South gate lodge to Delamont House, 90 Killyleagh Road, Mullagh, Killyleagh, Co Down, BT30 9NB

South Gate Lodge to Delamont House, c.1840s

This small gate lodge was built around the 1840s — some sources suggest 1841 — to serve a new secondary southern entrance to the Delamont House estate, at that time in the hands of the Gordon family. It sits on the east side of the Killyleagh Road, approximately three miles south-west of Killyleagh, and is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1859–60. The property was acquired by Down District Council, along with the wider estate, in 1987, since which time a new and presumably enlarged return has been added to the rear.

The front façade faces roughly west and is symmetrical. At its centre is a projecting porch with a steeply pitched gable, containing a timber sheeted door beneath a stone hood on brackets. Above the door, set into the gable, is a narrow arrow-loop slit recess in dressed sandstone. The gable rests on sandstone corbels and has a moulded verge. To either side of the porch is a single sash window with both horizontal and vertical glazing bars arranged to create vertical margin panes. The front façade is finished in rubble stonework.

The north gable is rendered and carries a small attic window with a six-pane frame. This gable has corbelled ends. The south gable is largely identical to the north, though it is taller, as the ground level drops toward the south-east side of the building. Both gables have rendered parapets.

To the rear there is a centrally placed single-storey return with a basement. On the south side of the return there is a high-level sash window with vertical margin panes, and at basement level a low timber sheeted door. The return gable contains a sash window at high ground-floor level and a further window at attic level of the more conventional two-over-two type. On the north side there is a matching window and a partly glazed door with margin panes to the glazing. A short section of rubble wall extends from the north face of the return. To either side of the return, on the main rear façade, is a single window matching those to the front. The return and rear façade are rendered. Three Velux windows are present to the rear and return. The entire roof is covered in natural slate. Metal rainwater goods are fitted throughout.

To the front of the lodge is a low curving rubble wall. Immediately to the north of the lodge is a gate screen with plain square pillars bearing pyramidal caps. The south pillar has been partly rebuilt in recent years using cement facing. The iron gates are relatively plain but carry decorative cast-iron spear heads. A higher rubble wall stands to the north of the gate screen.

Background to Delamont House and Estate

The Delamont House estate has a long history. The present house stands next to a rath, suggesting that the site may have been occupied as far back as early Christian or even prehistoric times. A substantial residence is shown on or close to this rath on Thomas Raven's map of approximately 1625, when the Mullagh townland formed part of the estate of James Hamilton, Viscount Clandeboye. In 1733 Mullagh was purchased by Thomas Delahaye from Viscount Limerick, a descendant of James Hamilton. It is thought that Delahaye named his estate "Delamont" as a play on his own surname. His residence — probably built shortly after 1733 — appears on Taylor and Skinner's map of 1777, where it is erroneously marked "Dallymount."

In 1793 the Delamont estate was sold by Thomas Delahaye's daughter to David Gordon, a member of a Belfast merchant family. His brother Robert had previously acquired Florida Manor through marriage, and on Robert's death that property also passed to David. Whether David Gordon rebuilt Delamont entirely or merely enlarged the existing Delahaye house is not certain. By the time of the 1834 Ordnance Survey map, the house is shown as a large, roughly L-shaped building with a further block immediately to the north. Contemporary valuation returns describe it as already two and a half storeys tall, with a full-height projecting porch to the front — possibly the forerunner of the later entrance tower — and a physically separate single-storey outbuilding to the north. The valuers considered the house fairly recently built at that stage, grading it "A," which suggests that the original Delamont had either been demolished or thoroughly renovated and possibly extended by Gordon.

The 1859–60 Ordnance Survey map shows a plan broadly similar to that of 1834, but with small projections to the front and south also indicated. The front projection may correspond to a mainly glazed single-storey outer porch visible in a photograph of around 1900, while the southern projection is likely the large conservatory also shown in that photograph. It is possible that Tudoresque embellishments to the building had been carried out by this date — the heyday of the Tudor Revival being the 1840s — but Gordon family history suggests these may instead have been executed by Robert Gordon around 1875. A clue to the date of these changes may lie in the slightly Tudoresque character of the south gate lodge itself, believed to have been built in 1841. Photographs of around 1900 show the full extent of the Tudor restyling: a profusion of gables, tall brick chimney stacks, and a central ogee-capped bell tower. The unusual entrance tower — which might be described as "American Gothic" for want of a better term — was also in place by this date. This tower may well represent a heightening and remodelling of the full-height porch recorded in the 1830s, though the absence of any Tudoresque detailing suggests the remodelling took place in the late 19th century.

Around 1938 the glazed outer porch to the front was removed and internal changes were apparently made to the servants' rooms, presumably on the attic floor. The house retained this form until the 1960s, when a fire necessitated the demolition of much of the western half. The remaining front portion was refashioned in 1967–68 to designs by architect Arthur Jury. In the later 1970s the last of the Gordon residents operated a restaurant from the house, and in 1985 he sold the entire Delamont estate to Down District Council and the Belfast Education and Library Board. Two years later the house reopened as an outdoor education centre, with the estate grounds serving as a country park.