Shankill Baptist Church, Tennent Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT14 7GL

Shankill Baptist Church is a symmetrical, double-height, gable-fronted Baptist church built between 1904 and 1907 to designs by architect James A. Hanna. It stands on the west side of Tennent Street, Belfast, to the north of Shankill Road, and is rectangular on plan, facing east. The building is constructed in a Gothic freestyle with notable Art Nouveau influences, most distinctively expressed in its original stained glass windows and unusual flying mullions. The listing extends to the church itself, together with its boundary wall, railings, and gates.

The site has a well-documented history. In the mid-19th century it was occupied by Glenwood Corn and Flour Mill. By 1900, Belfast Revaluation records show a vacant site earmarked for a Baptist Chapel, in the ownership of John Polley, whose family retained ownership through the construction period. Annual revisions confirm the chapel's completion as 1907. Church records indicate that around forty Baptists had been meeting in a schoolroom on Tennent Street from 1896, and the land was purchased in 1897. The completed building could accommodate 400 people and included vestry accommodation and a baptistery. Irish Baptists had a long presence in Belfast, but congregations tended to be small and churches of this denomination were relatively few in number — according to Boal and Royle (2006), there were just 31 Baptist churches across Ireland by the end of the 19th century. James A. Hanna was a practised designer of Baptist churches in Belfast, his other works including those on Antrim Road and Clifton Park Avenue. The church's Gothic freestyle with Art Nouveau detailing reflects the broader stylistic shift occurring in nonconformist ecclesiastical architecture at the turn of the 20th century, moving beyond the simple Gothic idiom that had dominated the 19th century toward Edwardian freestyles and Art Nouveau influences — a shift Larmour (1987) identifies as being aptly illustrated by this very building.

Externally, the walls are constructed in garden-wall bonded red brick with a projecting sandstone plinth course with lead capping. A continuous sandstone string course runs at sill level, and double-height stepped angle buttresses with offsets and stone weathering rise up the elevations. Window openings are equilateral-arched with chamfered brick reveals, plain stop chamfers, and splayed sandstone sills. Those on the east gable have chamfered ashlar sandstone heads with hood moulds over, and plain sandstone mullions and transom. All windows contain Art Nouveau leaded stained glass with external storm-glazing, unless otherwise noted. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue/black clay ridge tiles and lead valleys, with narrow torus-moulded stone verges supported on stone kneelers. Rainwater goods are replacement uPVC ogee fittings on a brick corbel course. A louvred lantern with projecting moulded rafters supports an ogee copper-covered dome roof with a spike finial; the lantern openings are cusped and vented.

The east elevation is the principal facade. At its centre is a projecting gabled entrance porch with squat lateral buttresses with offsets and weathering, surmounted by a sandstone torus-moulded stone verge with projecting polygonal piers — one above each buttress and one to the centre of each verge — and gothic-style finials. The entrance doors are replacement timber sheeted doors set within an equilateral-arched opening, framed by timber-framed replacement sidelights retaining the original stained glass fanlight over, with storm-glazing. Access to the entrance is via six tiled steps with original cast-iron gates, to which three replacement mild steel handrails have been added. A single window flanks the entrance on each side. Above the entrance, the dominant feature of the facade is a large Art Nouveau stained glass window comprising five narrow lights divided by flying mullions rising to eaves level, contained within a pseudo-four-centred arched sandstone surround. The moulded architrave is flanked by slender piers that extend below the splayed sill and break the eaves. Brick tourelles rise from the east verge on each side of the main entrance, supported on corbels with a fleuron below, and finished with sandstone detailing including octagonal pointed cappings.

The south nave elevation is partly obscured by a double-height modern extension added at its left (south-west corner) around 1985. The exposed section to the right contains a secondary entrance set between two buttresses with offsets and weathering. This entrance comprises a pseudo-four-centred arch containing a replacement timber sheeted entrance door on the left and a window with trefoil over on the right, with a stained glass fanlight above both openings and a lean-to natural slate roof over the entrance porch. Access is via two paved steps. Between the secondary entrance and the modern extension, three angle buttresses divide four further equilateral-arched windows with splayed sandstone sills and no mullions or transoms; the window to the right has been diminished in height to accommodate a disabled access door below, reached via a ramp.

The west elevation was not fully accessible at the time of survey, but the interior confirms that the west gable contains three leaded stained glass lancets. The south-west extension at this elevation is blank. The west gable faces onto the rear of Glenwood Primary School. The north elevation was also partially inaccessible at the time of survey. At the left, a lean-to single-storey annex adjoins the end terrace of Tennent Street housing. At the right, a single-storey concrete block extension adjoins the south side of Glenwood Primary School, enclosing access to the west side of the church. The exposed section of wall above this extension contains a single window above a former external door, now located internally. At the centre of the north elevation, three angle buttresses with offsets and weathering divide three pointed-arched windows.

The church is set on a city-centre site. Pedestrian access from Tennent Street is through two pairs of decorative cast-iron gates with the paint finish removed, set between brick piers. Railings are supported on a brick plinth wall with a stone chamfered coping. A modern hall has been constructed at the north-west corner of the site, with access to a small public car park to the south. The church is entirely enclosed to the west and north by Glenwood Primary School and by terraced housing along Tennent Street, both built around 1920, and abutted at the south-west corner by the brick extension of around 1985. These adjacent buildings and extensions detract from the original setting, though much historic fabric survives. Overall, the church remains a good and unusual example of the work of a noteworthy architect.