Stormont Building: a Testament to Northern Ireland’s British Identity

My trip to Stormont Building was amazing. I fell in love with the building before I even walked in. The stature of the outside surely matched the majesty of the inside. This building is not only beautiful but also fairly important. Stormont is where the members for Northern Ireland’s parliament spend their days debating and perhaps trying to come to some tacit agreement about their affairs. However, their ability to comprise is tied to Northern Irelands divide of Protestant versus Catholic and has resulted in Northern Ireland not having a government for two years. The two leading parties Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are severely divided and rarely if ever agree with the each other’s views.

The building holds many significant details, but one of the most interesting, to me, is related to the paneling in the assembly chamber. My tour guide stated that all of the paneling was specifically made with English oak. Even when they ran out of English oak, they imported more because all of the wood paneling had to be made of nothing but English oak. This need for English oak seemed to be in line with the Protestant view of staying apart of the United Kingdom. It may have been a way to assert that Northern Ireland was under British rule and thus belonged to Britain.

While visiting Stormont, I quickly learned that I had to constantly look up. Even the ceilings in the building had a grand story to tell and were not just ornate for no reason. The picture above portrays an example of a ceiling design in Stormont that is a reminder of Northern Irelands loyalty to British royalty and thus Britain. The colors on the ceiling are not even slightly random. They were chosen because they are the colors of the English prince who came to visit the building. Additionally the chandelier in the picture, once hung from the ceilings of Windsor Castle before it was gifted to Northern Ireland’s Parliament. This is all very important because it symbolically shows Britains presence in Northern Irelands affairs and points out to nationalist that Northern Ireland’s identity is British not Irish.

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Above are photos that show some of the important aspects of Stormont Building and may even give greater insight into why the nationalist party- Sinn Fein- have a hard time working at a Parliament with so many historical reminders that they do not exactly belong.

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