Belfast Gate Lodge

In order for the avenue to cross the Ballyrobert Road and the Crawfordsburn Road, Lord Dufferin had bridges built to go respectively under and over, but here there was no such option, so he decided to build a gate lodge.

The Belfast Lodge was designed by Benjamin Ferrey in 1855. He had also designed Helen’s Bay station, but whereas the station was Baronial Gothic, this building was to be Tudor Revival, built in brick, with dressed stone features and mullioned windows. The front door was sheeted with cast iron studding and a Tudor archway over which is a sculpted panel containing a coronet.[1]

Sadly, the lodge was sold during one of the estate’s many periods of austerity during the last century. The brickwork is now painted over, and the house half hidden behind a high fence.

The main estate entrance is now beyond the traffic lights towards Bangor. Prior to 1960, it was the site of what was another fine Tudor Revival style gate lodge, but it was demolished when the dual carriageway was constructed and replaced by a mundane modern bungalow. The Bangor Gate Lodge was designed by William Burn in 1849 and was larger than this one, with one and a half stories, and set back from the original road with walls sweeping in towards the gates.[2] William Burn also designed Helen’s Tower.

Benjamin Ferrey, as well as designing the station and the Belfast lodge, also offered his opinion on earlier projects, evidenced by a memo to Dufferin suggesting alterations in the chimney of the Bangor Lodge and an additional fireplace above the stairs, to prevent smoke and heat the house better - and also the position of the gate to enable carriages to be seen more readily coming from Bangor. He then went on to suggest that the windows in his own Belfast lodge should be replaced by casements, and finally suggested that low parapet walls - a short distance along the road, at both sides & each end, should be built onto the bridge, or tunnel as he called it, over which the avenue enters the park on the Crawfordsburn Road.[3] The bridge that today prevents the passage of high vehicles onto the Craigantlet hills.

Dufferin later sought Ferrey’s advice in finding a garden designer. He first suggested Mr Page from Southampton but then recommended William Kemp, a very practical man who had worked with Paxton at Birkenhead Park.[4] It was Kemp who planned the Pinetum, whose magnificent trees pierce the skyline as you drive along this dual carriageway from Bangor towards Clandeboye. It may have been good for commuters, but not for the historic landscape that it cut through.

[1] J. A. K Dean, The Gate Lodges of Ulster (Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1994), 69.

[2] Dean, The Gate Lodges of Ulster, 69.

[3] PRONI D1071/A/K/03/B/02/1 (November 1861)

[4] PRONI D1071/A/K/03/B/02/1 (20 February and 2 March 1863)