St Malachy's Primary School, Sussex Place, Belfast, BT2 8LN

St Malachy's Primary School, Sussex Place, Belfast is an asymmetrical two-storey former National School of 1878, designed in the Venetian Gothic style in red brick by Timothy Hevey (1846–1878), Belfast's leading Catholic architect of the Victorian era. Attached to its rear is a conjoined three-storey red brick gable-fronted former warehouse, built around 1869–70, which predates the school. Both buildings were vacant at the time of the most recent survey (2018), though the former school had previously been used as a boxing club, and the interior was recorded as well preserved. The complex sits within Belfast's Linen Conservation Area and has group value with the adjoining St Malachy's Convent next door to the east.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The school and warehouse together form a rectangular plan with extensions to the east side and a three-stage tower at the south-east corner. The roof is natural slate with a pyramidal form over the tower; stone skew tables rest on kneeler stones with apex stones above. Rainwater goods are ogee-profile cast iron. The walling is Flemish-bonded red brick throughout, with a series of sandstone platbands running at sill level and at the springing level of the window arches. Windows are generally Gothic-arched replacement timber casements, with occasional one-over-one timber sashes; some openings are covered with sheet metal. Sills are sandstone, chamfered on the principal elevation and projecting elsewhere.

PRINCIPAL (SOUTH) ELEVATION — SUSSEX PLACE

The main south-facing gable has three windows at ground floor and a single tripartite mullioned window at first floor, the latter with a Gothic sandstone surround and a tympanum pierced by a glazed roundel. To the left of this gable, a narrow link section contains the entrance doorway, which is covered with sheet metal and has a sandstone surround with a pointed arched tympanum and brick voussoirs. Above this entrance, at upper level, is a sandstone plaque carved with the words "Young Ladies' School". To the right, the tower rises in three stages: the ground and first stages each contain a window, and above the first-stage window is a datestone inscribed "1878". The upper stage has a paired Gothic opening to each face, with cogged brick ornament to the platband at arch-springing level and timber louvres in the openings.

WEST ELEVATION

The school's west elevation is divided into five bays by full-height brick lesene strips, each bay containing an opening at both ground and first floor. The opening at the far right at ground floor is a doorway surmounted by an ornately carved sandstone Gothic panel reading "St Malachy's Convent Schools". The west elevation of the warehouse section is gabled and also in Flemish bond. It presents three levels with symmetrically arranged openings: segmental-headed windows to each floor with fixed four-light timber frames, and a tall central opening rising through all floors that contains an alternating sequence of windows and what were originally goods accesses. Directly above this central opening, at loft level, is an eyebrow window.

SOUTH ELEVATION OF THE WAREHOUSE SECTION

Only a small section at the right-hand end of the warehouse's south elevation remains visible. This shows evidence of blocked-up windows at each floor level. The position of the uppermost window is cut across by the eaves of the school building, confirming that the original school was constructed after the warehouse.

EAST ELEVATION AND WAREHOUSE EAST GABLE

The east elevation is largely abutted by the convent and could not be fully accessed. A narrow full-height extension is visible midway along this elevation, with a modern lean-to infill at ground floor. The east gable of the warehouse has a central doorway at ground level, now fitted with a recent metal door. Within the doorway reveal, on the timber frame of the original door, is the number "12" in raised numerals. To either side of this doorway is evidence of blocked-up windows. The centre of the first and second floors retains original segmental-headed windows, with a smaller window above these near the gable apex; all are now boarded but retain their timber frames. On the first floor to the left is a boarded-up window that appears to be a mid-20th-century insertion. To the right on the same floor is a large square boarded-over opening with another directly above it; both appear to have been inserted after 1926 to serve a fire escape. The ground floor of this gable, which was once abutted by another structure, is rendered. The warehouse yard to the immediate east extends across to Joy Street, where it is enclosed by a tall brick wall in English garden wall bond with a moulded coping — possibly concrete — and a single pedestrian doorway to the left.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The warehouse was the earlier of the two structures, built in 1869–70 for William Carson and Sons, tea, wine, and grocery merchants of Cornmarket, Belfast. At this date it was accessed from a lane off Little May Street to the north; this lane was extended southwards in the mid-1870s to become Rathbone Street. The Carsons held the property into the mid-1890s, apparently leasing it for at least part of that time. It is likely the warehouse was the building advertised to let in 1878 and described as a "store, size 30 x 40 feet; floor asphalted; two strong lofts above, with tackle," and was probably also the flour and bran store listed under Rathbone Street in the 1877 street directory as being in the possession of Edward Rice. By the 1883–84 Ordnance Survey town plan, a yard was shown between the eastern side of the warehouse and Joy Street, with an additional separate structure running along the north side of the yard and abutting the warehouse's east gable. A smaller yard lay to the north between the warehouse and the backs of dwellings on Little May Street, and physical evidence confirms the warehouse originally had door and window openings to this side. By 1884, a small two-storey structure — later numbered 2 Rathbone Street — had been built over the yard, used initially as a laundry and collar manufactory by Thomas Smyth and by 1899 as a workshop and yard by cabinet makers Wightman (or Whiteman) Brothers. The warehouse itself passed to Robert Ewing, a grain and flour merchant, in 1897. Number 2 Rathbone Street became St Malachy's Boys Club in 1914, and both it and the warehouse were taken over by the school in 1926, thereafter forming part of the school complex. Number 2 was converted to a toilet block with a hall above, and was demolished around 2000.

