Shaftesbury Square Reformed Presbyterian Church, 72 Dublin Road, Belfast, County Antrim, BT2 7HP

Shaftesbury Square Reformed Presbyterian Church is a free-standing, double-height, gable-fronted Gothic Revival church built in redbrick and stone around 1889–1890, designed by architect Samuel Stephenson. It stands on the east side of Dublin Road, Belfast, rectangular on plan and facing west, with an attached hall to the rear. It remains one of the finest and most complete examples of a Gothic Revival church in the area, retaining most of its original external fabric and an impressive interior. It is well proportioned and carefully detailed, and represents one of the few surviving remnants of the 19th-century urban fabric of Dublin Road.

Exterior

The roof is pitched natural slate, with terracotta ridgecomb tiles, ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering to a sandstone ashlar eaves course, and metal downpipes. The roof is set behind the front gable, which has sandstone coping surmounted by a stone finial. The walls are redbrick laid in English garden wall bond, with a rock-faced sandstone ashlar plinth course and moulded sandstone trim throughout. Pointed-headed lancet window openings are formed in moulded redbrick surrounds, with a continuous flush sandstone impost course, flush splayed sandstone sills, a continuous flush sill course, and leaded coloured glazing.

The double-height gabled front (west) elevation is flanked by a pair of octagonal piers on angled buttress bases, which support decorative corbelled-out and panelled sandstone sections to the centre, surmounted by decorative panelled sandstone drums and tapered capstones. At the upper level there is a tripartite arrangement of pointed-arched window openings with deep moulded sandstone surrounds, continuous hood moulding, and foliate label stops, all resting on a splayed sill and weathered sandstone course that spans the entire gable. Cusped stone Y-tracery holds leaded coloured fixed glazing.

Flanking the main gable is a lower, single-bay, square-plan tower with angle buttresses, surmounted by a blind arcaded redbrick parapet wall and sandstone coping, with a single pointed-arched window opening to the front elevation detailed in the same manner as the other windows throughout the building.

The entrance is formed by a pair of pointed-arched door openings with deep voussoired compound moulded sandstone arches, enclosing square-headed door openings with blind sandstone overpanels, splayed sandstone reveals, continuous impost mouldings, and woodgrained timber doors each having nine flat panels with bolection mouldings. The doors open onto a sandstone platform reached by five sandstone steps flanked by low walls.

The north nave elevation has four groups of three lancet openings, flanked by three-quarter-height buttresses with sandstone offsets. The north side elevation of the flanking tower has a pair of pointed-arched lancets with a roundel above, set in chamfered sandstone with hood mouldings. To the east end is a further gabled elevation to the ancillary block, with a series of five pointed-arched window openings with continuous redbrick hood moulding and a continuous flush splayed sill, along with a series of four square-headed window openings to the ground floor with sandstone lintels and sills and timber mullioned windows. The rear gabled elevation is abutted by a two-storey redbrick ancillary building with a pitched natural slate roof behind a raised north gable with sandstone coping, which in turn is abutted by a slender entrance bay featuring an egg-and-dart dentilated eaves cornice, with a single window and door opening detailed as elsewhere on the building, opening onto three stone steps. The south nave elevation is detailed in the same manner as the north.

Setting

The church sits on the east side of Dublin Road, with small front and side paved areas enclosed by a redbrick wall with chamfered stone coping and decorative iron railings. Matching gates to the front are supported on redbrick and stone piers, while a further pair of gates supported on cast-iron posts serves the north side entrance to the ancillary block.

Interior

The original Belfast Newsletter account recorded that the fittings and pews were to be of pitch pine, highly varnished, with a platform of pitch pine and French-polished mahogany. A pitch pine dado was to run all around the church. Ventilation was provided by ventilators in the ceiling, and heating by a hot-water apparatus. The windows were filled with cathedral glass. The church was designed to seat 500 persons.

Historical Background

The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland traces its origins to a dispute over the Revolution Settlement of 1690. A minority of Ulster Presbyterians objected to that settlement on the grounds that it disregarded earlier covenants with the English parliament to work for the reformation of religion in the three kingdoms, and made no recognition of the kingship of Christ. These dissenters, known as Covenanters, stood apart from the wider Presbyterian church and began holding separate meetings. Until 1757 they depended on visiting ministers from Scotland, but in 1763 a Reformed Presbytery was formed, and in 1811 a Synod was established. Today there are 37 congregations, the great majority in Northern Ireland, reflecting the settlement patterns of the original Scots plantations in Antrim, Londonderry, and Down.

As Belfast's population grew rapidly during the second half of the 19th century, the existing Reformed Presbyterian congregation at College Street South (later Grosvenor Road) found it increasingly difficult to accommodate all who came to worship. In June 1888 it was decided to establish a second Belfast congregation, and the new Dublin Road congregation came officially into existence on 28 December 1888. For just over a year the new congregation worshipped in the Central Hall, Rosemary Street while their new building was under construction.

The memorial stone was laid on Saturday 14 September 1889, as reported in the Belfast Newsletter. The church was built of Ormeau perforated brick with dressings from the Glebe quarry at Scrabo, in the Early Gothic style, comprising a church with gallery, a large lecture hall at the rear, committee rooms, a minister's room, and a caretaker's room. The contractors were H & J Martin. The church opened on 13 March 1890. In keeping with other Covenanter churches, it has no organ.

The Grosvenor Road congregation amalgamated with the Dublin Road one in 1978 under the new name Shaftesbury Square, following the destruction of the Grosvenor Road church building by a bomb six years earlier. The church first appears, uncaptioned, on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–02, and entered the valuation records in 1890 at a valuation of £120.