Ballyholme Presbyterian Church, Ashley Drive, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 5RD

Ballyholme Presbyterian Church is a double-height Gothic-style church built around 1960 to designs by E.P. Lamont. It is situated on Ashley Drive in suburban Bangor, approximately 1.5 miles east of the town centre, in a predominantly two-storey residential area. The church comprises a central nave with side aisles, adjoined by halls and extensions added at various periods, including a two-storey extension built in 1993 and secondary flat-roofed accommodation linking to an earlier church hall dating from around 1940.

The building is constructed of red brick laid in English Garden Wall bonding with a projected plinth. Architectural detailing includes three-stage lateral buttressing, reconstituted sandstone block dressings and mouldings throughout. The roof is pitched with pan tiles; cast-iron rainwater goods with concealed gutters feature rectangular hopper-heads and circular down-pipes.

Windows are Gothic-arched with interlacing tracery, long-and-short surrounds, and chamfered cills. Label moulding appears above openings, with transoms to side and rear windows. The principal entrance comprises timber diagonally sheeted double doors beneath a Gothic arch embraced by a three-stage moulded surround with chamfer-stop and label moulding above.

The principal elevation faces south as a symmetrically arranged gable façade with a tower to the right. The gable is skew-table buttressed with saddle-coping and a pitched moulded drip course below, centred by a large single window. The tower is square-plan, three-stage with lateral buttressing and mould drip coursing. The ground-floor south façade accommodates the front entrance; a diminished square-headed window appears at gallery level on the south and east façades. Timber louvered openings occupy the top stage on all sides of the tower, with a billeted course above rising to a parapet with raised corners.

The west elevation comprises a buttressed four-window-wide nave abutted at ground floor by a single-storey aisle with diminished square-headed windows and saddle-coping to parapets with moulded drip courses. To the left, a blank double-height buttressed projection abuts the nave, further abutted by a two-storey extension of no significant interest. The rear (north) gable mirrors the front gable and is abutted by a diminished gable with a large central window. Ground floor accommodation is largely abutted by single-storey flat-roofed secondary structures linking to the earlier church hall. The east elevation of this secondary accommodation features a recessed rear entrance and a bi-partite square-headed window with single-stage lateral buttressing. The east elevation of the main church matches the west, with the tower abutting the left side and a gabled double-height projection to the right featuring matching gable details and a large central window.

The site is enclosed by a red brick wall with piers and iron gates providing pedestrian and vehicular access. A tarmac car park lies to the north and east. Immediately north is a two-storey modern townhouse development; Ballyholme Primary School lies to the south-east. A second hall, erected in 1978 adjoining the earlier church hall to the rear, now connects to the church via the two-storey extension and is of no significant interest.