The BLFI are looking forward to welcoming you in Belfast to the BLF Conference & Gathering 2022. At this annual event a variety of speakers including practitioners, specifiers, academics and historians will present papers on the use of building limes. Site visits and tours will also be organised.
This year we are delighted to confirm Queens University Belfast as our venue where we will have access to the Emeleus Lecture Theatre, the Canada Room and Council Chamber during the day. The Great Hall designed by Charles Lanyon will be the location of the Baker Memorial Lecture on the first night, Friday September 2nd.
The conference will be held at the main campus. The main building and Great Hall were designed by Charles Lanyon.
The programme will include talks every morning and site visits on Friday & Saturday afternoons.
The lecture programme will include local and UK speakers and international contributions from the Americas, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Italy.
We also plan to have a Questions and Answers session on Sunday morning ‘Question Lime’.
A programme of tours is planned for Friday & Saturday afternoons.
Titanic Quarter: A tour of the graving docks, pump houses, The Nomadic (tender for the Titanic) and finishing at the H&W Drawing office, now a hotel.
Carrickfergus Castle, winner of 2021 RIBA Regional awards. – We hope this will be a live site, with proposed lime repairs ongoing in 2022.
Ballycopeland Windmill - the only roller-reefing windmill left in the world and is one of only a small number of windmills still in working order in Ireland.
Walking Tours of Belfast city centre.
The Baker Memorial Lecture followed by the formal dinner will be held in the Great Hall at Queen’s on Friday evening. We are honoured to have Dawson Stelfox MBE, Belfast Conservation Architect give the lecture, which promises to be both most informative and entertaining.
Dawson Stelfox: Planting Vines
Dawson Stelfox is an architect and a Belfast native.
He is the former chairman of Consarc Design Group Ltd. and is now working as a Conservation Consultant on complex conservation projects.. Over the years Dawson has workedn some of the most
important historic buildings in Ireland including Parliament Buildings, Stormont; St George’s Markets; The Albert Clock; various projects at Queen’s University,Belfast; Christchurch, Belfast; Castle Leslie, County
Monaghan; The Ulster Hall; Belfast City Hall; Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin; Ashford Castle, Co Mayo and Adare Manor hotel in Co Limerick.
Recent and current work includes a number of projects for the University of Edinburgh and English Heritage.
He has been an active mountaineer over the last forty years and became the first person from Ireland to climb Everest.
On Saturday evening the dinner and evening lecture will take place in the beautiful Belfast City Hall.
We thank Belfast City Council for their kind generosity for the use of City Hall.
Student accommodation has been booked at Stranmillis University (now part of Queen’s) and a 10-15 minute walk from the main campus.
There is also a huge range of hotels to choose from if you prefer something different.
By air
Belfast has two airports, Belfast City and Belfast International and it will depend on where you are flying from as to which airport you will arrive at. Both have an airport bus service which will bring you into the city centre, where taxis are available to take you to your accommodation at Stranmillis University College.
Direct flights to Belfast International Airport are available from Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London Luton, London Stansted, Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester.
Direct flights to Belfast City Airport are available from Aberdeen, Birmingham, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds, Liverpool, London Gatwick, London Heathrow, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Southampton.
An alternative is to fly to Dublin, where there is a bus from the airport to Belfast (route 705X) which takes around 1.5 hours.
By ferry
Ferries travel between Cairnryan and Larne, Cairnryan and Belfast and Liverpool and Belfast.
An alternative is to travel to Dublin by ferry and drive to Belfast, which takes around two hours or from Fishguard to Rosslare, the drive to Belfast taking around 3.5 hours.
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