St. Finnian's Church of Ireland, Cregagh Park, Belfast, County Antrim, BT6 9LF

St Finnian's Church of Ireland is a double-height Gothic-style church built in 1931–32 to the designs of architect W.D.R. Taggart, with construction carried out by contractors J & R Thompson Ltd. It sits within a well-maintained landscaped site off Cregagh Park, south-east of Belfast city centre, adjacent to the Knock carriageway to the north. The building is listed along with its gates.

Taggart was responsible for numerous suburban houses in Belfast and served as architect to the Antrim Regional Education Committee, designing several schools in that role. His other notable ecclesiastical commission was St Bartholomew's on Stranmillis Road. The total cost of St Finnian's came to £12,370, and the building was designed to seat 600 people.

The church comprises a nave with side aisles, chancel, tower, and vestries. The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles. Rainwater goods are cast iron throughout, with ogee gutters, hopper-heads inscribed "1932", and circular downpipes. There is an octagonal ashlar chimney with a single clay pot. The walls are built of uncoursed squared rubble sandstone — specifically Ballycullen stone from the Scrabo quarries — with chisel margins at corners. Red sandstone ashlar dressings (Aspatria stone) include a projected plinth, moulded string course, and saddle-back coping. Windows are pointed-arched stained glass with cusped Y-tracery, long-and-short surrounds, chamfered cills, and hood mouldings with stops. The entrance doors are pointed-arched double-leaf panelled timber with faux strap hinges, a deep-moulded archivolt, long-and-short surrounds with chamfer stops, and hood mouldings with stops.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged. At ground floor level it is abutted by a single-storey lean-to aisle, four windows wide, separated by single-stage buttresses. To the left is a gabled porch with a skew table with ashlar shoulders, single-stage diagonal buttresses, and an arrow-loop over the entrance. Above the aisle are five paired diminutive pointed-arch lattice-leaded clerestory windows. To the right, a symmetrical three-stage tower abuts the main body of the church, with double-height single-stage diagonal buttresses. The tower's ground floor has a triplet lattice-leaded pointed-arch window rising to a string course; the second stage has an arrow-loop with long-and-short ashlar surrounds; the third stage has a timber-louvred pointed arch with hood moulding. The tower is surmounted by a drip course with plain gargoyles and a crenellated parapet, topped by a pyramid slate roof with a finial. At the re-entrant angle between the east face of the tower and the chancel is a single-storey parapetted vestry.

The west gable is symmetrically arranged with two-stage angle buttresses, skew-table ashlar shoulders, kneelers, and an apex cross. At ground floor level it is abutted by a single-storey parapetted semi-octagonal faceted baptistery, each face of which has a single pointed-arched stained glass window with hood mouldings and a continuous moulded drip course, with a hipped roof over. The baptistery is flanked by two matching single windows. Above, a triplet upper west window comprises a central Y-tracery light flanked by elongated single windows, with a continuous drip moulding and a central arrow-loop over.

The north elevation largely mirrors the south, though the aisle is three windows wide rather than four, and there is a single-storey abutting choir vestry to the left. The east gable is abutted by a semi-octagonal chancel. The central chancel face has a pointed-arched window with tripartite intersecting cusped Y-tracery, flanked by two-stage tracery. The northeast and southeast faces each have a pointed-arched window with cusped Y-tracery. The north cheek of the chancel is abutted by a single-storey parapetted choir vestry with a faceted east elevation, each face of which has a single pointed-arched window. The choir vestry's north elevation is three bays wide, separated by single-stage buttresses, with Y-tracery lattice-leaded windows to the centre and left bays, a double-leaf timber door to the right, and a chimney rising above parapet level to the far left. Stepped access to a basement below the choir vestry is located to the right of the chancel. The south cheek of the chancel is abutted by a smaller vestry and the tower. This vestry generally matches the choir vestry in style, with single windows to the northeast and east faces, a door to the southeast, and paired single windows to the south.

Internally, the columns and arches are of reconstituted Bath stone. The nave floor is laid with wood blocks and white Sicilian marble tiles. The bronze communion rail and the oak pulpit were gifts of the architect, W.D.R. Taggart. In 1953 oak panelling and further furnishings were installed. A new organ was installed in 1959 at a cost of £3,000. The stained glass was for the most part presented during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

The site is bounded to the north and west by hedgerow, and to the south by a masonry retaining wall to the Knock carriageway. It is entered through iron railings and piers, with vehicular access from the west leading to a small car park adjacent to the chancel, and pedestrian access from the south along a tree-lined path flanked by well-maintained lawns. To the west of the church stands a parochial hall dated 1939, also to Taggart's designs: a modernist double-height red-brick building with a distinctive ventilation lantern, though it has replacement windows and has been largely extended to the rear. To the east is a small garden of remembrance.

The district of Cregagh began to develop as a result of the population boom experienced by Belfast in the late 19th century and the new tramway serving the Cregagh, Castlereagh, and Ormeau Roads. As late as 1928 the lower reaches of Cregagh Road were still occupied by dairy farmers who sold milk daily from spring carts in the streets of Belfast, but the area gradually became entirely residential. Cregagh was initially part of the parish of Knockbreda, but attendance from the new houses was low, and a hall was established on the Knockbreda Road at McCaughan Park, with services conducted by a curate from Knockbreda. The new inhabitants — a rising middle class of shopkeepers, minor civil servants, tradesmen, and occupants of an ex-servicemen's colony — constituted a substantial new centre of population requiring churches, schools, and other facilities. Parish boundaries for a new parish of Cregagh were drawn, a curate-in-charge was appointed, and the decision to build a new church was made in September 1928.

The site chosen was a plot of land that had been leased from the Marquess of Downshire by a parishioner, Mr Ewart, in 1908 and reserved for church building. The parish committee obtained the land from Mr Ewart's estate and the Marquess, and W.D.R. Taggart was retained as architect. The foundation stone was laid in September 1931, and the church was consecrated a year later, described at the time as occupying "probably the finest site of any church in Belfast." It first appears on the Ordnance Survey map in the seventh edition of 1938, and entered valuation records in 1933 as a church and yard valued at £253.

Building work on the parochial hall commenced in 1938 and it was opened in March 1939 at a cost of £2,694, entering valuation records in 1940 at a valuation of £100. An extension was added to the hall in 1971. Saint Finnian's attained full parochial status in 1946. Growing population in the area subsequently led to the construction of an auxiliary church, the Church of the Pentecost at Mount Merrion, completed in 1956 with Cregagh parish meeting 50% of the building cost; Mount Merrion became a separate parish in 1962.