Ulster Hall, 1-7 Bedford Street, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT2 7FF

Ulster Hall is a mid-Victorian entertainment hall completed in 1862 to designs by William Joseph Barre, prominently located on Bedford Street in Belfast city centre, between Bedford Street and Linenhall Street. It remains one of the finest examples of a Victorian public hall in Ireland and continues to fulfil its original function, making it a rare and exceptional survivor of its type.

The building is rectangular on plan, two storeys in height with a double-height auditorium carefully screened from public view by extended parapets. A modern accommodation block to the rear is contained behind a facade retention to the east side, fronting Linenhall Street. The hall abuts Bryson House to the north and was most recently restored and extended in 2009. The auditorium has a hipped natural slate roof with concealed gutters to the classical frontage and cast-iron downpipes with box hoppers.

The principal elevation faces west onto Bedford Street and is rendered with band rustication to the ground floor and rusticated quoins to the first floor. The auditorium and the Linenhall Street elevation are faced in red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a stone plinth, stone quoins and yellow brick dressings to the Linenhall Street side. Windows are generally one-over-one timber sashes: round-headed to the classical front, and segmental-headed in rebated yellow brick reveals to Linenhall Street, all with painted stone sills. The auditorium is lit by a clerestorey of tall round-headed multi-pane replacement timber windows.

The classical Bedford Street facade is spanned at ground floor by a projecting single-storey band-rusticated vestibule with cornice and balustraded parapet. A central breakfront is embraced by an ornate cast-iron porte cochere added in 1882, understood to have been designed by W.H. Lynn. This covers three double-leaf six-panelled entrance doors set in moulded architraves with Art Nouveau bronze handles, each approached by two terrazzo steps. Moulded imposts and lintel cornices are surmounted by three semicircular glazed transoms with archivolts. The porte cochere itself consists of a glazed roof supported on slender circular columns on polygonal pedestals, with a geometric frieze bearing gold lettering reading "Ulster Hall", and ornate filigree spandrel brackets and acroteria. The vestibule cheeks are each one window wide. The breakfront is flanked by a single window to either side.

The upper storey is five windows wide, with Corinthian columns — paired at the outer positions — framing a central breakfront three windows wide with entablature. The frieze bears painted lettering reading "Ulster Hall". The parapet has lozenge-shaped recesses flanking a painted date of 1862, and a central pedestal is surmounted by a mid-20th-century Red Hand shield in concrete, which replaced the original coat of arms in 1959. Windows have moulded archivolts crowned with figurative plaster mouldings.

The north elevation is largely concealed from the street, with the exception of the extreme right bay, which is detailed in the same manner as the classical front and opens onto a paved recess off Bedford Street. The space between the auditorium and the neighbouring building to the north is infilled with a corridor wing and a further recessed extension, the latter blank except for double-leaf access doors. The corridor wing is a single bay deep and gives the appearance of three storeys, with similar but plainer detailing: segmental-headed windows with plain reveals and simple apron panels, and a panelled fire door with plain transom at ground floor. The upper storey of this wing is in fact a dummy without a roof, serving to conceal the utilitarian north elevation of the auditorium from the street. The auditorium clerestorey here comprises six modern round-headed timber-framed windows.

The east elevation faces Linenhall Street and presents a symmetrical facade retention ostensibly three storeys high but actually concealing five storeys behind it. It is five windows wide and extended to either side by a single-bay modern red brick addition, slightly set back, the whole crowned by a modern glazed and aluminium-framed clerestorey. The detailing is simple, consisting of cogged yellow brick string courses between floors and sandstone corbelled eaves. The south elevation is broadly similar to the north, largely comprising new extensions, with the exception of the auditorium clerestorey. A modern glazed disabled access entrance is located at the left bay, approached from the paved recess off Bedford Street.

The interior has been fully restored and contains fine and ornate detailing, particularly within the Grand Hall. The centrepiece is the Mulholland Organ, contemporary with the building and remaining one of the largest and most original examples of a classical English pipe organ in existence. The organ was donated by Andrew Mulholland of the York Street Flax Spinning Company at a cost of £3,300, built by Messrs Hill & Sons and inaugurated on 17th December 1862. A silver plate by Messrs Hunt & Roskell of London is attached to the instrument, bearing the inscription "Presented to the Ulster Hall Company by Andrew Mulholland Esq, Springvale." The organ was reconstructed and refurbished in 1903 and again in 1982.

