Beechmount House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey with attic house in Georgian style possibly dating from c.1778. Rectangular plan form having a symmetrical principal elevation with a Doric portico, canted end bays and two-storey L-shaped return to rear. The house is now part of the Coláiste Feirste secondary school located at the top of Beechview Park on an elevated site including a red-brick former chapel (HB 26.24.003 B), a former hospital (HB 26.24.003C) and a number of modern purpose-built school buildings.

Pitched natural slate roof with raised verges, red clay roll-top ridge tiles and skylights to rear slope. Four rectangular plan rendered chimney stacks with corbelled coping and red-clay chimney pots. Moulded eaves cornice to support cast-iron ogee guttering discharging to rectangular downpipes to principal elevation and circular downpipes to rear elevation. Rendered walling with projecting chamfered plinth. Square-headed window openings with painted cills having double-hung timber sash windows to GF and top-hung uPVC casement windows to FF (unless noted otherwise).

Principal elevation:
The five-bay wide principal elevation is symmetrical and faces E. Single storey portico to central bay on a raised platform approached by three stone steps; two Doric columns, flanked by square pillars, support an entablature with triglyphs, moulded cornice and raised parapet. Depressed arch door opening with a square-headed timber door, glazed fanlight and side lights. The portico has a window to each side with moulded architraves having top-hung uPVC casement windows. Three windows to FF above with moulded architraves. Three-sided two-storey canted bays to each end with hipped natural slate roof, red clay roll top ridge tiles and finial.

North elevation:
The N elevation is gabled with a shallow projecting chimney breast.

Rear elevation:
The rear elevation faces W. Two-storey return to rear forming an L-shape with a connection with the chapel (HB26.24003 B) at the end. Timber sash windows to N bay of rear elevation. Remaining bays to W elevation project from rear wall, with lowered eaves level and cat-slide roof, square-headed windows and projecting painted cills having uPVC top-hung casements to remainder. Square plan stair with eaves projecting beyond adjacent bays, with round arched windows to GF and FF landings and hipped roof.

The N facing return elevation of the 'L' shaped wing is smooth rendered and was added c.2004. Square-headed door opening to GF with a double-leaf modern door. Three modern square-headed windows to FF. A red-brick bay to W end connects the wing to the chapel - this bay, with paired square-headed windows with stained leaded glazing to GF, was built in conjunction with the chapel whilst the glazed corner screen at FF was added with the later 2004 addition.

South elevation:
The N elevation is gabled with a shallow projecting chimney to centre and is abutted to W by a modern single-storey building (of little interest).

Setting:
The building is located on an elevated site at the top of Beechview Park and is now part of the Coláiste Feirste secondary school compound. The site includes a number of modern purpose -built school buildings and a double-height red-brick former chapel (HB26.24.003 B) and former hospital (HB26.24.003 B), both of which are now converted to a library and classroom accommodation respectively. Tarmaced car parking area to the front. The rear yard is landscaped with shrubs, planting and a grassed area with a winding pathway. It is enclosed to E and S by the house and rear return, to W by the former chapel and to N by a rendered stepped masonry wall with stone coping over; the N boundary wall is set just 1m apart from the N gable which effectively creates a courtyard enclosure to the rear.

Materials:
Roof: Natural slate
RWG: Cast-iron
Walling: Rendered brick
Windows: Replacement double-hung timber sashes/ uPVC top-hung casements

Historical information

Originally a private home, Beechmount was for many years a hospital and is now the location of Coláiste Feirste, an Irish-Language medium secondary school.

A house identified as Beechmount on what is now the Falls Road is marked on Taylor and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland of 1778 when the owner was named as Wallace Esq. (no forename given). There is no certainty, however, that this was the same house as the one we see today. According to Young (p. 304), Beechmount formerly belonged to the Rev. Patrick Vance who was the great-grandfather of the sculptor Albert Bruce-Joy (whose mother had been born there). Vance was the minister of the Second Presbyterian Congregation in Belfast between 1791 and 1800.

Vance’s occupation of Beechmount must have been temporary for the Wallaces are again listed as resident there in the early 1800s. In 1823, for instance, Robert Wallace was listed as the occupier. At some point not long after this the Wallaces ceased to reside here. In October 1831, when a Roger Moore was the occupier, Beechmount was advertised for letting. It was again advertised for letting in the following March.

Beechmount is marked and named on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey maps. It is represented as an oblong building with an L-shaped rear return. It is also depicted on the 1816 Legg map and includes the canted end bays. The First Valuation fieldbook of c. 1835 names Lewis Reford (also spelled Redford) Esq. As the occupier of Beechmount and places a rateable value of £50 on the buildings. The main house was coded 1B+ and its dimensions were given as 81 feet long, 25½ feet broad and 22½ feet high to the eaves. Redford, a wholesale grocer and wine merchant with business premises in High Street and later Waring Street, was one of the original ‘guardians’ of the Belfast Poor Law Union in 1839. Reford’s will was probated in the Prerogative Court in Dublin in 1852.

Griffith’s Valuation of c. 1860, shows Beechmount in the possession of John Riddel who was leasing it from Hill Hamilton. The property comprised a house, gate-house, office and land. The land extended to just under 29 acres, while the buildings were valued at £65. John Riddel founded a hardware business at Chichester Quay in the early 1800s which later moved to the ‘Iron Warehouse’ in Ann Street. He died in 1870. The house continued to be lived in by several of his children. In 1885 the gate-house was valued separately at £5, meaning that the valuation of the remaining buildings was reduced to £60.

