RUC Barracks, Queen Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1

Former Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, Queen Street, Belfast

This is a former children's hospital, now a vacant former police barracks, designed by Thomas Jackson and Son and completed in 1878. It is a three-storey building with an attic storey, built in Scrabo sandstone in a style described by architectural historians as Early Renaissance — chosen, as Paul Larmour observed, to recall in a modest way the great period of hospital building in Jacobean England. C. E. B. Brett considered it one of the family firm's most successful designs, calling it "a distinguished building in a dignified Scottish renaissance style." The building is currently empty and boarded up.

Thomas Jackson (1807–1890) entered into partnership with his son William Ridgeway Jackson around 1855, and the practice continued until the early 1880s, making the Queen Street hospital one of their final commissions. The foundations were laid at the end of 1877, with a Mr William McCammond contracted as builder. The cost of construction was estimated at £3,840, though Harold Love records that the actual cost was upwards of £5,000.

The Architect and Practice

Thomas Jackson and Son were responsible for the design in its entirety. The building replaced an earlier children's hospital at No. 25 King Street, which had opened on 4th August 1873 but quickly proved unable to cope with the rapid growth of Belfast's population in the years leading up to the city's grant of city status in 1888. In 1874 alone the King Street hospital treated 317 inpatients and 5,408 outpatients. The Queen Street site was purchased in 1877 and the new building completed in 1878, though it was not officially opened for patients until 24th April 1879. The first Matron was a Miss Lennox, a former pupil at Florence Nightingale's training school in London.

Exterior Description

The front portion of the building is square on plan, faces east onto Queen Street, and is set back slightly from the street behind a double-height steel fence. The principal elevation is three windows wide, with paired windows to the ground floor flanking a central door opening.

The roof is a mansard of natural slate, lead-lined at the top and surmounted by a glazed lantern. Two smaller hipped dormers project from the main roof slope, each with a billeted cornice, lead-lined roof, single-pane timber sash windows, and ball finials; these break through a sandstone ashlar blocking course above the crown cornice. A central wall-head dormer has sandstone coping surmounted by a cross and carries a carved Belfast coat of arms to its gable, supported on scrolled console brackets, with a single square-headed window opening containing a replacement timber casement. Profiled sandstone ashlar chimneystacks rise from both gable ends, with a further stack at the centre of the plan. Plastic guttering has been fitted to the south end.

The walling is of uncoursed rock-faced sandstone ashlar, with smooth pink sandstone pilasters, cornices, and friezes framing the upper floors. Window openings are square-headed with pink sandstone architrave surrounds. To the first and second floors each window is framed by a pair of sandstone pilasters rising to a stepped and dentilled crown cornice, with a full-span sandstone frieze at each floor level punctuated by the pilasters. These friezes carry decorative carved motifs, and raised lettering below the central second-floor window states "A.D.1878." The second-floor windows have diamond-faced keystones. The paired ground-floor windows have deeply set bowtel surrounds, central mullions with stylised console brackets, and a continuous moulded sill course. The central door opening also has a bowtel surround with decorative scrolled lateral brackets, and a replacement steel door opening onto a stone step to an enclosed front area. All ground- and first-floor windows are currently boarded up, with single-pane timber sash windows to the upper floors.

According to a perspective sketch of 1877, the cornice below the first, second, and attic-storey windows originally bore the inscription: "ERECTED A.D. 1878 BY VOLUNTARY DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS BELFAST HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN." This inscription was removed — almost certainly around 1935 when the building was converted to a police station — leaving only the date panel below the attic dormer.

The south side elevation is abutted by an adjoining early 20th-century building. The rear elevation is plain rendered with unevenly spaced windows: four to the first floor and five to the second floor; the ground floor could not be observed clearly. Most of the rear windows have two-over-two timber sash frames; others are boarded. To the far left of the rear façade a narrow link section connects to the western ward block.

The Rear Wing and College Court

The plot extends westwards into College Court. Beyond a courtyard and set back from the neighbouring buildings stands a large, generally plain three-storey block, believed to have originally contained the hospital wards and capable of accommodating 45 beds. This block is linked to the main Queen Street building by a very narrow three-storey link that runs along the northern boundary of the site. Both elements are contemporary with the main building.

The ward block is of irregular plan — broadly rectangular but with a large recess to the south-east corner. It has a plain rendered façade and a double-pitched natural slate roof with two rendered chimneystacks, the southern one substantially larger. The College Court frontage has formal fenestration, with ground- and first-floor windows boarded and largely one-over-one sash frames to the second floor. The central ground-floor entrance has a plain sheeted door with boarded-up half-sidelights and a large canopy-like hood with a sprocketed slated roof. The east façade is less formal, with more varied openings, several of which retain Georgian-paned sash frames. The exposed section of the south façade appeared from the site visit to be rendered with at least one small second-floor window, though it could not be fully inspected.

The narrow link to the north shares the same plain rendered appearance as the western block, but has a mono-pitched slate roof and fenestration similar to the College Court front of the ward block, with fewer and irregularly spaced openings. The north side elevation of the main building is abutted by a two-storey infill building.

Historical Context

Queen Street was developed in the early 19th century and broadly follows the line of Belfast's original town defences. Before the hospital was built in 1877–78, the site lay immediately to the north of the former Mechanics Institute, established around 1822 and demolished in the 1860s.

When the hospital opened in 1879 it was praised for offering treatment "on lines which at that time were considered most modern and adequate," with a large outpatient department and 45 inpatient beds. The first full year of operation, 1880, saw 294 inpatients and 6,831 outpatients treated. By the year before the hospital's closure, those figures had risen to 799 inpatients and 13,251 outpatients — a growth described in the hospital's own records as "indicative of the growth of the City of Belfast." In 1911 the Census recorded nine nurses, three hospital sisters, and four domestic servants in post, caring for 26 sick children ranging from newborns to twelve-year-olds, in a building described as a first-class hospital with 15 inhabited rooms and wards.

Unable to sustain this demand, the hospital trustees decided in the late 1920s to relocate to a new site on the Falls Road. The foundation stone of the new Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children was laid on 5th June 1929, and the Queen Street building closed before the new hospital opened on 24th November 1932.

The Northern Ireland Ministry of Home Affairs immediately acquired the vacated building and converted it into a police station for the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The rateable value was increased to £355 under the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935, at which point the original inscribed lettering was in all likelihood removed from the façade. The building survived the heavy bombing of Belfast city centre during the Blitz of April and May 1941. By the end of the Second General Revaluation in 1972 the rateable value had risen to £848. The building was listed in 1979. The Royal Ulster Constabulary vacated the premises around 1993, and the building has remained empty since.