BELFAST may have, for many, melancholy associations with RMS Titanic and The Troubles, but for much of its modern history it was a money-making town. In the 19th century, it was the centre of global linen production and had the biggest shipyard in the world, Harland and Wolff, employing 35,000 men. Large fortunes were created and its captains of industry built fine houses for themselves. As were many of the city’s most successful businessmen, James Combe was a Scot, who moved to Belfast in 1845 and opened a foundry off the Falls Road, making equipment for the rapidly expanding railways and inventing a flax-carding machine.
By 1866, he was rich enough to commission Scotland’s leading architect, David Bryce, to design a large house for him on a 62-acre estate near the city’s eastern edge. Named after the Scottish village in which Combe was born, Ormiston House is in an architectural style that might be called Belfast Baronial, with a central three-storey tower house flanked by two-storey wings on either side, all faced in imported Giffnock sandstone.
A few years after Combe’s death in 1875, the house was acquired by Sir Edward Harland of Harland & Wolff, followed 10 years later by Harland’s business partner, William Pirrie, who became Mayor of Belfast in 1896 —although he’s best-remembered today for leading the design of RMS Titanic.
Pirrie spent most of his time at his London house in Belgrave Square or at Witley Park in Surrey, but Ormiston provided a perfect venue for corporate and corporation entertainment, as well as a grace-and-favour home for company directors. A ballroom was built in the grounds and the entrance drive illuminated by ornate gas lamps (which were installed at the city’s expense, even as the surrounding streets remained unlit).
Denne historien er fra June 17, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 17, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
