217 Holywood Road, Belfast, Co. Down, BT4 2DH

St Mark's Rectory, 217 Holywood Road, is a large detached former rectory built around 1887, now used as offices for a number of youth organisations. It was designed by the Belfast-based architect Samuel Patrick Close in a late-Victorian domestic style, and constructed by the local building firm H & J Martin — the same company later responsible for completing St Mark's Church chancel and transepts in 1891. The grounds were laid out by H. Dickson of Belmont Nurseries. The total contract value, including the cast-iron railings to the front of both the rectory and the church, exceeded £1,700.

The building is three bays wide and two storeys tall, with a dormer attic, and takes an irregular plan form with full-height projecting gabled bays to the principal west elevation and to the east and south elevations. A canted bay window abuts the south elevation, and a gable-fronted porch sits at the centre of the principal elevation. To the north, a two-storey L-plan return connects to single-storey red brick outbuildings to the northeast, which together enclose a small yard accessed through a timber-sheeted door in the red brick perimeter wall to the north.

The roofs are steeply pitched, predominantly in natural slate, with artificial asbestos-cement tiles to the rear (east) pitch, and finished with angled terracotta ridge tiles. Multiple red brick chimneystacks rise from the roof, each with stepped brick coping and largely yellow clay pots. The L-plan return has a partially hipped roof to its northwest. Overhanging eaves carry uPVC gutters, though some cast-iron soil pipes and downpipes with decorative brackets are retained. Corbelled brackets support the purlin ends at the gabled bays, concealed behind painted timber bargeboards.

The external walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond over an offset plinth, with a variety of projecting brick string courses to the upper floors. Red sandstone dressings appear throughout, including flush lintels with segmental brick relieving arches, projecting cills, and cinquefoil roundels with a shield motif at some gable apexes. Windows are generally original flat-arched one-over-one timber sliding sashes with horns and some historic glazing. The porch contains an original pointed-arched fixed-pane timber window. A number of first-floor openings are paired. Ground-floor windows are largely concealed behind externally mounted metal roller shutters or wire-mesh screens.

The principal west elevation presents a two-storey central bay with paired pointed-arched windows above the projecting porch, flanked by full-height gabled bays, the right-hand one of which projects further forward. A stepped sandstone string course runs from the cill of the central first-floor window to that of the left bay. The porch entrance to the north is approached by a single step up to a raised sandstone platform. The door opening is basket-arched with a red sandstone lintel, and fitted with a raised-and-fielded nine-panelled timber door with a circular brass or bronze lion's-head door handle.

The north elevation contains a segmental-arched window at attic level and a small timber casement at ground-floor level to the right, with a splayed sandstone plinth beneath the cill. The remainder of the north elevation is abutted by the two-storey L-plan return, which is detailed to match the main building and has a blank north gable. The right (west) cheek of the return has a single ground-floor window and a cinquefoil roundel at second-floor level. The left (east) cheek is two bays wide, with a single window to the ground and first floor on the left, and a half-gabled first-floor window above a tripartite metal casement window on the right; the casement is concealed by wire mesh and has replacement concrete surrounds. The short axis of the return abuts the right side of the main building's north elevation and contains paired first-floor windows — with a smaller window to the right cheek — and two ground-floor windows. Single-storey gabled outbuildings adjoin the return to the north, one of which has raised brick verges, an artificial slate roof, and sashes concealed by wire mesh. A matching outbuilding to the east completes the enclosed yard.

The east elevation has a single bay to the left and a projecting gabled bay to the right, with paired windows at first-floor level, a tripartite opening at ground floor, and single openings to the left cheek, including a flat-arched French door concealed behind a metal roller shutter. The two-bay south elevation is gabled to the right bay, with paired first-floor windows above a canted bay window that has a brick parapet and sandstone coping; ground-floor openings are concealed by metal roller shutters.

Despite the conversion to offices, the building's fabric and interior detailing are largely intact.

The building is set back from Holywood Road between St Mark's Church to the north and the Heyn Memorial Hall (built around 1929 to the designs of Henry Seaver) to the south, close to the junction with Sydenham Avenue. A vehicular entrance to the north is shared with the church, and a pedestrian path to the south is shared with the hall. The site boundary to the west is formed by a sandstone dwarf wall with chamfered coping, topped by arrow-headed mild-steel railings with flower heads to the standards and dog-leg supports. Rectangular-plan ashlar sandstone piers with chamfered coping appear at regular intervals. The surroundings include concrete-paved hardstandings to the perimeter, bitmac paving to the north and west, and a garden with mature trees and planting along the western edge. The rectory, church, and hall together form a significant architectural and historical group within shared mature landscaped grounds.

The history of the building is closely connected with the Parish of Dundela, which was established during the 1860s by the Belfast Church Extension and Endowment Society. Before the present church was built — around 1878 to the designs of William Butterfield — the congregation had first met in the coach house of a Henry Smyth in Park Avenue, and then in a small chapel constructed as a school in 1863, now demolished. Although St Mark's Church was consecrated and opened for worship in 1878, the Select Vestry postponed construction of Butterfield's chancel and transepts until 1891, judging that providing a suitable residence for the rector was the more pressing need. A plot to the south of the church had been acquired in 1880 in anticipation of this, but financial constraints meant that construction of the rectory did not begin until the summer of 1886. Prior to its completion, a house in nearby Park Avenue called "Ravensdale" had been used temporarily as a rectory.

The rectory was completed in spring 1887 and first occupied by the Reverend Hamilton, the first rector of St Mark's. Valuation records from 1887 to 1891 show the house was initially listed as vacant in 1887, but by 1888 it was recorded as occupied by the Reverend Thomas Hamilton, with a rateable value of £53 and a noted cost of £1,500; the property comprised the house, yard, and an acre of land. In the Belfast Revaluations of around 1900, a valuer described it as an excellent house and raised the valuation to £70, though on appeal from the Select Vestry this was later reduced to £65 around 1903. The footprint of the building has remained unchanged since it first appeared on the third-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1902, captioned "Rectory." By the First Annual Revision of 1935 the occupier was Canon Ernest Hayes and the valuation had increased to £87, a rise reflecting the incorporation of the Heyn Memorial Hall at 2 Sydenham Avenue rather than any physical alterations to the rectory itself.

By early 1974 the Select Vestry of St Mark's considered the building no longer suitable as a residence, and the rectory function was transferred first to a house in Norwood Gardens and subsequently to the current rectory at 4 Sydenham Road, gifted to the church in 1978. The original building, known as the Old Rectory, has since been used as church offices.

The former rectory has a notable literary association. The Reverend Thomas Hamilton — the building's first occupant — was the maternal grandfather of the Belfast-born writer C.S. Lewis (1898–1963), who lived nearby at "Little Lea" on the Circular Road until he was sent to an English boarding school following his mother's death in 1908. Hamilton had been ordained in 1849, served as chaplain to the Royal Navy from 1854 to 1870, and then as chaplain to Holy Trinity Church in Rome before his appointment at St Mark's in January 1874. His wife Mary Warren and their children, including Lewis's mother Flora, lived with him in Rome before the family came to Belfast. Hamilton baptised Lewis in the church font on 29 January 1899. The Hamilton family lived in the rectory from its construction in 1887 until Hamilton's retirement in early 1900; he died in 1905 aged 79 and was commemorated by a stained glass window erected in the church around 1906. The lion's-head door handle on the Old Rectory has subsequently been suggested as a possible inspiration for the young Lewis — who preferred the childhood name "Jack" — in creating the character of Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia.