56-58 Donegall Place, Donegall Square North, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 5BB

Robinson & Cleaver's Former Department Store, Donegall Place and Donegall Square North, Belfast

This imposing former linen warehouse — later a major department store — was built around 1886 to 1888 to designs by the Belfast architectural firm Young & Mackenzie, founded in 1867 or 1868 by Robert Young (1822–1917) and his former student John Mackenzie (1844–1917). The building stands on a prominent corner site at the junction of Donegall Place and Donegall Square North, directly opposite Belfast City Hall. It is an asymmetrical, L-shaped structure of six storeys with an attic, clad throughout in Scrabo sandstone ashlar with polished Scottish granite at ground floor level. The building's distinctive silhouette — dominated by a corner clock tower rising to 150 feet, with copper-domed turrets framing each elevation — makes it one of the most recognisable landmarks at the commercial heart of Belfast, and a powerful expression of the wealth and ambition of the city in the late 19th century.

Architectural Overview

The principal elevation faces west onto Donegall Place and is four windows wide with alternating shallow canted bays. The secondary elevation faces south onto Donegall Square and is six windows wide, set back slightly from the street with an advanced ground floor. The two elevations meet at a curved corner that projects beyond the south elevation. The roofline is flat with natural slate mansard-type pitches to the attic storey on both principal elevations, incorporating natural slate and lead-lined lean-to dormers set behind the parapet. Rainwater goods are concealed.

The curved corner is formed by a sandstone drum housing a clock face, surmounted by a dentilled cornice and a tempietto with slender round-headed openings. These openings are flanked by engaged polished granite Corinthian columns supporting a full dentilled entablature, above which rises a copper-lined, attenuated ogee dome with finial. Both elevations are terminated by octagonal turrets with slender round-headed window openings, a dentilled frieze, and copper-lined ogee domes, all set behind the parapet. The balustrade parapet has a moulded coping punctuated by squat piers surmounted by segmental pediments with fluted frieze blocks and anthemion ornament. At the centre of each elevation, the balustrade incorporates carved sandstone lettering reading "ROBINSON & CLEAVER".

The sandstone ashlar walling is channel-rusticated to the first floor, surmounted by a heavy dentilled cornice over the fourth floor. Window openings are tripartite throughout, framed by polished granite columns — Doric to the third, fourth and fifth floors, and Ionic to the first and second floors — rising from continuous sill courses and fitted with timber casement windows. The fourth and fifth floor windows are square-headed, with bipartite arched central lights to the fifth floor. The third floor windows are round-headed with fluted archivolts and keystones, and feature a central balconette supported on figurative brackets framing a carved panel. Second floor windows are square-headed. First floor windows have a central round-headed light flanked by square-headed sidelights, surmounted by a cornice carried on ancons with a central broken pediment and ball finial.

Window bays are framed by full-height pilasters: decorative panels and busts to the first floor, fluted with garlands to the second floor, and channel-rusticated to the third and fourth floors — all corresponding to the squat piers at parapet level. The curved corner has tripartite window openings at each level matching those on the principal elevations, including a curved display window at ground floor level, and flanked by a sidelight on each side. To the south elevation, a further pair of square-headed window openings with unadorned surrounds returns onto the east side elevation.

Ground Floor and Shopfronts

The ground floor of both principal elevations consists of a series of retail units with delicate timber-framed glazing surmounted by a polished granite fascia with incised lettering reading "ROBINSON & CLEAVER Ltd". The shopfronts are flanked by polished granite pilasters with fluted capitals, rising to a full-span dentilled cornice at the base of the balustrade above. The entrance bay to the right of the south elevation has a mid-20th-century brass-framed glazed entrance screen. On the west elevation, the shopfront to the right matches this treatment, while the remaining units have replacement late-20th-century shopfronts, though the polished granite pilasters have been retained.

