St. Matthew's Church of Ireland, Shankhill Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT13 3LA

St Matthew's Church of Ireland is a High Victorian brick church built between 1869 and 1872, combining Byzantine, Neo-Gothic and Celtic Revival styles in a composition described as unique within Northern Ireland. It was designed by Welland & Gillespie, a Dublin-based architectural partnership between William Joseph Welland and William Gillespie, who had been appointed joint architects to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1860 and held that position until the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland on 1st January 1871. St Matthew's was one of the last churches the partnership designed before disestablishment. The building was constructed by the local firm John Lowry & Son and consecrated on 11th March 1872. It stands on the north side of the Shankill Road where it meets the Woodvale Road, between Olive Street and Cambrai Street, with Yew Street to the rear.

The plan is irregular, loosely cruciform, with rounded ends to three sides — a form that gives the building its celebrated trefoil or three-leaf silhouette. Contemporary observers were uncertain how to classify it: Bishop MacNeice saw "an enlarged shamrock," others referred to it irreverently as the ace of clubs, and the Belfast News Letter thought it must be French Gothic. The better-established view is that it is Byzantine in character, with the addition of an Old Irish round tower executed entirely in yellow brick. Architectural historian C. E. B. Brett concluded that "whatever its source, St Matthew's has an originality and a structural daring that make it stand out from the ruck of boring Victorian churches," while Paul Larmour described the exterior as "a masterpiece of consummate brickwork, smooth-paned and striped in red on white."

The roof is pitched natural slate with projecting eaves, roll-top black clay ridge tiles and metal finials. The single-storey extensions added later have hipped natural slate roofs with angled black clay ridge tiles. The gable has a raised crow-stepped verge. Rainwater goods consist of semi-circular cast iron guttering and polygonal hoppers discharging to circular downpipes.

The walling is laid in buff brick in Flemish bond with decorative red brick banding and a projecting plinth. Window openings are elongated lancets with faint cusping forming trefoil arches in buff brick headers and splayed cills, fitted with stained leaded glazing. Door openings are trefoil-shaped with curved buff brick surrounds and wrought iron gates featuring stylised flowerheads and quatrefoil cut-outs to square panels at the base.

The principal elevation faces west and is gabled. At the south end stands a three-stage round tower with tall narrow lancet windows to the belfry stage, topped by a conical brick spire with a continuous foliated carved stone cornice at the eaves and two stepped projecting brick strings with a projecting brick band at cill level of the belfry windows. At the centre is a double-height gable with three lancet windows at ground floor level and a large plate tracery rose window formed in brick above. At the north end is a semi-circular two-storey stair tower with a raised parapet. Twin projecting string courses run just below eaves height in a continuous band of red brick headers.

The north elevation comprises the semi-circular stair tower to the west, a double-height bay immediately to the east, a semi-circular apse at centre, and a single-storey three-bay-wide extension to the east. The stair tower has a door facing east opening onto a stone step. Lancet windows appear at differing heights, with flush red brick string courses, polychromatic banding, and projecting angled brick string courses just above plinth height and just below eaves height. The apse has seven window openings. The northern extension is built in polychromatic brickwork with buff brick walling and red and black brick dressings. To its west bay is a modern square-headed door opening with a concrete head and toothed yellow brick jamb, fitted with a modern metal gate and opening onto a curved ramp with a buff brick retaining wall that steps to align with the ramp. The remaining bays have pointed arch window openings formed in brick headers with stained leaded glazing.

The east elevation consists of two angled faces of the single-storey hipped-roof extension to the north, a semi-circular apse at centre, and a three-bay-wide single-storey extension to the south. The northern extension has two pointed arch windows to its east face. The apse has seven windows. The southern extension has three pointed arch windows.

The south elevation comprises the three-bay single-storey extension to the east, a semi-circular apse at centre, a two-storey bay, and a single-storey lean-to porch at the foot of the tower to the west. The extension has two windows and a door opening with two steps to the west bay. The apse has seven windows. The bay immediately to the west has pointed arch windows. The porch has a pointed arch entrance opening with a recessed trefoil arch door opening, a leaded roof, and decorative stone carving at eaves level.

