Survey Data
Reg No
15401101
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Historical
In Use As
Building misc
Date
1800 - 1840
Coordinates
231995, 261644
Date Recorded
05/11/2004
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached single-bay single-storey gate lodge, built c.1820. Now in use as an outbuilding/animal house. Modern single-pitched outbuildings with concrete block walls and corrugated tin roofs adjoin to east and west sides. Pitched natural slate roof with raised ashlar limestone verges and pedimented ashlar gables to either end. Constructed of ashlar limestone with ashlar limestone detailing to principal façade (southeast), and with rubble limestone walling with roughcast render over to other three sides. Single square-headed former door opening to principal façade set in round-headed recess, now blocked up. Set back from road in owns grounds at former entrance to Baronstown House (now demolished) with limestone boundary wall with cut stone pillars (on square profile) to south. Now forms part of modern farmyard.
Appraisal
An attractive and well-constructed former gate lodge, which largely retains its original appearance despite its current use as an agricultural outbuilding. The finely executed ashlar masonry to the principal façade is of artistic merit and is testament to the skilled craftsmanship available at the time. This once proud and distinguished structure originally served one of the main entrances to Baronstown House, an important late eighteenth-century Palladian villa associated with the Malone Family/Lord Sunderlin. This building was later demolished and replaced by a large Tudor villa to designs by J. F. Fuller in 1904, which is turn was demolished by the Land Commission in the 1920s and is a sad loss to the architectural heritage of Westmeath. This former gate lodge acts as an historical reminder of this great estate, and of the Malone Family/Lord Sunderlin, and remains an important, if subtle, element of the architectural heritage of the area.