Lodge, Friends Meeting House, 15 Derrymore Road, Bessbrook, BT35 7DN

The gate lodge at Friends Meeting House was constructed around 1885 as a lodge to the Friends' Meeting House at Bessbrook, first appearing on the large-scale Ordnance Survey map of 1895. The gate lodge enters valuation records in 1885, confirming construction at approximately this date. It is possible the lodge was built around the same time that John Grubb Richardson, founder of Bessbrook as a model village, extended his nearby home 'The Woodhouse'. The extension work to the Woodhouse is thought to have taken place in the late 1870s and may have included the addition of decorative timberwork to the gables in an Arts and Crafts idiom. The architect of the gate lodge and the Woodhouse improvements remains unknown.

The building is a one-and-a-half-storey structure of three bays with random-coursed rock-faced local Newry Granodiorite stone walls and stepped red brick dressings to jambs and quoins. It has an "L" plan form and is set behind a low level rubble garden wall to the west of an access laneway. The east-facing front elevation features a pitched natural slate roof with roll top black clay ridge tiles. A rectangular-section mid-ridge red brick chimney to the front carries three clay chimney pots. Window openings are slightly curved-headed in gauged brick with stone cills. The lodge has painted top hung windows, with the top third openable. Rainwater goods are cast iron with half-round guttering discharging to circular section downpipes.

Both gable elevations have, at first floor, one over one top hung painted timber windows with red brick dressing to jambs. This is replicated at ground level with a large, centrally positioned window containing three over three top hung painted timber windows. The rear return features a catslid roof with finishes matching those of the front elevation. A small gable-fronted garage defines the southern boundary of the property and nestles into the rocky outcrop behind.

The 1885 valuation records the resident as stonemason James Jackson, followed in 1892 by Herbert Harrison, Secretary of the Bessbrook and Newry Tramway Company, the tramway having opened in 1885. The house was valued at £7, a relatively high valuation for a building of this type, and was leased from John G Richardson. At the 1911 census the resident was Thomas Baillie, a master millwright from County Tyrone, who lived with his wife and adult son, a clerk in the iron foundry. All family members were Quakers and, as with other gate lodges on the Derrymore estate in the early 20th century, they were likely employees of the Richardson's various businesses rather than estate workers. The building contained seven rooms. The First General Revaluation of the 1930s records the resident as Thomas Gray, Secretary and Treasurer to several Newry associations and manager of an accountancy firm who had served in the First World War with the Royal Irish Fusiliers. The accommodation is listed as a reception, kitchen and scullery to the ground floor and a further reception, two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs with hot and cold water. The valuer noted the 'very good repair and finish' and described it as an 'attractive house'. A plan from this period depicts the lodge much as first built with an attached shed to the rear and a detached brick and slate coal shed (now gone). A detached motor house of corrugated iron, shown to the south of the lodge and added after 1906, has since been reconstructed in more permanent materials. W R Bell, former clerk to Newry No 2 Rural District Council, became resident in 1943.

The gate lodge is set within Derrymore Demesne and a mature landscape setting bounded by an attractive boundary wall executed in local stone. The heavily wooded environment surrounding the dwelling enhances its setting. The building has been refurbished including replacement of historic windows.