After leaving
Templemore Avenue Baths, I headed home for some sustenance – heritage
appreciation is hungry work! After some mild enquiries, I was sufficiently
reassured that no burning desire resided within the Chapples Minor to accompany
me, so I sallied forth to see the beautiful Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices
in the company of my father-in-law, Dave. I’d been to the Drawing Offices once before, when the BBC’s
Antiques Roadshow came to Belfast. Then it was filled to capacity with people
clutching their treasured possessions, hoping for a glimpse of Fiona Bruce and
her giant head (honestly, it’s enormous and completely dwarfs her body … but I
digress …). On this occasion it was much less crowded, but those of us there
were more interested in the building itself, rather than the prospective values
of the various knickknacks found when cleaning out grandmother’s house …
From the front,
H&W’s Headquarters looks pretty bland and unimpressive. It’s a three-storey
office block, done in sandstone and brick, was and constructed in stages from
around 1900 to 1919 and formed the administrative heart of the Harland &
Wolff enterprise. The building contains the former offices of William
Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie, Thomas
Andrews, and Alexander
Carlisle. However, the oldest, and most beautiful, part of the building is
the pair of barrel-vaulted ground floor Drawing Offices at the back of the
building, constructed around 1885. Viewed from outside, or from the Titanic
Experience building, they do not impress, nor do they seem particularly
remarkable - they frequently remind me of unloved and dilapidated Nissen Huts. However, once inside, the visitor cannot but be impressed with the
airy, light-filled space. Their design was deliberately intended to catch as
much natural light as possible, as well as being a showcase for the skills of
the Harland and Wolff craftsmen. It was here that both the concept drawings and
the detailed production plans were produced for RMS Titanic and Olympic. It is this
association with tragedy that gives this place its cachet. Like the vast majority of visitors to this place, I
struggle to name more than one or two of the large number of vessels that were produced here and went on to have long and largely incident-free careers. Without
the tragedy and enduring interest of Titanic, little significance would be
attached to this building beyond its wonderful architecture. These are truly
wonderful spaces that deserves recognition on their own merits, but even after
all this time, I find them tinged with a certain degree of poignancy. After
all, these are the rooms where the flaws were introduced into Titanic’s design
- pretty much everything baring the iceberg was designed in these spaces. Of
course, H&W is about so much more than Titanic, and these offices were used
until late 1989. Since then they’ve been in a process of disintegration and degeneration
– the paint has started to peel, the damp stains are showing, portions of the
plaster have clearly collapsed, and large portions of the building are not safe
for visitors. However, all that may be set to change if plans to redevelop the
site into an 84 bedroom Titanic hotel, costing some £27M, come to fruition [see
here | here
| here].
Although the Drawing Offices are currently listed on VisitBelfast.com
as being open as part of the Titanic Belfast Discovery Tour, they don’t appear
to be part of the main EHOD set of available properties for 2015. My advice is to see if
you can get to see this crumbling jewel before it’s redeveloped! As always with
these posts, I do hope you enjoy my words and photographs, but I do hope that
they act as inspiration to come see my city!
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| Panoramic overview of one of the Drawing Rooms |
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Light through yonder windows ...
the Drawing Room with the fish-scaled Titanic Experience building behind |
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| Detail of roof section |
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| Peeling paint ... |
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| ... crumbling plaster ... |
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| ... details in need of love and restoration |
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| This revolving door, made of Honduras mahogany, was only for the use of the company directors and their important visitors. The workers would have entered the building via a side door. |
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| The front desk/booth |
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| Detail of the entrance booth |
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| This Office was once used by Thomas Andrews, in his role as Managing Director of the Naval Architects. This desk would have been used by one of H&W's accountants rather then a draftsman and was in daily use until the 1960s. |
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| The desk drawer still contains ink stains from long use in the service of the company. |
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| Everything above the ground floor is currently off-limits to visitors |
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| The Drawing Office's staircase makes liberal use of decorative metalwork and is one of the earliest examples of this form in Belfast. |
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| The information boards available on the day said that the flowers on this staircase were representations of flax flowers, a tribute to linen manufacture, Belfast's other great 19th century industry. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, or far too pedantic, these are not flax flowers as they have eight petals, as opposed to actual flax flowers which have only five. |
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| Empty rooms ... |
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| Modern Belfast ... |
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| As it was back then ... |
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| ... as it might be in the future ... an artist's impression of what a renovated Drawing Office might look like. |
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| Panoramic view of exterior |
Notes:
For anyone interested
in the other EHOD properties I’ve seen and written about my find the following
of interest:
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