The setting is notable. The Ulster Hall is street-fronted to both west and east, occupying a dense, high-quality urban environment close to Belfast city centre, generally comprising 19th-century warehouses and commercial buildings with occasional high-profile modern buildings. Two ornately embellished three-light cast-iron lamp standards flank the porte cochere; these were formerly sited outside the house of Belfast's Lord Mayor and were restored by J & L Ornamental Casings of Belfast.

The building is of exceptional social, cultural and historical significance. It was conceived in February 1859 when the Ulster Hall Company Limited was formed, with the aim of raising £10,000 through £2 shares to erect a public hall accommodating between 2,000 and 3,000 people, suitable for concerts, lectures, exhibitions, balls, dinners and other public purposes. The site on the newly laid-out Bedford Street — an area formerly known as McLean's fields, on the damp floodplain of the River Blackstaff, which had been slow to develop — was chosen after negotiations for a site in Howard Street fell through. Adam McLean, a linen draper and property developer, had come into possession of the area between 1805 and 1826. By the time of the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, spinning and weaving factories had colonised the western side of Bedford Street and empty plots were available on the eastern side.

A design competition was organised in October 1859, with prizes of £50 and £25 offered, and advertisements placed in English, Scottish and Irish newspapers. Members of the building committee visited music halls in Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham and London before considering the entries. William Joseph Barre, a young architect from Newry, won the competition. Protracted discussions followed on whether the hall should be circular or horseshoe in plan rather than the parallelogram Barre had proposed; English experts were consulted and Barre's plans were ultimately accepted, though the projected cost rose to £20,000, requiring further investment. Attempts were made to remove Barre from supervision of the works, but he successfully resisted these and retained control throughout construction. Building commenced in May 1860, with contractors Messrs David and John Fulton.

The opening concert took place on Monday 12th May 1862 to considerable civic fanfare. The hall could accommodate an audience of 2,000 together with 250 performers. At its opening it was described as the largest public building for popular purposes erected in Ireland.

The Ulster Hall first appears captioned on the 1871–3 town plan of Belfast. It is listed in Griffith's Valuation of 1859 at a valuation of £550, with the Ulster Hall Company as occupier and Adam and J. McLean as landlords at an annual rent of £225. In 1872 the valuation was reduced to £330 by order of council. The cast-iron verandah was added around 1882, and an early photograph from the 1860s confirms that the porte cochere had previously been open to the front facade before it was enclosed at that date.

In 1902 the hall was purchased by Belfast Corporation for £13,500. Extensive restoration and improvements were carried out in 1903 by contractors H & J Martin under the supervision of Young and Mackenzie, raising the valuation to £480 at a cost of £4,000. A series of thirteen painted scenes from Belfast history and mythology by J.W. Carey formed part of this refurbishment. Changes were carried out around 1933 under the supervision of Robert Buchan Donald, involving the construction of additional blocks on each side of the porte cochere. A second major renovation was carried out by the Corporation in 1957, including the covering in of the open metalwork balcony railings. In 1992 the front of the Hall was damaged by an explosion; Downhill Enterprises Ltd carried out the reinstatement, and a specialist firm, Andy Thornton Architectural Antiques Ltd of West Yorkshire, rebuilt and installed the metal canopy — originally designed by Lynn — which had been completely destroyed.

Between 2004 and 2009 the Hall underwent a £7.43 million refurbishment under the supervision of Consarc, becoming the permanent home of the Ulster Orchestra. Works included the refitting and redecorating of the main hall with new removable seating, new artists' dressing rooms and an education suite, new stage lighting, upgraded heating, improved fire escape routes and toilet facilities. A new floor was inserted, staircases were added in new brick wings to either side of the original structure, the original metal balustrade on the balconies was restored, and a new glass porch was added to the front facade. Some of Carey's 1903 artwork was replaced with decoration similar to that originally proposed by Barre but never executed in the 1860s on grounds of cost.

The hall has hosted an exceptionally wide range of events over its 150-year history — musical, sporting, political and religious — with notable visitors and performers including Enrico Caruso, Charles Dickens, Lord Carson, the Dalai Lama, Barry McGuigan and the Rolling Stones. The Ulster Group Theatre made its home in the Minor Hall from around 1940 and served as a nursery for Ulster dramatists such as Sam Thompson and Joseph Tomelty, and for actors including Stephen Boyd, James Ellis and Denys Hawthorne. The Group Theatre was removed during the recent refurbishment.