9 Wellington Place, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 6GB

9 Wellington Place, Belfast

This four-storey, three-bay late Georgian terrace house was built in painted brick around 1829–1830 to designs by Adam McClean (1765/66–1849), an amateur architect and linen draper based in Belfast. It forms the central property of a surviving terrace of three houses — numbers 7, 9 and 11 Wellington Place — which are the oldest remaining structures on Wellington Place and represent the early development of the area around Donegall Square and the White Linen Hall. The building has been in commercial use since the mid-19th century and was listed in 1979.

Exterior

The building is constructed in Flemish-bonded brick, painted throughout, beneath a roofline concealed by a cornice and blocking course, with rendered brick chimneystacks to either side. Rainwater goods are square-section metal. The ground floor has been altered to form a shopfront, though a separate entrance to the upper floors is retained. Windows in the outer bays at each floor have been converted to mullioned casements with plastered reveals and painted cills. The second and third floor windows in these bays have shallow entablatures, and the panels between the first and second floor windows are decorated with wreaths and swags. The central bays have been converted to deep bow windows with transomes and leaded upper lights — a feature likely added in the early 20th century — giving the building a distinctive Regency character that sets it apart from its immediate neighbours, numbers 7 and 11, which retain their original brick elevations with formal Ionic porticoes. The original Ionic doorcase that would have matched those of the neighbouring properties has been lost. The rear elevation is not visible.

As the architectural historian C. E. B. Brett observed in 1985, numbers 7, 9 and 11 Wellington Place together illustrate the transition in Belfast's building styles during the late Georgian period: "gradually, good brickwork gave way to sleazy stucco… the meeting-point is exemplified by 7, 9 and 11 Wellington Place, three houses built by Adam McClean in [c. 1830], of which the central one has Regency stucco bows; its neighbours are of brick with formal Ionic porticoes."

History and Context

Wellington Place was laid out in the 1790s as a street of superior terraces, named after the Duke of Wellington who had resided in Belfast during his youth. By 1822 it was the most densely populated residential area of the town and was favoured by doctors and other professionals. McClean accumulated his plots and leases in this area from the Donegall family during the 1820s, benefiting from the financial difficulties of the second Marquess of Donegall by acquiring long leases at low rents which he then built upon. Brett noted that McClean "was genuinely interested in architecture and not merely in property speculation." Beyond Wellington Place, McClean also erected a terrace of nine houses on Donegall Square — of which only one survives at the corner of Donegall Square East and May Street — and warehouses at 19–23 Franklin Street, and owned a large number of properties in Belfast town centre.

The Hodges and Smith Belfast Street maps of around 1850 record that McClean's lease commenced on 17th August 1829, suggesting the terrace was constructed that year. The original terrace comprised six similar four-storey houses running between Fountain Street and Queen Street; only three survive. The buildings formed part of the westward expansion of Belfast in the late Georgian period and were originally intended as private residential dwellings, lining the road towards the newly laid out College Square and the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.

The Townland Valuation of around 1830 records No. 9 as valued at £62 and occupied by a Mr David McCance, a linen merchant who, along with his brother John, worked at the White Linen Hall in Donegall Square. David McCance continued to reside there until at least 1843, but had vacated by 1852, when John Herdman, a flax spinner of J & J Herdman & Co. with offices on Winetavern Street, was recorded as occupant.

By 1860, Griffith's Valuation records that the property had been purchased by Richard Davison and James Torrens, solicitors who established an office at No. 9 while also maintaining a branch at 65 Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin. The value of the building had risen to £70. Davison and Torrens also acted as estate agents, principally administering the estate of the Earl of Shaftesbury; by 1910 Thomas H. Torrens was recorded as the Earl's agent in the Belfast Street Directories. Despite its conversion to offices around 1860, the building continued to be partly used as a private dwelling: the 1911 census records a Mr John Frederick Bowman, aged 31, of the Church of Ireland, residing there with his wife Mary, aged 30, in his capacity as the estate office's caretaker. The census building return for that year described No. 9 as first-class offices comprising five inhabited rooms.

By 1918 the firm had been renamed Torrens and Bristow, following the retirement of Davison and the admission of a Mr John Bristow as partner. The 1900 Belfast Revaluation had by then raised the property's value to £170, with the solicitors' rent assessed at over £100 per annum.

In 1924 the property — along with the adjoining No. 7 — was purchased by Thomas Shanks of T. Shanks and Son, florists who had previously occupied No. 7. Shanks ceased trading and instead leased the floors to other tenants, with Torrens and Bristow having vacated before this change of ownership. A shop was installed to the ground floor in 1924 and the upper floors were taken by the Ministry of Agriculture, raising the total assessed value to approximately £368. The First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 assessed the property at £634 10s. The terrace survived the Belfast Blitz of 1941 intact. By the 1950s the building had been subdivided into numerous offices and also contained a café on the upper floor — known as the Val d'Or Café, which operated from the 1940s to the 1970s — in addition to the ground floor shop. The total assessed value stood at approximately £1,246 10s. by the end of the second general revaluation in 1972. The ground floor has most recently been used as a vintage art and exhibition space.

Significance

No. 9 Wellington Place is of architectural interest for its style, proportion, ornamentation, plan form, and the quality and survival of its interior, as well as for alterations that have enhanced rather than diminished its character. Its historical significance lies in its authorship by Adam McClean and its local interest as one of the oldest surviving buildings on Wellington Place. Together with the adjoining numbers 7 and 11, it forms a group of considerable importance as the earliest surviving remnant of the late Georgian residential development that preceded the Victorian transformation of central Belfast.