Heyn Memorial Hall, 215 Holywood Road, Belfast, County Antrim, BT4 2DR

The Heyn Memorial Hall is a two-storey, red-brick, Tudor-style parish hall built in 1928–29 for St. Mark's Church, Dundela, to designs by Belfast-based architect Robert Hanna Gibson (1890–1979). It stands at the corner of Holywood Road and Sydenham Avenue in the Strandtown townland of Belfast, and the listing extends to the hall itself together with its gates, railings and walling.

Gibson received his architectural training in the offices of Henry Seaver, with whom he later became a partner, and the Heyn Memorial Hall was one of his early commissions. Although the Belfast Newsletter attributed the design solely to Seaver at the time of opening, architectural historian Paul Larmour believed the design was the work of the younger Gibson, noting in particular that the large bay window reflects Gibson's declared admiration for the architect Edwin Lutyens. Construction was carried out by the building firm F. B. McKee & Co. of the Shore Road. The hall was opened on Saturday 12th October 1929 by the Lord Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, and upon completion was awarded the Ulster Architectural Medal, being described as "one of the best buildings of its kind belonging to the Church of Ireland in Ulster." By 1987 Larmour was describing it as "one of the finest parish halls in the country."

The building is named for Frederick L. Heyn, a steamship owner, local magistrate and Justice of the Peace who served as churchwarden at St. Mark's and represented the parish at the Diocesan Synod. Following his death, Heyn's family wrote to the church vestry proposing a memorial and contributed £6,500 — the total construction cost was approximately £6,000 — towards "a building to be erected which should meet the requirements of the Parish for many years to come." A portrait of Heyn and a plaque to his memory were installed within the hall at its opening in 1929. The hall was first valued in the Annual Revisions of 1930 at a rateable value of £115, administered by the Select Vestry of St. Mark's Church. It was raised to £200 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland in 1935, subsequently increased to £470, and later combined with the value of St. Mark's Church under the Second Revaluation of 1956–72. The building was listed in 1993 and was reopened after renovation in October 2013.

The plan is rectangular, set on a west–east axis, with projecting bays to both the north and south elevations. The roof is half-hipped and covered in natural green Norwegian silver-green slates — recorded at the time of opening as Voss Norwegian silver-green slates — with angled red-clay ridge tiles and overhanging eaves. Plain bargeboards are present to the gables. Two small hexagonal-plan, pyramid-roofed ventilators with copper spires and louvred openings to each face sit on the roof. The guttering is semi-circular uPVC and the downpipes are circular. Walling is red brick laid in stretcher bond, constructed from Buckley Junction Jacobean bricks. Square-headed window openings are set flush with the wall with no sills and contain timber casement windows.

The principal elevation faces south and presents a pair of two-storey gables to the west. The western end has a two-bay, two-storey, half-hipped roof gable with a two-part window to each bay at ground floor level and a three-part window to the centre of the first floor, along with a stone memorial plaque at the centre. Immediately to the east is a two-storey, two-bay projecting gable housing the main entrance: a square-headed porch opening with a square-plan timber column to the corner and a painted iron balustrade to the side; the porch floor is laid with red-clay brick paving in a herringbone pattern, and the main entrance is a half-glazed timber double door. This bay also has a two-part window to the east bay at ground floor and a single three-part window at first floor level, with uPVC lettering to the centre of the gable. Three double-storey hipped-roof projecting bays each contain a four-part window at high level. The westernmost of these three bays has a single-storey flat-roofed outshot with two two-part windows facing south and a single two-part window facing east. The easternmost bay has a further single-storey flat-roofed outshot with a modern metal double door and windows to all three sides.

The west elevation is three bays wide and two storeys tall, with four-part windows to each bay at ground floor and a flat-headed lucarne — a dormer built off the face of the wall — with a three-part window to each bay at first floor level.

The north elevation mirrors the south in its general arrangement: two two-storey gables to the west, three projecting double-storey hipped-roof bays, and two modern single-storey flat-roofed outshots. At the east end there is a two-storey half-hipped roof bay incorporating a projecting single-storey flat-roofed semi-circular bay with a multi-part window and a three-part window to the first floor. Directly to its east is a two-storey two-bay projecting gable with a canted bay timber-mullioned oriel window at first floor. Three one-and-a-half storey hipped-roof projecting bays contain four-part windows at high level. The western of these three bays has a single-storey three-bay flat-roofed outshot with a square-headed door to the first bay and a two-part window to the remainder. A modern single-storey flat-roofed outshot occupies the east end.

The rear elevation faces east and features a single canted bay containing a large one-and-a-half storey timber-mullioned bay window. The Belfast Newsletter noted at the time of opening that the main hall measured 60 feet by 30 feet and "follows the treatment of one of the Oxford College halls." Surviving interior fittings include the original staircase and wall panelling, with wood-panelled rooms throughout. The most significant alteration to the building has been the replacement of the original leaded casement windows with simple single panes, which Larmour considered to detract from the original Tudor-style character of the building.

The hall is located at the northwest end of St. Mark's Church grounds on the south side of Holywood Road. The former rectory — a red-brick, two-storey gabled building currently used as parish offices — stands between the hall and the church. The site is partly lawned and partly tarmacked, with a car park to the northwest. It is enclosed by a dwarf sandstone wall with iron railings and rectangular piers to the north, a red-brick dwarf wall with stone coping to the west, and hedging and fencing to the south and east. In its original setting alongside the former St. Mark's Rectory and St. Mark's Church on Holywood Road, the hall has group value with the other parish buildings and is of local importance.