Historic Building Details

HB Ref No:
HB26/29/024

Address :
Sandy Row Orange Hall 206 Sandy Row Malone Lower Belfast BT12 5EY

Townland:
Malone Lower

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Survey 2:
B2

Date of Listing:
16/09/2016 00:00:00

Date of De-listing:

Current Use:
Hall

Former Use
Hall

Conservation Area:
No

Industrial Archaeology:
No

Vernacular:
No

Thatched:
No

Monument:
No

Derelict:
No

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OS Map No:
147/1 NE

IG Ref:
J3348 7313

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Owner Category

Orange Order

Exterior Description And Setting

Symmetrical detached four-storey redbrick Gothic Revival style orange hall, dated 1910, with two-storey redbrick gable-ended hall abutting the rear and fronting onto Renwick Street. Rectangular on plan, facing west and located on the east side of Sandy Row on a streetscape now largely redeveloped. Hipped tarred natural slate roof with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles set behind central gable and flanking parapet walls. Gable surmounted by stone finial and chamfered stone fractible. Cast-iron guttering on drive-through brackets to side elevation and cast-iron downpipes. Redbrick walling laid in English garden wall bond. Square-headed, pointed-arched and segmental arched window openings with flush splayed masonry sills and replacement windows. Symmetrical front elevation is three windows wide with a central recessed four-centred arched panel to the first and second floors. Replacement concrete lintels and uPVC windows to the third floor with moulded brick string course below. To either side of the central bay is a pair of gothic-arched opes and continuous hood moulding spanning entire elevation. The central panel has a compound moulded brick surround, a stone finial rising from a keystone to the second floor window and a painted masonry base to former oriel window supported on three fan-vaulted corbels rising from foliate bosses and a central finial to the doorcase below. Between first and second floors is a date stone stating 'Sandy row Orange Hall A.D. 1868, REBUILT 1910'. Timber gothic tracery windows to all three windows on the second floor. Original timber casement windows to the first floor and replacement windows to the ground floor. Central gothic-arched door opening with compound moulded redbrick surround, painted masonry keystone, hood mouldings and replacement double-leaf timber panelled doors. Doors open onto three granite steps. Glazed brick tiled plinth course with moulded trim. North side elevation has had most of its former windows openings blocked up with a small passageway giving access to the rear. Rear elevaiton abutted by two-storey gable-ended redbrick hall six windows wide. Square-headed window openings with masonry sills and replacement uPVC windows to the ground floor. The first floor has original fixed-pane timber framed windows with elaborate Art Nouveau leaded coloured glazing. South side elevation has a random arrangement of window openings, the remnants of a slightly advanced corbelled out chimneystack and surmounted by a small gable emulating that to the front elevation. Setting: Located on the east side of Sandy Row with its south side elevation fronting onto Renwick Street. Roof Natural slate RWG Cast-iron Walling Redbrick Windows Timber casement and uPVC

