Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church, Carlisle Circus, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT13 1AB

Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church

Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church is a large, attached, double-height Gothic Revival former Methodist church built around 1874–1875 to designs by Belfast architect William Henry Lynn (1829–1915), and constructed at the sole personal expense of Alderman James Carlisle (1810–1888) as a memorial to his son, who had died at the age of eighteen. Lynn had trained under Charles Lanyon and worked in partnership with him from 1854, but established his own independent practice in 1872; Carlisle Memorial was among the first major commissions he undertook after that separation. The church was built in rock-faced Armagh limestone with red Dumfries sandstone dressings, and was designed to seat a congregation of approximately 1,000. Construction costs were estimated at between £15,000 and £20,000, carried out by a builder named Mr Henry. On completion, the church was valued at £700 in the Annual Revisions. The building was listed in 1980.

The church is rectangular on plan with a square-plan entrance tower at the north end rising through an octagonal belfry stage to an octagonal tapered spire — a composition reaching approximately 170 feet in total height. A pair of side aisles and gabled transepts cross the nave, and the building was originally connected by a cloister (a separate listed structure) to a former Sunday School and Church Hall, together forming a significant architectural group within the city. The hall and connecting cloisters were built between 1888 and 1889 to designs by James John Philips.

The roofs are triple-span natural slate with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles, set behind slightly raised gables with sandstone coping and stone cross finials. Parapet walls with sandstone coping run along the eaves, with replacement metal rainwater goods breaking through at a corbelled eaves course. The walling throughout is rock-faced limestone ashlar with sandstone quoins, string courses and plinth trims, supported by two-stage weathered buttresses (angled at the east gables) and surmounted by gableted Gothic pinnacles with trefoil-headed niches. Window openings are largely lancets with compound sandstone surrounds, slender colonettes, splayed sills, and surviving fragments of leaded glazing.

The entrance tower is square on plan with three stages, transitioning to an octagonal belfry stage framed by octagonal tourelles on each elevation, before tapering into an octagonal spire. Angled buttresses with offsets at each stage are surmounted by pinnacles matching those on the main body of the church. The front door opening is pointed-headed with deeply set compound arch mouldings enriched with dog-tooth decoration, rising from compound colonettes, and fitted with a vertically-sheeted timber door with elaborate iron hinges. At the belfry stage, each elevation has a slender timber-louvred gabled opening with a crocketed hood and foil tracery. Three tiers of louvred lucarnes adorn the spire, which is surmounted by an iron Celtic cross.

Between the tower and the main gable is an octagonal tourelle with leaded lancet windows over trefoil panels, flanked by colonettes, which houses a stone spiral stair giving access to the tower. The front elevation presents three triple-lancet windows to the north aisle and an advanced gabled transept with three lancets and tourelles rising from the angled buttresses; the corresponding tourelle to the south has been removed. A small entrance porch sits in the re-entrant angle between the chancel and transept, with a slate roof, a shouldered door opening with a timber door, and diminutive lancets. The northeast elevation shows the east gable with three lancets featuring compound moulded surrounds, colonettes, and stone tracery to the centre light in the form of a Venetian arch with original leaded glazing to the roundel. The south aisle terminates in a lower gable flanked by tourelles and featuring twin lancets with a quatrefoil above.

The rear elevation runs flush with the south gabled transept and has a gabled entrance porch to the east. The transept has tourelles matching those on the north, a Catherine-wheel window, and four lancets. To the ground floor, a single-storey wing — the former connecting cloister — formerly linked the church to the Sunday School. The entrance porch to this elevation has a pointed-headed door opening with a compound arched surround and double-leaf sheeted timber doors with decorative iron hinges; the door opens into the porch, which has a further dog-tooth enriched compound arch surround rising from colonettes with a trefoil-headed niche to the apex, and leads out to the front area via seven stone steps. The triple-gabled chancel elevation has five lancets to the chancel, flanked by a pair of circular stone chimneystacks. The flanking gables have paired lancets with oculi above, and diminutive square-headed window openings at ground floor level.

Although the building has been deconsecrated (around 1982, following the dwindling of the congregation due to its position at a major community interface and the urban redevelopment of the area, including construction of the Westlink in 1981–83) and most of the internal fabric has been lost, significant historic fabric and detailing of good quality and craftsmanship survive throughout. The church's Conacher organ was dismantled on closure; sections were sent to Cooke Centenary Presbyterian Church and the 32-foot pipes were transported to a church in Salt Lake City, Nevada.

The church stands on an elevated site on the south side of Carlisle Circus, enclosed to the street by decorative iron railings and gates on a limestone plinth wall with red sandstone piers topped by tapered capstones. A safety-sheeted iron wall and canopy front the pavement.

The church has attracted considerable critical comment. Charles Brett described it as among Lynn's least happy works and suggested it had a strong claim to being Belfast's ugliest church, attributing this view largely to the contrasting pink sandstone and coarse limestone, which he felt gave unfortunate emphasis to an uncommonly ungraceful spire. Brian Walker similarly found little grace in the building but acknowledged it had a jarring rather than simply ugly quality, and noted that when the stonework was cleaner the building must have had a rather startling appearance. Paul Larmour, writing in 1987, took a markedly different view, describing it as a very good example of a Gothic Revival church in the Early English style, excellent in composition and detail, well-proportioned, with a tower and rich spire on a really grand scale. A renovation to the exterior stonework was carried out in 1966, which Brett felt served only to emphasise the unfortunate choice of materials.

The Belfast Revaluation of 1900 slightly reduced the church's rateable value to £625 and recorded that the building was leased to the church trustees by the Belfast Charitable Society, originally established in 1752. The First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 rated the building at £900. The church escaped direct bomb damage during the 1941 Belfast Blitz, though many carved stone ornaments were shattered and windows in the church, cloisters, and Sunday School were destroyed. Following a renovation in 1966, the value had risen to £1,464 by the end of the Second General Revaluation in 1972.

The church has remained vacant since the 1980s and was recorded as derelict at the time of survey. It was included in the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's Buildings at Risk register in 2008, which noted its importance as a prominent building in a gateway location at the junction of the Crumlin and Antrim Roads. In 2010 the church was recognised by the World Monuments Fund as one of the 100 most endangered historic buildings in the world, alongside such structures as the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal. The World Monuments Fund highlighted the building's potential as neutral territory in a deeply polarised area and proposed adaptive reuse as a shared heritage resource that could foster civic engagement and support the Northern Ireland peace process. In February 2012 the Department of the Environment provided £400,000 to the Belfast Buildings Preservation Trust to carry out maintenance work to secure the building ahead of its future conversion or restoration.