Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB26/30/024 B

Address :
St Malachy's Primary School Sussex Place Belfast BT2 8LN

Townland:
Town Parks

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Survey 2:
B1

Date of Listing:
28/03/1988 00:00:00

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Recreational Club

Former Use
School

Conservation Area:
Yes

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
No

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OS Map No:
130/13SE

IG Ref:
J3405 7387

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Owner Category

Exterior Description And Setting

A non-symmetrical two-storey red brick Venetian Gothic-styled former school building of 1878 by Timothy Hevey, with three-stage tower, facing south onto Sussex Place, and conjoined three storey gable fronted red brick former warehouse building to rear facing west onto Rathbone Street. The whole is rectangular on plan with extensions to east side and tower at south east corner. The warehouse, built c1869 predates the school. The block is attached to the east to St Malachy's Convent. The former school has pitched natural slate roof, pyramidal to tower; stone skew tables on kneeler stones; apex stone; ogee cast iron rainwater goods. Walling is Flemish bonded red brick with a series of sandstone platbands corresponding to cill and window arch springing levels. Windows are generally Gothic-arched replacement timber casements, with occasional 1/1 timber sash; some windows covered with sheet metal. Cills are sandstone, chamfered to principal elevation, otherwise projecting. Principal elevation faces south to Sussex Place; main gable has three windows to ground floor and a single tri-partite mullioned window to first floor with Gothic sandstone surround and tympanum pierced with a glazed roundel. A narrow link section contains the entrance (covered with sheet metal) which has a sandstone surround and pointed arched tympanum with brick voussoirs over; at upper level is a sandstone plaque carved 'Young Ladies' School'. At right, the tower has a window to ground and first stage, surmounted by a datestone '1878'; upper stage has a paired Gothic opening to each face, with cogged brick ornament to platband at arch-springing level, and timber louvres. West elevation is divided into five bays by full height brick lesene strips; each has an opening to each floor; that to extreme right at ground floor is a door surmounted by ornate carved sandstone Gothic panel reading 'St Malachy's Convent Schools' . The west elevation of the former warehouse section is gabled and also in Flemish-bond. It contains three-levels and its openings are symmetrically arranged, with segmental-headed windows to each floor with fixed four-light timber frames, and a tall central opening which rises through all of the floors and contains an alternating sequence of windows and what were originally goods accesses. Directly above the latter, at the loft level, is an eyebrow window. Only a small section of the right-hand end of the south elevation of the former warehouse section is still visible. Here there is evidence of blocked up windows to each floor. The location of the uppermost window is cut across by the eaves of the school (the original section of the school post-dating the warehouse.) East elevation is abutted by the convent (HB26/30/024A) and could not be accessed, visibility is limted; however there is a narrow full-height extension mid-way, and a modern lean-to infil to ground floor. The east gable of the warehouse section has a central doorway to the ground level, now covered with a recent metal door. Within the doorway reveal on the timber doorframe for the original door is the number '12' in raised numerals. To the right and left of the doorway there is evidence of blocked-up windows. There are original segmental-headed windows to the centre of the first and second floors with another smaller window above these close to the gable apex (all now boarded, but with timber frames still in place). To the left on the first floor is a boarded-up window that appears to be a mid-1900s insertion. To the right on this floor is a large square boarded-over opening, with another directly above, both of which appear to have been inserted post-1926 to serve a fire-escape. The ground floor of this gable (which was once abutted by another structure) is rendered The warehouse yard, to the immediate east, stretches across to Joy Street, where it is enclosed by a tall brick wall (English garden wall bond) with moulded [?concrete] coping and a single pedestrian doorway to the left. Setting: The former school is prominently located on Sussex Place, opening directly onto the pavement. It is abutted by the convent (HB26/30/024A) at right. Modern social housing to opposite side of the road. The pair is located in St Malachy's parish close to the centre of Belfast, and St Malachy's church is nearby. Roof: Natural slate Walling: Red brick Windows: Timber casement / sliding sash RWG: Cast iron

