St. Martin's Church of Ireland, Kenilworth Place, Belfast, County Antrim

St. Martin's Church of Ireland is a free-standing Lombardic-style red-brick church with a three-stage tower, built between 1932 and 1933 to designs by the Belfast architect Henry Seaver (1860–1941). It stands on the north side of Newtownards Road, east of Belfast city centre, prominently situated at the beginning of a major urban thoroughfare and forming part of a 1930s housing estate. Despite a relatively plain exterior, the building is an accomplished and well-proportioned design, and is an excellent example of an early 20th-century suburban church. A simply detailed exterior conceals a lofty and impressive interior that is almost entirely intact.

Architectural Description

The church is set on an east–west axis and comprises a long nave with single-storey apsidal ends to both east and west, containing the chancel and baptistery respectively. A vestry projects to the north, a porch projects to the south, and a square three-stage tower — instepping at each stage — with an open arched belfry occupies the northeast corner. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue/black angled ridge tiles, terracotta ridge tiles to the vestry, and raised masonry verges to the gables. The belfry tower has a shallow pyramidical roof finished in terracotta pan tiles. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods and square hoppers are carried on projecting eaves with exposed rafter ends. The walling is English garden wall-bonded red brick, with a corbel course marking the stages of the tower. Windows are tall, narrow, round-headed lancets containing square leaded quarries, with leaded-and-stained glass windows to the baptistery.

The principal elevation faces east, with a gabled bay to the left framed by lesenes and containing three windows set over the projecting baptistery, which has three leaded-and-stained glass windows. The three-stage belfry tower to the right retains its original twelve-panelled double-leaf entrance doors recessed within a Portland stone architrave. The south elevation is six windows wide; to the left is a single-storey entrance porch with a ten-panelled double-leaf timber door accessed by two masonry steps. The west elevation has a gable with an apsidal end containing three windows and a masonry half-dome roof. The north elevation is also six windows wide and is abutted to the right by the lower vestry. The east elevation of the vestry has three windows and an original fifteen-panelled timber door to the left, accessed by two masonry steps and with a round-headed transom light above; to the right, steps descend to the undercroft, enclosed by a red-brick wall. The west elevation of the vestry has three windows.

Historical Background

St. Martin's was designed by Henry Seaver, a Belfast-based architect who established his independent practice in 1880 and designed many churches for the Church of Ireland. The Irish Builder records that the church was constructed between 1932 and 1933 towards the end of Seaver's career. Built as a mission church with financial assistance from the Southern Church Mission, it was consecrated on 8th April 1933. The congregation had originally separated from Ballymacarrett in 1930 and initially met in a hall in Memel Street before moving into the completed church. The first minister appointed by the Southern Church Mission Committee after the church's completion was the Reverend Alan Buchanan. The church was first valued at £210 in 1935 during the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland.

An early organ, acquired from St. John's Church at Laganbank when that church closed, had fallen into considerable disrepair by the late 1930s. During the Second World War, St. Martin's escaped damage from the Belfast Blitz, though its parent church, St. Patrick's — which had celebrated its centenary in 1927, six years before St. Martin's opened — was severely damaged by Luftwaffe bombing in 1941. The church's value was recalculated at £450 in the post-war revaluation, subsequently reduced to £360 under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act.

Plans for a church hall to the north were first drawn up in 1940 but were delayed by the war and by the withdrawal of financial support from the Southern Church Mission, which was itself in financial difficulty following the war. Authorisation to proceed was not given until 1956; the foundation stone was laid in December of that year and the hall was opened on 14th December 1957. A new organ was installed in 1951 at a cost of between £2,000 and £3,000, and the current organ, constructed by Wells-Kennedy Partnership Ltd. of Lisburn, was installed in 1983 at a cost of £15,000.

In 1970 the Northern Ireland Housing Trust approached the church committee with an offer to purchase the church and hall as part of the redevelopment of the surrounding Memel area, but the offer was declined. Owing to the church's location at the interface between Short Strand and the Newtownards Road, it was targeted during civil unrest, and in 1976 the church's windows were damaged. The congregation declined steadily during this period, falling from 550 members in 1971 to 220 by 1981; by 1983, 130 of the then 200 members lived outside the immediate area. The same decade saw the total number of parishioners attending services across the wider Ballymacarrett area fall from 46,000 to 27,000 by 1981. The church was listed in 1993 during a restoration and renovation project estimated to have cost £50,000. Between 2000 and 2002, due to the continued decline of the Ballymacarrett congregations, the parishes of St. Martin, St. Patrick, and St. Christopher were grouped together; St. Martin's lost its independent church committee but gained representation on the diocesan council with voting rights in the appointment of future rectors. The church continues to operate within this parish group, though its parochial district — incorporating the Bridge End and Short Strand areas — now has a very small residential population.

Setting

The church is prominently sited at the beginning of a major urban thoroughfare and, together with the adjacent 1930s housing estate, illustrates the suburban development of this part of Belfast during the first half of the 20th century. Directly to the north, within the same grounds, is a rustic red-brick church hall in the Modernist style, which complements the setting of the church. Both buildings are enclosed by a mid-height painted masonry wall with masonry caps and surrounded by mature shrubs and trees, with metal railings to the east and entrance gates. The church is an important local landmark of significant local interest and social importance to the surrounding community.