Wilmont House Hopefully the Beginning of Its Rescue....
11 minutes ago
3 min read
This week brought some welcome news for one of Belfast’s most important historic buildings.
Wilmont House, standing within the grounds of Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park, is finally seeing movement towards securing its future. Essential enabling works are progressing, including measures to make the building safe enough for further assessment and asbestos removal, while Belfast City Council has committed up to £400,000 towards health and safety works at the house.
For me, this news is particularly welcome because I have seen first hand just how badly the house has deteriorated. When I got the opportunity to photograph the interior of Wilmont House, I was honestly appalled that such an important building had been allowed to reach this condition. Walking through the rooms, it was impossible not to see the effects of years of neglect. Peeling walls, damp, decay and damaged interiors had taken over a house which should have been one of the jewels of the park.
Wilmont House dates from 1859, and its later history is closely tied to Sir Thomas and Lady Edith Dixon. The Dixon family took over the estate in 1919, and after Sir Thomas’s death, Lady Dixon left Wilmont House and around 134 acres of surrounding land to Belfast Corporation. The property was formally transferred in 1959, in memory of her husband, with the intention that the house and grounds should be used for the benefit of the people of Belfast.
That legacy can still be seen today in Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park, which became one of Belfast’s best known public green spaces. What makes Wilmont’s story even more poignant is that it was not the only major house associated with the Dixons to be given over for public benefit.
Cairndhu House near Larne was gifted by Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon to the public on 2 February 1948, and later opened as the Sir Thomas and Lady Edith Dixon Hospital in 1949.
Both buildings were deliberately handed over so that they could serve people long after the Dixons were gone. That is why it is so difficult to see places like Wilmont and Cairndhu allowed to deteriorate so badly.
These are not simply old houses that happened to fall empty. They are buildings with deep historical, architectural and social value, and in both cases, they were given for public use.
Across the country, we have too many important buildings sitting empty, slowly becoming harder and more expensive to save with every passing year.
There comes a point when the conversation has to move beyond simply admiring photographs of abandoned buildings and asking what practical action can be taken before they are lost altogether. That is why I am genuinely glad to see Belfast City Council taking action at Wilmont House.
The work now being progressed is not a complete restoration, and there is still a long road ahead, but making the building safe and properly understanding its condition are essential first steps towards giving it a viable future.
Lady Dixon gave Wilmont so that it could serve the people of Belfast. Cairndhu was also gifted for public benefit. That makes it even more important that we do not allow that legacy to crumble with the buildings themselves.
I hope this is the beginning of a much more positive chapter for Wilmont House.
Below, I’m sharing a collection of photographs I took inside the house, documenting its condition before these latest works began.
Sometimes photographs like these are difficult to look at, but they are also an important record of where a building has been and hopefully, in this case, something we will one day be able to look back on and see just how far Wilmont House has come.
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