Macrory Memorial Presbyterian Church, Duncairn Gardens, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT15 2GN

Macrory Memorial Presbyterian Church is a double-height gabled red-brick church in the Gothic style, built in 1952 to designs by Hobart & Heron. It stands on the south side of Duncairn Gardens in North Belfast, on a site donated in the early 1890s by Edmund Macrory QC. The building was constructed as a replica of an earlier church dating from 1893, which was destroyed during Belfast's bombing in the Second World War.

The church has a rectangular plan hall with a gabled projection to the southwest. Two-storey stairwell bays project to the southeast and northwest, each abutted by gabled porches. The pitched natural slate roof carries blue and black angled ridge tiles and raised sandstone verges. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods sit on moulded sandstone eaves.

The walls are English garden wall-bonded red-brick on a projecting plinth, dressed with ashlar red sandstone. Angle buttresses with sandstone offsets rise to large corner pinnacles. A moulded sandstone string-course marks the impost level to the northwest gable. Windows throughout are metal-framed leaded-and-stained glass lancets in chamfered sandstone reveals with blocked flush surrounds and chamfered sills; some are timber-boarded. Geometric tracery windows to the gables are surmounted by drip moulds.

The northeast-facing gabled front features a large geometric tracery window to the gallery, comprising four cusped lancets surmounted by three pierced quatrefoils. A roundel with recessed glazed quatrefoil occupies the apex of the gable, crowned by a drip mould. At ground floor, a group of five arcaded lancets lights the interior. The stairwell bays to left and right are recessed and lit by two windows at first floor over the projecting gabled porches. The porches contain original pointed-headed timber-sheeted doors in chamfered sandstone reveals, each accessed by four concrete steps. The southeast and northwest elevations of the stairwell bays have two windows to first floor and three at ground floor. The southeast elevation was historically concealed from view.

The southwest gable is abutted by the gabled projection and features a geometric tracery window at centre comprising three cusped lancets surmounted by three pierced quatrefoils. At gallery level are paired lancets to left and right (the left pair boarded). Ground floor has two boarded square-headed openings to the right and a modern metal door set into a deep recess to the left, both accessed by four concrete steps, the left fronted by a modern metal gate. Both openings have chamfered red-sandstone lintels. The northwest elevation displays five sets of paired lancets, all timber-boarded.

The church stands set back from the street in a residential area, bounded by red-brick walls with concrete coping topped by metal railings and metal latch gates. The southeast elevation is abutted at left and right by red-brick walls topped with concrete breeze-block, adjoining a single-storey red-brick church hall. An alleyway to the northwest leads to Hillman Street, lined with two-storey red-brick terraced housing.

The original church, designed by architect James Ferguson with contractors Campbell & Lowry, was built following the laying of the foundation stone on 17 February 1894. It was expected to seat 900 and cost around £4,000. Opening services took place on 27 January 1895, with leaded light glazing supplied by Carlisle & Wilson of North Street. The building was damaged in the first air raid on Belfast in 1941 and completely destroyed in the second, with 62 members of the congregation killed and almost 100 injured.

The replacement church, raised on the foundations of its predecessor, closely resembles the original but with simplified fenestration and external detailing. Internally, a vestibule was provided and seating rearranged to allow for an extra aisle. The pulpit and choir were repositioned and the gallery reduced in size. Post-war economies necessitated steel trusses instead of timber for the roof, with a modern fibrous plaster ceiling below. Red Ballochmyle sandstone was used externally and Portland stone internally for chancel and organ chamber openings and corbels. Windows were supplied by Clokey of Belfast. A lecture hall and minor hall were added in 1955. Demographic changes led to a decline in congregation numbers, and in 1997 the congregation united with Newington and Sinclair Seamen's Church. The building currently lies vacant.