St Joseph's RC Church, Prince's Dock Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 3AA

St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Prince's Dock Street, Belfast

St Joseph's is a two-storey French Gothic style Roman Catholic church built in 1879–80, designed by Timothy Hevey. It stands on the south-west side of Prince's Dock Street, set within a terrace of warehouses. The church rectory house is located to the rear, facing onto Pilot Street. The church closed in February 2001 and remains vacant.

The symmetrical front elevation faces north-east. The building is constructed in squared greywacke stone with dressed red sandstone used for quoins, architraves, courses, coping and other details. The elevation is dominated by a gable with a taller central gable that rises into a flying buttressed tower with a stone spire. A tall hoarding obscures much of the ground floor level during survey.

The ground floor entrance at the centre consists of a large timber double door within a large semicircular-headed architrave. Above the door is a large semicircular fanlight with petal tracery, executed in red sandstone. The architrave appears to be flanked by marble three-quarter colonettes, though these could not be fully seen. The entire doorway sits within a shallow gabled porch with stone coping and crow-stepped verge. On either side of the porch are plain pilasters rising the full height of the gable to form corner buttresses for the tower. Beyond these are outer pilasters that rise above gable level to form flying buttresses. Between each pair of buttresses on either side of the doorway is a narrow semicircular-headed window topped with a small plain gable, set within a broad shallow buttress-like feature stretching between the pilasters. Above each pilaster is another semicircular-headed window at an intermediate level, lighting the stairwells.

The porch intersects a broad stone string course, immediately above which is a panelled course of stone. In the spandrel panels between the porch roof and string course is decorative floral moulding. Above this are a pair of tall semicircular-headed windows with marble three-quarter colonettes to their architraves. A large quatrefoil window sits above these, with the gable line above featuring a bracketed verge. The gable then merges with the rectangular two-level tower above.

The lower level of the tower has two flying buttresses to the north-west and south-east faces, each with pinnacle caps featuring crockets. These buttresses extend directly to the main corner buttresses of the tower, which also have pinnacles. On the front (north-east) face of the tower at the same level as the pinnacles is a central niche containing a statue of St Joseph. To the rear (north-west) face are two broad recesses with double semicircular arched heads. Similar single niches appear on the south-east and south-west faces.

The upper level of the tower houses the bell and features two large segmental-headed louvered openings to the front and rear, with marble three-quarter colonettes to their reveals. Similar single openings appear on the south-east and north-west sides. At this level, the corner buttresses change from square to six-sided form, rising through a bracketed cornice course with gargoyles into eight-sided pinnacles. The tower is capped with a relatively short four-sided stone spire with a small opening to each side, topped with a weathervane.

The north-west and south-east sides of the higher central section of the main gable are exposed in red brick, each featuring four pairs of semicircular-headed windows with yellow-grey sandstone dressings. The rear (south-west) gable is also in red brick.

A large single-storey gabled chancel extends from the lower half of the main gable, following the shape of the main gable with lower sections to the north-west and south-east. Above this, a large round window has had its original rose tracery replaced with cross tracery (undertaken in 1959). A small semicircular-headed window sits above this round window. The chancel gable could not be surveyed externally, but internal evidence indicates a large semicircular-headed window whose stone tracery forms three semicircular-headed lights with a large roundel light above. The lower sections of the chancel gable each contain a large multi-foil window. The lower sections of the main gable each have a high-level semicircular-headed window.

All roof sections are slate-covered with ventilation fleches to the ridge of the main section and skylights to the lower sections on the north-west and south-east sides.