Parliament Building of Northern Ireland
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The Parliament Building of Northern Ireland, known as Stormont because of its location in the Stormont area of Belfast, served as the seat of the Parliament of Northern Ireland and successive Northern Ireland assemblies and conventions. It is now the home of the Northern Ireland Assembly created under the Belfast Agreement, and also of the Executive Committee or power-sharing cabinet created under the Agreement, in which nationalists and unionists share power.
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Original plans for US capitol-style building
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The need for a separate parliament building for Northern Ireland emerged with the creation of the Northern Ireland home rule region in the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Pending the construction of the new building parliament met in two locations, in Belfast City Hall, where the state opening of the first parliament by King George V of the United Kingdom took place in on 21st June 1921, and in a nearby Presbyterian Church headquarters. In 1922 preparatory work on the chosen site, east of Belfast, begun. Plans for a large domed building reminiscent of the Congress building in Washington, DC were scrapped following the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and its knock-on effect on the economy of the United Kingdom. Instead a smaller domeless building was erected on the site. It was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) on 16 November 1932.
Finished building
The final building was intended to serve both as a seat of parliament and a seat of government, after plans for a Ministerial Building were abandoned. The headquaters of government was in effect Stormont Castle, a baronial castellated house in the grounds and which was originally meant to have been demolished to make way for the Ministerial Building. Stormont Castle served as the official residence of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and was the meeting place for the Northern Ireland cabinet. Another residence, Stormont House served as the official residence of the Speaker of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland.
Two separate chambers were provided, the green-benched rectangular House of Commons of Northern Ireland and the red-benched smaller rectangular Senate of Northern Ireland. In the main hall, called the Great Hall, a large gold-plated chandelier was hung. It was a gift from King George V and had originally hung in Windsor Castle, where it had been a gift of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. The Kaiser's chandelier had been removed from Windsor and placed in storage during World War I. It was never hung in Windsor again.
Wartime paint damage
The building itself changed little over the years, even as the parliaments meeting inside it did. To camoflage it during World War II the building's portland stone was painted with supposedly removable green paint. However after the war removing the paint proved an enormous difficulty, with the paint having scarred the stonework. While most traces of it were removed from the facades (though having done damage that can be seen up close) some of the remains of the paint survive in the inner-courtyards and non-seen parts of the place.
The chambers
The original House of Commons of Northern Ireland was designed in the standard adversarial form, with the government and opposition facing each other in parallel blue benches across a central aisle.
The original House of Commons chamber was slightly redesigned in the 1970s with the addition of a block of curved benches facing the Speakers' chair, along with new curved front benches for some of the remainder of the furnishings, to reduce the advertorial nature of the chamber and provide a symbolic middle ground for middle ground parties.
However the entire chamber was destroyed by fire in January 1995. The British government stated that the fire had been caused by an electrical spark behind the speaker's chair. Critics alleged arson and noted how the destruction of the chamber allowed the creation of the modern less confrontational chamber used by the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, which has no echo of the earlier seating arrangement.
Unlike the new Assembly chamber which replaced the old House of Commons chamber, the Senate chamber, with its red leather adversarial seats in two parallel blocks of benches remains as it was originally designed. Irish damask linen hangs on the wall; plans to line the walls with large oil paintings fell through.
The chamber has not been used as a parliamentary chamber in plenary session since the abolition of the Senate of Northern Ireland in 1973.
The Senate chamber is now used as the Northern Ireland Assembly's main committee room, with a committee table inserted in the central aisle and surrounded by seats.
Statues
Additional changes to the building and its environs include the erection of a statue to Edward Carson following his death, and the erection of a statue to Lord Craigavon in the main foyer, half way up the grand staircase. Craigavon and his wife are buried in the parliamentary grounds.
Uses for the building
The building was used for the Parliament of Northern Ireland until it was prorogued in 1972 and was abolished in 1973. The building was used for the shortlived Sunningdale power-sharing executive in 1974. Between 1973 and 1998 it served as the headquarters of the Northern Ireland civil service. Between 1982 and 1986 it served as the seat of the rolling-devolution assembly. It is now the home of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
A new parliament building?
In the 1990s, Sinn Fein suggested that a new parliament building for Northern Ireland should be erected, saying that the building at Stormont was too controversial and too associated with unionist rule to be used by a powersharing assembly. However no-one else supported the demand and the new assembly and executive was installed there as its permanent home.