Ballysillan Presbyterian Church, Belfast, Co. Antrim

Ballysillan Presbyterian Church is a six-bay late-Victorian Gothic Revival gabled church built in 1891 to designs by Belfast-based architect Samuel Stevenson (1859–1924). It stands prominently at the corner of the Crumlin and Ballysillan Roads in Belfast, orientated south-west to north-east, and is bounded by decorative cast-iron railings, two pairs of ornate gate piers to the south-west boundary, a stone wall to the south-east, railings and vehicular gates to the north-east, and the gable wall of a neighbouring house to the north-west. The site also contains a former national school to the rear and a hall complex to the north-west.

The church is constructed in rock-faced sandstone with smooth sandstone detailing throughout, and carries a steeply pitched natural slate roof with bellcast detail, sandstone skews to parapet gables, and cast-iron ogee gutters resting on a flat sandstone cornice. Downpipes are a mixture of cast-iron and uPVC. The walls rise from a rock-faced projecting sandstone plinth, with stepped buttresses rising in four stages to form pinnacles with conical stone caps, string courses, and niches at various stages.

The main elevation faces south-west and features a pair of equilateral arched door openings, each flanked by plain columns with foliated capitals and double torus bases, with concentric moulded archivolts and modern timber glazed doors reached by steps and ramped access. Above a flat 'tiled' stone string course, with a memorial plaque between the door openings below it, are five Gothic lancet arched windows that increase in height from the outer windows to the central one, all with 'Y'-shaped tracery and a mix of diamond and square leaded coloured glass panes. Hood moulding follows the line of the window heads. Three shallow niches at the apex of the gable echo the windows below. The gable is flanked on each side by staircase enclosures, each a single bay with stepped set-back buttresses, two lancet windows at different heights, and quatrefoil windows with smooth surrounds and hood moulding. A smooth entablature with a blind arcade above forms the parapet, with a pinnacle and finial to the outer wall.

The north-west elevation has a projecting plinth and rock-faced sandstone walls with stepped buttresses separating groups of three lancet windows, the central window of each group being taller, with smooth sandstone surrounds and a cornice supporting rainwater goods. The bay to the south-west projects forward with set-back stepped buttresses, an equilateral arched door opening with smooth architrave, a pair of timber doors and glazed fanlight, a lancet arched window above, smooth entablature, blind arcade forming the parapet, and pinnacles with finials to each external corner.

The south-east elevation mirrors the north-west but has the gable of the former school attached to the north-east. It features a rock-faced sandstone gable with a central equilateral arched door opening with paired timber doors and a blind panel above. The smooth sandstone architrave carries the carved inscription 'Ballysillan National School' around the apex, with hood moulding running into single-stage buttresses on either side. Two lancet arched windows sit to each side of the door at ground floor level, and three lancet arched windows, taller to the centre, occupy the upper section. Small stepped buttresses with pitched stone-capped copings flank each end of the gable. The north-east elevation is attached to the former school complex to the rear of the site, with only the apex of the main church gable visible above the school roof.

The former school itself is a seven-bay, two-storey gabled building with red-brick walls in English Garden Wall bond, a pitched natural slate roof, square-headed window openings with metal windows and concrete cills and lintels to both floors, and uPVC rainwater goods.

Internally, the church retains a fine original fitted interior, including an ornately carved gallery carried on painted columns, original pews, and the original pulpit.

The congregation of Ballysillan Presbyterians grew from meetings held in the area from 1836, spurred by the industrial development of the village — including the construction of beetling mills and the laying out of numerous bleach greens — which caused significant population growth. In 1836 a committee was formed to create a place of worship, and in that same year James Blair Esquire of Clearstream provided the current plot of land. The foundation stone of the first church was laid on 27th September 1837 and the building opened for worship on 28th October 1838. This original church, depicted on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857 as a rectangular building occupying the exact site of the current church, served the congregation for approximately four decades. A manse was built in 1843 to the north-west of the church, on the site now occupied by the Gailey Memorial Hall. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 valued the church at £40.

The Rev. James Lowden was installed in 1887, and it was during his ministry that the present building was erected. The congregation resolved to build a new church on 18th March 1890, and only seven months later the memorial stone was laid on 4th October 1890 by William Laird of Wolfhill. The building cost an estimated £1,500 and was ceremoniously opened in June 1891. Upon completion, the valuation of the church rose to £100. According to the Dictionary of Irish Architects, Samuel Stevenson designed a number of Presbyterian churches in Ulster but was chiefly involved in industrial and commercial work. The third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901 records the schoolhouse to the rear of the church and depicts the building in its current layout, suggesting no major structural additions have been made since the early 20th century.

In 1938 the adjoining manse was demolished and replaced with a lecture hall named the Gailey Memorial Hall, in memory of the seventh minister of Ballysillan, the Rev. John Gailey, who had left the church in 1921 to become a lecturer for the Irish Temperance League. The hall was designed by J. F. Hall, who also designed the first church hall at Orangefield Presbyterian Church. The church and its newly completed lecture hall were jointly valued at £480 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (covering 1936–57), rising to £904 by the end of the Second Revaluation in 1972. In 2012 Ballysillan Presbyterian Church celebrated the 175th anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone, and the congregation remains active, with membership recorded at over 500 families.