May Street Presbyterian Church, May Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 4NU

May Street Presbyterian Church

May Street Presbyterian Church is a Grade A listed double-height Presbyterian church completed in 1829, designed by local architect William Smith and situated prominently on the south side of May Street in Belfast city centre. It is one of the earliest examples of a Presbyterian church in Ireland to break from the plain, unadorned meeting-house tradition, adopting instead a fully classical character and proportion. Its architectural fabric is largely intact, and the interior is well preserved. The church, its railings, and its gates are all included within the listing, and it has group value with the adjoining Presbyterian Church Hall to the east.

Architecture and Exterior

The building is rectangular on plan and constructed in Flemish-bonded red brick over a painted sandstone plinth, with painted stone quoins. The roof is hipped natural slate with leaded hips behind a stone cornice and parapet. Cast-iron half-round gutters and round downpipes serve the rainwater drainage.

To the south, the church is abutted by a series of returns: from left, a two-storey hipped return, a three-storey hipped return, a lower three-storey stairwell, and a further three-storey hipped return, the last of which abuts the rear elevation of the adjoining church hall. The south elevation of these returns features block-marked rendered walling. Windows throughout are generally square-headed timber-framed with leaded stained glass at ground floor and round-arched heads at first floor, all set within painted moulded sandstone reveals; windows to the returns are square-headed timber-framed three-over-three sliding sashes.

The principal elevation faces north onto May Street and is the church's most architecturally striking feature. At its centre is a pedimented portico formed by four painted sandstone fluted Ionic columns with angle-capitals, framing a double-height recessed porch and supporting a triangular pediment with moulded architrave and dentil mouldings. To the left and right, bays are framed by engaged pilasters with angle-capitals supporting a continuous moulded architrave with dentil mouldings and a moulded entablature, all raised over a moulded plinth course. Within the porch are three square-headed entrances, each containing double timber panelled entrance doors set within painted moulded lugged architraves flanked by engaged pilasters, surmounted by moulded console brackets supporting a projecting moulded cornice. At first-floor level, a plaster moulded string course runs across the porch, above which sits a plaque with a moulded surround over each entrance.

The west elevation is six windows wide and features a continuous moulded sill course to the first-floor windows. The east elevation is largely abutted at ground-floor level by the single-storey church hall; the exposed section at first floor contains six windows with a continuous moulded sill course. The south elevation is largely obscured by the returns; exposed sections at left and right each contain a single window.

The returns contain various openings at different levels. The lower two-storey return at the left has a single square-headed opening (now blocked) at ground floor and a square-headed door opening at lower ground floor; its west elevation contains a single steel-framed window at lower ground and ground floor. The three-storey return has three square-headed openings at ground and first floor and a single door opening at lower ground floor. The lower three-storey stairwell has a single doorway at lower ground floor right and a single square-headed window opening at ground and first floor left. The three-storey return at the far right, which abuts the church hall, has at lower ground floor a door opening flanked to the right by two square-headed windows; at ground floor, three round-arched-headed timber-framed one-over-one sliding sash windows with margin lights; and at first floor, three windows. The east elevation of this return is blank.

Setting

The church occupies its own grounds on a restricted city-centre site. To the north along May Street and to the west along Alfred Street, the site boundary is defined by a painted rendered plinth wall with a painted sandstone coping surmounted by cast-iron railings. Access is through three sets of double-leaf cast-iron gates supported on decorative openwork piers surmounted by iron lanterns. The church entrance is reached via seven stone steps. A rear entrance to the lower ground floor is accessed directly from Little May Street.

History and Development

The church first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey maps for Belfast of 1832–33, which shows it as a rectangular building on the south side of May Street — at that time the southern limit of Belfast's town centre. It was constructed on reclaimed land let by Henry Joy, who owned much of the land south of May Street. According to McComb's Presbyterian Almanac, William Smith — who was also active at that time on the Belfast Savings Bank on King Street, completed in the same year — provided the designs. The builder was a Mr John Brown, originally contracted for £4,400; additions to the design brought the estimated overall construction cost to £6,500, though Lewis records the actual cost as closer to £9,000. The church was purpose-built for the Reverend Henry Cooke, who conducted the opening service on 18 October 1829 and ministered there for almost forty years. It was the fourth Orthodox Presbyterian Church erected in Belfast, designed to accommodate a congregation of 1,700. The construction costs left the church heavily in debt; the full balance was not cleared until 1853.