Architects

Hill & Kennedy

Historical Information

Sandy Row Orange Hall was built in 1909-10 to designs by Hill & Kennedy, as a replacement front block to an earlier hall - portions of which remain. (Irish Builder; Valuation Records) The building is first shown on the sixth edition OS map of 1931. The closing decades of the nineteenth century, following the lifting of legislation which restricted the activities of Orange Lodges, saw the widespread establishment of Orange Halls across the north of Ireland. (McCormack) The first Orange Hall on the site was built to designs by the contractor, Smith, for a cost of £430. The foundation stone was laid in July 1868 and the hall was opened in September 1869, with a debt of £2-300 remaining on the building when it opened. The Rev Mr Henderson, speaking at the opening of the Sandy Row Hall, commented that, “These Orange Halls which are now, I am glad to say being extensively erected over Ulster, are designed for the mental and moral improvement of the members of your loyal Institution. Here you can meet for mutual counsel and encouragement, all the meetings, according to the rules of your society, being commenced and terminated by prayer. Here also you can assemble to listen to addresses bearing on the interests of Protestantism at home and abroad. Not one of the least attractive and important advantages of Orange Halls is that they give opportunity for pleasant and profitable social re-unions of the brotherhood graced by the presence of their wives and sisters…and these it is not to be forgotten are invaluable ornaments and auxiliaries of the Orange cause. So long as the fair women of Ulster are attached to Orangeism, there is no doubt of its stability and prosperity.” (Belfast Newsletter) According to Patton, the Rev R M Henry, minister of Great Victoria Street Baptist Church and father of the landscape and portrait painter Paul Henry, preached unconventional services in the Hall. (Patton; Snoddy) The early Sandy Row Hall is likely to have been a simple building and as the prosperity of the area grew with Belfast’s increasing industrialisation, an architect-designed replacement was brought to fruition. The building was the result of a brief partnership between architects Robert Sharpe Hill and Eric Riddell Kennedy who were responsible for a small number of buildings between 1907 and 1910, of which the Sandy Row Hall is probably the most notable. Hill went on to be a noted domestic architect and was responsible for designing what is thought to be the first purpose-built cinema in the Northern Ireland, in Larne. (www.dia.ie) The cost was £3,000 and the contractors Courtney & Co. (Irish Builder) The entry in valuation records for ‘Sandy Row Orange Hall, Concert Room and Yard’ is amended in 1911 from £95 to £140 to reflect the rebuilding of the hall. However valuer’s notes of the period show that a new front block had been grafted on to the older, lower rear halls of the building. A plan and dimensions of the building are given and the valuer notes that it has a glazed brick plinth and is ‘solidly built with fireproof doors and stairs.’ (Annual Revisions) A caretaker had accommodation within the building until 1921, which was separately valued at £5. On Thursday 15th February 1912 the first women’s Orange Lodge in Ireland was established in the Sandy Row Orange Hall, known as ‘Ireland’s Ladies’ Loyal Orange Lodge No 1’. Over fifty women joined the new Lodge on the first night and the women were addressed by Robert Gibson, Grand Secretary of Belfast Orangemen who, ‘thanked the ladies for the many services they had rendered to the Orange Institution and also congratulated them upon the excellent step they had taken that evening in forming an Orange Institution of their own. Their action should stimulate the male members of the Order especially at the present [Home Rule] crisis in their country.’ Colonel Wallace, the Grand Master, was not able to attend, but wrote, ‘I am very glad to hear the ladies are starting a Lodge, and wish it all success. The ladies can and have helped us time and again, although we have not yet come down to getting them to protect us.’ (Irish Times) Castor J Love, architect to the County Down Education Committee from 1927 to 1934 (when he was dismissed on suspicion of fraud) designed alterations to the building which were carried out between 1930 and 1932. (www.dia.ie) References: Primary Sources 1. PRONI OS/6/1/61/1 – First Edition OS Map 1832-3 2. PRONI OS/6/1/61/3 – Third Edition OS Map 1858 3. PRONI OS/6/1/61/4 – Fourth Edition OS Map 1901-2 4. PRONI OS/6/1/61/6 – Sixth Edition OS Map 1931 5. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/D/1-22 – Annual Revisions (1862-1930) 6. PRONI VAL/12/A/7/M/18 – Valuer’s Notebook 1911 7. Belfast Newsletter, 27th September 1869 8. Irish Times, 16th February 1912 Secondary Sources 1. McCormack, W J (ed) “The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture” Oxford: Blackwell, 1999 2. Patton, M “Central Belfast: An Historical Gazetteer” Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1993 3. Snoddy, T “Dictionary of Irish Artists, 20th Century” Dublin: Merlin Publishing, 2002 4. www.dia.ie – Dictionary of Irish Architects online

Criteria for Listing

Architectural Interest

A. Style B. Proportion C. Ornamentation H-. Alterations detracting from building J. Setting

Historic Interest

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

Evaluation

Symmetrical detached four-storey redbrick Gothic Revival style orange hall, dated 1910 and designed by local architects Robert Sharpe Hill and Eric Riddell Kennedy. Rectangular on plan, facing west and located on the east side of Sandy Row, It has a two-storey redbrick gable-ended hall abutting the rear and fronting onto Renwick Street. The hall has fine stained galss windows. An unusual early twentieth-century exercise in Gothic-revival with a distinctive verticality, this Orange Hall is of considerable social interest to the local community and is a fine early twentieth century example of a public building. It is one of the most significant historic buildings remaining in Sandy Row.

General Comments

Date of Survey

04 August 2011