St. Clement's Church of Ireland, Templemore Avenue, Belfast, County Antrim, BT5 4FR

St. Clement's Church of Ireland, Templemore Avenue, Belfast

St. Clement's Church of Ireland is a freestanding, double-height Tudor Gothic church with an adjoining two-stage belfry tower, built between 1929 and 1930 to designs by the Belfast architects Blackwood and Jury. The builders were Courtney and Co., who had offices on Shaftesbury Avenue. The church occupies a prominent corner site at the junction of Templemore Avenue and Paxton Street on the east side of Belfast, sitting at a slight angle to the principal road, which opens up good views of the front elevation and tower and gives the building a distinctive presence among the surrounding streets. Immediately to the north stands Mountpottinger Baptist Church; opposite is modern three-and-a-half-storey housing, with modern commercial buildings to the south.

The church is built of Jacobean brick laid in stretcher bond, supplied by John McNeill of Corporation Street, with sandstone dressings and a projected plinth throughout. The stone used for dressings is Aughenheath stone. The roof is pitched natural slate with a slight incline at eaves level; louvered vents are positioned close to the clay ridge tiles, and the moulded sandstone eaves are fitted with replacement uPVC rainwater goods. The building follows a barn-style plan, with a chancel projecting at the east end and side entrance porches.

The windows are tripartite, leaded coloured glass with decorative sandstone mullions and transoms, irregular long-and-short sandstone surrounds, and chamfered cills and jambs. The larger windows are multi-paned, Tudor-arched with hood mouldings and reticulated tracery. The doors are double-leaf timber panelled with decorative wrought-iron strap hinges, set within moulded sandstone Tudor-arched surrounds. The glazing was originally crafted by W. J. Douglas and Sons of Dublin Road; a number of stained glass windows were later added in 1983 by C. W. S. Design of Lisburn.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged, with a skew-table gable featuring sandstone shoulders, saddle coping, kneelers, an apex stone, and gablets. The chancel abuts this elevation, with matching details: a large centrally positioned Tudor-arched window flanked by two-stage set-back buttresses terminating in sandstone gablets with trefoil mouldings. The left cheek of the chancel has a single high-level window to the right and a single-storey gable-ended abutment to the left at the re-entrant to the tower, with a tripartite window to the gable end and matching sandstone detailing. The right cheek mirrors the left, except for the addition of a hipped-roofed entrance porch with a chamfered corner and a single-leaf door with square-headed surrounds; there are two single windows to the east face and a single tripartite window to the north. A chimney rises from ridge level, breaking through the eaves of the chancel, and terminates with stepped sandstone detailing and a large octagonal moulded pot.

The south elevation is asymmetrically arranged and five windows wide, each bay separated by a single-storey buttress. The left bay is abutted by a three-stage symmetrical brick belfry tower with angled buttresses — partially infilled at lower level to create an octagonal clasping buttress — and terminated with a heavily moulded crenellated sandstone parapet comprising a series of moulded quatrefoil panels over a dentilled cornice with projecting gargoyles at the corners. These gargoyles, along with a number of other carved features, were crafted by S. and T. Hastings of Downpatrick. The tower entrance door on the south face is set within a deep-set Tudor-arched surround with a heavy label embracing the spandrels. There is a single window to the ground floor east face. The first floor has single leaded windows to the east, south, and west faces. At second-storey level there are bipartite Tudor-arched louvered openings with moulded surrounds and a single hood moulding over, with continuing sandstone drip and string courses. At the re-entrant between the north face of the tower and the left elevation of the nave is a single-storey gable-ended abutment with matching sandstone detailing and a single Tudor-arched window centrally positioned.

The rear gable is symmetrically arranged with matching sandstone dressings. A centrally located Tudor-arched window with reticulated tracery is flanked by adjoining square-headed windows, which are in turn flanked by two-stage buttresses breaking through the coping course. The left side is abutted at ground floor by a flat-roofed structure that has been extended to form a corridor linking to the adjacent church hall. The right elevation mirrors the left in principle: five bays wide, with the right bay abutted by a slightly projecting gable-ended entrance porch with matching sandstone detailing, a Tudor-arched door with long-and-short surrounds and a hood moulding with geometric stops, and diminutive single-stage buttresses to the left and right cheeks.

