Royal Belfast Academical Institution, College Square East, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 6DL

Royal Belfast Academical Institution

The Royal Belfast Academical Institution is a detached, symmetrical, multi-bay three-storey Georgian brick school, dated 1810 and designed by the eminent London-based architect Sir John Soane (1753–1837). It stands on College Square East, set well back from the street behind a large front lawn, and terminates the vista along Wellington Place. It is the only surviving example of Soane's work in Belfast, and indeed his sole surviving commission in Ireland, making it one of the most architecturally significant buildings in the city. The building continues in use as a secondary grammar school.

Origins and Design History

The Institution was established by a management committee whose agent, Adam McClean, approached Soane to design a building combining the functions of a school and a university college. Soane completed a number of alternative designs in 1808, provided without charge, envisaging a much grander complex of Greek Doric buildings arranged around two large courtyards, with a monumental columned facade facing College Square East. Financial constraints forced the committee to scale back these ambitions, and the current, more austere plain brick structure was the result. The foundation stone was laid on 3rd June 1810 by the 2nd Marquess of Donegall, who provided the plot of land. Construction proceeded slowly owing to material shortages caused by the Napoleonic Wars, and the building was completed in 1814. The execution of Soane's design on site was carried out by local architects John Boyd and John McCutcheon. A later illustration in George Benn's History of Belfast (1823) depicted a central bell-cote on the roof that was never built. P. D. Hardy, writing in 1836, described the building as presenting "rather a good front" but as falling short of the architectural character such an institution would demand. The school was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1810 and officially opened on 1st February 1814, having raised an estimated £25,000, largely by voluntary subscription. Lewis, writing in the 1830s, recorded the total cost of construction including furnishings and teaching apparatus as £28,954 3s. 8d.

The Institution originally housed classrooms for English, writing, arithmetic, classics, languages and chemistry, as well as two dwelling houses used by boarders. It also functioned as a university, capable of conferring a Master's degree on students entering the Presbyterian ministry, and was patronised by both the Seceding Synod of Ireland and the Synod of Ulster. In 1837 it was educating approximately 410 pupils. During the cholera epidemic of 1832 and a typhus outbreak in 1847, it was used as an emergency hospital.

Exterior Description

The principal elevation faces east onto College Square East. The natural slate roof is hipped at either end, with clay ridge tiles and leaded hip ridges. Four rendered, profiled chimneystacks rise from the ridge and are fitted with clay pots. The roof is set behind a sandstone ashlar parapet with a moulded cornice and plain sandstone frieze. Circular cast-iron hoppers break through the parapet and drain into replacement metal downpipes.

The walls are of handmade red brick laid in Flemish bond, with some original pointing surviving, and a plain projecting sandstone plinth course at the base. Window openings are gauged brick flat-arched with sandstone sills and timber sash windows without horns, recently re-glazed with cylinder glass.

The symmetrical front elevation is 23 windows wide. The central 13 bays form a shallow breakfront defined by four pairs of Giant Doric order pilasters in painted sandstone ashlar. To the ground floor, gauged brick round-headed window openings are set within round-headed recesses and contain 6/6 timber sash windows with spoked upper sashes. The first floor has 6/6 sash windows beneath a continuous moulded sill course, and the second floor has 6/3 windows. At the centre of the breakfront, a large painted masonry panel to the second floor bears raised lettering reading "ACADEMICAL INSTITUTION. / MDCCCX" (1810). The first-floor central window is set within an arched moulded surround.

The central entrance takes the form of a tripartite Doric portico in antis, with two columns and responding engaged Doric piers to either end supporting a full plain entablature. The central square-headed door opening has double-leaf timber doors with raised-and-fielded panels, an architrave surround, and scrolled console brackets supporting a cornice. This central door is flanked by round-headed window openings with architrave surrounds and spoked upper sashes. In the re-entrant angles on either side are secondary door openings detailed in the same manner as the principal entrance but with single-leaf panelled doors; all open into the portico, which has replacement stone paving.

