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Belfast Technical College - Steam Engines, Cuckoos and Monkeys! |
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As well as the wonderful stained glassed windows and impressive front facade, the Tech has many quirky features : the basement reveals original wooden piles and a channel of water which rises at high tide. Many of the original card index records of student registration are still available, kept in old wooden crates.
Have a glimpse of the interior of the Tech, in the picture gallery
...There is an unconfirmed story that monkeys were once kept in cages on the roof for the biology dept!...
The Tech was planned and conceived in the boom time of the Victorian era (1899-1901), when Belfast grew rapidly as a trading and industrial centre providing the British Empire with ships, ropes and linen, but the building wasn't finally finished until early Edwardian times, in 1907.
The Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act ,1899, established a new Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, which in turn helped to set up technical schools, winter agricultural schools and introduced touring instructors. With this in mind, the Belfast Corporation appointed a committee to meet with representatives of the chief industries of the time, such as shipbuilding, textiles and machinery building, to inform them that this increased opportunity for acquiring technical training would shortly be at their disposal.
Click here to listen to Bertie McClure talking about why the Tech came to be built.
The Belfast Corporation concluded that none of the existing institutions providing evening instructions were suitable for the new teachings and no building could provide a suitable home for a technical college, so a decision was made to erect a new one. The vast development in Belfast at the time meant that building sites in the city centre were scarce.
...In 1898 the rateable value of the city stood at over one million pounds...
It was at this time that the Governors of the prestigious school next to the site of the Tech, RBAI (Royal Belfast Academical Institute), found themselves in financial embarrassment. They had long been in debt and in 1899 discovered that the lucrative land in front of them was worth between £100,000 and £200,000.
When they received an enquiry form the Lord Mayor regarding the possibility of using a portion of their land as a site for the new technical school, they accepted. In March 1900 a perpetual lease for the north side of the front lawn (240 ft x 205 ft) was agreed for an annual rent of £1,350.
The new college wasn't universally welcomed though, its inception causing great consternation among its neighbours.
College Square, where the Tech stands, was then the Harley Street of Belfast. Its residents have included the wealthy baker and philanthropist Barney Hughes, and Sir William Whitla, Professor of Materia Medica at what was to become Queen's University, and one of the city's mayors.
© Crown Copyright 2003
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While the Tech is now recognised as a fine baroque building, it was much criticised at the time. One critic said: "its dominant impression is of utility rather than beauty."
The accusation was also made that the design was a direct copy of the old War Office in Whitehall, in London, and that the Tech was "the largest and most ornate cuckoo's egg ever laid in a songbird's nest" because it blocked the graceful symmetry of the front of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and cast a substantial shadow over fashionable College Square North.
However, it seems that, to those who attended the opening ceremony, Samuel Stevenson was the hero of the hour : "..the architect has covered himself in glory. He has succeeded not only from an artistic point of view, but also he has designed a building that in every way is equipped in the most up to date manner...it is also worthy of being put on record that the whole work was finished without extras and within time..."
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