St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church, Bryson Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT5 4ES

St Matthew's Roman Catholic Church, Bryson Street, Belfast

St Matthew's is a large Roman Catholic church built in buff-pink Scrabo sandstone laid in uncoursed rock-faced rubble, constructed from 1881 and consecrated on 24 June 1883. It stands on a generous site south of the Newtownards Road in the Ballymacarrett district, east of Belfast city centre. The church was designed by Alexander MacAlister (c.1821–1897), one of the leading church architects of Victorian Belfast, who designed numerous churches across Ulster. The builder was John McElhatton of Cookstown. The building comprises a double-height hall with side aisles, transepts, an apsidal east end, a two-storey sacristy to the south, a projecting canted bay chapel to the northwest, and a three-stage entrance tower with broach spire to the northeast. Its external architectural detailing is largely intact, though the interior has been refurbished in recent years, altering its original character and some of its historic fabric.

Exterior

The roof is finished in natural slate with decorative ridge crestings and a weather vane to the apsidal end. The stone gable has raised verges with kneelers and a cross finial. Cast-iron ogee-profile rainwater goods are carried on corbelled eaves. The walling combines buff-pink Scrabo sandstone in uncoursed rock-faced rubble with ornamental Dumfries and York stone detailing, including a chamfered plinth and string courses. The main elevation buttresses are topped with ornately carved pinnacles.

Windows throughout the side aisles are paired mullioned and cusped lancets with chamfered sills and alternating sandstone voussoirs. The clerestory has cusped oculus windows, and the north end and apsidal end feature geometric tracery.

Principal (north) elevation

The principal elevation faces north and is gabled. It has two tracery windows, each flanked by semi-engaged colonnettes with Corinthian capitals, above which sits a rose window at gallery level. The tracery windows are divided by a white marble statue of St Matthew set on an ornately carved plinth within an ornately carved cusped Gothic niche. A diminutive statue occupies the top of the gable. The main entrance takes the form of a Romanesque-style portico with three semi-engaged half-columns in pink sandstone with decoratively carved capital heads. The doorway has timber-sheeted double-leaf doors beneath an equilateral-headed transom light with vertical timber glazing bars. To either side of the entrance are pink sandstone insets with carved stone plaques.

Tower

The three-stage tower is crowned by a broach spire with lucarnes and a weather vane, rising to 170 feet and originally topped by a 12-foot wrought-iron cross. The third stage has paired louvred vents flanked by semi-engaged colonnettes surmounted by an oculus, and a Gothic blind arcade with cross finials on a corbelled sill. The second stage has slender lancets to three sides. The tower's north entrance has a portico similar to the main entrance but on a smaller scale, with paired colonnettes; the flanking bay to the right is treated similarly.

Side elevations and apsidal end

The east side aisle is four bays of paired lancets wide, surmounted by a clerestory of six oculus windows. At ground-floor level to the left is a transept with a tracery triple window; its south cheek has a cusped oculus. The apsidal end to the south has three sets of paired tracery windows.

The sacristy, to the left of the apsidal end, is gabled with a chimney flue to the centre flanked by shoulder-headed windows at ground-floor level. Its west elevation has two cusped oculus windows at first-floor level. The north elevation has a tracery triple window at first-floor centre, a triple square-headed mullioned window to the ground-floor left, and a timber-sheeted door with a cusped transom light to the ground-floor right, all with relieving arches. The entrance door is reached by three enclosed masonry steps.

The west side aisle mirrors the east, being four bays of paired lancets wide with a six-oculus clerestory above. To the left is the projecting canted bay chapel.

Interior

The interior has been refurbished in recent years, which has altered its original character and some historic detailing. The original high altar and pulpit were built in Caen stone by J. W. O'Neill of Dublin, and the side altars were also constructed in Caen stone by Pearce & Sharpe of Dublin. The church organ, built by Evans & Barr, was installed during renovations in 1927–28.

Setting

The church is set on a large, attractively landscaped site with lawns, shrubs, and mature trees to the north. It is enclosed by original decorative wrought-iron railings with Gothic stone piers and gates to the north and east. The original twin entrance from the north is no longer in use; vehicular access is from the east via a tarmacadamed driveway and parking area. A three-storey red-brick detached presbytery stands directly to the south. The surrounding streetscape to the north includes a Housing Executive estate and late 20th-century replacement red-brick terraced housing.

To the west of the church stands an early memorial Celtic cross commemorating members of the congregation who lost their lives, and a shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes. The shrine was originally located against the western wall — built in 1963 of brown Scrabo sandstone and incorporating a piece of the rock at Lourdes on which Our Lady was reputed to have stood — but was subsequently moved to its present position to the east when the memorial cross was erected. The western wall now has a modern replacement feature.

Historical background

The congregation at Ballymacarrett has its roots in around 1810, when Father Patrick Curran formed a Catholic congregation in Newtownards. In the absence of a local place of worship, Catholics from Ballymacarrett travelled to Newtownards to attend services at the chapel built there in 1813. In 1828 a plot of land in Ballymacarrett was purchased by a Belfast merchant who declared it was for commercial purposes but intended it for a Catholic chapel. The chapel was built around 1830 and dedicated on 13 March 1831. The first Ordnance Survey map and its associated memoirs confirm a Roman Catholic chapel on the Newtownards Road near the current site as early as 1832. This early chapel appeared in Griffith's Valuation, where it was valued at £45, with an associated National Schoolhouse valued at £18.

By around 1870 the local Catholic population had grown to approximately 7,300 — from around 350 parishioners in 1831 — making a larger building essential. Plans for a new church were discussed as early as 1868, and in October 1877 the Ulster Examiner noted that the 1830s chapel, though in good repair, would soon need to be replaced by a more spacious building. A new site was purchased in 1881, close to the earlier chapel, and the foundation stone was laid that year. The church was consecrated on 24 June 1883 and shortly afterwards was given its own parish. When first recorded in the Annual Revisions in 1883, the church was valued at £300, on land let by Lord Templemore, the landlord of much of Ballymacarrett. In 1897 a sexton's house valued at £6 (now demolished) was given a separate valuation, reducing the church's recorded value to £294. From 1906, when Pottinger Ward was first valued separately from the rest of Belfast, the church's valuation rose to £410, remaining there until 1930. The First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 recorded a value of £775; by the start of the Second General Revaluation in 1956 this had risen to £1,170. Under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act the value was reduced to £936, though this was subsequently revised upward to £1,048 in 1960 following an application to revise, and had risen further to £1,060 by the end of the Second General Revaluation in 1972.

Positioned at a sectarian interface on the Newtownards Road, St Matthew's witnessed considerable civil unrest throughout its history and was frequently the target of attacks, most violently during the 1920s shipyard riots. The congregation declined during the early 1920s but returned as attacks lessened in the mid-1920s. In 1927–28 the church was renovated and repairs were carried out to the spire at a cost of £200. During the Belfast Blitz of 1941 the church escaped major structural damage, though its windows were shattered; these were not replaced until after the war, when damaged roof timbers were also repaired.

The church was listed in 1987. In 1988 the convent, which had stood for ninety years, was closed and was subsequently demolished in 1991. During the 1990s a series of renovations were undertaken to the church, the parochial hall, and the presbytery. The windows were restored in 1996 and repairs to the decayed exterior stonework were completed in 1998. The church celebrated the centenary of its consecration in 1983.