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Publications | Down Survey | 2001 Issue Contents The
Victorian Buildings of Downpatrick The Victorian age was an age of rapid change, in many ways like our own. However, the character of change in the two ages was very different. For us, the greatest change is in the way we do things and the range of choice that we have in what we do. For the Victorians, the changes were not so much a matter of choice, but were rather forced by need, and struck at the heart of everyday life. While Victoria and Albert promoted the sanctity of the family, the social forces of daily life required that, more than ever before in history, husband and wife were separated by work, sickness and poverty. A great many contemporary commentaries are available from Victorian writers, but their own limited experience of basic need makes it difficult for us to comprehend the tensions, excitement and total despair of those Victorian days. As in every other age these issues found expression in the architecture of the day. The well established classically based Georgian styles survived in use well into the new era. Rea's Hotel in Market Street is a Downpatrick example; but two new styles came to characterise the Victorian epoch, the Lombardic, championed by John Ruskin in his two seminal published works 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' of 1849, and 'The Stones Of Venice' of 1853. The other style was the Gothic Revival, synonymous with the name Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, who, in 1841, published 'The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture'. Other European countries were also reinventing history, always with an earlier antiquarian undercurrent spiced with nationalism, and in that context two earlier home-grown publications are worthy of notice: Thomas Bell's 'Gothic Architecture in Ireland', published in 1829, and Daniel Grose's, 'The Antiquities of Ireland' of 1791. Literary influences on the ideas of the day were considerable and continued in the Victorian age, for example Henry O'Neill's 'Illustrations of the most interesting of the Sculptural Crosses of Ireland' (1857) and 'The Fine Arts and Civilisation of Ireland' ( 1863). But turbulent new ideas were stirring in the worlds of philosophical thought and in politics. A large part of the nation's manhood was scattered across the globe, building, maintaining and governing a vast empire or busily developing its commercial resources. Back home, political and social structures promoted a misleading air of security, but those at the cutting-edge knew how very thin the red line was. You only had to look across the channel to see what could so easily become the reality at home. Germany, France, Italy and the Papal States were all being rocked by serious unrest and revolutionary change, and many more smaller states were soon to follow, with the whole terrible turmoil eventually erupting into the catastrophe of the First World War. The British Government in Dublin took a positive course of action and adopted a far more pro-active attitude towards social problems than any other government had done since the dissolution of the monasteries. Many of the new institutional buildings were being influenced by an interesting, new and developing philosophy of surveillance, the brainchild of Jeremy Bentham and Robert Owen. In the 21 st century, surveillance has become an element of almost every aspect of our lives, but to Victorian Society it was a revolutionary concept. Public money was provided to the Established Church, the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians with a view to bringing religion to the masses as a stabilising influence. Also, the government building programme was put onto an entirely new footing. The Surveyor General's Department and the Barrack Board were wound up and their building responsibilities were transferred by an Act of Parliament of 1831 to the Board of Public Works. The new Board was governed by Commissioners in nine departments, each focused on a different aspect of policy and each with a new rigorous building programme to create a social infrastructure from which we continue to benefit today. Downpatrick, at this time, was in a state of economic stagnation. It had maintained its status as a County Town and the seat of the Grand Jury; it supported markets, Courts, a Gaol, Barracks and after local government reform in 1898, a County Council. However, it could be said that the Victorian era in Downpatrick was remarkable for what was not built: there were no new schools, no factories, no major engineering works and very few new houses to serve any level in the social scale from top to bottom. No wonder that there was so much interest in the new owner of Downpatrick, John Mulholland, the first Lord Dunleath, who had purchased the estate from David Kerr in 1871, for he was a man of his time, who owed his position and his wealth to the industrial boom that had so far eluded Downpatrick. I have selected three Victorian buildings in the town for closer inspection. The first of these is the Assembly Rooms of 1882, now the home of Down Arts Centre. The design was by William Batt, a fashionable Belfast architect who was responsible for a number of civic buildings around the province, including Newry Town Hall. This was to be the most significant gift of Lord Dunleath to the built heritage of Downpatrick. A replacement for the dilapidated old Market House had been a matter of public concern since 1869. During the intervening years a number of townsfolk expressed their view on the matter in the local press, and here at last it was, a really commanding building, designed in the height of fashion to pure Ruskinian principles.
