Belfast Royal Academy, Cliftonville Road, Belfast, BT14 6JL

Belfast Royal Academy is a High Victorian two-storey building with attic and basement, constructed between 1878 and 1880 to designs by architect Robert Young of Young & Mackenzie. It was built as a purpose-built school by the local contractor Thomas Dixon & Sons. The building is Grade B1 listed and remains part of Belfast Royal Academy on the north side of Cliftonville Road, surrounded by modern two to four storey school buildings.

The structure is designed in Gothic-Scottish Baronial style with a rectangular plan, featuring a prominent four-stage tower to the front and circular turrets at the end of both wings. The pitched natural slate roof is finished with roll-top red clay ridge tiles, raised stone verges to gables with kneelers and cut-stone coping. Rectangular section chimney stacks have corbelled coping and clay chimney pots. The guttering is ogee cast iron discharging to circular downpipes. The walls are laid in random-coursed tooled ashlar Scrabo Sandstone with cut stone dressings. A moulded string course runs between ground and first floor levels.

Windows throughout are generally timber sash with horizontally paned glazing. The basement has depressed three-centred arch windows with multi-paned timber lights. Ground floor features two or three-part square-headed mullioned windows with splayed cills and relieving arches above. First floor windows are predominantly two or three-part round-arched stone mullioned with splayed cills. Stone transoms are located two-thirds along the overall height of windows. Dormer windows to the south have raised stone verges and cut stone kneelers with Tudor arch openings and moulded hoods. Northern dormers feature projecting bracketed timber gablets above square-headed openings.

The principal south-facing elevation is symmetrical with a central square-plan tower flanked by four-bay wide wings. The tower is four-staged with diagonal buttresses topped by octagonal pinnacles. The Tudor-arched door opening to the first stage features a deep moulded surround with decorative carved foliate detail in the architrave and spandrels. The spandrels are inscribed with dates 1786 to the left and 1881 to the right, referring to the institution's founding and the building's completion. A double-leaf timber panelled door opens onto polygonal-plan nosed steps.

The first-stage tower contains a three-sided canted oriel window with round-arched sash windows, stone transoms and mullions, and roundels above with coloured leaded panes. Two small round-arched windows to the second stage carry flat-arched moulded hoods. Two Tudor-arched traceried louvered openings occupy the third stage on all four elevations. The tower is topped with castellations and octagonal corner pinnacles, with intricate carved foliate details at the cornice level and at the junction between pinnacles and supporting buttresses.

The four-bay wings flanking the tower are separated by four-stage buttresses topped by engaged pinnacles. A corbelled cornice between first floor and attic carries head and foliate carvings, with dormer windows and castellations above. Projecting gables to each end contain attached round stair towers with small ogee arch openings, corbelled cornicing with foliate carving, conical slated roofs and metal weather vanes.

The west elevation comprises the south turret, a projecting gabled bay flanked by three-stage diagonal buttresses, and a recessed bay to the north. The gabled bay has paired square-headed mullioned windows to ground and first floors, and three-part round-arched windows to the attic. Square-headed door openings on the south face lead to a narrow metal bridge with railings connecting the gable to the turret at first floor level. A square-headed door with chamfered dressed stone surround opens to the recessed bay at ground floor, with a timber panelled door onto a raised stone platform accessed by stone steps.

The east elevation mirrors the west, with the south turret, projecting gabled bay with paired square-headed mullioned windows to ground and first floors, and three-part round-arched windows to the attic. A part-glazed link corridor connects the gable to the turret at attic level, with stone steps to a ground floor door.

The north rear elevation is symmetrical, featuring a central projecting gabled return flanked by four-bay wide wings with shallow projecting gabled bays and recessed bays. The central return has a small square-headed basement window, four-part first floor window and four-part Tudor-arch traceried window to the second floor with stained leaded glazing. Square-headed door openings at ground floor face east and west, with paired square-headed windows above. The east-facing opening has a double-leaf timber panelled door onto six steps; the west has a single-leaf door. Floor levels to the return are lower than those on the main elevation.

The west wing has segmental arched basement openings with a window to the first and fourth bays and door openings to the remainder with double-leaf glazed timber doors. Three-part square-headed mullioned windows to ground and first floors carry relieving arches above. The two-bay west gable has segmental arched basement openings with a window to the east bay and a door with square-headed glazed timber door to the west. Paired square-headed mullioned windows occupy each bay at ground and first floors, with a three-part round-arched window to the attic, taller at the centre. The recessed bay to the west has square-headed windows and a square-headed door opening with a replacement glazed timber door to ground floor. The two-bay east gable mirrors the west gable configuration with segmental arched basement openings, paired square-headed mullioned windows to ground and first floors, and a four-part traceried first floor window with a three-part round-arched attic window taller at the centre.

The building sits within a landscaped school site with tarmaced parking to the south and a tarmaced yard to the north. The main road frontage is defined by random-coursed tooled ashlar Scrabo sandstone topped by vertically stacked stone coping and tall metal fencing. The main gateway consists of two round-section pillars topped by conical stone coping and ball finials. The southeast gateway has two square-section pillars with cut-stone coping and gablets, while the southwest gateway features round-section pillars with rounded stone coping.