St. John the Evangelist Church of Ireland, 397 Castlereagh Road, Belfast, County Down, BT5 6AB

St John the Evangelist is a Church of Ireland built between 1955 and 1957 to the designs of Robert Hanna Gibson and E D Taylor of Belfast. The church replaces an earlier St John's Church at Laganbank, built in 1853 near the Albert Bridge and demolished in 1943. The new parish was established in 1937 and initially served by a church hall built to designs by Henry Seaver on land donated by the Blakiston-Houston family. The present site was purchased from the Ministry of Commerce in 1949, and the foundation stone was laid in 1956 by Lt-Col J M Blakiston-Houston. The building was consecrated in November 1957.

The church represents an unaltered example of mid-20th century architecture of good merit. It is a double-height structure with Gothic influences, adopting the minimal styling of its era while being informed by the proportions and forms of historic ecclesiastical buildings. The design comprises a nave with side aisles, chancel, sanctuary, tower and ancillary accommodation to the rear.

Externally, the church is constructed of reconstituted monotone block rock-faced masonry brought to courses, with a smooth-finished plinth and coping. The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, extruded metal ogee-moulded guttering, hoppers and circular downpipes. The principal gable faces northeast and is symmetrically arranged without moulded decoration. Windows include tripartite mullioned leaded stained glass and metal-frame casement rolled glass windows to the ground floor and aisles with smooth-faced long-and-short surrounds and chamfered jambs, cills, heads and mullions. The nave features pointed-arched leaded stained glass and metal-frame casement rolled glass windows with modern bipartite tracery, irregular long-and-short surrounds, and chamfered jambs, cills, heads, mullions and transoms. The principal entrance is a double-leaf panelled timber door with bronze ironmongery set within a simple moulded lancet-arched opening with plinth blocks.

A squared-headed quadripartite baptistery window is flanked by a pair of diminutive squared decorative buttresses without offsets. The tall east window comprises tripartite lancet-arched tracery stained glass with a ventilation grille above. The left elevation presents a raised seven-bay wide facade comprising six nave windows and paired chancel windows, with parapets breaking through the eaves at either end and a further sanctuary window to the left. The ground floor is abutted by a single-storey aisle. A projected gabled entrance porch with diminutive single and bipartite windows is positioned to the right of this elevation. To the left is a single-storey flat-roofed abutment with single, bi- and tripartite metal-frame windows and a concave sheeted timber rear door with moulded surrounds. The southwest gable features a single quadripartite stained glass circular window at high level with a ventilation grille above. The right elevation matches the left in principle, with six nave windows abutted at ground floor by a single-storey aisle and flanked either side by projected gabled porches. A three-storey plain square-plan tower abuts the left side, further abutted on the west cheek by a narrow two-storey flat-roofed bay, all comprising single, bi- and tripartite metal-frame windows and a concave sheeted timber rear door with moulded surrounds.

Internally, the subtlety created by clean lines and blank surfaces results in a light space, enriched by Gothic-style liturgical furniture and modern stained glass windows.

The church is located off the main Castlereagh Road, accessed via an entrance screen to the northeast comprising mild steel railings and gates fixed to squared coursed masonry walling and piers, with a boundary post adjacent to the right. South of the site are red brick industrial units; two-storey residential properties are located to the north. A narrow road circumnavigates the church, leading to a large car park to the rear which also provides access to the manse and church hall. A new hall was constructed within the grounds in 1994, after which the original hall in Orby Drive was sold.

Robert Hanna Gibson (1890–1979) received his architectural training in the office of Henry Seaver, becoming his partner in the 1930s and continuing the practice after Seaver's death in the late 1930s. Gibson's partnership with E D Taylor began around 1949 and lasted until Gibson's retirement in the early 1960s. Gibson was influenced by the architecture of Edwin Lutyens and designed a number of educational buildings and church halls, including St Jude's parochial hall on Ravenhill Road.