The church measures 100 feet in length and the tower 50 feet in height. The interior is relatively well preserved and retains much of its original Tudor Gothic character. Later internal additions include a choir vestry added in 1958, a new pulpit in 1964, a new font in 1968, and a new lighting system in 1971.

The congregation of St. Clement's has occupied the site since at least 1901, with origins on the Beersbridge Road in the 1890s. The congregation began as an offshoot of Ballymacarrett Parish Church on the Newtownards Road and originally worshipped in an iron church — described as the largest of its kind, measuring 81 by 61 feet and 40 feet in height including a spire, and capable of accommodating around 750 people. This iron structure had a remarkable history: originally built for a congregation in Germany, it was subsequently transported to England and then to Ireland, where it served the congregation of All Saints' Church on University Street before being sold to St. Clement's congregation by 1898. The third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1902 depicts the iron church as a square-plan building occupying the same layout as the current church.

The iron church was initially set up on the Beersbridge Road by 1897, but was relocated to Templemore Avenue in 1901 following a serious dispute between the first minister, the Reverend W. Peoples, and his congregation. Peoples was criticised for adopting Anglo-Catholic, or High Church, practices that alienated the vast majority of his charge: of a congregation of around 700, only 20 members supported his methods. From August 1898 to March 1899, the church and its minister were targeted by Orange mobs who, every Sunday for six months, surrounded the building in numbers of approximately a thousand, harassed Peoples, and broke into the church to remove items they found objectionable, including hymn books. The leader of the mob stated publicly that once matters were settled at St. Clement's, the same approach would be taken against St. George's on High Street. The violence was raised at Westminster by Nationalist politicians, who cited the episode as evidence of militant Orangeism's influence over political and ecclesiastical affairs in the city. Peoples was eventually expelled, the iron church was closed, and it was reopened at the Templemore Avenue site in 1901 under a new minister, the Reverend W. A. Lee. Between 1899 and 1902 the congregation was linked to that of St. Donard's Church on the Beersbridge Road, which also worshipped in an iron church until its permanent building was constructed in 1911–12. St. Clement's became an independent parish in 1902 and over the following three decades grew with the addition of portions of Ballymacarrett and Willowfield parishes.

The current site on Templemore Avenue was purchased in 1910 for £980, and a Church Building Fund was started that year. By 1929 over £2,000 had been gathered, though construction only went ahead with the assistance of the Church Extension Committee. The iron church was sold in 1929 and never used again as a place of worship. The Select Vestry originally resolved that the new church should be constructed using a cheap manufactured material called Stone Crete as the facing stone; this material has since been found to be crumbling and in a state of disrepair as a consequence of that choice. The foundation stone was laid on 29 April 1929. The church was designed in the Tudor Gothic style by P. M. Jury of Blackwood and Jury — one of his last major works, carried out in his preferred manner. St. Clement's Parish Church was consecrated on 14 June 1930 by the Bishop of Down. The bell installed in the belfry tower was acquired from the Mariners' Church off Corporation Street, close to the site of the Sinclair Seamen's Presbyterian Church, and dates from 1889; in 1929 it was housed temporarily in St. Clement's schoolhouse on Castlereagh Street to the rear of the church, before being moved into the belfry upon the church's completion in 1930. The tower was specifically designed to house this bell.

Upon completion, the church was valued at £224. The first general revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935 increased this to £370, with the school on Castlereagh Street valued separately at £110. The second general revaluation in 1956 valued the church and its hall together at £885; this was reduced to £708 under the 1957 Rent and Valuation Act, a figure that remained unchanged to the end of the revaluation period in 1972. The church was listed in 1989 and has since undergone a number of refurbishment and repair programmes, the most extensive of which was carried out in 1994 at a cost of £50,000. The architectural fabric of the building is largely intact, retaining much of its original detailing, and the church remains of considerable social importance to the local community it serves.