35 Castle Street, Lisburn, County Antrim, BT27 4SP

Wallace House (also known as Castle House), 35 Castle Street, Lisburn

Wallace House is a detached, five-bay, two-storey-over-basement neo-classical former private residence with an attic storey, built around 1878–1880 on the north side of Castle Street, facing south and set slightly back from the street within its own grounds. It was designed by Thomas Benjamin Ambler, architect of Leeds — who had previously remodelled Hertford House in London for the same client — and built for Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), baronet, philanthropist and art collector, as his Lisburn home. Construction was supervised by Wallace's local surveyor and engineer, John MacHenry, who is believed to have designed some of the details. The building was restored in 1993 and subsequently converted for use as the Municipal Technical Institute in 1913, later becoming South Eastern Regional College, before being vacated when the college moved to new premises. It has group value with the other listed buildings and structures in Lisburn erected by the Wallace family.

EXTERIOR

The front elevation is faced in red brick laid in Flemish bond, with rusticated quoins and rusticated stone walling below the ground-floor sill course, all set on a moulded stucco plinth course. A string course runs below the continuous first-floor sill course, and the elevation is topped by an architrave, frieze, and deep dentilated cornice with scrolled modillions and lead lining, below a balustraded parapet wall.

The roof is finished in natural slate with a mansard profile. The upper section has roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and a pair of rendered and redbrick profiled chimneystacks; the lower section has fish-scale slates, lead ridges, and lead-lined segmental-headed dormers set behind the balustraded parapet, with further brick chimneystacks to either end, detailed to match. Cast-iron square-profile downpipes break through the parapet walls to the rear and side elevations.

Window openings throughout are square-headed with moulded architrave surrounds and moulded sills, fitted with 6/6 timber sash windows unless otherwise noted.

The symmetrical five-bay front elevation has a single-bay shallow breakfront at the centre, carrying a prostyle tetrastyle Doric portico in red sandstone with a full entablature and balustraded parapet. The columns rest on a sandstone plinth, and the central square-headed door opening contains a pair of glazed timber panelled doors with an overlight, flanked by Doric sandstone pilasters, a pair of slender sidelights, and a further pair of pilasters. Three stone steps lead down from the door to the front cobble-lock area. The ground-floor windows have pediments supported on scrolled console brackets; the first-floor windows have a simple cornice above. Opening onto the roof of the portico is a tripartite window with a segmental pediment supported on scrolled console brackets to the centre, with double-leaf glazed doors and overlight, flanked by a pair of 2/2 sidelights.

The west side elevation has a breakfront at either end corresponding to the chimney breasts, with quoins. At first-floor level in the centre bay is a Palladian window opening with fluted pilasters, Corinthian capitals, a modillion cornice, and archivolt over. At ground-floor level is a pedimented Doric doorcase with a round-headed door opening, a timber flat-panelled door, and sidelights. This elevation is now largely overshadowed by a large extension to the neighbouring property, and an external steel fire escape is fixed to the wall. To the west, a curved wing wall in brick with stone dressings connects the house to the adjacent property, partly enclosing the front garden.

The north garden elevation has a breakfront matching that of the front elevation and features a single-storey semi-circular bow with fluted pilasters on a continuous moulded sill course and rusticated walling rising to a full Doric entablature, with an iron railing above. The bow contains curved 6/6 timber sash windows and double-leaf glazed doors at the centre, opening onto a circular stone-clad platform with nosed steps leading to a perron, all originally fitted with decorative cast-iron railings, though most of these have been removed or broken at the steps. Above the bow is a tripartite window with lugged architrave surrounds and double-leaf glazed doors flanked by 2/2 sidelights. The remaining window openings on this elevation have lugged architrave surrounds, with cornices to the ground-floor openings only.

The east side elevation is multi-bay and is partly rendered at the north end, where it is abutted by a glazed passageway connecting the house to a neighbouring 1960s educational building.

The building is enclosed to Castle Street by replacement steel railings on a low replacement brick wall with replacement steel gates. A multi-bay, multi-storey brick and concrete college building dating from around 1965 stands to the east, enclosed by the same railings and backing onto Wallace Avenue to the north.

