Opening up Belfast's oldest house to new shared opportunities for the benefit of all

With a range of capital projects underway and others in the pipeline around the Gaeltacht Quarter development site at Ard na bhFeá it is timely to engage the widest spectrum of stakeholder interest and involvement in how we move to the next phase of returning public space and public assets into fuller and connected public ownership and use. To give focus to that debate we reproduce below an essay on Belfast's oldest extant house, first published by chair of the Gaeltacht Quarter Board, Ciaran Mackel.

" Teach Ard na bhFeá (Beechmount House) (on high ground) is almost unseen from the Falls Road as the bend of the road of the hedges sweeps out of the city towards the Whiterock Road and the city cemetery - the old limit of 1950s west Belfast. It remains though as the only extant eighteenth century family house and estate (in Belfast) which has been continuously inhabited and in use throughout its 230 year history.

The house was built most probably in the latter half of the 18th Century. As far as can be established the first reference to the house occurs on a 1777 map which shows it located in the townland of Ballymurphy occupying a position on the road to Derriaghy; on the map the name Wallace Esq. is noted with the name Beechmount House (1). Some years later in 1786 a Belfast Newsletter advertisement mentions “The House and Farm of Beechmount, in the Falls, containing upwards of nineteen acres, well improved, besides the House and Offices, which are extensive, convenient and in good order. It is a pleasant situation, and well calculated for a private gentleman, or one in business, being within one mile of the town” (2). The house has a long history that embraced the linen industrialists and the United Irishmen (it hosted Wolfe Tone on his travels with Samuel Neilson (3) .

It is perhaps fortunate that since 1999 it has been in the possession of Coláiste Feirste and in use by Belfast’s first Irish language secondary school. This ownership and guardianship has saved it from the fate of other large houses in the west of the city certainly, but perhaps in the whole of Belfast. Estate houses such as Trench House and Airfield House have fallen to urban sprawl and apartment developments as the concept of re-use or ‘long-life, loose-fit’ has become lost in the urgent rush for financial profits.

It is known that the house initially belonged to Joseph Wallace in 1777. He and his brother Robert (4) were both prosperous linen merchants. The house was built in close proximity to the bleaching greens owned by Wallace in the Beechmount area (5). Joseph died in 1786 leaving his son Robert and daughter Grace who married George Joy (the famous family one of whom, Francis, established the Belfast Newsletter, and another was the mother of Henry Joy McCracken). Robert Wallace married twice firstly to Margaretta Duvall, who died of breast cancer and latterly to Mary Ann Rainey (6). Robert and Margaretta are buried together in Newtownbreda cemetery and Mary Ann Rainey is also buried in Newtownbreda in the Rainey Family grave (7).

It appears that the house was then for a time rented out and according to R M Young the Minister Patrick Vance lived there. Vance died in 1800 (8) and there is evidence that his son Thomas then continued to reside at Beechmount House. George Benn in his (early) ‘History of the Town of Belfast’ mentions Beechmount among a list of houses “Most admired for their extent and elegance” he refers to it as “On the Falls, Beechmount, Mr Vance’s” (9). Thomas Vance’s daughter Arminella married William Bruce Joy and they had two sons who became artists, Albert Bruce-Joy and George W Joy; Albert crafted the statue of Kelvin which stands at the Malone Road entrance to Botanic Gardens.

Around 1832 Beechmount House came into the possession of Lewis Reford (10). The Reford family who originated in Devon came from Antrim Town, where they are recorded as residents from the 17th Century. They were Quakers and were associated whilst in Antrim with the Linen trade. Lewis Reford who came to Belfast in 1818 was a trader and is mentioned in town directories of the time as a ‘Merchant’ with a business address at 53 High Street dealing in goods such as tea, sugar, raisins etc.(11). He was for a time successful as his residence at Beechmount testifies but the business collapsed in 1847 (12) and Beechmount is again advertised as available for lease – “a desirable residence for a gentleman’s family” (13). In spite of this advert it appears that Lewis Redford died at Beechmount House in 1852 as his death notice notes “at Beechmount, Lewis Redford Esq. aged 63 years. He was one of the oldest merchants in Belfast” (14).

It is said that local people always referred to Beechmount House as Riddel House on account of its being in possession of the Riddel family, but it is clear from the records that the Riddel family had no connection with the house until the 1850’s. On July 13th 1855 John Riddel obtained a lease for Beechmount House from Hill Hamilton (15). The Riddel family were a renowned business family largely engaged in the provision of hardware goods. In their heyday they had outlets in Donegall Place (Riddel’s Arcade) and in Ann Street which were very successful and interestingly ‘John Riddel and Sons Hardware Merchants still trade in Belfast to this day although no one of the Riddel family is any longer associated with the firm.

John Riddel, who acquired Beechmount House in 1855, married Anna Bella Charley (another prominent family) and although they had a large family only two of the daughters Isabella and Eliza, who never married, were left in Beechmount House. Both were significant benefactors of charitable work largely in the areas of education and medicine. They gave donations to the Royal Maternity and to the Royal Victoria Hospital – they funded the Riddel Ward – and they gave various grants to Queen’s University, one of ￡35,000 (a very considerable sum in those days) was given for the construction of Riddel Hall, a residence for women students. Other grants including one of ￡45,000 were later also donated (16). The family were Unitarians by religion and attended the Rosemary Street Church which remains as one of the architectural gems in the city.

