The Lanyon Building, Jennymount Industrial Estate, North Derby Street, Belfast

The Lanyon Building is a seven-storey late Victorian flax spinning mill built in 1891, designed by John Lanyon, a leading Irish architect of the period, as a six-storey extension to the Jennymount Flax Spinning Mill for Philip Johnson & Son. A seventh storey was added in the same style in 1909 by engineer J.K. Sparrow. A hoist was inserted in the interior in 1945 and a steel fire escape was added to the exterior at the rear in 1965, both works carried out by S. Stevenson & Sons, architects. The building is a particularly fine example of its type and holds special importance in the industrial history of Northern Ireland, representing a building form that is now uncommon in the Belfast area. Together with the earlier mill and former mill offices alongside it to the east, it forms a significant group associated with the great age of the local textile industry.

The building is constructed in red brick with sandstone dressings and is designed in the manner of a late medieval Italian palazzo with battered faces — that is, walls that lean slightly inward as they rise. It displays the open-plan form, repetitive storey arrangement, and structural system characteristic of its era and building type.

SOUTH ELEVATION (MAIN ENTRANCE FRONT)

The main entrance faces south onto the street. The south elevation is twelve bays wide, with eleven repetitive bays to the upper floors. The end bay to the right-hand extremity projects forward, corbelled out at first floor level, with a curved corner to the left. This projecting bay rises above the main roofline to form a small rectangular attic storey with ball finials surmounting each corner.

Materials throughout are red brick with some red sandstone dressings, and the facade has a projecting plinth of black bricks. The facade is divided horizontally by projecting stringcourses at each storey level, with a prominent corbel course above the fifth floor. A balustraded parapet runs along the roofline, terminating at the left-hand extremity in a panelled chimney stack and interrupted by two similar stacks positioned after the fourth and eighth bays from the left. The chimneys on the parapet retain their original plain creamware pots. The roof is flat and concealed behind red brick parapets with arcaded brick balustrading and plain sandstone copings.

The ground floor walling is arranged in horizontal stages of brickwork, stepped back slightly in four bands of four courses each followed by two bands of two courses each, to accentuate the battered profile. Openings are elliptically arched with moulded brick drip moulds, though the arrangement varies by floor. Ground floor openings have sandstone keystones. Second, third, and fourth floor windows are arranged in recessed vertical panels. The fifth and sixth floors have pairs of smaller coupled windows in each bay, surmounted by a common drip moulding above. Windows are mainly segmental-headed timber four-pane fixed lights with two-pane top lights.

At ground floor level, four original segmental arched timber sliding sash windows survive, vertically hung, two over two with horns, with deep splayed cast iron cills protected by three iron bars — the outermost original, with blunt spikes that originally rotated, and the other two later additions with fixed spikes.

The individual ground floor openings are as follows. The second opening from the left contains a doorway fitted with a modern rectangular glazed timber door with a side panel and fanlight, surmounted by an original two-pane fanlight above. The sixth opening from the left contains a four-pane timber window with a concrete cill, in what appears to have originally been a doorway, partly bricked up. The seventh opening is an original window with a cast iron cill, but later filled with glass bricks. The eighth and ninth openings are similar to the sixth. The tenth opening is a narrower brick-arched window with original cast iron cills and spiked bars as described previously, but now bricked up within the recess. The eleventh opening is the wide-arched main entrance, containing a pair of rectangular timber sheeted double doors surmounted by a five-pane fanlight over a concrete lintel. The twelfth opening is also a narrower arched window similar to the tenth, and retains its original sash window frame, one over one with horns; its arch is formed of red sandstone, to each side of which project curved sandstone corbels that carry the projecting bay above.

The projecting bay at the right-hand end has two small semicircular-headed windows staggered to the front on each floor from the first to the sixth, along with a single semicircular-headed window in the curved wall to the left and one in the side wall to the right, all with sandstone heads. The attic projection has three rectangular windows to the front and two to the right-hand side, all dressed in plain brickwork.

EAST ELEVATION

The east elevation is a largely blank wall of plain red brickwork with a plain parapet, now partly taken down, above projecting stringcourses. Stringcourses, cornices, and a corbel course decorate the left-hand extremity, returned back from the front facade for a short distance. A plain red brick chimney projects above parapet level at the right-hand corner.

WEST ELEVATION

The west elevation is of plainer character than the entrance front. It is built of red brick with projecting brick and sandstone stringcourses dividing the storeys, a brick corbel course over the fourth floor, and a plain parapet surmounted by a prominent panelled chimney stack at each extremity. Groups of cast iron ties appear at each storey level, a number of them in the form of shields bearing the date 1891. Part of the ground floor and first floor brickwork has been smooth cement rendered, probably where it was previously abutted by other buildings. From the second floor upward there are two windows to each floor, elliptically arched with drip moulds, and arranged as pairs of coupled windows in the top two floors. The window pattern is similar to that of the entrance front. There is a modern rectangular flush timber door at ground floor level.

REAR ELEVATION

The rear elevation is built of plain red brick with a corner chimney projecting above the parapet at each extremity and three further chimneys at intermediate positions on the parapet. Below the right-hand corner chimney, the stringcourses, cornices, and corbel course of the west elevation return back for the width of the chimney to form a shallow projecting pilaster or pier-like vertical strip. There are ten bays of repetitive brick segmental-arched windows to each floor, of mainly similar pattern to the other elevations. The left-hand end bay contains narrower coupled windows. Some windows have been later opened up to form doorways providing access to a later steel fire escape stairway. The extreme left-hand end bay at ground floor level contains an original wide elliptical archway, later partly closed up with brickwork to form a rectangular doorway with an arched sidelight. Some original cast iron downpipes are retained, though most have been replaced with PVC.

HISTORICAL NOTE

The building was originally fitted out at ground floor level with a three-bedroom apartment in the western portion with an enclosed yard to the rear, and a large Dining Rooms area in the eastern portion adjacent to the cart-way, also with an enclosed yard behind. The history of the overall development of the site is recorded alongside the associated earlier mill and office buildings.

SETTING

The building stands in an urban area in a cul-de-sac, facing directly onto the street. It is abutted on its east side by a lower, earlier mill building, which is itself linked by a gateway to a former mill office block further to the east. To the west, a modern gateway leads into the extensive former mill site, which is surfaced in tarmac and contains a number of detached buildings. The front boundary to the site west of this block is formed by a low modern red brick wall surmounted by modern iron railings between panelled modern red brick piers, with a gateway in similar style. The western site boundary is formed mainly by a modern red brick wall, with partially demolished terraced housing beyond. The northern boundary is formed by modern iron fencing, and the eastern boundary by wire mesh fencing on top of a concrete block retaining wall, with a railway shunting yard at higher level beyond. On the street front, the building overlooks an industrial works opposite.