According to the 1901 census, three Riddel siblings, Samuel, aged 67, Eliza, aged 53, and Isabella, aged 49 (in actual fact Eliza would have been 70 and Isabella 65), resided at Beechmount. None of them was married and they all belonged to the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church. Three domestic servants, a cook, parlour maid and housemaid, were also resident in the house. Twenty-four rooms in the house were occupied and there were sixteen windows in front.

Samuel Riddel died in 1903. His sister Isabella died in 1918 and Eliza in 1924. These sisters founded and endowed Riddel Hall. At some point before 1930 (no more precise date is given), the possession of the house was given as ‘Reps of Elizth [Riddel]’ in the Valuation Revision Books.

In 1932 Beechmount was purchased by the Catholic bishop Dr Mageean. On 15 September 1932 he celebrated Mass there and formally handed the property over to the Sisters of Mercy. It was used to provide additional accommodation for the elderly and invalids who could not be cared for at the Mater Hospital due to a lack of space and was named Our Lady’s Hospital.

In the annual report of the Mater Hospital of 1932 Our Lady’s Hospital at Beechmount was advertised as:

"This hospital is for the reception of patients the treatments of whose complaints is of too prolonged duration for their reception in an ordinary hospital. This noble service was carried on for many years in the old Hospice on the Crumlin Road. As the accommodation there was found inadequate, His Lordship, the Most Rev. Dr Mageean, acquired the present Hospital which was formerly the residence of the Riddell family."

The original house was insufficiently large to meet the needs of the hospital and so plans were drawn up to build a purpose-built hospital alongside it. By 1935 the new building had been completed. Built of red brick on an E-plan, the building was similar to the Mater, but on a smaller scale. After the completion of the hospital the old house became the residence for the Religious Order of Sisters and staff. A chapel was also built, the architect of both being Frank McArdle; the cost was £50,000.

Early in 1974 a large part of the grounds was levelled to provide playing fields for the new extension to St Mary’s Training College. In 1976, the hospital had four large and twelve small wards and could cater for 140 patients.

By the 1980s it was realised that the hospital would need a major upgrade. In 1990 the decision was made to build a new nursing home. The existing buildings were subsequently transferred to the trustees of the Irish-speaking secondary school in west Belfast. Now known as Coláiste Feirste, this school was previously called Méanscoil Feirste.

References

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1832/3 – OS/6/1/60/1
Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1857 – OS/6/1/60/2
Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1904 – OS/6/1/60/3
Ordnance Survey 1:1056 map, 1905 – OS/8/30/5/76
Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1920-38 – OS/6/1/60/5
First Valuation fieldbook – VAL/1/B/128A (c. 1835)
Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/E/8 (1882-96)
Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/D/18 (1897-1905)
Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/J/3 (1906-15)
Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/J/6 (1915-30)

Northern Ireland Environment Agency
First Survey Record – HB/26/24/003
HB Records – HB/26/24/003

Ulster Historical Foundation
Birth, marriage and death databases

Published sources
The Traveller’s Guide Through Ireland (1794)
A. Atkinson, Ireland exhibited to England (1823)
Belfast Newsletter, 4 October 1831
Belfast Newsletter, 9 March 1832
Francis Joseph Bigger, ‘Merchants in the High Street of Belfast at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 2nd series, vol. 8, no. 2 (1902)
Robert M. Young, Belfast and the Province of Ulster in the 20th Century (Brighton, 1909)
Joe Corr, ‘Beechmount & Our Lady’s Hospital’, West Belfast Historical Society Outline Annual, vol. 2 (1976)
Paul Larmour, Belfast: an illustrated architectural guide (Belfast, 1987)
Marie Duddy, Call of the North. A history of the Sisters of Mercy, Down and Connor Diocese, Ireland (Belfast, 2010)
Gillian McClelland, Pioneering Women: Riddel Hall and Queen’s University, Belfast (Belfast, 2006)

Online sources
Dictionary of Irish Architects: www.dia.ie
1901 Census (www.census.nationalarchives.ie)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
X. Local Interest
R. Age
S. Authenticity
T. Historic Importance

Evaluation

A two-storey with attic Georgian house, dating from c.1778, one of the oldest residences in Belfast; the name of the architect is unknown. Rectangular plan form; symmetrical principal elevation with a Doric portico and three-sided canted bays to each end. An L-shaped return to the rear connects the house to a vaulted chapel dating from the 1930s (HB26.24.003 B) and later to an E-shaped plan building formerly used as a hospital (HB 26.24.003C). Beechmount house is encompassed within Coláiste Feirste secondary school, located at the top of Beechmount Park in the former Beechmount Estate. It is of historic interest due to it's original use as a private dwelling, home to many renowned citizens of Belfast; these include Patrick Vance who was the great-grandfather of the sculptor Albert Bruce-Joy; Lewis Reford, one of the original ‘guardians’ of the Belfast Poor Law Union in 1839, and the Riddel family who were the last residents. Eliza and Isabella Riddel were generous benefactors and donated funds for the Riddel ward in the Royal Victoria Hospital and for Riddel Hall at Queens University. Significant also from a social perspective, the building has undergone many changes in use, from a private residence to Our Lady's Hospital at Beechmount and then to its current use as the administrative offices for what is the only Irish Language medium secondary school in Belfast. As a result of this last change of use, the quality of setting has been somewhat diminished by the splitting up of the former estate to allow a new nursing home to be developed North of Beechmount House. This effectively severed the original access road which swept from the Falls Road up through the Estate to the front of the house, thereby losing the intended grandeur.
Despite numerous internal alterations and some uPVC replacement windows, it retains its original layout to the ground floor, impressive staircase, door frames and decorative plasterwork to many of the reception rooms.

General comments

This file has been renumbered, previously HB26/24/003.