Gatekeeper's lodge

[1] Originally intended as the office and accommodation for a gatekeeper who was employed by the landowner to control access to the property, they fell out of use in the early 20th century but surviving examples are often preserved and can sometimes be used as domestic housing.

Originating from the gatehouses of medieval monasteries and manorhouses, gatekeeper's lodges became fashionable in the Georgian era along with landscape gardens.

[2] British architect John Buonarotti Papworth, wrote that park gates and their associated lodges should be: ...built to catch the attention of the traveller, for the entrance of a property effecting the earliest impression on the mind of a visitor, it is of some importance that it should be of the favourable kind.Lodges were often designed to give a visitor a foretaste of the big house itself.

Another British architect, Robert Lugar, advised: Lodges should be in due character with the house, and mark its style distinctly.

Following the First World War, the huge number of staff required to run large houses and their grounds were no longer available and lodges began to be abandoned, even on those estates that escaped closure.