St Donard's Church of Ireland Church, Bloomfield Road, Belfast, BT5 5DU

St Donard's Church of Ireland is a fine Gothic Revival church built in 1911–12 to designs by the London-based architect Edward Henry Lingen Barker (1838–1917), constructed in locally-quarried Scrabo sandstone. The building is of rectangular plan set on an east–west axis, single-storey and double height, with three gables serving the nave and aisles. It sits within its own grounds on a site adjacent to the junction of Bloomfield Avenue and Beersbridge Road, Belfast, and holds considerable social importance for the local community.

The roofs are covered in natural slate with red clay angled ridge tiles, raised stone verges with chamfered coping stones, and projecting eaves carried in cast-iron ogee-moulded guttering with circular cast-iron downpipes (replaced with uPVC rainwater goods at the southwest end). The walls are laid in coursed rock-faced Scrabo sandstone with a stone-cut plinth course. A coursed rock-faced Scrabo sandstone chimney with a corbelled coping and single black clay pot is also present. Windows throughout feature geometric tracery with pointed arch hood mouldings and carved head stops, and are fitted with stained leaded glazing unless otherwise noted below.

The principal west elevation presents gables at the ends of the nave and south aisle, abutted by a single-storey five-bay lean-to outshot, a single-storey porch to the southwest, and a square-plan tower at the northwest end. The main gable contains a large four-part tracery window with quatrefoils above. The south aisle gable has a small trefoil window, and trefoil windows light the outshot. The square-plan tower rises in three stages: at ground floor level it has a double trefoil window with a quatrefoil above; the second stage has three small square-headed openings and a painted metal clock face on the west elevation; and the belfry stage is finished with pinnacles and a parapet, with two trefoil louvred openings on each face. The tower has single-stage angle buttresses and is accompanied by a three-stage stair tower with blind tracery on each face at the third stage. A pointed arch door opening to the tower has a cut-stone surround and pointed arch hood moulding on carved head stops; it is fitted with a replacement vertical-sheeted timber door with decorative iron door furniture, opening onto two stone steps. The porch has a pointed arch door opening facing north with a chamfered surround, a vertical-sheeted double-leaf timber door with decorative iron door furniture, opening onto a concrete-paved platform.

The north elevation is five bays wide, each bay separated by two-stage buttresses, with a single-storey lean-to entrance porch at the west end covered in natural slate. A pointed arch opening with hood moulding leads into the porch and thence to a pointed arch door opening with chamfered stone surround and a vertical-sheeted double-leaf timber door with decorative iron door furniture, opening onto a tiled platform. The windows in this elevation are double trefoil with quatrefoils above, all with stained glazing.

The south elevation is four bays wide, each separated by two-stage buttresses, with a lower four-bay outshot to the east. A modern rendered corridor connects the church to the modern parish centre to the southeast. The aisle windows are double trefoil with quatrefoils above and stained glass; the outshot has lancet windows with chamfered jambs and sills, cut-stone surrounds, and stained leaded glazing.

The east elevation presents three gables with single- and two-stage buttresses. The main gable has a large stained glass tripartite trefoil window with quatrefoils above and a small square-headed window at a higher level. The north gable has a two-part tracery window with stained glazing and a quatrefoil above, a small square-headed window at a higher level, and a square-headed window with a cut-stone surround fitted with replaced frosted glazing. A square-headed door opening in the north gable with a vertical-sheeted timber door and decorative iron door furniture gives access to the ground floor, and a further square-headed door leads to the basement. The south gable, which forms a gabled outshot to the south aisle, is recessed and contains a lancet window with chamfered jambs and sill, cut-stone surround, and stained leaded glazing.

The interior layout and detailing are largely unchanged. The vestry at the east corner of the church was added in 1922 following the installation of a new church organ, which was built by the local firm of Evans and Barr. Six bells were installed in the bell tower in 1949, added in memory of Canon A. Moore, who served as incumbent minister between 1906 and 1946 and had overseen the construction of the church.

The church is set within its own grounds alongside the adjoining parish centre and a hall to the southeast, with a large car park to the rear. The grounds are lawned around the church and concrete-paved elsewhere, enclosed by a rock-faced stone wall with coping topped by original cast-iron railings. Square stone gate piers support original gates at all three entrances — to the southwest, west, and north — which contribute to the quality and character of the overall setting.

The congregation of St Donard's has its origins in a turbulent split from a larger congregation known as St Clement's, which had met in a temporary iron church on the Beersbridge Road. A well-publicised dispute arose from the Reverend W. Peoples' ritualistic, Anglo-Catholic practices, which alienated the great majority of his congregation of over 700. From August 1898 to March 1899, the church was surrounded each Sunday by crowds of approximately a thousand people — predominantly Orange Order members and associated groups — who harassed Peoples and on occasion broke into the church to remove items such as hymn books. The recurring violence at St Clement's was raised at Westminster in Hansard by Nationalist politicians, who cited it as evidence of the influence of militant Orangeism over political and ecclesiastical affairs in the city. In the aftermath, part of the original congregation moved to Templemore Avenue to establish a new St Clement's Church of Ireland, while those who became the congregation of St Donard's acquired the current site in 1900. Before the present building was erected, the congregation met in an iron church — a temporary portable structure — as the original iron church had been relocated to Templemore Avenue following the schism, necessitating the purchase of a second one for St Donard's. The union between the parishes of St Donard and St Clement was dissolved in 1902, when St Donard's was established as a parish in its own right. The congregation continued to use the iron church for a further decade while sufficient funds were gathered to build the permanent church.

The foundation stone was laid by the Archbishop of Armagh on 7 October 1911, as reported in the Irish Builder, and the completed building was dedicated to St Donard on 1 June 1912. A new robing room for the choir was added as part of renovation works in 1967, at which time the adjoining church hall was also reconstructed and enlarged at a cost of £20,000. The general layout of the church has not discernibly changed since 1922 aside from these additions. At the time of the listing records being compiled, the congregation was planning to construct a new parish centre involving the demolition of the existing youth hall to the northeast of the site, with the proposed new structure intended to be single-storey and connected to the existing church building.