Fortwilliam & Macrory Presbyterian Church, 577 Antrim Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT15 3LU

Fortwilliam and Macrory Presbyterian Church, 577 Antrim Road, Belfast

This is a free-standing, double-height Gothic Revival sandstone church over a basement, built between 1884 and 1885 to the designs of Henry Chappell (c.1832–1924), an architect and engineer from Newtownards who completed many ecclesiastical buildings across Ulster. Fortwilliam Park Presbyterian Church is considered his most accomplished work. The church is T-shaped on plan, facing west, and sits on its own site at the prominent corner junction of the Antrim Road and Fortwilliam Park, with its south nave elevation fronting onto Alexandra Gardens. It is located within the Somerton Road Conservation Area and was listed in 1988.

Historical Background

The church was built to serve the wealthy residential area of Skegoneill, which had developed rapidly following the opening of the Antrim Road in 1830 and become one of the most affluent parts of Belfast. The current plot was purchased from the Fortwilliam estate in 1879, and the Presbytery raised funds for construction from the prominent and wealthy residents of the area. Henry Chappell was commissioned to design a church capable of accommodating 800 worshippers, with a schoolroom below. The builder was James Henry of the Crumlin Road, whose tender of £6,200 was accepted. The foundation stone was laid on 1st January 1884. At the ceremony, the Moderator of the General Assembly praised both the site and the ambition of the project, declaring: "It is high time that the Presbyterian Church in Ireland should provide churches of a better class for her congregations in which to worship." The church was completed in April 1885 and officially opened on Sunday 26th April 1885, at which point it possessed the tallest spire in the city and could be seen for miles around. Its rateable value was initially set at £180.

The building was constructed of locally quarried Scrabo sandstone, with Corsehill sandstone used as a secondary material for the dressings. By 1885, the circular rose window facing onto the Antrim Road had been installed by the stained glass firm Heaton, Butler and Bayne. Two further stained glass windows commemorating Robert Porter and Henry Matier — prominent congregation members instrumental in acquiring the site in 1879 — were installed sometime after their respective deaths in 1887 and 1891, and were designed by O. C. Hawkes of Bromsgrove Street, Birmingham.

The church originally had no organ. An American harmonium was installed in 1902 and replaced in 1927 by a pipe organ costing £2,176. A memorial to congregation members who died in the First World War was installed in the church vestibule after the conflict. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the church was valued at £300. During the Second World War the building sustained minor structural damage as a result of the Belfast Blitz, and the stained glass windows were removed for protection; a second war memorial was installed after the conflict ended.

As the congregation grew substantially in the post-war years, a number of houses in the Fortwilliam area were acquired for additional church use between the 1940s and 1954. Between 1954 and 1956, the east end of the church was extended to designs by John MacGeagh (1901–1985), a Belfast-based architect responsible for numerous domestic and ecclesiastical buildings in the city during the mid-20th century. The extension cost £30,000. As part of this work the church organ was removed and upgraded, the new instrument having 61 stops and 1,438 pipes, described at the time as one of the finest of its kind in any church. By the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72), the rateable value had risen to £1,460. By 1962 the spire required immediate restoration at an estimated cost of £4,000, and in the early 1970s the church underwent extensive renovation encompassing repair of the spire, re-roofing, overhaul of the organ, and restoration of the exterior stonework. A further restoration was undertaken in 2009, when a new church organ was also installed. At the time of the listing record, the congregation stood at around 150 families.

Exterior

Chappell's engineering background is evident throughout: the composition is robust yet elegant, with a strong vertical emphasis that makes the building a local landmark. The steeply pitched natural slate roof has roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and sits behind slightly raised east and west gables with roll-moulded coping and stone finials. Replacement moulded steel guttering is supported on a moulded red sandstone eaves course, with a mixture of plastic and cast-iron downpipes. The walls are of coursed rock-faced sandstone ashlar with red sandstone ashlar plinth trims, flush red sandstone courses, and red sandstone string and sill courses. Sandstone buttresses divide each bay of the nave, each surmounted by gableted pinnacles that rise above eaves level.

Window openings are pointed-arched, flanked by red sandstone colonettes, and filled with stone tracery, decorative red sandstone panels at gallery level, and latticed leaded and stained glass windows with storm glazing.

The tower is square on plan and rises in three stages, terminating in a tapered octagonal sandstone ashlar spire with a crocketed top and wrought-iron finial. The lower half of the spire has lucarnes with stiff-leaf capitals and colonettes, though the colonettes are now missing. Clasping buttresses rise above the upper stage to form four octagonal tapered pinnacles surmounted by crocketed stone finials. The upper stage is an open belfry with a pair of pointed-arched apertures to all four elevations, rising from a blind arcade. The ground-floor stage of the tower has a single pointed-arched window opening to the south and west elevations, detailed in the same manner as the nave windows.

The gabled west (front) elevation is dominated by a large pointed arch with compound arch mouldings rising from paired red sandstone colonettes, incorporating a tripartite entrance. The upper part of the arch is filled with a geometric tracery window over three pairs of lancets, and the arch is flanked by full-height buttresses with hooded niches that rise as tapered finials breaking through the gable. The tripartite entrance comprises three compound-moulded arches over three shouldered square-headed door openings, fitted with three replacement double-leaf timber panelled doors, divided by clustered red sandstone colonettes with stiff-leaf capitals. The arches have decorative foliate stone tympana, and the doorcases are topped by crocketed gables. To either side of the entrance are lancet windows flanked by further gableted buttresses. The doors open onto a stone-paved platform approached by ten stone steps enclosed by an arcaded stone balustrade, which also encloses the basement area on each side and spans the full width of the church. The balustrade terminates in square gableted piers supporting decorative cast-iron lamp standards.

At basement level on the south elevation there is a shouldered square-headed door opening with double-leaf sheeted timber doors, set within a pointed-arched doorcase with splayed jambs, stiff-leaf impost stones, a compound-moulded sandstone arch, and a decorative roundel set within the tympanum.

The north nave elevation is five windows wide, with a canted projecting bay at the west end, and has paired lancets with leaded glazing at basement level. The south nave elevation is also five windows wide and detailed in the same manner.

The east gable is abutted by the 1954 multi-planar three-storey gabled extension. This wing is built in rock-faced reconstituted stone walling and incorporates a sandstone Catherine wheel east window with stained glass, and leaded steel casement windows set in transom and mullioned frames. While the extension detracts from the simplicity of the original composition, the overall architectural quality of the church, particularly the tower and spire, remains undimmed.

Setting and Boundaries

The church faces west onto the Antrim Road, with its south nave elevation fronting onto Alexandra Gardens. It is encircled to the west, south, and east by tarmacadam areas enclosed to the street by rubble basalt walling with stacked coping and replacement iron gates. The rear extension includes an arcaded passageway connecting to a red brick two-storey presbytery to the northeast.