Beechmount House, Coláiste Feirste, (Formerly Our Lady's Convent), 7 Beechview Park, Falls Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT12 7PY

Beechmount House is a two-storey house with attic, built in the Georgian style and dating from around 1778, making it one of the oldest surviving residences in Belfast. The architect is unknown. It stands on an elevated site at the top of Beechview Park, within what was formerly the Beechmount Estate on the Falls Road, and is now encompassed within the campus of Coláiste Feirste, Belfast's only Irish-language medium secondary school.

The house has a rectangular plan with a symmetrical principal elevation facing east. A single-storey Doric portico at the centre bay sits on a raised platform approached by three stone steps; two Doric columns, flanked by square pillars, support an entablature with triglyphs, a moulded cornice and a raised parapet. The doorway beneath has a depressed arch opening with a square-headed timber door, a glazed fanlight and sidelights. The portico has a window to each side with moulded architraves. Three further windows with moulded architraves occupy the first floor above the portico. Three-sided two-storey canted bays terminate each end of the principal elevation, each topped with a hipped natural slate roof, red clay roll-top ridge tiles and a finial.

The roof throughout is natural slate with raised verges, red clay roll-top ridge tiles, and skylights to the rear slope. Four rectangular rendered chimney stacks with corbelled coping and red clay chimney pots rise above the roofline. A moulded eaves cornice supports cast-iron ogee guttering discharging to rectangular downpipes on the principal elevation and circular downpipes to the rear. The walling is rendered brick with a projecting chamfered plinth.

Window openings are square-headed with painted cills. Ground floor windows have double-hung timber sash windows; first floor windows have been replaced with top-hung uPVC casement windows, except where noted otherwise.

The north elevation is gabled with a shallow projecting chimney breast. The south elevation is similarly gabled with a shallow projecting chimney to the centre, and is abutted to the west by a modern single-storey building of little architectural interest.

To the rear, the building extends in an L-shaped two-storey return facing west. The north bay of the rear elevation retains its original timber sash windows. The remaining bays project from the rear wall with a lowered eaves level and a cat-slide roof, with square-headed windows and projecting painted cills fitted with top-hung uPVC casements. A square-plan stair projection has eaves projecting beyond the adjacent bays, round-arched windows to the ground floor and first floor landings, and a hipped roof. The north-facing elevation of the L-shaped wing is smooth rendered and was added around 2004, with a square-headed double-leaf modern door at ground floor and three modern square-headed windows above. A red-brick bay at the west end connects the wing to the adjacent chapel; this bay, which features paired square-headed windows with stained leaded glazing at ground floor level, was built at the same time as the chapel, while the glazed corner screen at first floor level was added with the 2004 extension.

Despite numerous internal alterations and the replacement of most upper-floor windows with uPVC units, the house retains its original ground floor layout, an impressive staircase, original door frames, and decorative plasterwork in many of the reception rooms.

The house is connected by the rear return to a vaulted red-brick chapel dating from the 1930s (listed separately) and beyond that to a former hospital building on an E-shaped plan (also listed separately), both of which have been converted to library and classroom use. The wider campus includes a number of modern purpose-built school buildings.

To the front of the house is a tarmacked car parking area. The rear yard is landscaped with shrubs, planting, a grassed area and a winding pathway. It is enclosed to the east and south by the house and rear return, to the west by the former chapel, and to the north by a rendered stepped masonry wall with stone coping. This north boundary wall sits just one metre from the north gable, effectively forming a courtyard enclosure to the rear.

The setting has been somewhat diminished by the subdivision of the former estate to accommodate a new nursing home to the north of Beechmount House. This development severed the original access road that swept from the Falls Road up through the estate to the front of the house, removing much of the intended grandeur of approach.

The house has a long and well-documented history. A house named Beechmount on what is now the Falls Road appears on Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland of 1778, where the owner is recorded as Wallace Esq. (no forename given), though there is no certainty that this is the same building standing today. The Reverend Patrick Vance, minister of the Second Presbyterian Congregation in Belfast between 1791 and 1800, subsequently occupied the house. Vance was the great-grandfather of the sculptor Albert Bruce-Joy, whose mother had been born at Beechmount. Vance's occupation appears to have been temporary, as the Wallaces are again recorded as resident in the early 19th century — Robert Wallace is listed as occupier in 1823. In October 1831, when a Roger Moore was the occupier, Beechmount was advertised for letting, and again the following March.

The house appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey maps as an oblong building with an L-shaped rear return, and is also depicted on the 1816 Legg map, already showing the canted end bays. The First Valuation fieldbook of around 1835 names Lewis Reford (also spelled Redford) Esq. as the occupier, with a rateable value of £50 placed on the buildings. The main house was coded 1B+ and its dimensions recorded as 81 feet long, 25½ feet broad and 22½ feet high to the eaves. Reford was a wholesale grocer and wine merchant with premises in High Street and later Waring Street, and was one of the original guardians of the Belfast Poor Law Union in 1839. His will was probated in the Prerogative Court in Dublin in 1852.

Griffith's Valuation of around 1860 shows Beechmount in the possession of John Riddel, who was leasing it from Hill Hamilton. The property comprised a house, gate-house, office and land extending to just under 29 acres, with the buildings valued at £65. John Riddel had founded a hardware business at Chichester Quay in the early 19th century, later relocated to the Iron Warehouse in Ann Street. He died in 1870. The house continued to be occupied by several of his children. By 1885 the gate-house was valued separately at £5, reducing the valuation of the remaining buildings to £60. The 1901 census records three Riddel siblings living at Beechmount: Samuel, aged 67, Eliza, aged 53, and Isabella, aged 49 (though in actuality Eliza would have been 70 and Isabella 65). None was married; all belonged to the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church. Three domestic servants — a cook, a parlour maid, and a housemaid — were also resident. Twenty-four rooms were occupied and sixteen windows faced the front. Samuel Riddel died in 1903, Isabella in 1918, and Eliza in 1924. The sisters founded and endowed Riddel Hall at Queen's University Belfast, and also donated funds for the Riddel ward at the Royal Victoria Hospital. At some point before 1930 the Valuation Revision Books record the possession of the house as the representatives of Elizabeth Riddel.

In 1932 Beechmount was purchased by the Catholic bishop Dr Mageean. On 15 September 1932 he celebrated Mass there and formally handed the property over to the Sisters of Mercy. It was named Our Lady's Hospital and used to provide accommodation for elderly patients and invalids who could not be cared for at the Mater Hospital due to lack of space. The annual report of the Mater Hospital for 1932 describes it as a hospital for patients whose conditions were of too prolonged a duration for an ordinary hospital, noting that this service had previously been carried on at the old Hospice on the Crumlin Road. Because the original house was insufficiently large to meet the needs of the hospital, a purpose-built hospital building was constructed alongside it; by 1935 this red-brick E-plan building, similar in character to the Mater but smaller in scale, had been completed. A chapel was also built at this time. The architect of both the hospital building and the chapel was Frank McArdle, and the total cost was £50,000. After the hospital was completed, the old house became the residence for the Sisters and staff. Early in 1974 a large part of the grounds was levelled to provide playing fields for a new extension to St Mary's Training College. By 1976 the hospital had four large and twelve small wards and could cater for 140 patients. By the 1980s it was recognised that the hospital required a major upgrade, and in 1990 the decision was made to build a new nursing home. The existing buildings were subsequently transferred to the trustees of the Irish-speaking secondary school in west Belfast, previously known as Méanscoil Feirste and now as Coláiste Feirste.