On the death of Eliza, the last of the Riddels of Beechmount House, in 1924 the entire family estate, business, wealth, land and property, was left to three members of the Duffin family. Margaret Riddel, a sister of Eliza had married Samuel Barbour of Danesfort and their only child also Margaret married Charles Duffin. They had three of a family, Samuel, Marjorie and Charles and to these two great-nephews and one great-niece of Eliza Riddel accrued the Riddel possessions (17). From the contemporaneous street directories it is clear that Charles Duffin resided at Beechmount House for a number of years but it seems apparent that he felt ill at ease surrounded by a growing Catholic and Nationalist population in the turbulent years which followed partition in 1920. In 1922 one of his cousins was shot to death in a Mill on the Falls Road (18). Unsuccessful efforts were then made to sell Beechmount House to Belfast Corporation (19).

 In 1932 the Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, Doctor Mageean, purchased Beechmount House and 18 acres of land (20) and used the building as a hospital for elderly women which was managed by the Sisters of the Order of Mercy. When the house was found too small for the needs of the Hospital a new building, Our lady’s Hospice, was constructed to the rear of the former dwelling which was itself then used as a Convent which preserved the property in good repair (21). The building remained in this use until it was purchased by Coláiste Feirste who have retained the house as the administrative centre of the school.

As the school now seeks to expand and to build new accommodation an opportunity now exists to conserve and preserve the former Wallace family home and grounds (much of which have been used as the site of the former Beechmount Leisure Centre grounds and playing pitches). Such historic character of the house and grounds could be re-imaged as a community resource fully recognising the built heritage and embracing the landscape potential which could transform the sea of hardscape into landscaped parkland and embracing the architectural qualities of the house as a cultural and historic touchstone in an area (and a city) searching for meaning and depth and renewed quality of life as the culture of high-profit-driven investments falls to a more responsible and socially responsive economic and cultural paradigm."

Notes

1. Taylor & Skinner, Maps of the Roads of Ireland [1777]
2. BNL January 1786
3. Níl fianaise chinnte faoi Wolfe Tone, go fios dom; mar sin b’fhearr a rá go n-úsáideadh na hóglaigh an talamh mar ionad cruinnithe, féach BNL 1-4 May 1792: “A member of the Belfast Volunteer Company (Blues, Capt.Wm. Brown) on Monday last entertained the Corps at dinner in their elegant tent, which was pitched at Beechmount for the occasion …” Fosta deir Benn (1877, p.630), “The reviews (of the Volunteers) took place on the Plains and in the Falls Meadows …”
4. Déarfainn gur athair Joseph Wallace an Robert Wallace a shínigh “A Petition of Linen Drapers of Belfast” in March 1854 [PRONI]. Grace Wallace’s marriage settlement in 1788 describes her as “granddaughter of said Robert and only daughter of Joseph Wallace late of Belfast” [PRONI]
5. A lease of 1754: “…the Earl of Donegall … to Robert Wallace of Belfast Linen Draper … 310 acres lying in the Falls, within the Parish of Belfast and part of the townlands of Ballymurphy … together with the use of springs and streams of water running to the Falls mills for any Bleach Green the said Robert Wallace now has or shall set up …”[PRONI]
6. Drennan Letters 18.3.1804 & 1.3.1807
7. Gravestone Inscriptions, Knockbreda (Rainey & Wallace
8. Drennan Letters 6 January 1800: “Poor Mr Fuller and (still more melancholy) Mr Vance both died yesterday
9. Benn (1823), p.160
10. Legal documents: “All that and those the dwelling house office houses farm of land Orchard garden and premises called Beechmount with the Cabin and back Avenue thereto belonging in the Townland of Ballymurphy containing eighteen acres (Irish measure) … as heretofore demised by Joseph Wallace Esquire to Lewis Reford Esquire by Lease bearing date the sixth day of November one thousand eight hundred and thirty two …”
11. BNL 29 Sept. 1818; ibid.17 August 1827; Pigot’s Directory 1824, p.353-4
12. references in correspondence between a Margaret Steen in Belfast and Grace Reford (Grace’s husband Joseph was a cousin of Lewis Reford) in Toronto, e.g. 25 March 1846: “… Lewis Reford has failed once more … he intends giving up business to his sons …” 14 April 1847: “I do not know anything about the Refords but I see by the paper that Beechmount is to be let either furnished or unfurnished” - these references furnished by a Michael Reford in Quebec, the great great grandson of Grace and Joseph.
13. BNL 9.4.1847: “… The House contains Drawing-rooms, Dining and Breakfast-rooms, eight bedrooms, with dressing-rooms, and servants’ apartments; water closet; hot, cold, and shower baths; stabling for ten horses; coach-houses; cow-sheds, etc.,etc., all in a large enclosed yard; and any quantity of land, from 10 to 24 acres… “    
14. Northern Whig 29.4.1852; BNL 30.4.1852
15. Legal documents: “ … the dwelling house … and premises known as Beechmount containing eighteen acres Irish measure … were … demised by the said Hill Hamilton to the said John Riddel from the first day of November one thousand eight hundred and fifty three fot the term of ninety nine years …”
16. Belfast Telegraph 15.3.1924; see also Gillian McClelland, Pioneering Women, Riddel Hall & Queen’s University Belfast [2005]
17. ibid.
18. Irish News February 1922
19. BNL 25.4.1931
20. Legal documents: “This Indenture made the twenty third day of May one thousand nine hundred and thirty two between Samuel Barbour Duffin of “Danesfort” Malone Road … Charles Grimshaw Duffin of ‘Ardleevan’ Dunmurry … and the Most Reverend Daniel Mageean DD of Trench House Andersonstown … Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Down and Connor …”
21. Irish News 28.10.1935

 Ciaran Mackel