The volumes of the building are simple; the excitement is in the decorative natural colouring of the materials from which it was built, and the heavily moulded detail that catches the sunlight, creating a fascinating play of light and shade which is constantly modulating as the day wears on. It is an interesting commentary on the times that all the key materials from which it is constructed were imported: the sandstone from Scotland, the bricks from England, the slates from Wales and the timber from North America. This state of affairs would have been unthinkable half a century earlier. It was made economically possible by the arnval of the railway and the link with Belfast that was forged in 1859. While this event was widely welcomed at the time as a boost to the flagging local economy, it also made it possible for cheap imported goods to undercut great swathes of local enterprise and put many provincial firms out of business. The massing of the design very skillfully exploits the potential of the site. The dominating feature is the corner tower, which creates a focus down the vistas of all the main streets and provides a major contribution to the skyline. The irregular rhythm of the ground floor arcade is an interesting foil to the equally spaced windows above. On the north elevation, the shallow infunctional oriel gives a promise of symmetry to that aspect, only to have that notion dashed by the eccentricity of the corner tower.
My next building was opened for use in 1872 for a very different purpose and a very different client, and it is also in a different style. It is the Church of Saint Patrick to designs by the architects O'Neill and Byrne and it replaced the modest old mass house of 1787. After the younger Pugin (E W, who died in 1875) had left the Irish architectural stage, the partnership of O'Neill and Byrne, together with the practice of J J McCarthy, were the two major Irish protagonists for leader in the Gothic Revival movement. Cardinal Cullen was driving on an ambitious church building programme, and in Downpatrick the baton was taken up by an enthusiastic Father Patrick O'Kane. Fittingly, on St Patrick's day of 1868, Bishop Dorrian laid the foundation stone.
The internal planning is to ecclesiological principles, another feature of the times. In 1842 the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Connor, Richard Mant, had founded the Church Architectural Society, which looked back to medieval liturgical practices. This was followed, in 1849, by the Roman Catholic inspired Irish Ecclesiological Society, and in 1850 by the Church of Ireland St Patrick's Society, all with similar aims. The fact that each denomination formed its own group is again a reflection of the times. The same denominational insularity was expressing itself in the choice of architect, for while half a century earlier all denominations chose their architects primarily on ability, by the last quarter of the century each group was looking to 'one of their own'. More recent internal changes in the wake of Vatican II have confused, but not severely damaged, the original design conception. In the north wall of the sanctuary, accommodation is provided for the Nuns from the adjoining Convent, fronted by a beautifully fretted timber screen. Next to it, a particularly subtle detail is the arcading below the sanctuary windows. This is pierced on the north side, forming a small lobby just large enough to allow a procession to assemble before entering the main body of the church. On the south side, the matching arcade is blind and houses a decorative sacrarium. Decoration is necessarily concentrated on the sanctuary; however, the detailing of the west gallery unites with the rose window as a focus as you turn to leave. In addition, all down the north and south walls the corbel blocks for the plaster ceiling vaulting are in the form of angels, almost as though they are carrying the weight of the roof, making the walls appear superfluous.
The Sisters of Mercy were invited to Downpatrick in 1857 and their convent building, although by a different architect, is also in Gothic Revival style, and groups well with the Church building. It is an interesting aside that the daughter of the architect John O'Neill was accepted into the Sisters of Mercy and spent her whole adult life in this convent. Thinking of the buildings as a group, it is a great shame that the little lodge house had to be demolished, and the landscape in front of the Church filled with tarmac. It was all done for good practical reasons, but did nothing for the setting of the building. The last building in the trilogy is the Downshire Hospital, or the County Down Lunatic Asylum, as it was originally known. It was one of the final phase of the regional asyla, a programme for which had been running on and off since 1820. The Down Asylum was one of the best, in practical terms at least. The designs were overseen by the Board of Works' architect, J H Owen. However, the Regional Commissioners were free to appoint an architect of their own choice for the detailed designs and supervision; in this case it was Henry Smyth1 and the contractor was F McGaughey of Omagh. I have included a number of quotations in the following text from the Down Recorder of 9 October 1869, where the opening is reported, together with a most interesting commentary on the building and its features. Before the construction of these asyla, lunatics were often placed in county gaols, as in Downpatrick, or in the indifferent hands of private individuals. The private institutions were often referred to as 'Retreats' and the treatment received was closely related to the money one could afford. The Victorian Government stepped in, as it had in so many fields of social welfare, to provide a regulated and equitable service for everyone. These were the beginnings of the Welfare State.
