambre (the family is buried in Killevy churchyard). The building is captioned 'gate lodge' on the 1861 Ordnance Survey map. Hawthorn Hill was burnt down during civil unrest in the 1920s and subsequently reconstructed. In 1968 the Chambre family sold the estate to the Forestry Commission, and the house then served as its headquarters until recently.

The gate lodge fronts the road within mature gardens to the rear and is enclosed on either side by a curving rubble stone wall with stone copings.