INTERIOR

The building was designed around a central, top-lit, double-height galleried hall, which was clearly intended for the display of large paintings and other works of art and forms the most important space in the house. This hall is flanked by a large staircase which, though substantial, is positioned to one side and is subordinate to the central hall. The interior retains most of its original features and contains some of the finest decorative work in Lisburn, combining high-quality classical decoration executed in both plaster and timber. The excellent woodwork of the doors and classical detailing can be admired in the entrance hall, from which central double doors give access to the great galleried hall. Beyond this lies a central saloon with a curved bow window overlooking the rear garden. Below the bow window, a double-curved staircase descends to an inner formal garden arranged on seven flights of steps, leading out to wider parkland that once contained extensive glasshouses.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Sir Richard Wallace was born in 1818 and spent much of his early life in Paris, where his father, Lord Hertford, was also living and amassing a significant art collection. Wallace served as his father's secretary and saleroom agent. When Lord Hertford died in 1870, Wallace inherited his collections and his unentailed property in Paris, London, and Ireland. He used his fortune extensively in philanthropic works — most notably during the Prussian siege of Paris in 1870–71, when he gave £12,000 towards a field hospital and subscribed £4,000 for victims of shelling. For these acts he was made a member of the Légion d'honneur and in August 1871 received a baronetcy from Queen Victoria. He subsequently presented the city of Paris with fifty cast-iron drinking fountains, which remain in use today and are known as wallaces. In February 1873 he made a celebrated visit to Lisburn, where he received a tumultuous welcome, his father having had little involvement with his Irish estates. Wallace continued to extend his father's art collection and moved much of it from Paris to Hertford House in London. He established his right to the Hertford estates in Ireland after some litigation and served as Conservative MP for Lisburn from 1873 to 1885.

Wallace became the principal benefactor of Lisburn, funding improvements to the water supply as well as the construction of Assembly Rooms, a court house (now demolished), and a school that survives as Wallace High School. He also commissioned Thomas Ambler — the same architect who had remodelled Hertford House — to design Castle House. Wallace had hoped that his son Edmond would take up residence in Lisburn, but this was not to be, and Castle House was only rarely used. The house was designed along a great axial composition: a visitor arriving at the front gate would travel along the axis, through the front garden, under the portico, into the entrance hall, and through to the galleried hall and the rear saloon, before descending through the garden to the wider grounds beyond. To achieve this effect, an earlier house on the site — one of two buildings demolished — was cleared to set the new house back from the street, using the neighbouring buildings as a frame in a characteristically Victorian manner. One of the demolished buildings was known as Marquis House and had been occupied by Dean Stannus as the Marquess of Hertford's agent.

Although Castle House and Hertford House are often said to be identical, they differ in important respects. Hertford House is substantially larger with a more complex façade, and was not built from scratch for Wallace but was remodelled from a large house originally built for the Duke of Manchester a century earlier. At Hertford House, the front door leads directly to a great central double-return staircase; at Castle House, the staircase is large but subsidiary to the central galleried hall.

Valuation records show the house under construction in 1878, with a note reading "two houses taken down and a new house in progress" and "Sir Richard Wallace in fee, house (in progress) and garden." By 1881 the completed house was valued at £215. That same year "offices" and a "pleasure ground" are added to the description. By 1883 a "new coach house with a storey and a half over" had been added to the plot and the value increased to £235.

Wallace died in 1890. His estate and art collection passed to his wife, Lady Wallace, who on her death in 1897 bequeathed the contents of Hertford House to the nation as the Wallace Collection, with Hertford House itself becoming the museum in which the collection is now housed. The citizens of Lisburn erected a monument to Sir Richard Wallace in Castle Gardens, where one of two Wallace fountains in the city can also be found.

In 1899 the property was taken over by Sir John Murray Scott, who had been Lady Wallace's secretary and inherited much of her property and estates on her death. It is recorded that Scott stripped the house of its 18th-century fireplaces, tapestries, furniture, and other objects of art. Scott does not appear to have ever lived in the house, and he died in 1912 leaving it unoccupied. By 1910 the valuation had fallen from £230 to £200, and a valuation fieldmap dating from 1907 to around 1927 captions the house "Castle House." In 1914 it opened as the Municipal Technical Institute. By 1915 it was listed as the Technical School and garden, occupied and owned in fee by Lisburn Urban District Council, and valued at £117. In 1923 two ground-floor rooms were recorded as being used as an employment exchange. The house continued in use as a technical college until it was recently vacated.

SETTING

The building overlooks Castle Gardens to the south — both the gardens and the house having been created and given to the city by Sir Richard Wallace. It sits within its own grounds on the north side of Castle Street, enclosed to the street by replacement steel railings on a low replacement brick wall with replacement steel gates.