Medical Wing, Palace Barracks, Holywood, County Down

Medical Wing, Palace Barracks, Holywood, County Down

This is a detached two-storey red brick military barracks health centre built around 1898–1900, designed almost certainly by the War Office Architects Department based in London and constructed by Campbell of Belfast at a cost of £9,888. It stands on a slightly elevated site to the south of Jackson's Road within the Palace Barracks complex.

The building is irregular on plan, facing south, with west and east wings arranged on a north-south axis connected by a central block. The roofs are hipped and covered in natural slate (replaced around 2000), with concrete ridge tiles, plastic-sheeted overhanging eaves and fascia, and plastic rainwater goods. The walls are red brick laid in stretcher bond with moulded terracotta string courses and a projecting brick plinth course. Window openings are segmental-headed with concrete sills and uPVC frames throughout.

The east wing has a canted front elevation and projects southward beyond the rest of the building, with a pair of two-storey towers set at an angle and connected to the projecting wing by short corridors at each level. These towers have pyramidal roofs. Their windows are slender and round-headed, with red sandstone sills and oculi above the ground-floor openings; these retain their original timber-frame swivel windows. The upper-floor windows have diminutive square openings above. The central block has a pair of full-height three-sided canted bays at either end, and a central door opening fitted with a replacement timber panelled door and an original multi-pane overlight. The west wing projects beyond the front elevation of the central block, is four windows wide to the front, and thirteen windows deep along its west side elevation. At its north end is a single-bay two-storey projection with slender round-headed window openings.

The building has been extensively refurbished over the course of the 20th century, with the loss of most original fabric, which significantly detracts from whatever architectural merits it may once have possessed. The replacement of windows with uPVC units and the re-roofing around 2000 are among the more notable alterations.

The historical significance of the building lies in its place within a wider purpose-built military complex of relatively late date, and as evidence of evolving approaches to housing and caring for military personnel. The barracks as a whole were constructed between 1894 and 1898 on a site with a notable prior history. The land had originally formed part of the grounds of the Bishop's Palace, Holywood, the official residence of the Bishop of Down and Connor and Dromore. When Bishop William Reeves succeeded to the see in 1886 and chose to reside at Dunmurry instead, the Palace fell vacant. Attempts to sell it proved difficult until the War Office's offer of £1,000 was accepted in 1890. By 1891 the Royal Irish Rifles were using the palace and grounds for training, and the site was recorded as a military barracks in valuation records of that year. From the mid-1880s, the British Army had already been using the nearby Kinnegar camp at Holywood as a training ground for regiments stationed in Belfast, with capacity for more than 400 personnel under canvas.

Construction of officers' quarters began in 1893 and of the barracks proper in 1894. By September 1896 the Belfast Newsletter was able to describe a scheme that was considered pioneering at the time, encompassing nine blocks to quarter one regiment of infantry (each block accommodating 84 men and two unmarried sergeants), a recreation establishment containing a lecture room, coffee room, billiard room and canteen with separate accommodation for corporals, cookhouses, baths, workshops, a sergeants' mess, guardhouses, a commanding officer's quarters, officers' quarters for twenty-seven officers with a mess establishment, and quarters for warrant officers and married men. Gas lighting was supplied by the Holywood Gas Company Limited and water by the Belfast Water Commissioners. The hospital block, described in the 1896 article as nearly complete, was notable as the first instance in that part of the country of accommodation for a medical officer being constructed alongside a military hospital.

When the hospital was assessed in House of Commons Sessional Papers of 1901, it was described as "extremely well-built and favourably situated," with a hot water apparatus for heating the corridors and a boiler for supplying hot water for baths, though the coal allowance was considered barely sufficient for these purposes, requiring careful economy. In 1907, a parliamentary debate on improving accommodation at Holywood Barracks noted that recruiting in Ireland was considerably more difficult than elsewhere in the United Kingdom, making it all the more important to make Irish barracks as attractive as possible.

The building is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1900–02. It continues in use as a health centre within the still-active Palace Barracks complex.