[Extracts from the Palm House and Botanic Garden Belfast, by Eileen McCracken, published by the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society in 1971.]
...The most striking and interesting feature of Belfast Botanic
Gardens is the Palm House, with its two wings flanking a bold
elliptical dome. One cannot but applaud the determination of the
men who directed the Garden in its early days and who, without
outside financial help, built a curvilinear glass house before
Kew or Glasnevin had one. And it was most likely a source of satisfaction
to them that when Kew and Glasnevin put up their Palm Houses,
they both chose the contractor who had built the wings of the
Belfast house.
The foundation stone of the Belfast Palm House was laid on 22
June 1839 by the Marquis of Donegall at a ceremony at which no
intoxicating drink was provided. By the following year the two
wings, each 65 feet long, 20 feet high and 20 feet wide had been
completed at a cost of £1,400. The glazing was done by Walker
of Dublin and the cast iron frames and the actual construction
were the work of Richard Turner of the Hammersmith Works, Ballsbridge,
Dublin.
The designer of the Belfast Palm House was Charles Lanyon who
was made a director of the Company in 1861. It can be seen from
his original design that, to start with, he envisaged a low central
dome with a vertical front and two terminal domes at the ends
of the wings...
Lanyon's final design for the Palm House dome differed considerably
from his original conception. In place of a low square structure
with a flat front that projected only a little beyond the line
of the wings he wisely substituted a 46 foot high elliptical dome
with a short axis of 45 feet spanning the space between the two
wings, and a long axis of 66 1/2 feet which brought the front
well beyond the line of the wings. By this means he considerably
increased the floor area and at the same time provided for the
growing of lofty plants.
...As has been indicated the Company showed considerable initiative
in erecting what was a new form of hot house... By the mid-eighteenth
century the front and often the sides of conservatories had large
glass windows, and by 1800 the standard conservatory had front
and sides of glass although the roof was slated or timbered. The
first range of conservatories built at Glasnevin in 1801 was like
this - glass sides and front with a wooden roof. A few years later
glass roofs were introduced, and the second Glasnevin range which
was put up in 1820 had a flattish glass roof.
During the 1830s two very important developments took place in
glasshouse construction. Firstly, a new method of glass manufacture
enabled sheets of glass to be made up to six feet long, three
times as big as formerly... Secondly, cast iron frames came into
use. The original orangeries had been of brick or stone, and during
the eighteenth century brick sometimes was replaced by wood. These
wooden houses, however, had a short life and needed constant repair
after about twenty years. The use of cast iron for the conservatory
frame made possible the construction of a satisfactory glass dome
which gave the height and light necessary for the cultivation
sf tropical and sub-tropical trees and palms.
A flat roof was still very general during the 1820s, and even
by the end of the 1830s a curvilinear dome was still very much
an innovation. Paxton's great curvilinear conservatory at Chatworth
was built between 1836 and 1840. (It was demolished in 1920.).
...Turner first appears in a Dublin Directory of 1813 and was
in business at 4 St Stephen's Green. In 1818 the entry is Richard
Turner and Co and later the firm is described as 'Ironmonger to
the Bank of Ireland'. In 1836 the family moved to the Hammersmith
Works on the Shelburne Road, Dublin. The two wings of the Belfast
Palm House are the first known examples of the firm's work. Richard
Turner helped to design Kew Great Palm House and he constructed
it... from 1844 to 1848. One wing of the Glasnevin Curvilinear
Range was built in 1842 by William Clancy but the contract for
the second wing and the central dome was given to Turner who completed
the range by 1850...
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As well as the curvilinear conservatory Belfast Botanic Garden
contains a second conservatory - the Tropical Ravine House, formerly
known as The Glen. This rectangular house is uniquely constructed
in that the whole of the interior, with the exception of a pond
at one end, is taken up by a sunken ravine so that the visitor
walks round what is in effect a balcony and looks down into a
moist valley filled with tropical plants.
Although Belfast Corporation effected certain improvements, which
will be described later, the basic construction, much of which
Charles M'Kimm did with his own hands, was completed in 1886.
On entering the door past a column of basalt the 5,000 people
who paid the entrance fee of a few pennies in 1890 saw below them
a sunken glen of red sandstone scattered with patches of limestone
and lumps of quartz 'the size of the old howitzer shells used
at Sebastopol'. A small stream cascaded into a shallow pool in
which two fountains played.
Not without justification, the Company was extremely proud of
the Ravine House, and one shareholder described it as 'one of
the finest houses of the kind in the kingdom'. This opinion was
endorsed by Burbridge of the Trinity College Botanic Garden who
stated that it was one of the finest and most artistically arranged
of all the fern houses in Europe. 'I have never seen', he commented,
'so fine and satisfying a collection of ferns, bamboos, mosses
and climbing and trailing plants under a glass roof before'. Burbridge
was particularly pleased by a nine-feet long by three-feet-wide
bank of Killarney ferns, and observed that there were probably
more Killarney ferns growing there than could be found in Killarney...
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