5 Murray Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 5HD

This asymmetrical terraced six-storey commercial building in red brick and stone was constructed between 1908 and 1910 to designs by architect James A Hanna. It was built for W R Nelson & Co Ltd, manufacturers of lawns, linen and cambric handkerchiefs, as part of a major complex of four similar warehouse buildings (including numbers 4 and 6 Murray Street and numbers 13-17 Grosvenor Road) that reflected the growth of the textile industry in early twentieth-century Belfast. The buildings are significant works by a notable Edwardian-era architect and are considered among the most interesting of the period.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing north and located in a cul-de-sac on the west side of College Square East, overlooking the grounds of the Royal Academical Institution. Machine-made red brick walling is laid in English garden wall bond, with the roof concealed behind a red brick parapet wall with sandstone coping. The sandstone ashlar ground floor features three tripartite window openings surmounted by a deep moulded cornice with raised plinth course.

The asymmetrical front elevation is four windows wide. To the left bay is a three-tier canted oriel window positioned above the principal entrance. The ground floor entrance is a round-headed door opening with a corbelled base, voussoired head with three keystones flanked by angled mouldings, and foliate corbelled bases below impost level. The remaining openings have square-headed window frames in sandstone with moulded sandstone sills. The central two windows are largely quadripartite, while those to the right bay are bipartite. The fourth floor features a horizontal quadripartite window comprising a series of columns with cushion capitals resting on a single bracketed sill course with frieze and cornice over. The decorative stone detailing throughout employs a loosely Jacobethan idiom, repeated in the adjoining buildings.

Although the loss of original windows compromises the external appearance, much historic fabric survives. A 1917 photograph published in the Irish Builder shows the building has been considerably altered since construction, principally at the roof line.

The east side elevation is abutted by the adjoining building at number 4, and the west side by number 6 and the building fronting Grosvenor Road. The south rear elevation features glazed brick walling with square-headed window openings and flush concrete sills and lintel courses.

The building entered valuation records in 1911 as an office, warehouse and laundry valued at £320. W R Nelson & Co, established in 1865, had operated a weaving factory in Lurgan employing 750 hands by the 1890s, with finishing premises in Bedford Street from 1870 where staff of 50 folded and ornamented handkerchiefs for sale to customers in London, Paris, Manchester, Dublin and Hamburg. The success of their enterprise led to successive relocations to Linenhall Street and then to the present building. W R Nelson & Co vacated by 1930 and were followed by John Fulton Ltd, wholesale warehousemen, then by the Bessbrook Spinning Company who remained until the 1970s. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive took over the building in the 1980s, sharing it with various other organisations and businesses. The building has since been converted to office use.