1 Donegall Street, 4-6 Waring Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 2DX

This is a four-storey corner building with attic, designed in the Italianate style by Thomas Jackson and Son and constructed in 1872. It stands at the junction of Waring Street and Donegall Street in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter, and is known historically as Overland House. Although the building was reconstructed internally in the early 21st century, the original Victorian façade survives and is of considerable architectural and historical interest.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building turns the corner between Waring Street (the south elevation) and Donegall Street, and is finished in lined render with decorative mouldings throughout. The roof is a mansard form clad in modern metal sheeting, set behind a stone parapet and punctuated by square dormer windows glazed with single-pane metal frames.

The façade is richly ornamented in the Italianate manner. Decoration includes a moulded cornice, string courses between each floor, window architraves and hoods, motifs to blocked keystones, and foliate imposts. The elevation is framed by pilasters that change character at each level: rusticated to the first floor, with moulded insets to the second and third floors, and foliate capitals with acroterian ornament rising to parapet level.

The window arrangement varies by floor. Third-floor windows are square-headed and tripartite. Second-floor windows are bipartite with segmental arches and a central slender column. First-floor windows match the second floor in arrangement but have round-arched heads. Polished black granite columns appear at the upper window openings, while the ground floor features grey granite columns with rendered bases supporting a plain frieze and dentilled cornice. Upper-floor windows are replacement one-over-one timber sashes; ground-floor openings are modern shop windows. The corner entrance is recessed behind two cast iron columns and fitted with modern double doors.

The south elevation is three window bays wide, with one bay curving around the corner to the west. At ground floor level it has seven columns arranged in a one-three-three grouping, the central column on the right of the south elevation being a modern replacement. The west elevation matches the south in its upper floors, but the ground floor has four equally spaced columns. The north elevation is obscured by the adjoining listed building to the north, and the east elevation is abutted by a five-storey modern rendered building of similar height.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The site has a long history. It appears on 18th-century maps of Belfast, where the street was shown as Linnenhall Street on the 1757 town plan — a reference to a former linen hall near the current site of St Anne's Cathedral. By 1819 the street had been renamed Donegall Street in honour of the Marquis of Donegal and was fully built up on both sides. The former building on this site is thought to have been constructed before 1782, when it was occupied by a schoolmaster named David Manson. In the early 19th century it was used by the Commercial Bank, prior to that institution's amalgamation with the Belfast Banking Company in 1827. By 1868 the last occupant before demolition was the British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company. The previous building was demolished around 1870.

The present building was erected in 1872 to designs by Thomas Jackson and Son, a Belfast-based architectural practice responsible for a large number of contracts in the town centre, including a recent extension to the Ulster Bank Buildings at nearby 33 Waring Street in 1869–70. The Irish Builder records that construction commenced in the spring of 1872, with William McCammond of Antrim Street as the contracted builder. The building was commissioned by brothers James and Greer Malcolmson, who operated the London Tea House and were grocers and wine merchants, though they ran their main business from 24–26 Castle Place. They owned the Donegall Street property outright.

When completed, the building comprised two retail units at ground level — a larger unit on Donegall Street and a smaller one facing Waring Street — with the upper floors let to various private firms and companies. The first occupant of the main ground-floor unit was Joseph Wright and Company, a grocer and tea merchant trading as the Overland Tea House, which gave the building its long-standing name, Overland House. The Waring Street unit was initially used as an office by Edward Reilly, a flax merchant trading between Belfast and Rotterdam. The upper offices were occupied by firms predominantly engaged in the textile industry, as well as an accountancy and insurance agency, the Ulster Liberal Society, a solicitors' firm, and the Irish Educational Newspaper Company Limited. The building's total rateable value was set at £433 in 1872.

During the mid-Victorian period, Donegall Street was a major centre of the textile trade, characterised by warehouses and drapery businesses. By the mid-1880s, however, Joseph Wright and Company had vacated and was replaced by T. Edens Osborne's cycle and hardware business, the Pneumatic Tyre Company. In 1886 Edward Reilly's Waring Street office was taken over by Coombe, Barbour and Coombe, the metal foundry company that operated the Falls Foundry on North Howard Street, supplying machinery for the textile industry and using the Waring Street unit as their central business offices.

The commercial redevelopment of Royal Avenue from 1880–81 and the development of the Bedford Street area had a significant effect on Donegall Street. By 1900, the Belfast Revaluation reduced the building's value to approximately £282 15s., with the valuer noting that the entire lower length of Donegall Street had been depreciated as retail trade had suffered and the street had not benefited for wholesale purposes from the growth of new commercial areas. With the granting of city status in 1888 and subsequent redevelopment, Donegall Street lost much of its trade to areas that had previously been residential in character, such as Royal Avenue, Bedford Street, and Donegall Place.

By 1901 the property was formally known as Overland House. By 1906 the Donegall Street shop had passed to P. Mullan and Sons, who operated a hairdressing salon until 1911. Coombe, Barbour and Coombe continued in the Waring Street office until around 1910, when F. J. Preece and Company, wholesale woollen and trimming merchants, took possession. In 1911 Crotty and Aiken, estate agents and property auctioneers — who had previously operated from the Commercial Buildings across Waring Street — occupied the Donegall Street unit and converted the shop and an office into an auction market room. They continued to operate from Overland House until at least the 1940s. The architectural firm E. and J. Byrne also occupied one of the upper offices between approximately 1897 and 1930. By the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930, the building's total rateable value had declined further to £252 5s.

Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the Waring Street unit had been converted back into office premises by a Mr William Johnston, and the value of Overland House and its upper offices was assessed at £383. During the Second World War, the building sustained only superficial damage in the Belfast Blitz of 1941, which severely damaged the neighbouring Northern Whig building and many nearby structures on Bridge Street, Waring Street, and High Street. Crotty and Aiken continued to operate from the building during the war years. By the 1950s the Donegall Street ground-floor unit was occupied by William McCalla and Company Limited as offices, with McCalla also taking the Waring Street unit from 1958. By the end of the Second General Revaluation covering 1956–72, Overland House was valued at £833.

By 1993 the ground floor had long been in use as the Cornerhouse Restaurant. In that year the site lay vacant, and a survey image from 1995 records the ground floor boarded up and the entire building, along with the adjoining property at 3 Donegall Street, in a state of disrepair. The building was listed in 1996. Around 2006, with the building having been vacant for at least a decade, the interiors of nos 1–3 Donegall Street were completely demolished, retaining only the original façades. As part of a major reconstruction project around 2008, new premises were built behind and supporting the retained façades, which now front the Premier Inn Hotel; the ground floor of no. 3 forms part of the Four Corners Bar and Restaurant, while the upper floors are hotel rooms.

SETTING

The building occupies a prominent corner position at a major intersection in the Cathedral Quarter, sitting directly on the pavement on the north side of Waring Street and turning into Donegall Street, where it adjoins the listed building at 3 Donegall Street. On the opposite side of Waring Street stand two further listed buildings. Facing across Donegall Street is the Northern Bank (formerly the Old Assembly Rooms).