St. Mary Magdalene, Donegall Pass, Belfast, County Antrim

St Mary Magdalene, Donegall Pass, Belfast

St Mary Magdalene is a double-height, seven-bay Gothic Revival church built approximately 1898 to 1900 to the designs of architect Samuel Patrick Close, replacing an earlier church on the same site that was severely damaged by fire in December 1898. The building is a Church of Ireland parish church and retains much of its original external fabric and character. A church hall to the rear, built in 1923 to 1924 to the designs of James St John Phillips, completes the site and adds to its historical and architectural interest. The listing covers the church itself together with its railings, gates and pillars.

Architectural Description

The church is planned in a barn style with north and south lean-to side aisles, a north transept, a chancel with adjoining vestry, and a side chapel. The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee-moulded with circular downpipes. The walls are built of snecked, uncoursed, square rubble rock-faced Scrabo sandstone with chisel-draughted margins to the quoin stones. Ashlar dressed stone is used for the plinth course, buttress offsets, copings and corbel course. Windows are came-lights and stained glass set within bipartite and tripartite pointed-arched openings with cusped tracery, long-and-short surrounds and chamfered cills. The principal entrance doors are timber sheeted double-leaf doors with filigree wrought-iron strap hinges, set into a two-stage chamfered pointed-arched archivolt with chamfer-stops and long-and-short surrounds.

The principal elevation faces south and is asymmetrically arranged. At upper level are diminished bipartite clerestory windows. At ground floor the full-length lean-to aisle runs seven bays wide, with bipartite and tripartite windows separated by diminutive two-stage buttresses. To the left is a gabled entrance porch with diagonal buttressing, a pointed arch opening with ashlar surrounds and hood mouldings, and moulded coping with skew-tables and shoulders. To the right, the aisle rises to a gabled vestry with a centrally positioned bipartite window and a sexpartite oculus above, a vestry entrance to the left, and on the east cheek a single and a bipartite square-headed window. The west face of the aisle has a bipartite window with a lateral buttress to the right.

The west gable is symmetrically arranged. At ground floor there is a tripartite stained glass window to the baptistery. The west window above is a tall pointed lateral arched window flanked by diminished cusped pointed arched windows. Gable detailing matches that of the porch.

The north elevation is asymmetrically arranged and constructed in red brick laid to English garden wall bond, with dress stone matching the south elevation. Paired bipartite clerestory windows appear at upper level. At ground floor a lean-to north aisle abuts the wall, and the west face of this aisle is further abutted by a two-storey irregular-plan stairwell with squared-headed came-lights and a rear entrance door. To the left is the double-height gabled north transept; its gable elevation has three bipartite windows at ground floor and three pointed-arched came-lights with plain chamfered brick surrounds at upper level, with an oculus above, and a projected chimney-stack to the right breaking through the coping. A flat-roofed basement occupies the re-entrant angle between the north aisle and the north transept. To the far left is a single-storey side chapel with a symmetrical gable comprising a wide central segmental arched came-light with plain brick surrounds, flanked by narrower segmental arched windows of matching style; the entrance door is in the west cheek and four matching segmental arched windows run along the east cheek.

The east gable is symmetrically arranged with a tall pointed lateral arched window flanked by diminished cusped pointed arched windows, and gable detailing matching the west gable, except for the addition of a chimney located over the left skew-table.

Interior

The interior has undergone some minor alterations that do not detract from its special interest. At the time of construction, Scrabo stone was used throughout with Scottish white stone dressings for the windows and Bath stone for the interior. A gallery was built for the use of inmates of the asylum during services, keeping them out of view of the general congregation; this gallery was connected by a passageway to the asylum. The organ pipes now occupy the position of this gallery. A vestry or schoolroom was positioned at the rear of the church, opening by double arcades into the main body of the church to provide additional seating. The stained glass windows were made by Messrs Carlisle and Wilson to the designs of the architect. A brass eagle lectern donated by Mr W T Coates JP, a Belfast stockbroker, was particularly admired at the time of opening and considered one of the finest examples then in Ulster. In 1979 the former Church Room at the rear of the church was refurbished to form the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, which was further refurbished and redecorated in 2006.

