By the 1st October 1768 work was well and truly underway to source the materials required to begin construction of the Poor House which had been envisioned at the first meeting of Belfast Charitable 16 years previously.
Offers came from various philanthropists, but on this day 1768 the Belfast Charitable Society wrote a letter to Mr Kennedy of Cultra, thanking him for granting them free liberty to quarry stone and sand from his estate. The quarries referred to in the letter can still be viewed at the Ulster Folk Museum at Cultra today.