Henry Cooke (1788–1868) was the most prominent leader of the Presbyterian Church in the early and mid-19th century. Outspoken in his opposition to Arian beliefs, which were prevalent within Presbyterianism at the time, he was a gifted speaker and debater who drew packed congregations to May Street. The church served as the meeting place of the Presbyterian General Assembly for sixty years until Church House was completed in 1903.

The architectural historian C. E. B. Brett praised May Street's design, observing that its classical pediment and Ionic columns represented the highest point of the admirable tradition of Presbyterian churches moving away from plain barn-like meeting houses toward classical forms. Brett placed it as an early and distinguished example of that transition.

Griffith's Valuation of 1859 records that the adjoining hall — originally used as a schoolhouse — had been constructed by that year. The combined value of the church and hall was assessed at £300; the valuer described the building as an A-Class Church ('Not Cut Stone') measuring 24 by 22 yards and noted the presence of a library and committee room within the adjoining hall. The value remained at £300 until 1906, when the church and hall were valued separately for the first time, the church being recalculated at £280.

The first major structural addition came in 1858–59 when the adjoining hall was constructed on vacant ground to the east of the church. This was designed by John Boyd (d. 1895), who designed many churches and schools in Ulster from the 1850s onwards. The hall was originally used as a schoolroom with a two-storey library and committee room.

Following the death of Henry Cooke on 13 December 1868, the Reverend Samuel MacIntosh was appointed incumbent minister. Under MacIntosh, extensive renovations — again carried out by John Boyd — were undertaken, during which the coffered timber ceiling, new heating apparatus, and the Henry Cooke Memorial gateway were added. The current pulpit was also installed as part of the 1872 programme of renovations; this was an enlargement of Cooke's original pulpit, and was subsequently altered in 1885 when the platform around it was enlarged to accommodate the church choir.

At the turn of the century, under the Reverend D. Patterson, Sir James H. Halett donated the current pipe organ to the church in 1903 — the first time worship at May Street had been accompanied by any instrument. A decade later, between 1911 and 1915, the basement beneath the church was converted into a lecture hall and classroom; the basement had formerly served as the church's private cemetery. This conversion caused the church's valuation to increase from £280 to £310 in 1915. A second pipe organ, by J. J. Bramley of Leeds, was installed in the basement hall at around the same time. Further works under Patterson included the installation of electric lighting for the first time; the total cost of this phase of refurbishment amounted to approximately £3,000.

In 1919 a War Memorial Tablet recording the names of the 227 members of May Street's congregation who had served in the First World War — forty of whom died — was unveiled by Sir James Craig, leader of the Ulster Volunteer Force before the war and later the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

The church sustained minor damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz in the Second World War, but survived intact due to the vigilance of firewatchers assigned to the building. Services were limited during the war years; the current Baptismal font dates from 1943. In 1951, following the end of the war, the lecture hall beneath the church was reconstructed and a new heating and lighting system installed throughout. In 1953, new choir stalls were purchased and a remembrance table — designed by a Mr Boyd Scott — was dedicated.

Shortly after this refurbishment, dry rot was discovered in the roof timbers and walls of the church, requiring a repair project costing £27,000, carried out in 1963–64. During the period of civil unrest that followed, the church was frequently targeted, with much of its original glazing lost. Protective screens were installed on the windows facing Alfred Street in 1974. The windows to the rear of the building were badly damaged when a bomb exploded in Alfred Street in 1977. Despite this, May Street celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1979 and in that year received an award from the Northern Ireland Amenity Council for the best-kept building in central Belfast — the first time the honour had been given to a church.

Further repairs were carried out in 1984, and in 1988 May Street Presbyterian Church was listed for protection, along with its adjoining hall. The first general revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935 had placed the combined value of the church and hall at £610; a second revaluation from 1956 set the value at £1,350, subsequently reduced to £1,080 under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act.

Around 2005, the former hall in the basement was converted into a café. The church remains in active use and continues to operate as a focal point for the Presbyterian community in Belfast city centre. It lies within a conservation area.