Architects

Hevey, Timothy

Historical Information

The Irish Builder records that construction of the convent adjoining the National School began in 1879 and was completed in 1880. The convent was designed by Alexander McAlister (1821-1897), another leading Catholic architect in Victorian Belfast. Larmour states that the National School was designed by Timothy Hevey (1846-1878) and opened on 24th September 1878, two months before his death. Hevey, a Belfast based architect is described by the Dictionary of Irish Architects as ‘the city’s leading Catholic architect’ (Larmour, p. 47; DIA). The National School was operated by the neighbouring Sisters of the Convent of Mercy; Patton records that the Sisters of Mercy originated in Dublin and arrived in Belfast in 1854, originally establishing a girl’s school at No. 15 Hamilton Street in 1858. Construction of the current school at Sussex Place was funded by Matthew Bowen (proprietor of the Royal Hotel in Donegall Place) after whom the school gained its original name, the Bowen School for Young Ladies (Patton, p. 307). When the school was first constructed the Annual Revisions valued the building at £45, however by c.1880 this had increased substantially to £75 at which it remained until 1905. In 1905 Cromac Ward was valued separately from the rest of Central Belfast for the first time and the National School was subsequently revalued at £100. During this period the 1901 Census Building Return described the convent and National School as a single 1st class building which consisted of 14 rooms, although by the 1911 Census 20 rooms were recorded. In 1909 the value of the school was once more increased to £116; the reason for this series of increases is not known but the school remained valued at this level until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930. In 1935 the government carried out the first general revaluation of property in Northern Ireland which recalculated the value of the school, which was no longer a National School but recorded as ‘St. Malachy’s Convent Public Elementary School,’ at £275. In 1941 St Malachy’s Convent and School escaped damage during the Belfast Blitz although the surrounding Markets area sustained heavy damage during the Luftwaffe raid on the nearby shipyards. The second revaluation of property in Northern Ireland was undertaken a decade after the completion of the war from 1956 by which time the value of the school had increased through inflation to £560; this was decreased under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act to £448 and remained unaltered by the end of the revaluation in 1972. In her history of the Sisters of Mercy, Marie Duddy records that the Sisters of Mercy resided in a house on Alfred Street until the completion of the convent in 1880. The Sisters operated under the National School system, however a room in the building was set aside as a private school for the education of young ladies in French, music and other skills. The Sisters operated this private school room until the turn of the century when it was closed as the room was needed to accommodate increasing attendance of the National School. After the partition of Ireland in 1921 the school no longer operated under the National School System but was renamed St Malachy’s Convent Public Elementary School. The school continued to operate under the supervision of the Sisters of Mercy for over a century; in 1978 the school celebrated its centenary and recognised that in that century over 100 Sisters and 50 lay teachers had taught at the premises. However, the centenary celebrations coincided with the ensuing years of civil unrest. Due to a lack of security in the area attendance at St Malachy’s Girls School decreased from 450 in 1970 to only 190 in the year of the centenary. The school was closed on 23rd June 1987 after 110 years; the remaining pupils (as well as pupils from the nearby boy’s school on Oxford Street) were rehoused in a new building, St Malachy’s Primary School, on Cromac Street (Duddy). With the closure of the school and convent both buildings lay vacant and declined into a state of disrepair (Anderstown News, 25 Nov 2010). Larmour’s illustrated guide of Belfast includes an illustration of both the convent and the adjoining school c. 1987 which shows that the front garden of the convent was originally enclosed behind a brick wall, however this was removed sometime before the First Survey of the buildings in 1988. In 2008 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society included St Malachy’s School and Convent in a list of buildings at risk in Belfast, noting that the pair ‘forms part of an important grouping in the Linen Conservation Area, helping to retain a distinctive sense of place.’ The writer noted that the former National School had been acquired in 2006 by the Belfast Buildings Preservation Trust who carried out holding repairs on the declining school, and recorded that the Trust intended to restore the building for new uses. After the purchase of the building in 2006, the former school was used as the temporary home of St George’s Amateur Boxing Club (Buildings at Risk, p. 49). The building has since passed into private ownership, and the new owners are currently carrying out repairs to the structure [May 2019]. Sources indicate that the northern north end of the school was originally a warehouse, built for William Carson & Sons (‘Tea, wine and grocery merchants’ of Cornmarket), in 1869-70 and is that recorded in the valuation book for the first time in the latter year. At this date the building was accessed from a lane off Little May Street to the north, which was extended southwards in the mid-1870s to become the present Rathbone Street. The valuations state that the Carsons held the property into the mid-1890s; however, they appear to have leased it for at least part of this time, and it was probably the building 'in Rathbone Street, between Joy Street and Alfred Street', that was advertised to let in 1878, and described as a ‘store…size 30 x 40[ft]; floor asphalted; two strong lofts above, with tackle.’ It is also likely that the building had been leased prior to this, and was probably the ‘flour and bran store’ in possession of Edward Rice listed under Rathbone Street in the street directory of 1877. The 1883-84 OS town plan shows a yard between the eastern side of the building and Joy Street, with an additional structure (a separate property) running along the north side of the yard and abutting the east gable of the warehouse. To the north side, between the warehouse and the backs of the dwellings facing into Little May Street, there was a smaller yard, and physical evidence shows that the warehouse originally possessed door and window openings to this side. By 1884 a small two-storey structure (later no.2 Rathbone Street) had been built over the yard, which was initially a ‘laundry and collar manufactory’ run by Thomas Smyth, and, by 1899, a ‘workshop and yard’ in the hands of cabinet makers Wightman (or Whiteman) Bros. The warehouse (subsequently no.4), meanwhile, passed to Robert Ewing a ‘grain and flour merchant’ in 1897. No.2 was converted to ‘St Malachy’s Boys Club’ in 1914, with both it and the warehouse taken over by the school itself in 1926 and forming part of that institution thereafter. No.2, which was converted to a toilet block with ‘hall over’, was demolished in c.2000 References Primary Sources 1. PRONI OS/6/1/61/2 – Second Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1858 2. PRONI OS/6/1/61/3 – Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1901-02 3. PRONI OS/6/1/61/4 – Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1931 4. PRONI OS/6/1/61/5 – Fifth Edition Ordnance Survey Map 1938 5. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/A/1 - Annual Revisions 1863-1881 6. BCC Building Control - Plans of St. Malachy’s School, 1877-1970 7. ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory’, 1877- 1926 8. ‘Northern Whig’, 26 October 1878 9. Irish Builder Vol. 21, 1 September 1879 10. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/A/24 - Annual Revisions 1882-1896 11. PRONI OS/8/30/3/37 - OS town plan of Belfast, 1883-84 12. ‘Northern Whig’, 14 July 1886 13. Fire insurance plan of Belfast, sheet 18, 1896 14. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/A/35 - Annual Revisions 1897-1905 15. PRONI VAL/7/B/14/3 – Valuation of Belfast, 1900 16. Census of Ireland, 1901; 1911 17. PRONI OS/8/30/5A - OS town plan of Belfast, 1901-03 18. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/P/4 - Annual Revisions 1906-1915 19. ‘Irish News and Belfast Morning News’, 10 January 1911 20. PRONI VAL/12/A/7/R/58 – Valuers’ office notebook, 1914-15 21. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/P/8 - Annual Revisions 1915-1930 22. PRONI VAL/3/B/3/22 – First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland 1935 23. PRONI VAL/4/B/7/52 – Second General Revaluation of Northern Ireland 1956-1972 Secondary Sources 1. ‘Buildings at Risk: Vol. 8’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 2008 2. Brett, C. E. B; McKinstry, TR. J., ‘Survey and recommendations for the Joy Street and Hamilton Street District of Belfast’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1971. 3. Duddy, M., ‘The call of the north: A history of the Sisters of Mercy’ Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2010. 4. Larmour, P., ‘Belfast: An illustrated architectural guide’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1987. 5. Patton, M., ‘Central Belfast: An historical gazetteer’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1993. 6. First Survey Record – HB26/30/024 (1988) Online Resources 1. Dictionary of Irish Architects - http://www.dia.ie

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation D. Plan Form I. Quality and survival of Interior J. Setting K. Group value

Historic Interest

R. Age S. Authenticity X. Local Interest V. Authorship Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance Z. Rarity

Evaluation

An asymmetrical Venetian Gothic style two-storey red brick former National School of 1878 by Timothy Hevey, with conjoined red brick gable-fronted former warehouse to rear of 1869-70, both now vacant (2018). The school is designed in a plain Gothic idiom, enlivened by the tower and isolated stone carving and fronts confidently onto Sussex Place within Belfast's Linen Conservation Area. It is by an acclaimed architect, has group value with the adjoining St Malachy's Convent (HB26/30/024A), and the interior, now used as a boxing club, is well preserved. Both the school and convent play an important role in defining the historic context of this part of Belfast, which is dominated by St Malachy's Church, whilst the warehouse (which predates the school) is a rare surviving example of the type of mercantile structure that once characterised many of the city’s Victorian backstreets.

General Comments

Date of Survey

10 May 2011