The Ulster acropolis
ON November 16, 1932, Edward, Prince of Wales, arrived in Belfast to open the newly completed Parliament Buildings at Stormont on behalf of George V. The Prince was a veteran of such events, having already played a ceremonial role in the establishment of parliaments across the British Empire from Valletta to Canberra. Where they were provided with new buildings—to make outward expression of the political change they represented —these early 20th-century institutions of nascent statehood shared much in common.
All the new parliaments and assembly buildings were monumental works of Classically informed architecture, an idiom particularly associated at the time with the dignity of government and authority. All formed the centrepiece of park-like, governmental districts that were a hallmark of British Imperial power. And all of them assumed a governing structure borrowed from the example of Westminster, the ‘Mother of Parliaments’, with an upper and a lower house.
As we saw last week, the Parliament Buildings of Northern Ireland were planted on an estate purchased for the purpose a century ago in 1921. Stormont originally lay outside the bounds of Belfast, but was formally incorporated within the city to serve its new governmental role. The 1850s castle at the heart of
