Former Our Ladys Convent, Hospital, Belfast, Co Antrim BT12 7PY

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two-storey red-brick, former hospital building E-shaped on plan with hipped natural slate roof, built in 1935 to designs by architect Frank McArdle. Complex also contains former Convent Chapel (HB26/24/003B) and original house, formerly Beechmount House and now called ‘Teach Ard na bhFeá’ (HB26/24/003A). Main spine of 'E' orientated east/west with 16 bay wing to west, short central section and 10 bay wing to east, now with two-storey extension to south and two-storey link to school to east. Now forms part of Coláiste Feirste with modern extensions to south linking building with new school; extensions to east forming new corridors and internally reconfigured to provide classrooms.

Hipped natural slate roof with terracotta ridge. Two pairs of two-tiered chimney stacks on ridge at north end with concrete bevel and cornice and clay pots. Two shouldered chimney stacks with chimney-crickets and clay pots. Mix of cast-iron and uPVC rainwater goods. Walls to original building red brick in Flemish bond with concrete plinth, moulded cornice and cills. Segmental arched openings formed in soldier coursed brick to windows divided in three horizontally, with some original sliding sashes retained but the majority are replacement timber with central pivoting opening light.

Principal elevation faces north (no access to building from this elevation by the current occupant). Two-storey seven-bay red brick wall with moulded concrete string course at first floor level, hipped natural slate roof with small terracotta finials at apex. First two bays to east and two bays to west, project forward as hipped gables either side of original entrance. Three terrazzo steps inlaid with band of mosaic tiles lead to single storey projecting entrance porch with smooth painted render to front and parapet frieze and brick to cheeks. Glazed timber square headed entrance door to middle of porch, with glazed fanlight over set in four centred arched opening with concentric moulding to surround, flanked by pointed arched windows also with moulded architraves decorated with small foils to upper curve. Moulded string course above ornate spandrel panels between windows and door, topped with frieze embelished with lettering 'Our Lady's Hospital' and deep moulded cornice to parapet. Windows all paired pointed arch with concrete tracery set in segmental pointed arch opening formed in alternating bands of brick, soldier coursed, and painted concrete voussoirs and topped by brick header course. Ornate carved medallion to upper centre of pointed arch tracery. Flush splayed concrete cills. This elevation retains some original windows with 1/1 panes to timber sliding sashes with pointed arch fixed light above. Wire screens surface mounted to face of wall beyond window reveals. Directly above the porch, a statue of Our Lady is recessed within a pointed arched niche surrounded by a gable that extends from eaves height to the central bay only. The apex to this gable is surmounted by a gablet on scrolled brackets that supports a decorative cross, all formed in painted reconstituted stone.

East elevation walls also red brick. New two-storey link with red brick to ground floor and glazed upper section with curved roof provides access at first floor to other school buildings including former Chapel (HB26/24/003B). Link positioned at fifth bay from north end. New two-storey extension to south end set back from face of original wall with flat roof, floor to eaves glazing and parapet with concrete coping to end gable. West elevation of wing has projecting shouldered chimney stack, at third bay from south end.

South elevation has hipped gable end of east wing beyond modern red-brick with single square window at upper level. To centre is set back gabled wall with two segmental arched window openings at upper level, reconstituted stone skews, kneelers and apex. West side abuts new smooth rendered wall to form modern corridor to 16 bay wing. Cat-slide natural slate roof over new corridor with roof glazing at junction either side of original chimney stack. Square headed openings with powder-coated aluminium windows to north and patent glazing to south.

West elevation is original 16 bay with modern rendered, flat-roofed extensions to southern end.

Setting:
Former convent hospital lies to the north of the Coláiste Feirste school complex. Located on an elevated site on the west side of the Falls Road with a modern nursing home to the north (that is the former hospital relocated to a new purpose-built unit). Playing fields lie to the east and south-west and residential areas to the south-east and west. Accessed via Rockdale St / Beechview Park.

Materials:
Roof : Natural slate
RWGs : Cast-iron and uPVC
Walls: Red brick with painted concrete or reconstituted stone dressings
Windows: Timber, uPVC and aluminium

Historical information

Originally a private home, Beechmount was for many years a hospital and is now the location of Coláiste Feirste Teach, 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 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 and were benefactors to the Riddle Ward at the Royal Victoria Hospital. 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 Sisters and staff. A chapel was also built, the architect of both being Frank McArdle for a construction cost of £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 only Irish-language medium secondary school in Belfast. Now known as Coláiste Feirste, this school was previously named Méanscoil Feirste.

References

Primary sources
1. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1832/3 – OS/6/1/60/1
2. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1857 – OS/6/1/60/2
3. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1904 – OS/6/1/60/3
4. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 1:1056 map, 1905 – OS/8/30/5/76
5. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1920-38 – OS/6/1/60/5
6. PRONI, First Valuation fieldbook – VAL/1/B/128A (c. 1835)
7. PRONI, Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/E/8 (1882-96)
8. PRONI, Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/D/18 (1897-1905)
9. PRONI, Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/J/3 (1906-15)
10. PRONI, Valuation Revision Books – VAL/12/B/43/J/6 (1915-30)
11. NIEA, First Survey Record – HB/26/24/003
12. NIEA, HB Records – HB/26/24/003
13. Ulster Historical Foundation, Birth, marriage and death databases
14. The Traveller’s Guide Through Ireland (1794)
15. A. Atkinson, Ireland exhibited to England (1823)
16. Belfast Newsletter, 4 October 1831
17. Belfast Newsletter, 9 March 1832

Secondary sources
1. 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)
2. Robert M. Young, Belfast and the Province of Ulster in the 20th Century (Brighton, 1909)
3. Joe Corr, ‘Beechmount & Our Lady’s Hospital’, West Belfast Historical Society Outline Annual, vol. 2 (1976)
4. Paul Larmour, Belfast: an illustrated architectural guide (Belfast, 1987)
5. Marie Duddy, Call of the North. A history of the Sisters of Mercy, Down and Connor Diocese, Ireland (Belfast, 2010)
6. Gillian McClelland, Pioneering Women: Riddel Hall and Queen’s University, Belfast (Belfast, 2006)

Online sources
1. Dictionary of Irish Architects: www.dia.ie
2. 1901 Census (www.census.nationalarchives.ie)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

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

Evaluation

Two-storey red-brick former hospital building built in 1935 for Our Lady's Convent, E-shaped on plan with hipped natural slate roof, to designs by Frank McArdle, architect. Building now used as teaching accommodation within the Coláiste Feirste school complex with modern extensions to south, linking building with new school; extensions to east forming new corridors and internally reconfigured to provide classrooms. Well proportioned and symmetrical NE elevation has retained much of its original character, with the recessed statue and ornate cross at the apex providing an important visual connection with the Mater Hospital (HB26.43.005A). The terrazzo steps that lead to the projecting entrance porch further enhance the character of the building. Located on an elevated site on the west side of the Falls Road, the school consists of an eclectic group of buildings dating from 17th - 21st Century. The former hospital shares group value and social significance specifically with the former Convent Chapel (HB26/24/003B) and Beechmount House (HB26/24/003A), reputedly one of the oldest houses in the city, that now comprise the library, administrative offices and staff accommodation.

General comments

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