Patrick Comerford
The former Belfast Bank at 221-223 Rathmines Road Lower is now Reggie’s Pizzeria and is one of the interesting buildings in Rathmines that I looked at last week, along with the former YMCA building on Lower Rathmines Road, close to Portobello Road, nearby Kensington Lodge on Grove Park, and the former Kodak building.
The former Belfast Bank in Rathmines is a small building in a Scottish Baronial style, with a sharp corner and a corner turret. Despite its size, it is very noticeable for the narrow façade that creates an optical illusion, for its individual features, and because of its prominent location on a busy corner where Rathmines Road Lower meets Rathgar Road and Rathmines Road Upper.
The side street is Wynnefield Road, and many people also know the building because of its location beside Slattery’s public house.
The Belfast Bank was formed in 1827 by a merger of two private banks, Batt’s, also known as the Belfast Bank, and Tennant’s, also known as the Commercial Bank. The bank moved in 1846 to the former Assembly Buildings at the corner of North Street, Bridge Street, Waring Street and Donegall Street. Within decades, the bank was trading in branches throughout the northern half of Ireland.
The Belfast Bank had a New York branch by the 1860s, but it did not establish a branch in Dublin until 1892, when temporary premises were acquired in Dame Street. A purpose-built branch at 21-22 College Green was designed by William Henry Lynn and was built in 1893-1894.
The Belfast Bank in Rathmines was the second branch in Dublin, and a third branch in Dublin at 86 Talbot Street was designed by Frederick George Hicks and built in 1900. The branch building in Rathmines was designed by the Belfast architect Vincent Craig (1869-1925), whose work included clubhouses for yacht and golf clubs, Presbyterian churches, hospitals, banks for the Belfast Bank and the Ulster Bank, and masonic halls.
Craig was born at Craigavon, Strandtown, Belfast, in 1869, one of seven sons of James Craig, a wealthy whiskey distiller, and a younger brother of James Craig (1871-1940), later Lord Craigavon and first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
Vincent Criag was educated at Bath College and received his architectural training in the office of William Henry Lynn from 1885 to 1889. He then spent a year travelling in Europe before setting up in practice in Belfast in 1891.
He was a member of the Royal Institute of the Architects in Ireland, and was elected a fellow (FRIAI) in 29 May 1906. He was also a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1900). His pupils and assistants included John Charles Lepper, Arthur Norman McClinton and Jackson Graham Smyth. He exhibited drawings of three of his designs in the Irish International Exhibition in Dublin in 1907.
Craig was a keen yachtsman and motorist, and also a generous benefactor of hospitals. He represented Court Ward on Belfast City Council in 1903-1906, and he was president of the Belfast Art Society in 1903.
He worked from 5 Lombard Street, Belfast, and 22 Donegall Place, and lived at Eldon Green, Helen’s Bay, Co Down, which he designed for himself. He moved to England in 1910, retired from his architectural practice soon after, and lived in retirement at High Close, Wokingham, Berkshire.
Craig’s bank in Rathmines was built between 1899 and 1900 for the Belfast Bank. Tenders were invited in September 1899 and the building was ‘nearly complete’ by mid-July 1900.
The site was once part of the Chains. A fading photograph in Slattery’s beside the former bank tells how the Chains were one of the worst slums in late Victorian Rathmines. According to Weston St John Joyce in The Neighbourhood of Dublin (1912), the Chains were a number of dilapidated shanties enclosed by chains hung from stone pillars. They had become ‘an unsightly and insanitary slum’ until they were cleared to make the site for a new bank.
The corner is marked by a tower, topped by a finial and cut into at the base to make the entrance. The curve to the castellation is picked up on the apex of the gable, and the little peaks on the slope look even more like cake decoration when you follow the line down into the fussy scrolled base.
On the Wynnefield Road elevation, a terracotta plaque set into the wall displays the coat of arms of Belfast with the motto Pro tanto quid retribuamus (‘What return shall we make for so much?’). It is a paraphrase of Psalm 116: 12 in the Vulgate translation, which reads ‘Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi?’
My childish sense of humour could not resist being amused by a Latin motto on a bank building that includes the word Quid.
On this façade, the chimney’s descent stops nearly in line with the top of the door, and it is an additional tension, a feat of brinksmanship with the visual weight as well as a clear marker of the asymmetry of the two façades. The break happens within the entrance, too, with the columns holding nothing and the pointed brackets above hanging like stalactites.
Sitting on the string course are two stone figures that look like lions bearing shields with the initials BB for Belfast Bank. The doors have panels and panes of stained glass.
In the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, the Belfast Bank merged with the London City & Midland Bank in 1917, the first entry into the Irish market by an English bank. After partition, the Belfast Bank decided to operate only in what became Northern Ireland. Following secret negotiations, the business in what had become the Irish Free State was transferred to the Royal Bank of Ireland in 1923, along with 20 branches and their staff.
The bank in Rathmines was more recently the premises of the Trustee Savings Bank/TSB Bank, and then the offices of a recruitment agency. It is now Reggie’s Pizzeria, which was opened in December 2024 by Reggie White, his wife Amy and their daughter Florence, who live nearby.
He has been described by the The Irish Times as ‘Ireland’s pizzaiolo-in-chief.’ He has trained Ballymaloe, and had stints at Del Popolo and Flour+Water in San Francisco. He returned to Dublin, co-founded Pi on George’s Street, and then made his name consulting for some of Ireland’s best-known pizza spots, including Little Forest, Bambino and Otto. With ten of his friends, including James Lowe, quietly backing 20 per cent, he opened Reggie’s in Rathmines shortly before last Christmas.
Once again, my childish sense of humour could not resist being amused by the thought that a former bank that exalted the word Quid is now making some of the best dough in Dublin.
As for the Belfast Bank, its businesses in Northern Ireland eventually merged with the Northern Bank, which began trading in 1824. Both were acquired by the Midland Bank, the integration was completed in 1970, and Northern Bank continued to trade throughout the whole of Ireland. The Midland Bank eventually sold the Northern Bank to the National Australia Bank, which later transferred ownership to Danske Bank.
Many of the former Belfast Bank buildings in Northern Ireland have been sold on to other businesses. But the name of ‘Belfast Bank’ continues to adorn a few of the old buildings, including those in Portrush, Rathfriland and Warrenpoint, as well as the former bank building on that narrow corner on Lower Rathmines Road.
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