The National School itself was designed by Timothy Hevey and opened on 24th September 1878, just two months before Hevey's death. Hevey is described by the Dictionary of Irish Architects as "the city's leading Catholic architect." The school was funded by Matthew Bowen, proprietor of the Royal Hotel in Donegall Place, and was originally known as the Bowen School for Young Ladies. It was operated by the Sisters of the Convent of Mercy, who had arrived in Belfast in 1854 and originally established a girls' school at 15 Hamilton Street in 1858. A room within the building was set aside as a private school offering instruction in French, music, and other accomplishments; this private room operated until the turn of the century, when it was closed to accommodate rising attendance at the National School.

The adjoining convent was begun in 1879 and completed in 1880, designed by Alexander McAlister (1821–1897), another prominent Catholic architect in Victorian Belfast. The 1901 Census Building Return described the convent and National School together as a single first-class building containing 14 rooms; by 1911 this had increased to 20 rooms. When first constructed, the school was valued at £45 in the Annual Revisions; by around 1880 this had risen substantially to £75, at which it remained until 1905. Following a separate revaluation of Cromac Ward in 1905, the school was revalued at £100, rising again to £116 in 1909 and remaining at that level until the Annual Revisions ended in 1930. The 1935 General Revaluation of Northern Ireland — the first such exercise — recorded the building, by then no longer a National School but described as "St Malachy's Convent Public Elementary School," at £275. In 1941, St Malachy's Convent and School escaped damage during the Belfast Blitz, though the surrounding Markets area sustained heavy damage. The second general revaluation, begun in 1956, recorded the value of the school at £560; this was reduced under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act to £448 and remained unchanged until the end of that revaluation in 1972.

After the partition of Ireland in 1921 the school ceased to operate under the National School system and was renamed St Malachy's Convent Public Elementary School. The school continued under the supervision of the Sisters of Mercy for over a century. In 1978 the school celebrated its centenary, recognising that over 100 Sisters and 50 lay teachers had taught there across that period; however, the centenary coincided with a period of civil unrest, and attendance fell from 450 pupils in 1970 to only 190 by 1978. The school closed on 23rd June 1987 after 110 years of operation. Its remaining pupils, together with those from a nearby boys' school on Oxford Street, were rehoused in a new building — St Malachy's Primary School — on Cromac Street. Following closure, both the school and convent fell vacant and deteriorated. Paul Larmour's illustrated guide of Belfast, published in 1987, includes an illustration showing that the convent's front garden was originally enclosed behind a brick wall; this wall was removed at some point before the buildings' First Survey in 1988.

In 2008 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society included St Malachy's School and Convent in its Buildings at Risk register, noting that the pair "forms part of an important grouping in the Linen Conservation Area, helping to retain a distinctive sense of place." The former school had been acquired in 2006 by the Belfast Buildings Preservation Trust, which carried out holding repairs and used the building as the temporary home of St George's Amateur Boxing Club. The building subsequently passed into private ownership, with repair works being carried out at the time of the most recent assessment in May 2019.

SETTING

The former school fronts directly onto the pavement on Sussex Place and is abutted by St Malachy's Convent to the right. Modern social housing occupies the opposite side of the road. The complex lies within St Malachy's parish close to Belfast city centre, with St Malachy's Church nearby. Together, the school and convent play an important role in defining the historic character of this part of the city, which is dominated by St Malachy's Church. The warehouse, predating the school, is a rare surviving example of the type of mercantile structure that once characterised many of Belfast's Victorian backstreets.