The south side elevation is largely blank, with two irregularly placed windows to the ground and first floors. The rear elevation is 11 windows wide, with the walling, parapet and windows detailed as on the front but without pilasters. It has a shallow breakfront to the central entrance bay, which is built in machine-made brown brick. Each level of this breakfront has a round-headed window opening, and the ground-floor entrance has a shallow door surround with a concrete lintel and glazed hardwood doors, flanked by bronze memorial plaques commemorating the First World War and the Second World War.

Later Wings and Extensions

The south wing, abutting the rear elevation, was built around 1915. It is constructed in machine-made red brick with gauged brick segmental-headed window openings having red sandstone sills. The south elevation has uPVC windows; the west and north elevations retain 6/6 timber sash windows. Two square-headed door openings on the south elevation have red sandstone architrave surrounds and latticed overpanels. A single-bay five-storey red brick staircase block, also built around 1915, connects this wing to the rear elevation.

A four-storey wing abuts the rear elevation to the north, built around 1960. The north side elevation is abutted by a further single-storey extension built around 2000, and a steel walkway connects the principal block to the north block.

A detached multi-bay three-storey brick block to the north, fronting onto College Square North, was built around 1835. It is six windows wide, detailed in the same manner as the principal block, and retains original timber sash windows throughout. This extension was designed by John Millar (c.1811–1876), a local architect known for a number of Presbyterian churches across Ulster.

Historical Alterations

The first Ordnance Survey map of Belfast (1832–33) recorded the building as an oblong structure with west-facing wings to both its north and south elevations; both of these original wings have since been replaced by 20th-century additions. By 1834 the rateable value was set at £320, rising to £345 in Griffith's Valuation of 1860.

In 1878, Thomas Jackson and Son — a Belfast-based practice operating between 1867 and at least 1878 — added a detached Mathematics House and Common House in the rear of the school, together with three additional classrooms and a science laboratory block extending from the original north wing. By the 1900 Belfast Revaluation, the total assessed value had risen to £1,579; the 1878 block was by that point being used as a recreation and administration wing containing a swimming bath, ball alley, gymnasium and administrative offices.

In 1901, Blackwood and Jury inserted a physics laboratory into one of the school's rooms. Between 1900 and 1907, faced with financial difficulties, the school's governors sold a portion of the College Square grounds directly in front of Soane's building to Belfast Corporation for £1,350 per annum. The Municipal Technical Institute subsequently erected its five-storey building on that site, an outcome described by the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett as "an environmental disaster" and by Paul Larmour as having spoilt "the full effect of the main facade, closing the vista along Wellington Place and setting the tone for the later Georgian development of College Square."

In 1914–15, the architects Watt, Tulloch and Fitzsimons added the current three-storey red brick south wing, which involved the demolition of the original 1810–14 south wing. In 1932, Robert Hanna Gibson expanded the recreation and administration block, contributing to an increase in the assessed value to £1,735 under the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935.

By 1959, the northwest extension by Thomas Jackson and Son (1878) and the original north-facing wing had been demolished. They were replaced by the current modern four-storey north wing. At the same time, the former detached Mathematics House was replaced by a dining hall for pupils and teachers, erected in 1957 and extending westwards towards Durham Street. The second revaluation of 1956 set the total value at £2,160, rising to £8,240 by the end of the second revaluation period in 1972.

In 1996, the Institution acquired the adjacent Christ Church (a Church of Ireland place of worship dating from 1833) which had lain vacant and in disrepair. It was restored by Consarc Design Group between 2001 and 2003 and now serves as the school's computing library and information centre. The facade of Soane's original building was restored and refurbished in 2012.

Setting and Grounds

The building is set within its own extensive grounds to the east of College Square North, with a large front lawn enclosed to the street by a low brick wall and decorative iron railings erected around 1950. Its front elevation is partially obscured by the former Municipal Technical Institute building to the north-east. A paved rear yard lies to the west. While the partial loss of its front grounds detracts from the original setting, the building retains considerable presence and continues to represent the lost Georgian character of Belfast city centre.

The Institution has a distinguished list of former pupils, among them John Miller Andrews (2nd Prime Minister of Northern Ireland), Thomas Andrews (chief designer at Harland and Wolff), the poet Michael Longley, and Dawson Stelfox (the first Irish person to climb Mount Everest).