A plain house

Stormont Castle, Belfast Home to the Northern Ireland Executive and the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister A century ago, the Stormont estate was chosen as the seat of the government of Northern Ireland. In the first of two articles, John Goodall looks at the history of this decision and the castle now at the centre of politics

- John Goodall

IN 1920, amid intensifying violence, Ireland was partitioned. By the terms of the Government of Ireland Act, the six counties in the north of the island were divided from the remaining 26 to the south, and each was provided with an assembly to control its internal affairs. The former desired political union with Britain and the latter independence from it, but both regarded partition as an act of betrayal that compromised Ireland’s geographic integrity. Nonetheless, political division proved irresistible and, in December 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty conceded Dominion status to the Irish Free State, the future Republic of Ireland.

A few months earlier, on June 22, 1921, George V and Queen Mary had braved the dangers of an ongoing and bitterly fought civil war (COUNTRY LIFE, December 30, 2020) to open the newly assembled Northern Ireland Parliament in the Council Chamber of Belfast City Hall. Belfast had grown in the course of the 19th century—largely through the profits of linen manufacture and shipbuilding—into one of the richest cities in the world. It was a status powerfully articulated by the stupendous scale of City Hall, completed in 1906 and perhaps the most ambitious civic building of the Edwardian period. The new leaders of Northern Ireland, however, were not tempted to adopt this building as their new home.