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

St Matthew's Roman Catholic Church is a large buff-pink sandstone church built around 1880, located south of the Newtownards Road east of Belfast city centre. It is constructed in uncoursed rock-faced rubble and comprises a double-height hall with side-aisles, transepts, an apsidal end, a two-storey sacristy to the south, a chapel to the northwest, and a three-stage tower with broach spire to the northeast.

The walls are built in buff-pink Scrabo sandstone with ornamental Dumfries and York stone details including a chamfered plinth and string courses. Buttresses with ornately carved pinnacles feature on the main elevation. The pitched natural slate roof has decorative ridge crestings and a weather-vane to the apsidal end, with raised stone verges featuring kneelers and a cross finial to the gable. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are mounted on corbelled eaves.

The principal elevation faces north and is gabled. This gable contains two tracery windows flanked by semi-engaged colonnettes with Corinthian capitals, surmounted by a rose window at gallery level. Between these tracery windows stands a white marble statue of St Matthew set into an ornately carved cusped Gothic niche with an ornately carved plinth; a diminutive statue crowns the top of the gable. The entrance is a Romanesque-style portico with three pink sandstone semi-engaged half-columns with decoratively carved capital heads, fronting a timber-sheeted double-leaf door with an equilateral-headed transom light having vertical timber glazing bars. Pink sandstone insets with carved stone plaques flank the main entrance. A second entrance with a smaller-scale portico of similar design exists to the left at the tower base.

The side-aisles are lit by paired mullioned and cusped lancets with chamfered sills and alternating sandstone voussoirs. The east side-aisle spans four sets of paired lancets with a clerestory of six sets of cusped oculi above. The west side-aisle similarly spans four sets of paired lancets with six sets of cusped oculi in the clerestory. The left (west) transept features a tracery triple window at ground floor; the south cheek has a cusped oculus.

The apsidal end to the south has three sets of paired tracery windows. The north and apsidal-end elevations feature geometric tracery.

The three-stage tower to the northeast has a broach spire with lucarnes and a weather-vane. The third stage contains paired louvered vents with semi-engaged colonnettes surmounted by an oculus, and a Gothic blind arcade surmounted by cross finials on a corbelled sill. The second stage has slender lancets to three sides. The entrance to the tower's north side comprises a portico as at the main entrance but on a smaller scale, with paired colonnettes. A similar but smaller-scale entrance portico exists to the flanking bay at right.

The gabled sacristy to the left (west) of the apsidal end has a chimney flue to its centre and is flanked by shoulder-headed windows to the ground floor. Its west elevation has two cusped oculi to the first floor. The north elevation has a tracery triple window to the 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, each with relieving arches. The entrance door is accessed by three enclosed masonry steps.

The canted bay chapel projects from the west side-aisle.

The church stands on a large site south of the Newtownards Road opposite a housing executive estate, with late-twentieth century replacement red-brick terraced housing nearby. A three-storey red-brick detached presbytery stands directly to the south. The church grounds are lawned with shrubs and mature trees to the north and are 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 to the east with a tarmacadamed driveway and parking area. An early memorial cross and shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes stands to the west, originally located to the west wall which now has a modern replacement.