How do you get in a position to purchase La Roche House?
My wife, Emma, is from Northern Ireland as well, but we had both lived in London for about 20 years (straight from University). Our three kids were starting to grow up a bit, and we really never meant to be in London for that long, so we decided to come back to Northern Ireland. Partly for good affordable secondary schools, but mainly just to be closer to our wider family.
At that stage we were both starting our own self-employed businesses—Emma is a dressmaker at ‘Emma Birney Bespoke Dressmaking’ and I do my commercial design work under the brand ‘Bell + Whistle’—so this made it easier to leave London.
When we came back to Belfast to look at properties, we were fortunate that this house was on the market at that time. We fell in love with it straight away, and coming from a ridiculously overpriced housing market in London, it also seemed refreshingly affordable for what it offered!
Did the house require a lot of work?
The previous owners had lived in the house for 40 years, and had not made many changes to the original house. Which was a blessing and a curse. Whilst it was great that the integrity of the structure, and many of the original fixtures and fittings were unchanged, the property was also in great need of maintenance and updating. Parts of the house were very tired.
There was underfloor heating which didn’t work, all the windows were single-glazed, the flat roofs needed re-felted, a lot of the timber was starting to rot. So we had a new heating system installed, fixed the roof, single-glazing was replaced with double-glazing, insulation was added, all the electrics needed redone—a lot of work basically!
Any time we’ve made significant updates to the property, we’ve kept as close as we can to the original design. Although the building isn’t listed, it had featured in the Architects Journal in 1962, and is of significant architectural design interest. So maintaining the original design and features where possible was very important to us.
You must at some point decide to share the building with the community?
The idea to open up the house to the community wasn’t something we had intentionally planned. I suppose our children, again, were starting to drive another change in lifestyle. As they started to become of ‘leaving’ age, we started to imagine being empty nesters. In the back of our minds, we were always aware that the property had potential to be opened up for public use: the previous owners had a wonderful art collection, and there were artists who actually came to the house just to see the artwork. They also used to have Queen’s University architecture students coming here on guided tours to have a look at the design of the house.
But even though that was in our minds, we were initially just thinking of renting out part of the house as accommodation. So we remodelled the upstairs to allow it to function independently, almost like as a separate flat with its own entrance and privacy. The ground floor already had a master bedroom with en suite, alongside all the living spaces, so it would have facilitated us very comfortably while we potentially rented the upstairs.
So how does the project develop?
It wasn’t until I was speaking to a friend, Charlie Kennedy, who frames all my paintings, and he suggested he knew a few people who represent artists, who might be interested in using the space to display their work. That immediately seemed like a great idea, not least because it brought so much more function and purpose to the house, but it also gave us the opportunity to share the space again.
For Emma, and I, faith is a central motive in these sorts of big decisions, and we felt this idea to open the home as a gallery and event space created an opportunity for us to simply practice being generous and hospitable.
In order to create the right kind of welcoming feel, we didn’t want to turn the house into a white cube gallery, but we also didn’t want it to feel like you were walking straight into someone’s home. So I think we’ve ended up with a kind of interesting half-way house where it still feels like a home but without being too traditionally homely; and it also feels like a gallery but without feeling too formal.
It certainly does feel like a very unique space, both an incredible architectural structure as well as somewhere which works as a gallery?
We installed a flexible track lighting solution, and introduced a very subtle minimal hanging system around all the available wall space. It’s mostly white walls, but we kept some dark and mid-toned walls as well, which helps display certain pieces of work, and also allows viewers to more easily imagine the art in their own domestic setting. It makes it relatively quick and easy to put up new exhibitions.
You gave the space over to Gallery 545 recently?
Yes, and that was a great exhibition, and an enjoyable experience working with Francesca from Gallery 545. It’s been really interesting for us as owners, to experience the space with different exhibitions of artwork in it. When the art and architecture resonate well together it has a very powerful and sometimes unexpected effect. And of course, the opportunity to meet the artists, and play some small part in helping their work to be seen more widely is a privilege. We are also building a permanent collection so that there is exciting artwork to view all the time—even when a particular exhibition is not being held in the space. A lot of this collection had been my own painting work, but I’m being slowly sidelined and diluted so that it’s not a shrine to me! I think we now have about 15 or 16 artists represented in the current permanent display (the majority of which are local artists).
Where to now?
Off the back of the footfall from the pop-up art exhibitions, people have approached us with suggestions as to how they would like to use the space.
In just the last year we’ve had photoshoots, small wedding parties, corporate days; we’ve also had television shows filmed in the house, and we even have a live music performance coming soon. Most of this has been unexpected, but it’s opened our eyes to some of the opportunities that exist. We hope to balance the more commercial opportunities with the more community-minded opportunities, so that we can continue to make the space function affordably for artists and curators.
We’ve been surprised and delighted at the amount of interest in space, and hopeful that there’ll be lots more exciting events to come in the future!
You can keep abreast of any new events and exhibitions by subscribing on the website at www.larochehouse.com
