Former Our Ladys Convent, Hospital, Belfast, Co Antrim BT12 7PY

Former Our Lady's Hospital, now teaching accommodation within Coláiste Feirste school complex, Falls Road, Belfast

This is a two-storey red-brick former hospital building, E-shaped on plan with a hipped natural slate roof, built in 1935 to designs by architect Frank McArdle. It was constructed for Our Lady's Convent as a purpose-built hospital alongside the earlier Beechmount House, at a construction cost of £50,000. The building now serves as teaching accommodation within the Coláiste Feirste Irish-language medium secondary school complex, and shares group value and social significance with the former Convent Chapel and Beechmount House (now known as 'Teach Ard na bhFeá'), reputedly one of the oldest houses in the city, which together now comprise the library, administrative offices and staff accommodation.

Architectural Description

The main spine of the E-plan is orientated east to west, with a 16-bay wing to the west, a short central section, and a 10-bay wing to the east. Modern extensions have been added to the south, linking the building with the new school, and further extensions to the east form new corridors. The interior has been reconfigured to provide classrooms.

The hipped natural slate roof has a terracotta ridge. On the ridge at the north end are two pairs of two-tiered chimney stacks with concrete bevel and cornice and clay pots, along with two shouldered chimney stacks with chimney-crickets and clay pots. Rainwater goods are a mix of cast-iron and uPVC. The walls of the original building are red brick in Flemish bond with a concrete plinth, moulded cornice and concrete cills. Window openings are segmental arched, formed in soldier-coursed brick, with windows divided horizontally into three sections. Some original sliding sashes have been retained, but the majority have been replaced with timber frames incorporating a central pivoting opening light.

Principal (North) Elevation

The principal elevation faces north and is well proportioned and symmetrical, retaining much of its original character. It comprises a two-storey, seven-bay red-brick wall with a moulded concrete string course at first floor level, a hipped natural slate roof, and small terracotta finials at the apex. The first two bays to the east and two bays to the west project forward as hipped gables flanking the original entrance.

Three terrazzo steps inlaid with a band of mosaic tiles lead up to a single-storey projecting entrance porch. The porch front is finished in smooth painted render with a parapet frieze, and the cheeks are in brick. The entrance comprises a glazed, square-headed timber door in the centre of the porch, with a glazed fanlight above, all set within a four-centred arched opening with concentric moulded surround. This is flanked by pointed arched windows, also with moulded architraves decorated with small foils to the upper curve. Above is a moulded string course, then ornate spandrel panels between the windows and door, topped with a frieze embellished with the lettering 'Our Lady's Hospital', and a deep moulded cornice to the parapet.

All windows on this elevation are paired pointed arches with concrete tracery, set within segmental pointed arch openings formed in alternating bands of brick (soldier-coursed) and painted concrete voussoirs, topped by a brick header course. Each pointed arch tracery features an ornate carved medallion to its upper centre. Cills are flush and splayed in concrete. Some original windows with 1/1 panes to timber sliding sashes and a pointed arch fixed light above have been retained. Wire screens are surface-mounted to the face of the wall beyond the window reveals.

Directly above the entrance porch, a statue of Our Lady is recessed within a pointed arched niche surrounded by a gable that rises from eaves height across the central bay only. The apex of this gable is surmounted by a gablet on scrolled brackets supporting a decorative cross, all formed in painted reconstituted stone. This statue and ornate cross provide an important visual connection with the nearby Mater Hospital.

East Elevation

The east elevation walls are also red brick. A new two-storey link — with red brick to the ground floor and a glazed upper section with a curved roof — provides first floor access to other school buildings including the former Convent Chapel. This link is positioned at the fifth bay from the north end. A new two-storey extension to the south end is set back from the face of the original wall, with a flat roof, floor-to-eaves glazing, and a parapet with concrete coping to the end gable.

South Elevation

The south elevation shows the hipped gable end of the east wing beyond a modern red-brick wall, with a single square window at upper level. At the centre is a set-back gabled wall with two segmental arched window openings at upper level, with reconstituted stone skews, kneelers and apex. The west side abuts a new smooth rendered wall forming a modern corridor to the 16-bay wing. A cat-slide natural slate roof covers the new corridor, with roof glazing at the junction either side of the original chimney stack. Openings on the north side of this section have powder-coated aluminium windows; patent glazing faces south.

West Elevation

The west elevation is the original 16-bay facade, with modern rendered, flat-roofed extensions to the southern end. The west elevation of the wing has a projecting shouldered chimney stack at the third bay from the south end.

Materials

Roof: natural slate. Rainwater goods: cast-iron and uPVC. Walls: red brick with painted concrete or reconstituted stone dressings. Windows: timber, uPVC and aluminium.

