Belmont Hotel, Rathfriland Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 3LH

Belmont Hotel (formerly Belmont House) is a two-storey over basement, three-bay Victorian mansion built in 1838 to the designs of Thomas Jackson (1807–1890), a Belfast-based architect primarily known for residential work but also responsible for St. Malachy's Church in Belfast and who served as architect to the Banbridge, Lisburn and Belfast Railway. The house was built for the McClelland family, prominent linen merchants in the Banbridge area, and later occupied by the Smyth family, another of the town's most respected linen dynasties. It is now in commercial use as a hotel.

The building has a square plan form and sits on an elevated site in the southeast part of Banbridge town centre, with its entrance adjacent to the mini-roundabout junction with Kenlis Street. In 1969, the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett described it as "a fine square two-storey merchant's mansion of horizontally rusticated golden freestone with tetrastyle Ionic portico; an excellent example of the Greek Revival style at its late best."

The roof is hipped and covered in natural slate with clay hip and ridge tiles. The eaves overhang with plain soffits and paired eaves brackets, and cast-iron ogee-moulded rainwater goods are fixed throughout. The chimneys have been removed. External walls are ashlar channel-rusticated sandstone with a tooled plat band.

The principal elevation faces southeast and is symmetrically arranged. At its centre is a prostyle tetrastyle Ionic portico — that is, a porch of four free-standing Ionic columns set forward from the façade — with a full entablature and pilaster responds. The front door beneath is a double-leaf timber door with round-headed glazed upper panels, a square-headed overlight, and a moulded architrave flanked by pilasters. To either side of the door is a single ground-floor window, with three first-floor windows directly above. Ground-floor windows are 1/1 timber sliding sash with horns and masonry cills; ground-floor windows to the front are 6/6 timber sliding sash with horns and masonry cills.

The southwest elevation is smooth rendered with projecting long-and-short quoins and a projecting plinth. It is flanked on each side by a two-storey, two-bay hipped-roof subservient block with lower eaves and ridge levels than the main house; between these two blocks is a single-storey flat-roofed infill block. The southeast cheek of the right-hand block, which addresses the principal elevation, has two 1/1 timber sliding sash windows at ground and first floor. The southwest face of this same block has a tripartite 2/4 sliding sash window to the right and a replacement door to the left. Its northwest face has a single window overlooking the flat-roofed infill. The infill block has high-level casement glazing with a tripartite landing window over, serving the main block, and a timber-sheeted water storage enclosure above. The left-hand block has two windows to its first-floor southeast face, a blank southwest elevation, and various-sized first-floor windows to its northwest elevation (ground-floor views being obscured).

The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged, with three first-floor windows and a fire escape door located left of centre served by a metal escape stair. At ground floor, a modern flat-roofed single-storey block partially abuts the rear, which in turn adjoins a double-height modern conference centre. The right-hand (northwest) elevation is symmetrically arranged, five windows wide on both floors, with the central ground-floor window altered.

The principal façades have retained their character and historic appearance. Some alteration has been made to the internal layout to accommodate the change of use to a hotel, but the original plan form and much of the historic plasterwork and joinery survive.

The house is approached via a long sweeping driveway from a gateway with panelled tapered masonry piers with pyramidal caps and associated railings (the gates themselves are missing). Adjacent to the gateway is a single-storey hipped-roofed stucco-rendered gate lodge with pilaster mouldings, listed separately. The house commands an elevated setting overlooking the former bleach green and weaver's factory, with extensive areas of mature lawns and a maintained landscape of lawn and trees. A small car park addresses the principal elevation and a large car park lies to the rear. From the avenue, glimpsed views are afforded to the former linen stores to the west of the main house. The large modern conference centre added to the rear has a significantly detrimental effect on the setting.

The McClelland family, for whom the house was built, had been operating as linen merchants in the Banbridge area from the mid-18th century, previously residing at Millmount from around 1762. By around 1862, Griffith's Valuation recorded Robert McClelland as the outright owner of Belmont House, with outbuildings to the west in use as yarn and linen stores; the house and outbuildings were jointly valued at £110. In 1865, Robert McClelland established the Banbridge Weaving Factory to the north of the house. The 1861 Ulster Towns Directory confirms he was resident there as a linen merchant. In 1877 the valuation was increased to £120 following the construction of a greenhouse on the site. Robert McClelland died in 1880, leaving the property to his sons Robert, Andrew and Alexander. By the 1901 Census, only Robert McClelland Junior (aged 57, Church of Ireland), a linen merchant and Justice of the Peace for Banbridge, remained at Belmont with his wife Mary (aged 53) and their daughter. The census described Belmont as a first-class dwelling of 20 rooms, with a piggery, turf house and shed as its out offices (separate from the linen stores to the west).

By 1903, the McClellands had vacated the house, which was taken over as tenant by William Anderson Smyth (1861–1927), son of William Smyth Esq., one of the most respectable linen merchants in Banbridge. The Smyth family had settled in Banbridge in the early 18th century and established the Milltown Bleachworks at Lenaderg, which was reputedly the largest factory of its kind on the River Bann. In 1883, William Smyth Senior constructed a powered loom factory at Brookfield producing fine and coarse linens, and subsequently brought his son William Anderson Smyth into partnership, changing the company name to Smyth's Weaving Co. The 1911 Census records William Anderson Smyth (aged 49, Presbyterian) at Belmont with his wife Kate (aged 32), their three daughters and several servants, and notes that the site by then also contained a stable, two cow houses and a barn added since 1901. In 1902, the Annual Revisions show the value of the house and linen stores was divided: the mansion with its immediate out offices and greenhouse was individually valued at £100, and the linen stores at £20. In 1907, the value of Belmont House was reduced to £75, for reasons not recorded.

The McClellands continued to own Belmont and the nearby linen factory throughout this period, leasing the mansion to Smyth, who resided there until his death in 1927, after which the site passed to a Mr James McFinney. By that time the former linen stores were described simply as "stores" in the Annual Revisions and reduced in value to £6 15s, while the house remained at £75 through to the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930. Following the wider recession in the global textile industry after the First World War, the Smyth family gradually downsized production: bleaching of cloth ceased in 1930, yarn bleaching shortly afterwards, and the linen store was converted into a row of dwelling houses known as Belmont View. The Milltown factory finally closed in 1947.

The gate lodge, first depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860, was constructed around that time and was jointly valued with a boiling house at £7 10s during Griffith's Valuation, before being individually valued at £2 in 1870. The architectural historian J. A. K. Dean described it as "somewhat less elegant" than the house itself. By 2008 it was recorded as vacant and listed in the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's Buildings at Risk register.

The linen store to the west of Belmont House is also first shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860 and was possibly constructed at the same time as the main house, around 1840. It was associated with the bleach mill and greens to the north of the house, and later with the Belmont Weaving Factory (constructed in the 1860s), both part of the McClelland and Smyth linen business. Brett described the store in 1969 as "an impressive 9-bay range of three-storey buildings plastered, well-sited to overlook the wooded slope down to the river." The store is now derelict, but it is the only historic building remaining from the McClelland and Smyth linen enterprise at this location and one of the few buildings in Banbridge once solely dedicated to the linen trade to survive anywhere in the town.

Belmont House was listed in 1977. The house, gate lodge, linen stores and associated landscape together form a complex that is intimately associated with the rich linen history and heritage of Banbridge.