Albert Hall (aka Shankill Mission Hall), 110-120 Shankill Road, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT13

Albert Hall (also known as Shankill Mission Hall) is a former Presbyterian Mission Hall built in 1897–98 to designs by architect William J.W. Roome, with upper storeys added in 1923. It stands on the south side of Shankill Road in west Belfast and is a symmetrical five-bay, three-and-a-half-storey building in the Queen Anne Revival style, constructed in red brick and ashlar sandstone, with commercial units occupying the ground floor. Much of its historic fabric and fine stonework survives, though this is compromised by modern shopfronts.

EXTERIOR

The building has a rectangular front block and a three-storey rear block with a semi-circular recess at the south wall, together with a large double-height gabled extension to the rear, which is of no architectural interest. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles, raised sandstone verges to the gables, and a pyramidal roof to the central gable. The rear block has a flat roof with a domed lead covering at the centre. Red-brick chimneystacks have moulded caps. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are carried on projecting eaves or concealed behind parapets.

The upper floors are built in English garden wall-bonded red brick with sandstone dressings. The ground and first floors on the north face are ashlar sandstone, channel-rusticated on a chamfered granite plinth at ground floor level. The rear walls are painted smooth render, and the east and west elevations are partially cement rendered.

Windows are mostly replacement uPVC, diminishing in size with each floor, with two timber dormer windows at attic level. The second-floor and attic windows sit in plain brick reveals with a sandstone plat band at lintel level and projecting sandstone sills. First-floor windows are segmental-headed in moulded sandstone reveals with flush sills, with canted uPVC windows to the left and right of the central bay. A multi-paned semi-circular window with alternating red-brick and sandstone flush-inset voussoirs lights the second floor of the central bay.

PRINCIPAL (NORTH) ELEVATION

The principal elevation faces north and is symmetrically arranged, ten windows wide at first-floor level. Boarded shopfronts span the ground floor and extend to the east and west via corner bays. The far left and right bays are gabled, each with two windows at each floor. The central entrance bay rises to a segmental-headed gable and contains three windows lighting the attic, a semi-circular arched window at second floor, and two windows at first floor. The three gabled bays are flanked by brick pilasters to the upper storeys — chamfered at second-floor level — on a sandstone corbelled plinth at first-floor level. The ground-floor shopfronts are divided by channel-rusticated piers with impost mouldings and carved circle motifs to the heads.

A tall round-headed central archway is flanked by pilasters, with voussoirs and a decorated keyblock inscribed "1898". A corbelled cornice sits above, and a decoratively carved stone fascia reads "SHANKILL ROAD MISSION". The original decorative wrought-iron gates — made by J. Crooks of Mountpottinger — remain in the arch, behind which are recessed replacement double-leaf timber-sheeted doors with vertically lined side panels.

The corner bays each have a second-floor canted oriel window on a sandstone corbel, positioned over a segmental-headed entrance in a chamfered reveal with modern metal shutters. Larmour notes that Roome made use of this recessed oriel form here as he did at his Mountpottinger YMCA, a window type favoured by Norman Shaw and other exponents of the Queen Anne Revival.

OTHER ELEVATIONS

The east elevation includes a gabled bay to the right matching the arrangement described above. The east elevation of the rear block has a variety of window openings, five windows wide at first-floor level, all segmental-headed with sandstone arch-heads that form a continuous string course.

The south elevation has a semi-circular recess at its centre, five segmental-headed windows at second-floor level, and one tall window at first-floor right; it is abutted at ground floor by the gabled double-height hall.

The west gable has two windows at attic level, three at both second and first floors, and a cement-rendered blank ground floor. The west elevation of the rear block has a variety of window openings to the right, some of which are timber boarded.

SETTING

The building is street-fronted, situated on the south side of Shankill Road opposite the Shankill Women's Centre and to the west of the Shankill Road Leisure Centre. A concrete alley to the west leads to a rear parking area.

HISTORY

The Shankill Road Mission Hall was built on the site of terraced housing for the Reverend Henry Montgomery. The Belfast Town Mission had been founded in 1827 as an interdenominational organisation concerned with the spiritual wellbeing of the large numbers of labouring men and women arriving in the town to work in the textile industries. The poor were visited in their homes and invited to attend church, with clergy visiting "stations" twice weekly for Bible reading and tract distribution. After 1843 the Belfast Town Mission became a Presbyterian organisation, and in the 1850s the Albert Street congregation was established as a result of its work. Albert Street was located in one of the most troubled areas of late 19th-century Belfast, and anti-Home Rule riots in 1886 affected the area particularly badly.

The minister at this time, Henry Montgomery, was anxious to provide spiritually for the labouring poor, warning that "if we do not reach the masses, the masses will reach us, and in a way some may not like." Having visited the Shankill area one Sunday evening and found conditions of extreme poverty, disease, drunkenness, and promiscuity, Montgomery held a public meeting at the Ulster Hall at which it was decided to begin an evangelical mission in the traditional Ulster manner, by putting up a tent. A tent was erected in 1896, followed by a temporary wooden structure a year later, and money was raised to build a permanent Mission Hall on the site.

The foundation stone was laid on 23rd October 1897. The central feature of the building was to be a large hall seating 2,000 — now gone — furnished with what were described as "all necessary conveniences for aggressive evangelisation work." At ground-floor level the building was to be let to shops at the front, with a medical mission and dispensary to the rear and a soup kitchen. The upper floors were to house offices for letting, a recreation department, and a residential training home for Christian workers. A large central entrance hall was to rise the full height of the building and terminate in a tower. The intended material was Scrabo stone for the main structure, with upper storeys of brick, and the final cost was estimated at £13,000–£14,000. The contractors were McLaughlin and Harvey, with steel construction undertaken by Moreland and Son of London. The building was formally opened on 25th November 1898.

The Mission was particularly concerned with reaching those who were "victims of drink," and a men's reading room was to serve as a "haven of refuge" in the evenings for those who might otherwise be tempted into public houses. The mission aimed to reach those outside Church influence, a number estimated at 75,000 at that time.

In 1910 the mission was raised to the status of an organised congregation, with Montgomery as its minister. The Mission established seaside trips to Bangor, where a "Fresh Air Colony" was built with playing fields, pavilions, and sports facilities. It continued to support local people through the First World War, the influenza epidemic of 1918–19, the sectarian violence of the 1920s, and the rising unemployment that followed. When Montgomery died in 1943, thousands lined the streets to pay tribute to the man known as the "Shankill Shepherd." The Mission continued to operate until the financial crisis of 2009, when it became unviable and was closed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

The architect, William J.W. Roome, was not only the designer of the hall but was also closely identified with the Mission's work, writing a history of it that was published in 1898. He was involved in a number of philanthropic projects in Belfast and ultimately gave up his architectural practice to become a missionary in Africa.