Belmont House Special School

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2 storey building 3 bays wide on entrance front and 5 bays long on south facade, smooth rendered walls, colour washed with slated roofs in a neo renaissance style.

The entrance or west elevation has a narrow break front through both floors and contains the entrance door. However a single storey gabled and slated porch has been added in recent years in a more domestic manner. The building is entered by a door on the north flank wall of the porch. On either side of the breakfront there is a single sliding sash 2 pane window with moulded, lugged and plastered surround and small keystone. The cill is part of a continuous plain string course which continues on the west and south facades. Below this string course is a moulded plinth. At 1st floor level and centrally over the porch a sliding sash 12 pane window with moulded surround and this window is repeated on either side over the windows below. In line with the top of the moulded surrounds of the 1st floor windows there is a plain frieze with bold cornice above. At each corner short and long quoin nicely modelled. Another string course, moulded at 1st floor cill level, continues along washed south facades.

The south facade has similarly decorated sliding sash windows at each floor as on the west side. The facade is punctuated with 2 forceful segmented bays, of 2 storeys height, each bay has 4 windows on each floor. The string courses, frieze and cornice continue unbroken on this facade and crosses the bays. The quoins are repeated at the south-east corner.

The east facade on gable is similarly treated and with quoins at the north east corner but the string courses are not returned. There are 4 & 3 windows at ground and 1st floors respectively (without mouldings), spaced at regular intervals but placed asymmetrically and grouped towards the south east corner.

The roofs are double piled, parallel to the south facade, hipped at ends and have natural slates. Over the segmental bays the slating which follows the curves very neatly, are truncated and the flat finished in lead. The ridge is plain and unadorned. On the south side 2 low moulded chimney stacks and the same on the west. Each has 3 tall yellow clay moulded pots. The main building has a return to the north with hipped double pile roofs.

The building has been greatly extended to the north and to the rear, mainly to provide ancillary accommodation for the building’s purpose. However these extensions and alterations, particularly in the use of modern standard casement windows are not in keeping with the original style.

The building originally had a fine
setting of garden and woodland with avenue approaches from the Culmore and Racecourse roads. The former has been closed off and much of the side has been encroached upon by other buildings. In front of the south facade there is a margin of lawn but beyond that a sea of bitmac car parking. The site still retains some of the original woodland which softens the effect of the new development.

To the north east of the building are the remains of a walled garden, 2 walls of which remain standing, built in a mixture of sandstone and brick. At the south east of the walled garden is the St Columb’s Stone and nearby was found underground a stone effigy of a knight in armour.

Historical information

Belmont house is illustrated on the 6” O.S. maps of 1830 but in with a different plan from that of the later 19th C and today. The valuation of 1831 gives a valuation of £1114.0, James Mackey the occupant. The valuation of 1858 gives a valuation of £58.0.0, James T Mackey, lessee and the Hon. Irish Society and the Marquess of Londonderry the lessors.

The land at Belmont was leased to the Lecky Family in the 17th C and in 1696 the family built a house on it. In 1833 the house was described as a plain lodge occupied by a Mr Millar. The O.S. memoir gives James Boggs as resident in 1837. In 1837 the house was occupied by the Mackey family who remained in possession until the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war the house was occupied by the American Forces.

After the war the house was divided in flats and in the late 1950s was secured by the Education Authority. Belmont Special School was opened on the 9th May 1961. In the early 1970s the Western Education and Library Board took over responsibility for the area. During that period the numerous additions and adaptations took place to and within the original building.

In the walled garden is St Columb’s Stone, Inauguration Stone, believed to be one of the “Crowning Stones” of the Irish Kings of Ulster. (Local tradition is that St. Columba blessed the stone.) One of the Macky’s, Captain Ross Macky, records that his father dug around the stone in 1900, searching for treasure though none was found. However it revealed that the stone was pear-shaped. The O.S. Memoir of Parish of Templemore gives a detailed description of the stone. Monument Record Co Londonderry 26:45, B-file B2/84.

Near the stone, buried in the ground, was discovered a stone effigy of an armoured knight in the 19th C. The effigy, clad in cloak and armed with brooch and sword with hands joined and head missing appears similar to the figure on the Cooey-na-Gall monument in the former Augustinian Monastery in Dungiven (S.M. 31.15 Co. Londonderry). The effigy is currently on display in the Tower Museum, Union Place, Londonderry.

The walled garden is recorded in the Heritage Gardens Inventory 1992 - L/062.

References

Primary Sources
1. O.S. map 1830 Londonderry 13
2. O.S. map 1850 Londonderry 13
3. O.S. Memoir, Londonderry, Parish of Templemore, 1837 PP206, 233, 234
4. Coleraine Constitution 15th Feb. 1936.

Secondary Sources
1. Belmont Special School Magazine.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

An early Victorian house in Neo- Renaissance Style in which character is retained in the west and south facades and in the entrance hall and main staircase area. The segmented bays of the south side are bold features of the elevational treatment. Addition and alterations of the 2nd half of the 20th cent. have greatly diminished the architectural effect and the building can no longer be regarded as a suitable candidate for listing.