The doors of the Downshire Hospital opened to the first 50 patients on 8 October 1869. The patients walked through the streets of Downpatrick from the Belfast train, accompanied by a band. There was no commotion as you might expect today. The building is nothing less than colossal, measuring nearly 1000 feet across the main frontage. The capacity was for 333 patients, 45 in single rooms and the remainder in dormitories. Male and female accommodation was identical, symmetrically set out each side of a central administrative unit and shared assembly hall. Despite the Board of Works' general direction that the style should be gothic, it would be hard to describe this design as being in that style. It does support some gothic elements however, principally the barbican-like central bay, which is the focus of the whole composition. It has twin cylindrical turrets and a crowning tower, reminiscent of a chateau, crested by beautifully decorative ironwork. Behind this exciting architectural display is the equally impressive Great Hall, recently refurbished and originally intended to function both as a dining hall and for recreation. It measures 90 feet long by 45 feet wide, and is 48 feet high. The timber roof framing is exposed and the great trusses spring from decorative, carved stone corbel blocks. The remainder of the design is distinctly restrained by comparison, as the Down Recorder reporter remarks: 'The main purpose of the committee being to obtain a plain building of the most approved form of construction for the purpose to which it is to be appropriated...Mr Smyth (the architect) has displayed resource and felicitousness... . Truly it must have been an amazing contrast for most new patients, compared to their home living conditions. The disciplinary aspects aside, the building was a palace; for example, the closets were 'self acting', the baths were 'reclining and shower'. The water was collected into a reservoir from local streams and the roofs of all the buildings, and its use was economised by using the waste from the baths to flush the closets. The whole complex was served by a ventilation system and the two decorated towers at each end of the main frontage were to discharge the foul air.2 Throughout the design, form follows function in a very modern way, and this is expressed in a bold modulation of the building masses. Returning to style, the greater part of the design is distinctly classical. In fact one could imagine that if the central feature were to be removed, the most natural replacement would be a pediment. The composition is unified by the subtle use of strong coloured bands of brickwork and cornicing. At the rear, rubble shale stone is used with brick dressings to equal effect. The management was almost self-contained within its 60-acre site, where, as well as the services already mentioned, there was a gasworks, laundry, sewage plant and market gardens, not to mention the pleasure gardens at the front, where 'patients find healthy exercise and occupation in taking part in the work...'. The clock cost £287.10s and was supplied by Mr Joseph Lee of High Street Belfast. There was no comer-cutting here, what an achievement! It is a shame that the lodge house has been taken down and that the grounds are only now being appreciated again, after a long period of neglect. In subsequent years, additional accommodation was added by the architect P C Cowan in 1896, followed by provision of an isolation hospital in 1902. Improvements to the water supply and drainage system were all directed by the County Surveyor, James Heron, but none of these changes challenged the character of the original design concept. It was not until the period after World War Two, that other buildings of contrasting styles were added to the complex. So here you see three Victorian buildings, contrasting in their purpose and in their clients; one private, one Corporate and one Government, yet they have so much in common. They are all assured architectural compositions that are unambiguous in the clear way that they express their brief, and they all make a major impact on the environmental quality of Downpatrick. These are characteristic Victorian statements, bold, unashamed and built to last. Dick Oram was formerly an Inspector of Historic Buildings with the Department of the Environment (NI). He is a committee member of the Friends of Down County Museum and of the Upper Ards Historical Society. Notes References
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