Queens Parade Methodist Church Queens Parade, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 3BJ

Queens Parade Methodist Church, Bangor

A double-height gable-fronted Gothic-style church built around 1891 to the designs of John Harold Burton of Lancashire. The church is located adjacent to Bangor Marina, overlooking Bangor Bay towards Belfast Lough, and forms part of a terrace of Victorian and modern commercial premises on Queens Parade (formerly known as Sandy Row). It replaced an earlier Methodist Meeting House on the same site, a simple primitive Gothic building constructed in 1820 at a cost of £600, which had accommodated between 300 and 400 people.

The new church was built in response to Bangor's growth as a resort and commuter town. The Wesleyan Methodists and New Connexion Methodists each constructed new churches in the centenary year of Wesley's death, with the Queens Parade church opening in June 1891. John Harold Burton, who had won several competitions for chapels and schools in north-west England in the late 1880s, was the architect. The contractors were Messrs Dixon and Campbell of Belfast, who used Dundonald whinstone from their own quarries with ashlar dressings from Scrabo. The building was developed by William James Campbell, who was also responsible for several houses along Queens Parade during the 1880s and 1890s. A schoolhouse fronting onto Main Street was erected at the same time and survives today, now occupied by a travel agency.

The principal elevation faces north and is symmetrically arranged as a gable. Externally, the church is constructed of uncoursed rubble basalt with sandstone dressings and features a pitched natural slate roof with clay ridge tiles and a centrally located copper ventilation lantern. The principal entrance comprises a modern glazed replacement door set within a segmental arched opening with hood moulding rising to an engaged finial, flanked by diminished red sandstone colonnettes embedded into chamfered jambs. The door is accessed by three sandstone steps accompanied by modern tubular steel handrails. At ground floor level, the entrance is flanked by paired windows either side. The upper stage comprises two large Gothic plate tracery windows featuring sexfoil openings over three Gothic openings with hooded mouldings and head-stops, flanked by quoins. Gablets rise to the apex stone and gable shoulder. Dress stone pillars flank either side of the elevation, squared with a string course at the base, rising to semi-engaged octagonal upper stages that continue to cornice level, each surmounted by an octagonal conical pinnacle.

The windows are Gothic diamond lattice leaded stained glass set within long-and-short chamfered sandstone surrounds with hood moulding. Originally, according to the Belfast Newsletter's account of the opening, the joiner's work was of varnished pitch pine with plastered walls and ceilings. The windows were filled with stained lead lights of simple design. The body of the church was 33 feet wide and divided by two aisles into three groups of seating. The church was furnished with a gallery and accommodated 400 people.

The left (east) and right (west) elevations are abutted by adjoining buildings. The rear (south) elevation is rendered and blank, with the view partially obscured. The setting is bounded by adjoining buildings to the east, south and west, with a multi-lane road running between the church and the marina carpark. The surrounding area comprises largely derelict Victorian and modern replacement two and three storey commercial and retail premises.

The church has undergone substantial alteration and damage. A German air raid in 1941 caused considerable damage, with extensive repairs and window replacement completed in 1945. A bomb in 1981 devastated the lower end of Main Street and destroyed the roofs of both the sanctuary and Wesley Hall, with all church windows blown in. Repairs were made with £11,000 assistance from the Northern Ireland Office, and the windows were replaced. Although the principal façade has retained much of its original appearance, typical in style and proportion to Methodist churches of its period, the extensive alterations and bomb damage have resulted in the loss of substantial historic fabric, compromising the building's architectural and historic interest. The church remains in active use.