Historical Background

The site's history begins with Beechmount House, a private residence marked on Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland of 1778, when the owner was named as Wallace Esq. (no forename given). However, there is no certainty that the house marked on that map is the same building that stands today. According to Young (p. 304), Beechmount formerly belonged to the Reverend Patrick Vance, great-grandfather of the sculptor Albert Bruce-Joy, whose mother had been born there. Vance served as minister of the Second Presbyterian Congregation in Belfast between 1791 and 1800. His occupation of Beechmount appears to have been temporary, as the Wallaces are again listed as resident there in the early 1800s — Robert Wallace, for instance, is listed as occupier in 1823. At some point shortly after this the Wallaces ceased to reside there. In October 1831, when a Roger Moore was occupier, Beechmount was advertised for letting, and again the following March.

Beechmount is marked and named on the first edition Ordnance Survey maps, represented as an oblong building with an L-shaped rear return. It also appears on the 1816 Legg map, including the canted end bays. The First Valuation fieldbook of circa 1835 names Lewis Reford (also spelled Redford) Esq. as occupier, with a building value of £50. The main house was coded 1B+ and its dimensions were given as 81 feet long, 25½ feet broad and 22½ feet high to the eaves. Reford was a wholesale grocer and wine merchant with business premises in High Street and later Waring Street, and was one of the original guardians of the Belfast Poor Law Union in 1839. His will was probated in the Prerogative Court in Dublin in 1852.

Griffith's Valuation of circa 1860 shows Beechmount in the possession of John Riddel, who was leasing it from Hill Hamilton. The property comprised a house, gate-house, office and land extending to just under 29 acres, with the buildings valued at £65. John Riddel had founded a hardware business at Chichester Quay in the early 1800s, which later moved to the 'Iron Warehouse' in Ann Street. He died in 1870, after which the house continued to be occupied by several of his children. By 1885 the gate-house was valued separately at £5, reducing the valuation of the remaining buildings to £60.

According to the 1901 census, three Riddel siblings — Samuel, aged 67, Eliza, aged 53, and Isabella, aged 49 (though in fact Eliza would have been 70 and Isabella 65) — resided at Beechmount. None was married; all belonged to the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church. Three domestic servants — a cook, parlour maid and housemaid — were also resident. Twenty-four rooms in the house were occupied and there were sixteen windows to the front. Samuel Riddel died in 1903, Isabella in 1918, and Eliza in 1924. The sisters founded and endowed Riddel Hall and were benefactors to the Riddel Ward at the Royal Victoria Hospital. At some point before 1930, the possession of the house was recorded as 'Reps of Elizth [Riddel]' in the Valuation Revision Books.

In 1932, Beechmount was purchased by the Catholic bishop Dr Mageean. On 15 September 1932 he celebrated Mass there and formally handed the property over to the Sisters of Mercy, to be used to provide additional accommodation for elderly patients and invalids who could not be cared for at the Mater Hospital due to lack of space, and named it Our Lady's Hospital. The annual report of the Mater Hospital for 1932 described it as: "This hospital is for the reception of patients the treatments of whose complaints is of too prolonged duration for their reception in an ordinary hospital. This noble service was carried on for many years in the old Hospice on the Crumlin Road. As the accommodation there was found inadequate, His Lordship, the Most Rev. Dr Mageean, acquired the present Hospital which was formerly the residence of the Riddell family."

The original house proving insufficiently large for the hospital's needs, plans were drawn up for a purpose-built hospital alongside it. By 1935 the new building — the present former hospital — had been completed, built of red brick on an E-plan and similar in character to the Mater Hospital but on a smaller scale. A chapel was also built at the same time, both designed by Frank McArdle. After the hospital's completion, the old house became the residence for the Sisters and staff.

Early in 1974, a large part of the grounds was levelled to provide playing fields for a new extension to St Mary's Training College. In 1976 the hospital had four large and twelve small wards and could cater for 140 patients. By the 1980s it was recognised that the hospital would need a major upgrade, and in 1990 the decision was made to build a new nursing home. The existing buildings were subsequently transferred to the trustees of the only Irish-language medium secondary school in Belfast, now known as Coláiste Feirste (previously named Méanscoil Feirste). A modern nursing home, the former hospital relocated to a new purpose-built unit, now stands to the north of the site.

Setting

The former hospital lies to the north of the Coláiste Feirste school complex, on an elevated site on the west side of the Falls Road. The school as a whole consists of an eclectic group of buildings dating from the 17th to the 21st century. Playing fields lie to the east and south-west; residential areas lie to the south-east and west. The building is accessed via Rockdale Street and Beechview Park.