Bank of Ireland, 62-68 High Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 2BW

Former bank, now offices, built around 1895 to designs by architect William Batt in a Franco-Flemish Renaissance style, and widely regarded as representing the highest peak of High Victorianism in Belfast. The building was formally opened on 19th March 1897 and is among the most elaborately decorated facades in the city.

EXTERIOR

The building is terraced, symmetrical, and three bays wide, rising four storeys with an attic. It is rectangular on plan with an L-plan three-storey return to the rear. The walls are machine-made redbrick laid in Flemish bond, with painted terracotta window surrounds, sill courses, and a bracketed crown cornice. The ground floor was re-clad around 2000 in replacement reconstituted stone, which resulted in the loss of much original detailing including the three central windows, the balcony above them, and the broken pediments over the original grand side entrances.

The roof is natural slate with a steep front pitch clad in fish-scale copper with copper antefixae trim, forming a mansard profile. Tall profiled and dentilled redbrick and rendered chimneystacks rise from both gable ends, fitted with terracotta pots and moulded coping to the gables; the base of the west stack has a scrolled pediment. The roof sits behind a decorative pierced parapet wall that forms an elaborate central dormer topped by a diminutive pedimented block, with ball finials and a round-headed window opening. Flanking this central dormer is a pair of copper-clad dormers with antefixae and square-headed window openings fitted with replacement timber windows. At either end of the facade, the oriels rise above the crown cornice to become octagonal-plan turrets, each with three round-headed window openings, dentilled string courses, and elaborate pinnacled fish-scale copper roofs. Square-profile steel downpipes are fixed at either end.

The front elevation is five windows wide. Window openings to the second and third floors are square-headed; those to the first floor are round-headed. Most have replacement timber casement windows, with the exception of the second floor which retains single-pane timber sash windows with shaped horns. Three-sided canted oriels rise from the second floor on decoratively corbelled bases. A full-span frieze at second-floor level, below a dentilled cornice, carries raised lettering reading THE NATIONAL BANK LIMITED. Second and third floor windows are framed by pilasters with stiff-leaf capitals — banded and fluted at second-floor level — all with foliate panels above. The round-headed first-floor openings are framed by panelled pilasters with archivolt mouldings and foliate keystones, with an elaborate spandrel panel above the central window. The end bays also carry elaborate spandrel panels enriched with centaurs, and an ancon forms the springing point of the deep corbelled base of the oriel above.

The replacement ground floor has a central display window flanked by square-headed door openings at either end, fitted with double-leaf glazed hardwood doors and steel roller shutters, all surmounted by a stone fascia with lead lining to the first-floor sill course.

The rendered west gable is partially exposed and partially abutted by an adjoining office building. The rear elevation is three windows wide, abutted by a single-storey accretion and a full-height return which connects to a three-storey flat-roofed block. Rear elevations are ceramic tiled, with the third floor cement rendered, and have segmental-headed window openings with concrete sills and single-pane timber sash windows; those to the rear of the three-storey block are fitted with iron bars. The east elevation is abutted by an adjoining building.

CONSTRUCTION AND MATERIALS

The building was exceptionally advanced in its structural engineering for its time, which is why it was the only building on this part of High Street to survive the Belfast Blitz of 1941. Because of the nature of Belfast's subsoil, the foundations were dug to nearly six feet and 200 wooden piles, each 40 feet long, were sunk with cross-timbers and concrete filling the spaces between. The front wall, floors, and chimneys are of reinforced concrete, as was the strong room, where concrete filled the spaces between steel plates and rails. The beams, joists, and lintels are all of rolled steel. Much of the steel and concrete work was carried out by Messrs Homan and Rodgers of Manchester.

The terracotta decorations on the facade were made by J C Edwards of Ruabon in Wales, who also supplied dark red facing bricks and white enamelled bricks. The copper work on the turrets, roofs, and finials was by Messrs Ewert and Son of London, the patentees of the system used. Ornamental wrought metalwork was supplied by Messrs Singer and Sons of Frome, Somerset, and Messrs Winfield of Birmingham.

INTERIOR

The entrance porch and public banking hall were laid with white marble mosaic by J F Ebner of London. Ceiling mouldings were supplied by Messrs Goodall of Liverpool. Canvas wall coverings and oak fittings were erected by Messrs Gillow and Co of Lancaster and London. Stained glass for the dome over the banking hall was by Messrs Carlisle and Wilson of Belfast. Charles Geoghegan of Dublin supplied designs for a lantern over the rear of the cash office. The strong room, manufactured by Chatwood and Co of Manchester, was fitted with an undrillable and unbreakable compound steel burglar-proof door with a pair of self-locking steel ventilating gates on the inside; the night-bolt on the strong room could be operated from the bank manager's bedroom, as was also the case at the former Ulster Bank premises in Waring Street. The building was lit by both electricity and gas, with fittings adapted to operate on either supply. Two patent hand lifts were installed by Messrs Clark, Bunnett and Co of London — one to raise ledgers to the storerooms and another in the bank manager's residence to raise coal and wood to the kitchen. Massive doors of Riga oak, now gone, were made by the main contractors H and J Martin of Belfast and carved by James Edgar Winter.

The manager's apartments were on the first floor overlooking the street, with kitchen, pantries, and a large yard to the rear.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The National Bank of Ireland was established in 1835, later becoming the National Bank Ltd from 1856. It operated with its head office in London and set up Irish branches on the basis of half the capital of each branch being subscribed by local residents and half by Head Office, with profits divided on the same basis. The bank became a limited company in 1882 and by 1888 was the eighth largest British bank. Over the following thirty-five years it opened sixty further branches, many in England and Wales. In 1966 the Irish part of the business was sold to Bank of Ireland; the Welsh and English branches ultimately became part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

William Batt won a competition held in 1893 to design the new bank and manager's residence, required by the National Bank's expansion and business success. The building first appears on the large-scale town plan of Belfast dating from 1901 to 1903, and entered the valuation records around 1897 at £850. On its formal opening on 19th March 1897, it was reported to be one of the finest buildings in the city, which was described as being so rich in architectural beauties.

The 1901 census records the bank manager resident at the premises that year as Robert J Kennedy, a Catholic from County Waterford, who lived there with his wife and five adult children — his sons working as solicitors, a bank clerk, and a medical student. The family employed an Irish-speaking cook from County Louth and a general domestic from County Tyrone.

The building was altered and extended in 1922 to designs by John Valentine Brennan, and again in 1939 to designs by Fuller and Jermyn. The National Bank was taken over by the Bank of Ireland in 1966, and around that time the ground floor was refaced, with the consequent loss of much original detailing. In late 2007 and 2008 the building was purchased by Beannchor, the developers of the former Ulster Bank in Waring Street (now the Merchant Hotel), and permission was sought to convert the building into a boutique hotel to plans by Consarc Design, with the intention that the ground floor facade would be restored to its original design; however, those plans were on hold at the time of listing.

SETTING

The building is street-fronted, facing south onto High Street, within a conservation area. There is a small enclosed rear yard accessed via Skipper Street, with a further two-storey rendered wing beyond, which was not accessed at the time of survey.