Assembly Rooms, Belfast
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54°36′03.2″N 5°55′41.1″W / 54.600889°N 5.928083°W
The Assembly Rooms is a Grade B1 listed building in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was built, as the single-storey Exchange, in 1769 by Arthur Chichester, 1st Marquess of Donegall. The Marquess expanded to a second floor in 1776 and the building came to be known by its current name. It housed the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, public meetings and, following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the court martial of rebel leaders.
The building was converted into the Head Office of the Belfast Banking Company in 1845. It was extended several times and received listed building protection in 1975. The bank, now part of Northern Bank since 1970, vacated the building in 2000. Since then the structure has only been occasionally used and has been subject to vandalism. It is on the Northern Ireland Buildings at Risk Register and the watchlist of the World Monuments Fund.[1][2]
The structure was built in 1769 by Arthur Chichester, 1st Marquess of Donegall as a celebration of the birth of his son, George Augustus. The structure, designated The Exchange, was single storey in the neo-classical style and cost the Marquess £4,000 (equivalent to £701,082 in 2023).[3][4] The Marquess ordered an extension, to two storeys, in 1776. This was designed by the English architect Robert Taylor and cost £7,000 (equivalent to £1,190,809 in 2023).[4][3] Following the extension the building became known as the Assembly Rooms.[3]
In 1786 a meeting at the Assembly Rooms rejected a plan to establish an Ulster-based slave trading company. In July 1792 the building hosted the Belfast Harp Festival. After the Irish Rebellion of 1798 rebel leader Henry Joy McCracken and others were court-martialled and sentenced to death in the Assembly Rooms.[4] The building is located on the "four corners" from which road distances to Belfast were once measured.[3]