Riddel Building, 87-91 Ann Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1

The Riddel Building is a mid-Victorian polychrome brick warehouse designed by Thomas Jackson & Sons, built between 1865 and 1867 for John Riddel & Son, wholesale iron, steel, tinplate and metal merchants. It is located on Ann Street in Belfast city centre, close to the River Lagan and adjacent to the former docks where ironmongers and ship's chandlers were established.

The building is a four-storey structure with seven bays, constructed in patent white bricks by Allan & Mann of Glasgow, with the ground floor fronting in Newry granite. The extraordinary interior comprises five floors of galleries supported on cast iron columns and beams, lit originally by a cast iron and glass roof over a central courtyard. This Piranesian arrangement of galleried interior space is rare for a warehouse in Belfast and survives with remarkable completeness. Most of the original flooring remains intact, along with varied arrangements of steps between the different levels, and the cast iron columns and atrium are substantially unaltered. The central courtyard was originally paved with wooden setts to deaden sound, and goods entered via the central archway over a weighbridge, from which metal trams transported stock to the rear premises.

The front elevation is symmetrical and richly detailed. The ground floor features Newry granite arches with elaborately carved sandstone reveals and capitals, and carved roundels set in the spandrels between openings. The carved decoration includes water-lilies, ivy, columbine and shamrock on the arcade reveals, with floral capitals and rosettes adorning the piers. The central bay is wider with a segmental head and a sheeted timber carriageway door. At first floor, round-headed windows have substantial stone reveals and keystones, with a smaller pair in the central bay. The second floor has smaller segmental-headed windows with polychrome brick heads, while the third floor features smaller round-headed windows paired under red and black brick arches, with a triplet window in the central bay. Above a deep cornice sits a parapet pierced between the structural openings. The stonework employed includes Newry granodiorite to the ground floor, with Dungannon sandstone, Armagh limestone and Whitehaven redstone used elsewhere. A cast iron parapet surmounts the elevation. The roof is slate, with tall yellow brick chimneystacks visible from street level. Some cast iron rainwater goods survive.

The side elevation to the west is visible in red common brick. The eastern side is a party wall. The rear elevation is abutted by smaller buildings within the Ann Street Police Service of Northern Ireland precinct and is fully abutted to the east by an adjoining red brick former bank. Rectangular double-hung timber sash windows survive at second floor rear level; first floor rear windows are blocked. The windows and ground floor arcades were originally glazed with plate glass.

The building was erected at a cost exceeding £6,000. The architect Anthony Jackson (rather than his father Thomas, according to Larmour) designed the structure with contractor William Nimick of Holywood. The warehouse first appears on the large-scale town plan of Belfast dating from 1871-73. When first built, the premises were said to have had 'no superior in the three kingdoms' and the business carried on there was described as 'one of the most important and representative of its kind in the North of Ireland'. The stores held vast stocks of iron, steel, tinplate, zinc and other patent metals.

John Riddel & Son's origins trace to circa 1830, when the business was founded under the name of Messrs Edward Porter & Son in premises in Hamilton's Court. In 1851, William Riddel JP, who had been running an ironmongery business with his father John Riddel in High Street, purchased the stock and goodwill from the Porters and renamed the enterprise John Riddel & Son. The business was subsequently developed and expanded in premises on Ann Street. In 1865, Riddel purchased the site and two adjoining plots from the Corporation of Belfast and commissioned the present warehouse.

John Riddel & Son remained in the building until 1976, when they relocated to premises elsewhere in Belfast. The company continues to operate under the same name, now trading in wholesale hardware from Lisburn. The warehouse building has been vacant since the 1970s, apart from minor use by the neighbouring Police Service of Northern Ireland, and has appeared on the Built Heritage at Risk register since its first edition. Although most of the internal fittings have been removed, the plan form survives intact, making this a rare and unusually complete survivor of a Victorian warehouse interior in Belfast and a fine example of the type, representing the city's mercantile history and the architectural practice of Thomas Jackson & Sons.