Belfast was once described as “a conservationist’s nightmare”. Not much has changed. Vacant, dying buildings slouch on every other street. You notice the big ones first, places like the Crumlin Road Courthouse, a huge Victorian building cored out by decay. Then you notice the smaller buildings, the 19th-century shops and offices with mottled brickwork and buddleia exploding from their gutters. Eventually, something disturbing happens. You stop noticing these buildings at all. They are simply part of what Belfast’s city centre is these days.
The conservationist who found Belfast so nightmarish was called Charles Brett. A lawyer by trade, he was invited to join the National Trust’s Northern Ireland committee in 1956. When Brett asked the committee chairman what books he should read on Belfast’s architectural history, he was told that no such books existed. So he decided to write one himself. After eight years of research, Brett’s Buildings of Belfast was published in 1967. The work was completed “only just in the nick of time”.
Brett was referring to more than the Troubles; in fact, he complained that “the demolition men rival the bombers in coarse heartlessness”. His real ire was reserved for developers who razed historic buildings that might have been repurposed for modern use. He nursed a particular dislike for the various concrete shoeboxes imposed on Belfast in the Sixties: “Happily, many office blocks of this period are already suffering from the defects of their shoddiness, and, it may reasonably be hoped, will fall down soon.”
A portrait of Brett hangs in the offices of Ulster Architectural Heritage (UAH). I’m here to meet Sebastian Graham, the society’s Heritage at Risk Officer, one of the tiny number of people working to save Northern Ireland’s historic buildings from oblivion. UAH is based in the Old Museum Building, a handsome Greek Revival edifice built in 1831, filled with winding staircases and galleried salons. The place was used as an arts centre in the Nineties and still has an intact dressing room, the walls covered with mirrors and posters for Joe Orton plays. Today, the Old Museum Building is tired but magnificent. It’s appropriate that UAH is quartered in something of a project. After all, as Graham tells me, “vacancy is the big killer”.
UAH and other organisations have been fighting to preserve Northern Ireland’s built heritage for decades. There have been many successes. Hearth Historic Buildings Trust has restored numerous derelict properties, and is currently engaged in renovating Riddel’s Warehouse in Belfast, a project that has been ongoing since 2014. But despite the occasional “save”, Graham says that the overall situation is dire: “In Northern Ireland there’s more than 800 listed buildings at risk. That’s about 9% of our listed building stock. The figure in Scotland and Wales varies from 2% to 4%. So we’re essentially double the rest of the UK as to the [poor] condition of our built heritage.”
The last decade has been devastating for Northern Ireland’s architectural inheritance. In 2014, the government budget for the maintenance of historic buildings was £4.17 million. That pot was reduced to £500,000 in 2015 and has continued to shrink — Graham estimates that last year’s budget was in the region of £200,000. Today, the owner of a listed building can apply to the Roof and Window Repair scheme. This offers a maximum grant of £6,000, although thatched properties can be awarded double that. These piddling sums won’t cover the cost of meaningful repairs, especially when many projects require the expertise of specialist craftsmen. As Graham observes: “It’s not even a sticking plaster… Given the cost of everything with inflation, you’d barely get one or two windows done for that.”
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SubscribeExcellent article. I live in Edmonton, Canada and there is a similiar apathy among the government but also more worryingly the population as a whole.
I wish I knew, definitively, whether there really is no public money left or if it’s being siphoned off by corrupt officials.
Well, we do know that £100s of millions have gone into the Bloody Sunday enquiry. And billions from the UK taxpayer over the decades. As ever, it’s about priorities.
Good article; and it is not just Belfast – most towns in NI have derelict historic buildings left to rot away. Sadly there does not seem to be much prospect of the situation changing in the forseeable future.
The big problem is purpose exemplified by Belfast city council buying up much of the main street, Royal Avenue, for ‘meantime’ activities.
Retail, office blocks, hotels and student residences came and went as options.
Apartments are all that’s left although the Assembly Rooms would make an excellent municipal art gallery. Sadly council wants another ‘Belfast story’.
All civilizations leave ruins when history passes them by.
Not ours, man. We’ll pull them down first. What do we owe to posterity? Lately we’ve shown that we neither want nor deserve them.
As somebody who worked in Belfast in the 90s when the areas mentioned were thriving much more than now (though dereliction was a problem even then), I think the planner’s biggest mistake was allowing the Victoria Square retail centre to be built where it is.
The original idea was to redevelop the area where this nonsensical ‘Tribeca’ project is now proposed into additional retail space. The bigger stores & local specialist shops could have co-existed side by side.
Truth is, there’s only ever so much money to go round & Victoria Sq has sucked all the retail out of the original retail areas. It’s been replaced by empty buildings & associated social problems.
Building more student flats & offices won’t fix that.