Friends Institute, 47 Frederick Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 2LW

Friends Institute, 47 Frederick Street, Belfast

This is a detached, symmetrical, multi-bay, two-storey redbrick former Friends Institute, built around 1869–70 and associated with the Quaker Meeting House on the same site. It faces south onto the north side of Frederick Street and is rectangular in plan. The building was extensively renovated and extended to the east around 1990 and is currently in office use, occupied by Concern Worldwide. Much interior detail and fabric have been lost through renovation, though the building's simple character survives and it retains considerable historic significance as the rooms of the Friends Meeting of Frederick Street.

The roof is hipped natural slate with black clay ridge tiles and replacement profiled redbrick chimneystacks. Replacement moulded metal guttering is supported on an angled brick eaves course, with metal downpipes. The walls are redbrick laid in Flemish bond, with continuous sandstone impost and sill mouldings and a splayed sandstone plinth trim to a projecting redbrick plinth course. Cast-iron wall-ties are present at ground floor level, with a geometric brick course below the first-floor sill course and at eaves level.

Window openings are segmental and round-headed, formed in gauged brick, and fitted with single-pane timber sash windows. The symmetrical front elevation is five windows wide. The first-floor windows are segmental-headed with stepped brick surrounds and corbelled brick reveals; the outer windows are paired and divided by stop-chamfered sandstone piers with cushion capitals. At ground floor level, round-headed door and window openings are fitted with replacement sandstone hood mouldings arranged as a continuous pointed-arched moulding rising from sandstone impost mouldings. The full-height openings to the left contain timber-framed glazing. To the right are arched single-pane timber sash windows with decorative wrought-iron sill guards. The central round-headed door opening retains its original timber door, which has two arched flat panels and a circular panel above. The door opens onto two granite steps to the front pavement.

The west side elevation is cement rendered with a replacement redbrick chimneystack. The north rear elevation is smooth rendered at ground floor level and redbrick at first floor, with segmental-headed first-floor window openings containing single-pane timber sash windows and a steel door. The east side elevation is abutted by a flat-roofed extension and features walling detailing matching the front elevation, alongside a replacement redbrick chimneystack and two segmental-headed first-floor window openings.

To the east of the principal building stands a pedimented redbrick and red sandstone arched entrance screen, now connected to the main building via the modern extension and serving as the principal entrance. This features a replacement timber glazed screen set within a round-headed opening with a sandstone archivolt and scrolled keystone, along with a pair of steel gates to three stone steps. The arch is flanked by a pair of brick pilasters meeting a stepped sandstone frieze with inscribed gilt lettering reading "Friends Meeting House," with a triangular pediment above. Sloping walls to either side have scrolled sandstone coping and terminate in a further pair of square brick piers.

The site setting consists of bitmac parking across the entire plot, a tall redbrick wall enclosing the site to the east, and replacement steel railings and gates to the road frontage. A replacement Meeting House, built around 1975, stands to the rear.

Historical background

The Friends Institute dates from 1869–70 and first appears on the second edition Belfast town plan of 1871–73. Valued at £44 in 1900, it was said to have cost £610 excluding the architect's fee; the architect is unknown. The concept of providing dedicated rooms within or alongside a Friends' meeting house for social occasions, lectures, and educational or mission work originated in the mid-19th century. A Friends' library and reading rooms operating as a social club for Quakers — particularly those newly arrived in the city — was established at Gracechurch Street Meeting House in London in 1852, and urban centres across Britain and Ireland established their own institutes in the years that followed.

The Belfast Friends' Institute was founded for "the promotion of the intellectual, moral and religious welfare of the young men in our Society." It originally occupied premises in North Street. In August 1869, plans for a purpose-built structure in Frederick Street — in front of the existing meeting house of 1811, which had been extended in 1840 — were approved by the town council, the first set of plans having been disapproved the previous month. The caretakers, Mr and Mrs Daniel, were living in the building by January 1870, when they sustained minor injuries in a gas explosion.

The original ground-floor accommodation comprised a committee room and a caretaker's dwelling. The upper floor contained a lecture room with windows looking onto the street, and to the rear a library of 600 non-fiction volumes, magazines and newspapers, with a reading room opposite. The caretaker was responsible for both the institute and the meeting house, and supplied refreshments to visitors. The Institute hosted a range of public meetings on topics including the land question and women's suffrage, and provided social facilities for Quakers more broadly. It was also used for a First-day (Sunday) school, weekly mission meetings, Bible meetings, and mothers' meetings.

Additions and alterations were made to the meeting house in 1894–95 to plans by Joseph Bell, and these appear to have included a single-storey extension to the Institute. Part of the boundary wall, two gateways, and an entrance passageway survive from this period. In 1959 a decision was taken to sell the building, but this was not carried out, and the Institute survived the rebuilding of the meeting house in 1972. Since 1987 the building has been let for charitable purposes. The pedimented former entrance and passageway to the meeting house have now been incorporated into the present building.