The Exchange and Assembly Rooms:

Of the many commercial buildings that reflect life in 18th century Belfast the one that stands out the most is the Exchange and Assembly Rooms, until recently the Northern Bank. It stands on the corner of North St and Waring St.

1769 -- The Earl of Donegall, an absentee landlord, celebrating the birth of his son George Augustus, paid £4,000 for the building of a single storey building called "The Exchange "

1776 --The Earl added a second storey, designed by the distinguished London architect Sir Robert Taylor, known as "the Assembly Rooms". This new addition cost the Earl £7,000, but being one of the biggest landlords in Ireland and the owner of the town of Belfast he could well afford it.

1783 -- The Earl of Donegall, as Colonel of the Belfast Battalion of Volunteers (equal to today's reserve army) hosted a reception for 360 guests in the Assembly Rooms.

1785 -- The first meeting of the "Corporation for Preserving and Improving the Port of Belfast" (now the Harbour Commissioners) was held in the Assembly Rooms.

1786 -- There was an abortive attempt to set up a "Belfast Slaveship Company" by a group of Belfast merchants lead by Waddell Cunningham. (Cuningham had made his fortune in New York before returning home to Belfast.) Thomas McCabe, whose premises were just across the road at 6 North St., denounced this vile idea and the proposition was defeated.*

*Thomas McCabe was a successful watchmaker and was also a member of the United Irishmen . His house stood on what is now St Malachy's College on the present day Antrim Road. The meetings to plan the attack on Antrim in the 1798 uprising were held in his house. His shop in North St was repeatedly attacked by government troops because of his involvement with the United Irishmen.

1792 -- From the 11th - 14th July the famous Belfast Harp festival was held in the Assembly Rooms. Ten harpists, most of them blind, took part in this celebration of the fall of the Bastille. There was also a march by the various Belfast Volunteer companies through the town. Wolfe Tone who was passing through Belfast on his way to exile in America, attended the festival with some of his United Irishmen colleagues and wasn't too impressed with the musicianship of some of the harpists. The festival has a special place in the history of Irish music because Edward Bunting, organist and friend of the McCracken family, transcribed these old Irish airs for posterity (reprints of this historic document can be purchased at the Linenhall Library in Donegall Square North).

1798 -- 17th July -- After the failure of the "98 rebellion" the Assembly Rooms took on the air of a military court when Colonel Montgomery presided over the trial of the famous Henry Joy McCracken. 
McCracken had lead the unsuccessful attack on Antrim in June 1798. Robert Simms was the original commander but lost his nerve and Henry stepped in. He escaped the battlefield, hid out on Slemish Mountain and in the cottage of a man called Bodell on the Cavehill. He was eventually captured while trying to make his escape on his way through Carrickfergus.
After being found guilty, and refusing an opportunity to be released if he informed on Robert Simms, he was taken and at 5pm hanged at the Market House at the corner of High St. and Cornmarket (present day Dunnes store).
The normal punishment was to be hung, drawn and quartered and the head placed on a spike on top of the Market House as an example to others. His equally famous sister Mary Ann McCracken pleaded to the Colonel and got his body back intact and the body was taken back to the McCracken house in Rosemary Street where they made an abortive attempt to revive him. It was to no avail and, followed by a small cortege, he was taken to High Street graveyard (present day St. Georges), and buried. His remains are now believed to have been re-interred in his sister's grave in Clifton Street where many of his United Irishmen comrades are also buried eg Thomas McCabe, William Drennan, Dr Wm Steele Dickson, the Sinclair brothers.

1799 -- The Belfast Charitable Society met in the Assembly rooms to revive the Belfast Dispensary and Fever Hospital which had fallen into neglect. The society had opened a fever hospital in Berry St around 1794. This fever hospital was the forerunner of the Royal Victoria Hospital. It would remove to West St, then in 1817 to Frederick St and became known as the General hospital, then The Royal Hospital before being superseded when the "Royal " opened on the Grosvenor Road in 1901.

1820 -- When the larger Commercial buildings (present day Northern Whig building) opened across the road the Exchange and Assembly building reverted back to its use as business premises.

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