St John the Baptist Church, Stewartstown Road, Belfast, Co.Antrim, BT11 9JP

St John the Baptist Church is a single-storey, four-bay High Victorian Gothic Revival church built between 1860 and 1861. It was designed by Joseph Welland, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and constructed by contractor James Henry of Belfast at a cost of £1,650. The building is constructed from rock-faced, random-coursed basalt with sandstone dressings and sits on a battered plinth course.

HISTORY

The origins of this congregation reach back to the mid-1830s. In 1837, the Reverend William McIlwaine, curate at St George's Church on High Street, Belfast, began holding services in the Roseland schoolhouse and in the barn of William Coates of Trench Farm on alternate Sunday evenings. In the autumn of 1854, John Stouppe Charley made a room available at his residence, Woodbourne, for public worship, which was subsequently licensed by the bishop. It was recorded that Reverend McIlwaine had "by his great exertions brought together a considerable number of worshippers" at these Woodbourne services. In 1859 a district parish was legally reconstituted and the Reverend Joseph Rawlins was appointed its first incumbent. Charley also provided the site for the new church building.

Joseph Welland prepared the designs, and this was among the last churches he designed before his death on 6 March 1860. The foundation stone was formally laid on 14 May 1860, and as part of that ceremony a roll of parchment was placed in a bottle together with coins of the realm and set into the foundation of the right side of the chancel arch. Some £600 of the total building cost was raised by public subscription. The church was consecrated on 27 May 1861 and appeared in Griffith's Valuation of the same year with a valuation of £65. In appreciation of Reverend McIlwaine's efforts, a stained glass window was placed in the chancel in his honour. The district parish was reconstituted as the parish of St John the Baptist, Upper Falls, in 1868.

In 1903 Samuel Patrick Close designed a new transept and organ chamber at a cost of approximately £700. In the early 1980s, mortar bombs fired at a nearby army base caused considerable damage to the church, including damage to a number of the original stained glass windows. Subsequent repairs were carried out and the damaged windows have been restored.

EXTERIOR

The plan is rectangular, oriented north to south, comprising a gabled nave with a projecting gabled porch to the northeast, a narrowly projecting gabled bay to the west, and a projecting gabled chancel to the south. The vestry, which has a lower ground floor, abuts the west side of the chancel. The narrowly projecting western bay is further abutted by a later flat-roofed boiler house. The deep gabled transept to the east and the smaller gabled organ projection to its south were both added in 1903 to Close's designs.

The roof is of natural slate with black clay roll-top ridge tiles to the nave and angled ridge tiles elsewhere. There are open roof vents to the nave and transepts. All gables have raised stone verges with moulded stone trefoils to the apex. The nave has a single square-section chimney with two buff clay pots at the south gable apex, and a smooth dressed sandstone bell-cote at the north apex. Original cast iron ogee guttering is set on moulded sandstone corbels and discharges to circular-section cast iron downpipes. Windows are generally of a simplified Gothic form, composed of paired lancets in pointed arch surrounds with leaded stained glass. The chancel gable has a Perpendicular Gothic stained glass window, with smaller Perpendicular Gothic windows with stained glazing to the southeast and southwest of the nave.

The principal elevation faces east and comprises a three-bay nave, a single-bay gabled chancel to the south, and the projecting single-bay transept at the southeast end. The projecting gabled porch in the northeast has a pointed arch doorway with a stop-chamfered sandstone surround and pointed arch windows to its side elevations. The painted timber door, fitted with iron nail-head studs, is hung on wrought iron scroll hinges and opens onto two splayed sandstone steps. The north bay of the nave has a paired pointed arch window with leaded clear lozenge-shaped glazing, and the south bay has a traceried stained glass window. The transept has a pointed arch window with stained glass composed of two lancets crowned by a quatrefoil light. The gabled organ block projecting from the south side of the transept has no window openings to the east facade.

The north gable of the nave has two lancet windows with clear lozenge glazing below a reuleaux triangle-shaped window and the crowning sandstone bell-cote with a moulded trefoil to its apex. A later square-headed doorcase with a metal door is positioned to the northwest of the nave gable. The porch to the east of the nave has a lancet window, and the east transept has a paired lancet window in a pointed arch surround. The narrow projecting gabled bay to the west is abutted by the later flat-roofed, cement-rendered boiler house.

The west elevation has three bays: the first and second bays have paired lancet windows with pointed arch sandstone surrounds, and the third bay has a two-part traceried window. The narrowly projecting gabled bay to the southwest of the nave has a pointed arch window with stained glass composed of two lancets crowned by a quatrefoil light, set in a pointed arch sandstone surround. The flat-roofed boiler house sits below the transept window with a metal flue rising to its south side. The chancel to the south has a mono-pitch vestry attached to its west side, which has a square-headed trefoil doorcase with a louvred timber door opening onto two stone steps. A flight of stone steps to the south of the vestry leads to the lower ground floor, which has a square-headed timber door to its south.

The south elevation is dominated by a four-centred arch on the gabled chancel with Perpendicular-style tracery, restored in 2012 as recorded by a plaque inside. The chancel window has a stone cill composed of twelve pierced and moulded quatrefoils. The transept projects from the east side of the nave with the gabled organ projection to its side. There is a paired lancet window to the end of the mono-pitch vestry on the west of the chancel, and a blind lancet window to the gable of the organ projection.

SETTING

The church stands within its own grounds at the junction of Suffolk Road and Stewartstown Road, with the ground set to lawn with mature trees. The Colin Glen river runs immediately adjacent to the east. The boundary to Suffolk Road is of rock-faced random-coursed basalt dwarf walling with bevelled-edge sandstone coping, while the Stewartstown Road boundary has replacement concrete coping. The walling is topped by pointed finial wrought iron railings to the east and south roadsides, with random stone coping to the north boundary wall. The site is bound to the west by mature trees and the banks of the Collin River.

The principal entrance in the southeast corner of the boundary wall has wrought iron gates hung on square-section piers with two-stage pyramidal caps and a scrolled metalwork overthrow dated 1935 by a plaque in the porch. A tarmacked pathway leads northwest from the gates to the projecting porch. The boundary walling, railings, gates, gate pillars, and overthrow are all included within the extent of the listing.