Sunday 1 October 2023

Mount Stewart Hunting Lodge

The North Lodge, formerly the gamekeeper's lodge, is a modest, single-storey, "toy fort" Gothic hunting lodge of ca 1810, situated in a wooded area within a clearing in the National Trust's Mount Stewart estate, Ards Peninsula, County Down.

This delightful little lodge is not included in Dean's Gate Lodges of Ulster, simply because it is not a gate lodge.

The roof is covered with Bangor blue slates.

Side Elevation

There are decorative barges and a finial.

The main lodge's roof lies behind the castellated parapet and is only visible from the rear elevation to the north.

The southern facade at the front is symmetrical, and has two moderately projecting outer bays, each with a pointed arch window with casement frame, with (now boarded) quatrefoil openings above.

Prospect from the Rear Yard in 2018

The porch has wooden double doors with pointed arch sidelights and a quatrefoil window in the gable apex.

There is a quatrefoil opening above the porch.


The top of the facade is "castellated with stone pyramidal pinnacles to corners and inner edges of outer bays".

The eastern and western facades are similar in arrangement as the outer front bays, with castellations and pinnacles.

Each side has a yellow brick chimney stack which rises from the castellations.

The northern edges of both the eastern and western elevations each merge into a wall.

The eastern wall adjoins a small, single-storey, lean-to, corrugated-iron outhouse.

All of the facades (apart from the north one) are finished in lined render, with sandstone dressings to the openings.

The rear is finished in roughcast.

There is no documentary evidence relating to the date of construction of this lodge.

It is thought, however, to be contemporaneous with the other Gothic gate lodges within the estate, which are believed to date ca 1804-13.

The lodge is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834, with the exception of the front porch (probably a late-Victorian addition).

The rather incongruous chimney stacks are likely a late Victorian addition, too.

First published in October, 2018.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

My grandparents and my father and his brother and sisters lived there, as my uncle was gamekeeper.