Hall to Belmont Presbyterian Church, 92 Sydenham Avenue, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT4 2DT

Hall to Belmont Presbyterian Church, 92 Sydenham Avenue, Belfast

A double-height Gothic Revival style hall built in 1931 to designs by architect J. C. Stevenson. The hall is rectangular in plan, set on a north-south axis with a projecting gabled entrance porch to the south. It is connected to the adjoining Belmont Presbyterian Church by a modern single-storey lobby and sits within the church grounds fronting onto Sydenham Avenue.

The roof is pitched with natural slate and roll-top black clay ridge tiles with a metal finial. Chamfered brick corbels to the eaves support cast-iron ogee-moulded guttering with rectangular section downpipes. The walls are built of red brick laid to English garden wall-bond with buff brick dressings and quoins; stone coping tops the gables. Lancet windows have sandstone keystones and splayed sills with stained glass leaded glazing and fixed secondary external glazing.

The principal west elevation has five bays, each separated by single-stage buttresses with double lancet windows. The projecting gabled entrance porch to the south end has raised stone verges and a carved trefoil to the apex, with single-stage buttresses and stone pinnacles either side. A square-headed door with segmental arch hood and tympanum opens to vertical-sheeted double timber doors onto a concrete platform approached by eight steps. Dwarf red brick walls with buff brick detail and chamfered stone coping flank the steps, each supporting a painted metal handrail, with an additional handrail to the centre.

The south elevation is gabled with two three-stage buttresses, a three-part lancet window and a small louvred lancet opening at high level. The projecting porch has three bays: the west bay is gabled with a carved trefoil to the apex and a lancet window, with single-storey buttresses and stone pinnacles either end; the middle bay has paired shouldered-arch windows; a three-sided canted bay to the east has a raised parapet and a shouldered-arch window to each face.

The rear east elevation has five bays, each separated by single-stage buttresses with double lancet windows to each bay. A small modern flat-roofed entrance porch projects from the north end. The rear yard is enclosed by a red brick boundary wall and metal gate.

The site is bounded to the south by a red brick wall with stone coping topped by cast-iron railings. Square red brick gate piers with buff brick quoins and single-stage buttresses, topped by cast-iron finials, support cast-iron gates at the main entrance. A cast-iron gate and hedge mark the southwest pedestrian entrance. The grounds are partly lawned and concrete paved.