East Entrance Gatescreen, Drumbanagher estate, Tandragee Road, Newry, Co.Down, BT35 6TJ

East Entrance Gatescreen, Drumbanagher Estate, Tandragee Road, Newry, County Down

This is the east entrance gatescreen to the former Drumbanagher House estate, standing on the main Newry to Poyntzpass road. It is the most intact of the surviving gate screens on the demesne, despite having sustained some damage. The gatescreen most likely dates from after 1846/7 and was probably constructed at the same time as the demesne boundary wall, as part of famine relief works — a conclusion supported by the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1861, which appears to show gate piers at this location for the first time.

The gatescreen consists of a vehicular gateway and a pedestrian entrance, flanked on either side by low rubble stone walls topped with half-round dressed stone copings. The main frontage faces east and is symmetrically arranged. The central vehicular gateway is formed by a pair of elaborately scrolled wrought iron carriage gates hung between two pairs of tall, square, smooth-cut sandstone piers with flat-topped projecting moulded cornices and copings. Horizontal movement between the blocks of stone has distorted the alignment of one of the pillars. Between each pair of piers, mounted to either side of the carriage gates, is a pedestrian gate of similar design to the main gates but narrower.

The gates are designed in two principal stages. In the lower section, vertical uprights alternate with crossed braces featuring a central boss, and these run up to a transom where quatrefoils alternate with the uprights. Above this transom, the uprights continue into the upper section, where they are decorated with ring ornaments and terminate at a further transom. Above that, the uprights finish in ornate foliate and fleur-de-lys tips, alternating with plain spikes. The pedestrian gates replicate this design on a smaller scale. Sections of gate railing are missing or twisted, particularly on the left-hand side.

The gatescreen stands set back slightly from the main road, approached across a gravel area bordered by randomly placed painted rubble stones. Beyond the gates, a tarmac driveway leads into the demesne.

The associated east gate lodge has entirely disappeared. The earliest recorded lodge at this entrance (designated E1) was a small rectangular building shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1835. It had been replaced by the time of the second edition in 1861, when a successor lodge (E2) and the gate piers appear together for the first time. E2 was likely built around 1846/7 alongside the demesne wall. At the time of the First General Revaluation of 1933, E2 was occupied by Robert Kimmons, an employee of Captain Close, and comprised a kitchen, two bedrooms and a scullery. He was followed by Hugh Ferris in 1949. The lodge was the first on the demesne to fall derelict, and by the time of the large-scale Ordnance Survey map of 1972 it is shown as roofless. No obvious physical remains of E2 survive today.

The gatescreen should be understood in the context of the broader history of the Drumbanagher estate. Drumbanagher Castle was an early 19th century mansion designed by William Henry Playfair of Edinburgh and demolished in 1951. The estate has been settled since the Plantation period. The Moore family, the first to live at Drumbanagher, arrived in Ireland in 1550. The Manor of Knockduff, of approximately 1,000 acres, was granted in 1610 to Sir Garret Moore of Mellifont, County Louth (1564–1627), 1st Viscount Moore of Drogheda. By 1619, Moore had built a bawn with two flankers, recorded in 1622 as having a three-storey tower house within the bawn. This is thought to have stood to the southwest of the later castle site, near the boundary with Skegatillida townland. The building was apparently destroyed in the 1641 rebellion and the site abandoned by the 1640s. A new house was constructed for the Moores in the late 1660s or 1670s, depicted on Nevill's 1703 map of the Glan Bogg. Buildings on the site are also shown on Rocque's map of 1760, along with extensive woodlands. These were described as very likely rare survivals of pre-Plantation forests. The Great Wood of Drumbanagher, consisting of full-grown oak, ash, birch, alder and hazel, was advertised for sale in 1755, and all the woods at Drumbanagher were again advertised in 1777, though clearly not all were felled after either date.

A depiction of the Moore manor house is given on a 1784 estate map surveyed by Robert Bell by order of John Moore MP (1726–1806), who inherited the estate in 1762. The house shown is a two-storey, gable-ended building of approximately five bays with a single-storey extension to the east elevation, and outbuildings forming a row extending north to south on the west side. The map is not of Ordnance Survey standard, but the location of the dwelling is not inconsistent with the present-day site of the land steward's house.

The Close family, of Yorkshire descent, acquired property in County Monaghan in the aftermath of the 1641 rebellion and eventually settled at Lisburn. They became connected through marriage to the Warings of Waringstown, the Halls of Narrow Water, and the Maxwells of Elm Park, Armagh. Colonel Maxwell Close (1783–1867) was appointed High Sheriff of County Armagh in 1818 and married Anna Brownlow, sister of Charles, 1st Baron Lurgan, in 1820. The Drumbanagher estate, comprising nearly 4,000 acres excluding a demesne of 460 acres, was first put up for sale in 1817, with the mansion and office houses described as being in the most perfect repair. After John Moore got into financial difficulties, the house and most of the estate were sold at public auction to Major Close in April 1818. The former mansion was destroyed by fire shortly afterwards in 1820.