Side Elevations

The north side elevation is abutted by an early 21st-century infill building. The east side elevation is functional in character, with an advanced central section clad in ceramic tiles and segmental-headed window openings with masonry sills and some timber sash windows.

Setting

The building occupies one of the most conspicuous corner sites in Belfast city centre, at the junction of Donegall Square North and Donegall Place, facing Belfast City Hall. Steel gates enclose the east side elevation, providing vehicular access. The building lies within a conservation area.

Carved Decoration

The façade is adorned with over fifty carved heads and decorative sculpture, the work of Harry Hems (1842–1915), an English sculptor based in Exeter whose work was exported worldwide. These carvings were designed to represent the firm's prominent regular patrons and included likenesses of Queen Victoria, the German Kaiser, the Maharajah of Cooch Behar, George Washington (representing the export of the firm's goods to America), and Lady Dufferin of Clandeboye, among many others.

Historical Background

Robinson & Cleaver was established by Edward Robinson and John Cleaver in 1874, with their first premises on Castle Place selling Irish linen and tweed. Such was the demand for their goods that by 1887, one third of all packages leaving Belfast were said to be from Robinson & Cleaver's. To accommodate their expanding business, construction of the new store began in 1886 on the former site of three three-storey private residences — among the last private dwellings on Donegall Place — which had belonged to Lieutenant Colonel John Francis Ferguson, who died in 1879. The building was completed in the spring of 1888 at a cost of nearly £50,000, with the construction carried out by H. & J. Martin, a local Belfast firm. The Irish Builder recorded that the construction consumed 30,000 cubic feet of sandstone, 6,000 cubic feet of concrete, 4,300 square feet of polished Scottish granite, and 30,000 square feet of polished teak and mahogany. When first completed, the Donegall Place façade comprised only the first three bays; a fourth bay was added around 1890 when an adjacent building was demolished and its site became available, a fact confirmed by a photograph taken in that year.

The building was originally known as the Royal Irish Linen Warehouse. When it appeared in the Annual Revisions of 1888 it was valued at £1,100, rising to £1,450 by 1894 following the addition of the fourth bay, and increasing substantially to £2,700 under the Belfast Revaluation of 1900. By the time of the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 the value had risen to £4,800, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation in 1972 it stood at £9,440.

For Young & Mackenzie — previously known almost exclusively for ecclesiastical work — Robinson & Cleaver's represented a decisive move into large-scale commercial architecture. Their earlier Scottish Provident Building of 1878 on Donegall Square West had been their most significant commercial contract prior to this, and Charles Brett has described Robinson & Cleaver's as the firm's "breakthrough into the commercial field." The firm went on to design other major Belfast buildings including Anderson & McAuley's department store at the opposite end of Donegall Place, the Ocean Building on Donegall Square East, and the Scottish Provident Building on Donegall Square West.

One of the building's celebrated interior features was a grand staircase of white Sicilian marble on the ground floor, which incorporated two statues representing Britannia and Erin, set on short Doric columns serving as newel posts.

The store's reception was not universally positive on completion: although many considered it an ornament to Belfast, others felt that the gigantic structure disfigured a corner that had until the mid-Victorian period been occupied by quiet residential dwellings.

By the 1950s, following the general international decline of the textile industry in the interwar years, Robinson & Cleaver's had reinvented itself as a general department store, selling clothing, homeware, perfume and many other goods. In 1956 it also contained individual commercial shop units, storerooms, and offices on the upper floors. The department store continued to trade for a full century, closing in 1984 following a prolonged decline in the firm's fortunes. The building was listed in 1979. In 1963 it was extensively renovated, and in 1987 it was converted into individual shop premises — renamed Cleaver House — by the architects Hobart & Heron, and subsequently occupied by Next and Principles, with the remaining space leased as offices. During the late 1980s renovations, the marble staircase was removed and is now reported to be in a private mansion. Other internal fabric and detailing was also lost at this time, though the majority of the shopfronts and most of the external detailing have survived. The building continues to be used as commercial and office space.