Need the ability to toggle a branch for allowing or disallowing commits/merges to take place.

The feature would only be available to admins of the repo.

The feature could be invoked in 3 ways:

a. Manually (toggle switch),

b. Freeze with a time period after which the branch would unfreeze automatically,

c. Freeze with a time period (same as b) on a recurring schedule.

USE CASE:

We have a "development" branch and "master" branch for management of mfg production code.  All new code merging into development automatically kicks off a Jenkins Integration test build.  These builds must pass before a merge to master can occur.  The builds can take several hours and at least one could be queued waiting.
We want to schedule regular releases to the factory.  To do so, development merges must stop temporarily so that the Integration Testing can complete to allow the master merge to be performed.
The ability to freeze development for a brief period can guarantee a regularly scheduled master release.