Royal Ulster Yacht Club, 101 Clifton Road, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 5HY

Royal Ulster Yacht Club, 101 Clifton Road, Bangor, Co Down

The Royal Ulster Yacht Club is an imposing Tudorbethan-style yacht club of around 1899, designed by the architect Vincent Craig. It stands two storeys high with an attic and a prominent tower, set on an elevated coastal site east of Bangor town centre with uninterrupted views across Belfast Lough towards County Antrim. The building has an irregular floor plan and has undergone various extensions and alterations carried out around 1930, 1960, and 2000.

The roof is pitched and covered with rosemary tiles, with crested ridge tiles and finial stop-ends. Exposed timber rafter tails are visible at eaves level, with timber bargeboards. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee-moulded guttering with circular downpipes and vent pipes. Tall clustered red brick chimney-stacks are topped with terracotta pots. The walls are red brick in Flemish bond with moulded brick string and plinth courses. Timber Tudor-style gabled ends and brackets add to the character. Windows are generally Arts-and-Crafts segmental-arched 6/1 timber sliding sashes, with 1/1 sliding sashes to the rear and chamfered brick surrounds; there are dormers at attic level, and squared-headed 1/1 windows to the tower with chamfered sandstone heads and sills. Wide timber panelled doors are fitted with cast-iron ironmongery.

The principal elevation faces north-west and is asymmetrically arranged. To the right is a three-storey projecting gabled bay with a chamfered ground floor, timber corner brackets, three tall segmental-arched window openings, and a large tripartite window to the first floor flanked by projecting brick piers supporting a jettied second floor with a Tudor-style timber-framed gable head. The central bays have a modern glazed opening at ground floor level with a replacement balcony above and three windows to the first floor. Paired dormer windows sit on the roof. To the lower left at ground floor level there is a large modern single-storey extension, with the first and second floors of the gable rising to the right above and the first and second floors of the left-hand bay rising above to the left.

The north-east elevation is asymmetrically arranged with a gable end to the right and a return with a lower ridge level projecting southwards. At ground floor level to the right is a semi-octagonal projected bay, now incorporated into the modern extension of around 2000 projecting northwards. A secondary access door is centrally located. To the left is a hipped lean-to single-storey projection adjoining a two-storey catslide gable with a single-storey canted bay projecting eastward from the rear abutment, added around 1930. Various windows survive to the first and second floors throughout this elevation.

The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged with a one-and-a-half-storey half-hipped gable abutment to the right and gabled returns projecting westward, dating from around 1930. A modern single-storey hipped extension sits at ground floor level. Window sizes and types vary throughout.

The south-west elevation is asymmetrically arranged. The right-hand bay is two storeys with a gable end, a single window to the ground floor, a canted oriel bay with replacement windows and terracotta fish-scale tiling to the first floor, and a jettied Tudor-style timber-framed gable head. At the centre stands a five-storey tower: three squared-headed windows to the ground floor; a large segmental-arched opening to the first floor embracing five arched windows with a hood moulding over; staggered single segmental-arched windows rising into the stairwell; a single narrow square-headed window to the fourth floor; and above that a parapet with a small gable-ended stairwell and chimneys. Set into the re-entrant angle between the central tower and the south-west elevation is a small two-storey entrance porch, glazed to the upper level with a hipped roof. The entrance itself is a deeply moulded voussoired sandstone arch with a hood moulding, long-and-short surrounds, and a segmental-headed door opening with a stone arched lintel on corbels and a carved panel above reading "RUYC". A vaulted roof was added to the porch around 1990.

The grounds include a large tiered lawn with stone steps set into the landscape, flanked by two small cannons. A curved entrance drive leads from Clifton Road to a large car park at the rear, adjacent to a single-storey outbuilding with a rosemary tile roof and roughcast rendered walls. To the south of the building the surroundings are largely two-storey detached residential. To the north-east are green space, a tennis court, and car parks adjacent to Ballyholme Yacht Club.

Historical background

The Ulster Yacht Club was founded in Bangor in 1806 but had ceased to be active by 1866. That year the future Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, an experienced yachtsman, revived the club, which received a Royal Charter in 1870 and became the centre for yachting on Belfast Lough. Valuation records show that in 1879 the club took over a villa on the site of the present building, renting it from Richard Patterson. Vincent Craig became a member in 1889 and was eventually commissioned to design a new clubhouse; the decision to purchase the land the club already occupied was made in July 1897.

On 15 April 1899, the Irish Builder announced the opening of the new clubhouse with a long and favourable description, offering hearty congratulations to Vincent Craig as architect. The building was described as being in the "old English style of architecture, built with red Lagan Vale facing bricks, tuck jointed and roofed with Peake's red pan roofing-tiles." The tower was noted as rising to a height of over 70 feet above ground level, bounded by parapet walls with white stone copings, with "neatly-pointed gables and gablets, and the numerous ornamental chimney stacks" setting off the grouping of the several sections of the building admirably. The builders were McLaughlin and Harvey, and the total cost was £6,396. Painting was carried out by Mr A. Thompson, decorations by Messrs Ward and Partners, heating by Musgrave's patent heating apparatus, and sanitary arrangements by Messrs J. Lowden and Co.

The property was initially valued at £178, rising to £194 in 1904, indicating improvements or additions at that date. Additional land was purchased in 1905 and tennis courts, garages, and car parking were laid out. Caretakers' apartments were added to the rear in the 1930s. A drawing of the clubhouse was exhibited at the Irish International Exhibition in Dublin in 1907. In 1962 a modern glass extension was added to the front of the building to provide a bar facility, entailing the removal of part of the front façade; although of its time, it was ultimately deemed inappropriate in style. A replacement was designed by Consarc and completed in 2002, with this part of the building becoming a dining facility. The same year saw the addition of a small rear extension providing ladies' changing facilities, which had not been included in the original design. New gentlemen's changing rooms and showers were added to the rear in 1978, and in 1990 a covered area was added to the front porch during renovation work.

The original internal accommodation included a billiard room, a card room, a gentlemen's locker room and changing room, and ten bedrooms, along with a Strangers Room for non-members. The dining room was initially downstairs, moved upstairs to the drawing room before the First World War — with meals brought up from the kitchens by hoist — then moved back downstairs in the 1970s and to its present position at the front of the building in 2002. The locker room and changing room have since become a back bar, and some bedrooms have been converted into offices. The card room is now known as the Lipton Room, named after Sir Thomas Lipton, founder of the Lipton tea brand. Lipton was refused admittance to the Royal Yacht Squadron and instead entered the America's Cup from the Royal Ulster Yacht Club. His repeated and widely publicised attempts to win the race made Lipton's tea famous in America.