Wetherspoons

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

An attached three-storey polychrome brick former warehouse, now in use as a public house, dated 1868 and located on Bedford Street, close to Belfast city centre. The building is rectangular on plan with substantial return to rear.

Pitched natural slate roof concealed behind a sandstone parapet. Cast iron rainwater goods and stone eaves gutters. Red brick chimneys to gables. Walling is yellow brick to principal elevation, laid in Flemish bond, with decorative eaves band comprising two courses of cogged yellow brick sandwiched between red and black brick bands; remaining exposed elevations are redbrick laid in English garden wall bond. Windows are round-headed to ground and second floor, segmental-headed to first floor, with moulded sandstone sill courses to all floors; 1/1 timber sashes to upper floors. Upper floor windows have polychrome brick heads, interlinked to central windows, and dentilled redbrick banding to impost level. Windows to secondary elevations are modern casement openings in plain red brick reveals. Ground floor has red brick voussoirs to all openings and modern window insertions.

Principal elevation faces east onto Bedford Street. Upper floors are symmetrically arranged with four central windows (grouped in twos) flanked by a window to either side. Ground floor has two central windows, and a wide double-door opening to left with fixed tympanum. To right is a door opening with modern timber door and ashlar sandstone reveal with stop-end chamfers and semi-circular tympanum carved with flowers and leaves around a central blank shield. The lintel in inscribed with a date, 1868.

The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining modern extension, of no interest.

The rear elevation is abutted by two contiguous perpendicular returns, one slightly lower than the other. Only the north and rear elevations are exposed, each plainly detailed with a series of window openings to each floor. The rear elevation of the return is skewed and abutted by a modern extension to right side. Ground floor is cement rendered and blank with the exception of two large modern delivery access openings to rear yard. First floor has four window openings, two infilled with concrete blocks. Second floor has two window openings.

The north elevation is abutted by the adjoining building.

Setting:

Street fronted, the building occupies an urban
setting south of Belfast city centre, abutted to south by a taller modern extension of inappropriate design. There is a small concrete service yard to rear enclosed by steel security railings. The north side of the building overlooks a private carpark (access via a vehicular entrance arch in the neighbouring building), and is generally concealed from public view. To north are a series of nineteenth century warehouse buildings.

Roof: Slate
Walling: Polychrome brick
Windows: 1/1 sash and modern casement
RWG: Cast iron

Historical information

The building is dated 1868 and is first shown on the 1871-3 street plan for the area as a warehouse fronting onto Bedford Street with a carriage archway to the south west. The building is a large one and extends back as far as the course of the Blackstaff River. It is first entered into valuation records in 1868 as a warehouse and yard occupied by Herman Boas & Co and leased from Leadbetter Calder & Co. The building is initially valued at £180 but this is reduced to £165 in 1869 following an appeal. The valuation is further reduced to £150 in 1885. (Annual Revisions)

The site chosen for the warehouse was a stretch of Bedford Street that had formerly been part of the Old Dublin Road. This area of Belfast was slow to develop, the damp floodplain of the river Blackstaff making the site unattractive and it was not until improvements in drainage were made that the area was built on. Spinning and weaving factories had colonised the western side of Bedford Street by the second edition OS map of 1858 and the street became a significant centre of linen manufacture and trade. (Brett) From the mid nineteenth century, for more than a hundred years, the street was built and occupied largely by linen manufacturers and ancillary trades, the current building housing one of the last linen businesses to operate in this part of Belfast. (Street Directories)

The building was constructed in 1867-8 by Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon as a store for Herman Boas, trading as Sol Boas, fancy box and linen ornament manufacturer. (Patton; Annual Revisions) Herman Boas (1827-1917) was a founding member of the Jewish congregation in Belfast in 1861 and its president in 1877. He was also Treasurer of the Belfast Hebrew Board of Guardians for many years. Boas had emigrated to Nottingham from Lubeck in 1854 and settled in Belfast in 1861. Herman’s Dutch wife Caroline Spiers was a niece of the lexicographer Alexander Spiers and aunt to Herman Heyermans, the Netherlands playwright and novelist. Their eldest son, Frederick Samuel Boas (1862-1955) became an extremely distinguished Shakespearean scholar, publishing numerous works in the field of Tudor and Stuart drama and poetry. He was Professor of English Literature at Queen’s College, Belfast from 1901 to 1905. (Hyman)

Herman Boas had previously run the business from premises in Donegall Square South and took the opportunity to build his own warehouse on a vacant plot in Bedford Street in the 1860s. By the late nineteenth century the Boas firm had vacated the building and it was let floor by floor to a series of businesses who used it as warerooms, stores, offices and workrooms. In subsequent decades the building was a busy centre of trade, several linen, textile and other firms passing through the building: H J McBride & Sons, linen bleachers with works at Hyde Park (c1897-1921/2); Joseph Moulds, linen merchant (c1902-1915); J & R Pritchard & Co, handkerchief manufacturers (c1902-1907); JR Cooper Ltd, fancy box manufacturers (c1897-1911); Bedford Hemstitching Company (1908-1911); Clendinning and Gotto, fancy linen manufacturers (1911-1922); William Nicholl, blouse and overall manufacturers (1911-1919); Wesley Roy, paper merchant (1912-1922); W Heney & Co, linen manufacturers (1921-2) and Kirk Partners and Forestbrook Ltd, linen manufacturers, bleachers and finishers. (Annual Revisions; Street Directories)

In 1925 the building was taken over by John Higginson & Co Ltd, cotton piece goods manufacturer, who was to occupy the premises for the next 45 years. The firm was joined in 1941 by the Ulster Linen Company, linen manufacturers and the two firms remained in the building until 1970. Although this was a period of decline for the linen industry and for Belfast in general, the building continued to be occupied by linen manufacturing firms; H Jackson and Co Ltd and the York Street Flax Spinning Company Ltd, until the early 1980s making this the last of the Bedford Street warehouses to be used by linen manufacturers. (Street Directories) The building has now been converted for use as a public house.

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/8/30/1/36 – Belfast Street Map (1858)
2. PRONI OS/8/30/2/36 – Belfast Street Map (1871-3)
3. PRONI OS/8/30/3/36 – Belfast Street Map (1883-4)
4. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/A/1 – Annual Revisions (1863-1930)
5. PRONI VAL/12/F/3/14/1 – Annual Revisions (1930-1935)
6. PRONI VAL/7/B/14/B – Belfast Revaluation Fieldbooks (1900-1)
7. Belfast Street Directories (1902-1995)

Secondary Sources

1. Brett, C.E.B., Gillespie, R. and Maguire W.A. “Georgian Belfast, 1750-1850, Maps Buildings and Trades” Dublin and Belfast: Royal Irish Academy and Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, 2004
2. Hyman, Louis “The Jews of Ireland from Earliest Times to the Year 1910” Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972
3. Patton, M “Central Belfast: An Historical Gazetteer” Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1993

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
T. Historic Importance
U. Historic Associations
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

An attached, three-storey-with-attic, former warehouse, now public house, built 1868 to designs by Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon and located on Bedford Street, close to Belfast city centre. Displaying proportions and detailing typical of the Lombardic style, the principal elevation is detailed in lively Ruskinian polychrome brick. Much of the architectural fabric is intact; however modern-style front entrance doors have been added to the ground floor. The internal layout has also been altered as a response to the changing requirement of the buildings usage, although some elements of a typical late Victorian interior survive. Number 35-37 Bedford Street has group value with other linen warehouses in the immediate area (26/30/015 A, B, C) and is of considerable interest as a link to Northern Ireland's linen industry.