Survey Data
Reg No
15401220
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Historical
Original Use
Demesne walls/gates/railings
In Use As
Demesne walls/gates/railings
Date
1750 - 1770
Coordinates
245449, 258877
Date Recorded
20/11/2004
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Gateway serving back entrance to Knockdrin Castle, built c.1760 and moved and rebuilt c.1860, comprising pair of ashlar limestone gate piers on square plan with ashlar capstones over and projecting ashlar limestone gate brackets with scroll detail over to inside faces. Gates now missing. Set into rubble limestone estate wall adjacent to main Mullingar to Castlepollard road.
Appraisal
An attractive, well-built and well-detailed set of gate piers. They retain their early character despite the fact that they were probably removed and rebuilt in the mid nineteenth-century, possibly at the same time the attendant gate lodge (15401219) was constructed. These gate piers are amongst the few surviving details at Knockdrin that indicate that an earlier eighteenth century house stood on the site (known as 'High Park’) prior to the construction of the present edifice in the early nineteenth-century. They remain attractive features in the rural Westmeath landscape and form part of an important group of related structures within the Knockdrin Castle Demesne.