of Belfast. In 1907 Pirrie was appointed Comptroller of the Household to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and in 1908 he was appointed Knight of St Patrick (KP). Pro-Chancellor of The Queen's University of Belfast from 1908 to 1914, Pirrie was also in the years before the First World War a member of the Committee on Irish Finance as well as Lieutenant for the City of Belfast (both 1911) In February 1912, after chairing a famous meeting of the Ulster Liberal Association at which Winston Churchill defended the government's policy of Home Rule for Ireland, Pirrie was jeered on the streets of Belfast, and assaulted as he boarded a steamer in Larne: pelted with rotten eggs, herrings, and bags of flour. In 1910, the Ulster Liberal Association, an overwhelmingly Protestant body, with a weekly newspaper, and branch network throughout Ulster, had adopted (in opposition to the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association) an explicitly pro-home rule position. Two months later, April 1912, he was to travel aboard the , but illness prevented him from joining the ill-fated passage. During the war he was a member of the War Office Supply Board, and in 1918 became Comptroller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, organising British production of merchant ships. In 1921 Pirrie was elected to the Northern Ireland Senate, and that same year was created Viscount Pirrie, of the City of Belfast, in the honours for the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, for his war work and charity work. Personal life Lord Pirrie married Margaret Montgomery Carlisle, daughter of John Carlisle, M.A., of Belfast, on 17 April 1879. In 1909, Lord Pirrie bought Witley Park, formerly the residence of Whitaker Wright. The letter P with a coronet above can be seen on metal gates and fence posts in the estate and previously owned lands. Pirrie built the Temple of the Four Winds near the Devil's Punchbowl, Hindhead. The octagonal plinth still remains. Lord Pirrie's nephew, Thomas Andrews, died on the Titanic. Pirrie himself died on 7 June 1924, at the age of 77 of bronchial pneumonia, at sea off Cuba, whilst on a business trip to South America. His body was brought from New York on the White Star Line's , and was buried in Belfast City Cemetery. The barony and viscountcy died with him. Lady Pirrie died on 19 June 1935. A memorial to Pirrie was unveiled in the grounds of