Setting and Church Hall

Immediately to the north of the church stands the church hall, a two-storey, dry-dashed building with a half-hipped slate roof, square-headed timber casement windows with smooth surrounds, and stilted square-headed door openings with moulded masonry surrounds embracing tall overlights. The east elevation is abutted by a two-storey castellated parapet entrance and stairwell with Gothic-style fenestration. Internally the hall retains much of its original fabric, including doors, architraves, wainscoting, flooring, cornicing and stair details. The upper hall has an exposed steel truss.

To the east of the church stands a Georgian terrace (listed separately). The site is bounded to the south by wrought-iron railings and gates with moulded finials and vermiculated sandstone piers. To the west is a car park, beyond which is modern two-storey terrace housing.

Historical Background

The origins of the church lie in the broader Irish Magdalene tradition. Lady Arabella Denny (1707–1792), a philanthropist, established the first Magdalene asylum in Ireland in 1766 in Leeson Street, Dublin. The attached chapel, opened in January 1768 to raise funds for the asylum, became a fashionable place of worship among Dublin's ruling classes. Magdalene asylums were subsequently established throughout Ireland. In 1838 a committee was formed in Belfast to collect subscriptions for a Magdalene asylum and chapel in the city. In 1839 a grant of £1,000 was made by the Down and Connor Church Accommodation Society, and a church was erected to the designs of William Moore, opening in December 1839. The asylum and laundry to the rear did not open until 1849. Magdalene asylums were intended to provide a refuge for women who had fallen into prostitution, and typically operated a laundry both for rehabilitation purposes and to sustain the institution financially. Such asylums were run by both Catholic and Protestant denominations across Ireland; the last such institution in Ireland closed in 1996.

St Mary Magdalene also served as a parish church — the fifth in the ancient parish of Shankill and the fourth to be built in the early decades of the 19th century, partly in response to Belfast's rapid population growth. The church of 1839 is recorded in Griffith's Valuation of 1859 as a Magdalene Episcopal Church and Asylum, valued at £160.

In December 1898 a serious fire destroyed the belfry and organ and extensively damaged the body of the church. The replacement building was designed by Samuel Patrick Close, a prolific architect responsible for much ecclesiastical, commercial and municipal work in Counties Antrim and Down, with James Kidd as contractor. The foundation stones were laid in October 1899 and the church was dedicated in October 1900. Seating was provided for 900 people at a total cost of £5,000. The new church was assessed at a valuation of £260 in Annual Revisions and first appears on the 1901 to 1902 Ordnance Survey map.

The asylum and laundry became increasingly costly to maintain and closed in 1916; the building was demolished two years later. When the former church hall and schoolhouse at Shaftesbury Square was sold in 1919, it was decided to build a new hall on the ground behind the church previously occupied by the asylum. The foundation stone of the parochial hall was laid in December 1923 and the building opened in 1924, designed by James St John Phillips, whose ecclesiastical work was often commissioned by the Methodist Church and who also designed numerous commercial and domestic buildings.

St Mary Magdalene also has a significant association with the history of the Boys' Brigade, an organisation founded in Glasgow in 1883. The first Irish company was established at St Mary Magdalene in December 1888 through the efforts of William McVicker, a Sunday School superintendent who had visited Glasgow to meet the movement's founder. The Boys' Brigade subsequently spread throughout Ulster. The 1st Company was temporarily transferred to St Columba's in Knock during the 1980s but returned to St Mary Magdalene in 1997.

Due to declining congregations in the Belfast inner city area, the parishes of St Mary Magdalene and St Aidan's Sandy Row were grouped in 2007, sharing a joint ministry while maintaining separate services and Select Vestries. In 2013 the Bishop of Connor appointed a Minister-in-charge to each parish.