The interior, which has been recently refurbished, is impressive though modestly detailed for the most part. Larmour noted that "the open tri-apsal space of the interior with smooth coved ceilings is a real surprise in an age of dark-stained timber trussed roofs on more traditionally laid out plans." Stained glass windows by the Belfast-based firm Clokey Stained Glass Studios enhance the worship space: seven windows installed in the sanctuary between 1957 and 1961 depict scenes from the life of Jesus including his birth, baptism, the Last Supper, the Ascension, the Resurrection, Jesus with Mary Magdalene, Pentecost, and the Epiphany. A further window in the south apse is by the Belfast-based glazier Daniel Braniff, depicting the Crucifixion, gifted to the congregation by the children of Anne Eliza Robinson following her death in 1966. A memorial window depicting St Patrick was added in 2006 in memory of Helen Baird, a prominent former member of the congregation.

The oak reredos were installed in 1918 to designs by the English architect Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1835–1924). The original communion table was replaced with the current altar, gifted by the congregation of St Peter's Church in 1924. The pulpit, oak panelling and reading desk were all installed around 1918 as a memorial to those who gave their lives during the First World War, with the names of the dead inscribed on the pulpit. The original church organ, installed in 1885 by Harrison of Durham, was replaced by the current organ in the early 1960s.

The only major structural alteration to the building was carried out in 1933, when single-storey extensions with hipped roofs were added to the south-east and north-east corners to designs by Henry Seaver (1860–1941), a local architect who designed a number of churches in Belfast for the Church of Ireland over his long career. This was one of the final contracts Seaver undertook before his retirement around 1934. The extensions continue the polychromatic brick detailing of the original building and are carefully integrated into the existing fabric, so that the church has retained its distinct trefoil-like shape.

A major renovation was carried out in 2002–2003 with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, including the repointing of the brickwork, the reslating of the roof, and restoration and adaptation of the interior for modern liturgical use. The sanctuary was remodelled to create a dais in front of the communion rail, and the area to the rear of the church under the organ gallery was enclosed with a glass screen to create the St Patrick Room, dedicated in memory of the late Archdeacon McDonald.

The church occupies a generous plot and is set within landscaped grounds with lawn and mature trees. The site is enclosed to the south and east by painted wrought iron railings with circular section rails and pointed heads, double gates supported on square section standards with scrolled finials, and to the north and west by rendered low walling. A narrow tarmacked area runs to the south. The site is visually open to the main road, and the scale of the church — with its pale buff brickwork and curved forms — is striking in an area where red brick terraced houses and rectilinear structures predominate.

The church stands on one of Belfast's most ancient ecclesiastical sites. Shankill takes its name from the Gaelic "seanchill," meaning "old church," and the site was formerly occupied by St Patrick's, the medieval parish church of Belfast, first recorded in the Papal Taxation of Pope Nicholas in 1306 and serving as Belfast's principal parish church until 1776 when St Anne's Church was built on Donegall Street. No physical remains of St Patrick's survive; it had been completely demolished by the early 19th century. Shankill Graveyard (listed separately), located adjacent to the site, served as the parish burial ground for many hundreds of years and is believed to have been in use for over a thousand years: in 1858 pieces of the bronze covering of a bishop's staff were unearthed there and identified by their spiral carving as belonging to the 9th century. The current church was itself the second St Matthew's to be built along the Woodvale Road. The first, constructed in 1839 at a cost of upwards of £480 and accommodating a congregation of 240, was a Gothic building depicted on the 1858 Ordnance Survey map as a T-shaped structure on the site now occupied by St Matthew's Parish Hall. It was later converted to a parochial hall, continued in use until around 1940, and was subsequently demolished to make way for the current red brick church hall, which had been erected by 1941. The current church, capable of accommodating a congregation of 700, was necessitated by rapid population growth resulting from the development of the linen industry in the mid-19th century, which transformed the formerly rural townland of Edenderry through bleach works, beetling mills, bleach greens and workers' housing. The Church Extension and Endowment Society commissioned its construction.

Shankill Graveyard and Woodvale Park are both within close proximity.