Drumbanagher Castle, known locally as Close's Castle, was designed by Playfair in 1829 in the Italianate style he was simultaneously exploring at Dunphail House in Morayshire (1828–9) and Belmont House in Edinburgh (1828–30). It is thought that no other architect in the British Isles was working in this style at the time. Mrs Close took a keen interest in the design, earning the title Playfair's Lady Patroness in architecture. Construction taxed Playfair's Edinburgh office severely, with Playfair insisting on using experienced Edinburgh tradesmen. In a letter of 1830, he apologised to a client explaining that 80 masons had been sent to Ireland and required drawings immediately. Playfair's close attention to detail was said to have set an unusually high standard in Ireland. The mansion was described as having been built in the Italian style at a cost of £80,000, using freestone plentifully found in Ireland, though the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1838 assert that the stones had in fact all been brought from Scotland in a rough state, and were lying about the house and grounds at the time of writing. The extant porte-cochere is certainly of Scottish sandstone.

The mansion is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1835. On 17 September 1835, the Closes held a celebration for the wedding of a relative, at which the house was described as newly erected, though evidence suggests work continued for at least three further years. The house was praised for its grand saloon, said to exceed anything of its kind in that part of the United Kingdom. Valued at £200 in the Townland Valuation of 1836, it was on a scale rarely seen in the north of Ireland. Contemporary observers described it as by far the most beautiful and magnificent specimen in the kingdom of the Italian style of architecture. Jonathan Binns, writing as Assistant Agricultural Commissioner of the Irish Poor Law Inquiry, described it as a magnificent villa of the pure Italian style, surrounded by gently sloping ground adorned with plantations and stately trees, with terraces, lawns, ornamental water and parterres enriched with flowers.

At the time of Griffith's Valuation the house was occupied by Colonel Maxwell Close and valued at £370, with a quality mark of 1A+ for most of the building. It was listed in annual revisions as Drumbanagher Castle and valued together with outbuildings and gate lodges at £300 in 1865, reducing to £150 in 1923. The 1911 census records the grandeur of the estate: the house had 57 windows to the front elevation and 71 rooms. Maxwell Archibald Close (1853–1935), a retired Major in the 13th Hussars, lived there with his wife, two children, and a substantial household including an English governess, a nurse, a cook, eight maids, a laundress, a butler and a footman. It is thought that around this time Lady Muriel Close commissioned the celebrated garden designer Gertrude Jekyll to design flower borders in her characteristic cottage garden style, in an area now planted with trees.

At the time of the First General Revaluation in the 1930s, the occupier was Maxwell Stuart Close (1892–1946). In 1933, the accommodation comprised on the ground floor two very large halls, a library, dining room, billiard room, drawing rooms, three sitting rooms, kitchens, stores, sculleries, pantries, bathrooms and WCs; on the first floor 18 bedrooms, three bathrooms, five WCs, stores and six servants' rooms; and on the second floor ten bedrooms. The rooms were described as very richly decorated in a classical style, with the main rooms and halls exceptionally good and high-ceilinged. The library, drawing and dining rooms overlooked a very well maintained terraced pleasure garden and artificial lake. The house had running water, sewerage via a cesspool and electric light produced by a gas-powered engine. The valuation fell progressively from £170 in 1933 to £33 in 1948. In 1941 and 1942 the valuer noted that the house was partly in military occupation, for which Close was paid £300 per annum by the War Department, with 53 acres of the demesne also occupied. Damage caused to the ground floor reception rooms by the army had not been repaired, and by the mid-1930s the family had not occupied the south end of the dwelling for some years, using the main reception rooms only on special occasions. The army occupied approximately four-fifths of the dwelling, mostly in the southern part including the porte-cochere, while the family lived in the northern half. The castle was demolished in 1951 and a new dwelling house built to the west of the ruins in 1952.

The only upstanding survival from the original mansion house is the porte-cochere, which has lost its original surmounting balustrade and decorative urns visible in historic images. Some overgrown ruins of the former mansion remain. The stone, marble, brass, lead, timber and stained glass were all sold and may have been incorporated into nearby buildings. It is believed that some of the marble work was set aside for sculptors to use as tombstones.

William Henry Playfair was responsible for some of Edinburgh's most prominent public buildings, including the Royal Institution, the Surgeons' Hall and the National Gallery. Drumbanagher was one of two houses he designed in County Armagh, the other being Brownlow House in Lurgan. Charles Brownlow was Playfair's brother-in-law, and his sister Anna Brownlow married Maxwell Close in 1820.

The Picturesque-style park layout of the demesne has survived well and incorporates earlier features, in particular an early 18th century ornamental canal. The demesne has been settled since the Plantation period.