Robinson And Cleavers

Donegall Sq. North

1886-1888 - Young and Mackenzie. Used to be one of Belfast's most well-known department stores, Robinson and Cleaver's Royal Irish Linen Warehouse. Fifty heads of the firms patrons pop out of the exterior; including Queen Victoria, and the Maharajah of Cooch Behar, who laid out the rules of snooker in India in 1885! Heads also symbolise countries to which the firm sold products including Canada and Scotland, which is shown as a Highland chief.

Also designed by Young and Mackenzie in Belfast: Ocean Buildings (Pearl Assurance Building) Donegal Square East.

Robinson & Cleavers was Belfast’s most popular, and grandest, department store at the time Titanic was being built. Thomas Andrews and his wife Helen shopped here as would many of the wealthier Harland and Wolff employees. The memorial erected to Titanic after her sinking was erected in the middle of the road outside the building in 1920. It was moved to the grounds of City Hall in 1959, as it had become a traffic hazard.