Presbyterian Church, Gt. Victoria St., Belfast

Presbyterian Church, Great Victoria Street, Belfast

This is a Presbyterian church built around 1860 to designs by James McNea, an architect responsible for several Presbyterian churches in Armagh and Tyrone during the 1850s and 1860s. It stands on the west side of Great Victoria Street and is rectangular on plan. The church was originally known as Sandy Row Presbyterian Church and opened for worship on Sunday 13th January 1861.

Exterior

The roof is pitched natural slate with blue/black clay ridge tiles over a corbelled eaves course. The walls are painted ruled render over a painted plinth. Windows are segmental-arched-headed at ground floor and round-arched-headed at first floor, all containing leaded stained glass set in smooth painted surrounds with painted sandstone sills.

The principal elevation faces east and is dominated by a classically detailed double-height porch. This porch has channelled rustication to the ground floor, smooth render to the first floor, and a pedimented portico carried on engaged pilasters set on a moulded plinth, framing three entrances. Each entrance at ground floor level has recent double-leaf timber glazed doors surmounted by round-arched-headed glazed fanlights containing leaded stained glass, all set within bead-moulded surrounds with plain impost and keystone detail. A plastered sill course and string course run across the first floor of the porch. The portico entrance is flanked on both sides by curved bays, each containing a round-arched-headed niche with keystone detail at ground floor and a single window at first floor. The first-floor windows on the east elevation are set in moulded reveals with lugged impost and keystone detail. Access to the entrance is via two paved steps.

The north elevation is four windows wide, with windows arranged within double-height round-arched-headed recessed panels. The ground-floor window to the right has been replaced with a recent timber panelled entrance door surmounted by a segmental-arched-headed fanlight set within the existing opening. The south elevation is abutted by an adjoining two-storey building, as is the west elevation.

Setting and Boundary Treatment

To the east, facing Great Victoria Street, the church is bounded by sandstone plinth walling surmounted by cast iron railings, accessed via a pair of cast iron gates with decorative supporting brackets. To Albion Street to the north, the church is directly accessed from the street via a recent access ramp and steps with painted steel railings. The listing extends to the church building itself together with this walling, railings, and gate.

Rainwater goods are cast aluminium moulded gutters with round downpipes.

Interior

The interior has been substantially remodelled and modernised on more than one occasion and retains little of its original character. A schoolhouse was built to the rear of the church in 1868 to designs by Boyd and Batt.

Historical Background

The Sandy Row congregation originated with the work of a Town Mission, when a minister was appointed to gather together Presbyterian families in the Sandy Row district, an area undergoing rapid growth during the second half of the 19th century as factories and industrial housing spread westwards. Great Victoria Street had been laid out in the 1820s, and some high-value housing had been built nearby at Shaftesbury Square, making the area a juxtaposition of wealthy and working-class neighbourhoods.

It was initially proposed to build two churches in the area — one for ordinary people and one for the higher classes — but by 1859 Belfast Presbytery had rejected this idea, deciding that a single church would attract more public support and involve less expense. In November 1859 the Belfast Newsletter reported that large sums had already been received towards the erection of the church and that a very suitable site had been obtained.

On its opening, the Belfast Newsletter described the church as "handsome and commodious" and capable of accommodating between 800 and 1,000 persons, noting that "the sacred edifice will beautify the locality." The Reverend Dr Cooke, speaking in the church shortly after its opening, declared it a "truly a revival church" and expressed his satisfaction that it had been built in such a visible and prominent position rather than "in some backward place."

The congregation, which comprised around forty families when the church first opened — described at the time as composed largely of persons in humble circumstances — grew substantially over the following decades, reaching a peak membership of more than 1,400 families in the 1920s, before declining as population shifted away from the city centre.

In December 1872 the church reopened following extensive redecoration and improvements to the interior, including a new pulpit described in the Belfast Newsletter as designed on entirely modern principles and composed of pitch pine and mahogany, supported on four columns of pitch pine with mahogany bases and richly carved mahogany capitals. The total cost of these improvements was approximately £350. Further improvements were carried out in 1909, including the introduction of electricity; the contractor was T and W Lowry and the architects were Young and Mackenzie.

The First World War saw 769 members of the congregation serve in the armed forces, with 122 dying on active service — a figure illustrative of the significant contribution made by Belfast's working classes to the war effort and the high price many paid. In 1957 the interior was redesigned following serious fire damage. In 1997 to 1998 further radical restructuring took place to produce a dual-purpose building.