Bank House, 133-135 Albertbridge Road, Belfast, County Antrim, BT5 4PS

Bank House is a former bank and doctor's surgery built around 1886, occupying a prominent corner site at the junction of Castlereagh Road and The Mount at the west end of Ballymacarret in East Belfast. It is one of the most impressive late Victorian buildings in the area and is listed for its architectural and local historical interest.

The building is attached, corner-sited, multi-bay, two storeys with an attic, and constructed in redbrick with gabled rooflines. Its plan is irregular, with one elevation fronting onto Castlereagh Road to the northeast, another fronting onto The Mount to the northwest, and a gabled corner frontispiece entrance bay set at forty-five degrees to the principal elevations. The roofs are steeply pitched in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and two oversized profiled redbrick chimneystacks featuring cogged vertical brick courses and octagonal clay pots; a further stack to the rear has been reduced in size. Dormer windows with steeply hipped natural slate roofs, single-pane timber sash windows, and timber brackets appear on both the Mount Street and Castlereagh Street elevations. Ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering sits on a redbrick eaves course with a decorative terracotta billet course below, and cast-iron downpipes complete the rainwater goods. The walling is redbrick laid in English garden wall bond, with moulded terracotta string courses forming a frieze below eaves level and between the ground and first floors, and a projecting redbrick plinth course. Window openings are camber-headed with moulded redbrick surrounds and timber sash windows throughout.

The gabled frontispiece entrance bay is the architectural centrepiece of the building. Its steeply pitched front gable has moulded redbrick barge details, a foliate terracotta panel at the apex, and a 2/2 timber sash window with a flush red sandstone splayed sill above the frieze. Applied modern lettering on the frieze reads 'BANK HOUSE'. The first floor contains three window openings with a further slender window opening to either cheek. The principal entrance is a tripartite Tudor-arched opening formed in red sandstone ashlar with a square hood moulding, double-leaf timber doors with four decorative panels each, flanked by sidelights and a tripartite overlight, opening onto two granite steps.

The northeast elevation is four windows wide and features a gable and a three-sided canted bay to the east end, along with an off-centre rectangular-plan entrance porch. The gable has moulded redbrick barge details and a pair of 2/1 timber sash windows on flush splayed red sandstone sills, with a pair of moulded and corbelled brackets framing the frieze below. Two uPVC windows have been inserted at first floor level. The canted bay is surmounted by a parapet wall with terracotta rosette panels, flush splayed red sandstone sills, and uPVC windows. The entrance porch, now blocked up, is surmounted by a terracotta balustrade with trefoil openings set on a corbelled cornice, with stepped and moulded reveals to the former door opening and uPVC windows to the front and cheeks. Half-height angle buttresses have gableted red sandstone capstones and brick offsets. To the easternmost bay is a square-headed stepped and moulded redbrick door opening with an original flat-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings, brass door furniture, and a rectangular overlight opening onto two modern tiled steps.

The east side elevation is abutted by the adjacent Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church. The south elevation is abutted by a single-bay two-storey lower wing detailed to match the main building, with a paired window opening at first floor level containing single-pane timber sash windows. A further two-storey redbrick extension was added to this wing around 1985. The northwest elevation is two windows wide, detailed as the rest of the building, with timber sash windows at first floor and uPVC windows at ground floor. The north end is dominated by a slightly projecting full-height chimneystack with a squat red sandstone lateral buttress and a decorative square rosette at first floor level.

The building sits on a corner plot at the junction of Castlereagh Road and The Mount. Small front areas to both principal elevations are enclosed by a low redbrick wall with moulded redbrick coping and largely replacement metal railings, with the exception of the north entrance where the original wrought-iron railing survives intact.

The history of the building is well documented. The Albertbridge Road did not exist on the first Ordnance Survey map of 1834 and was still being developed by the time of the second edition in 1858, when it was largely flanked by fields and mansions in spacious grounds. By 1900, urban expansion had spread deep into County Down and the road was lined with commercial premises and terraces. The present building first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1902, but valuation records date its construction to 1886, when it was recorded as two houses valued at £40 and £27. The larger house was named 'The Lodge' and was leased by Henry Bingham MD from a Dr Ritchie, who was likely its developer. Bingham sublet the adjoining dwelling to the Reverend William John McCaughan, minister of Mountpottinger Presbyterian Church from 1885 to 1897, who later moved to Toronto before returning to Belfast as minister of May Street. He was a popular orator who died tragically in a fire in 1910.

The building replaced a much smaller gate lodge on the same site, which had served as the entrance lodge to Mount Pottinger, a mansion of considerable age that formerly stood to the south of Albertbridge Road. Thomas Pottinger of Mount Pottinger was the first sovereign of Belfast, elected to that position in 1661.

In 1892 the Belfast Banking Company acquired the building, paying £2,550 and spending a further £400 on its conversion to a bank; the valuation of the bank premises was consequently raised to £65. Henry Bingham MD moved into the smaller adjoining house, now valued at £28, following the addition of a return to the property. The 1901 census records no residents in either property but confirms that number 133 was in use as a bank office. By 1906 Robert Boyd, a general practitioner, was resident at number 135, which was valued at £41. He was still living there at the time of the 1911 census with his wife, two sons, and a domestic servant from Sunderland. By 1915 the house had been taken over by a J. McShannon and the valuation reduced to £34, possibly following an appeal.

In 1914 the Belfast Bank extended the banking portion of the building to the rear and took over the house for use as a bank manager's residence. The house at that time comprised nine rooms plus kitchen and bathroom and was fitted with gas. The valuer recorded that the bank had spent £2,000 on alterations including the construction of a new strong room, which brought the rateable value up to £165. A further addition was made to the bank in 1928 to designs by John Johnston. The premises continued to operate as a bank until at least 1972.

The Belfast Banking Company had its origins in the early 19th century, when a lack of ready money was hampering Belfast's growth as a trading centre. The Belfast Bank was established as a private partnership at premises in Donegall Square and by 1827 had merged with the Belfast Commercial Bank to form the Belfast Banking Company, with offices at the corner of Donegall Street and Waring Street. Branches were opened across the north of Ireland from the mid-1830s, typically in converted private houses. In 1846 the bank moved into the former Assembly Buildings in Waring Street, which served as its head office for the remainder of its existence. As wealthier citizens moved out of the city centre into the suburbs, travel to the bank's premises near the docks became less convenient. The three main local banks agreed to co-operate by opening branches in different parts of the city. In 1885 Belfast Bank opened a branch in the Markets area, which proved an immediate success. Encouraged by this, the bank decided to open a second branch further east in Ballymacarret, which was becoming Belfast's industrial heartland. By 1890 the bank was operating from temporary premises in the area, and its permanent branch at 133 Albertbridge Road opened shortly afterwards, just before the bank opened its first permanent Dublin branch in 1895. In 1968, following structural changes in Irish banking, the Belfast Banking Company amalgamated with the Northern Bank, and the Ballymacarret branch was eventually closed under subsequent rationalisation. The building is now in use as offices.