88 Clifton Street, Former Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT13 1AB

88 Clifton Street, Belfast

Former Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church Cloister Building

This attached two-storey gabled stone building dates to approximately 1888 and was designed by James John Phillips for Alderman James Carlisle as part of the Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church complex. It formerly connected the church to the Sunday school, positioned between both buildings with an enclosed front facing south onto Clifton Street.

The building features pitched natural slate roofs with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and a tall redbrick and stone chimneystack on the south elevation. The roof sits behind a slightly raised front gable with stone coping surmounted by a fleur-de-lys finial, kneeler stones, and cast-iron guttering to stepped brick eaves course with cast-iron downpipes. The front elevation displays coursed rock-faced limestone walling with red sandstone trims, while the side and rear elevations are finished in redbrick laid in Flemish bond.

The fenestration comprises red sandstone multi-light framed windows with splayed sandstone sills, including some leaded glazing. The front elevation is composed of a central gabled two-storey block fronted by a single-storey advanced wing and a further two-storey connecting wing to the north. A three-sided canted bay window projects from the gable with a steeply pitched natural slate roof. This bay features trefoil-headed lights with transoms and leaded coloured glazing in the overlights. The first floor of the connecting wing contains a window with three shouldered-headed lights having transoms.

The advanced single-storey wing displays large pointed-headed window openings flanked by weathered buttresses, each containing three lancets set within red sandstone tracery with splayed sills. Most of the glazing here is later replacement work.

A central gabled doorcase with decorative coping is flanked by a pair of gableted piers. The door opening is trefoil-headed with a compound arch and double-leaf vertically-sheeted hardwood doors with decorative iron furniture, opening onto a single step to the front paved area.

The south elevation contains a single lancet to the upper floor and two later square-headed window openings. The two-storey rear elevation is partly gabled with a pair of lancets to the first floor and an oval panel to the centre, all beneath a stone string course running across the parapet to the northernmost bay. A triple-light square-headed window opening serves the north bay, with paired square-headed openings to the ground floor. A pointed-arched door opening to the left, formed in gauged brick, contains replacement double-leaf sheeted hardwood doors and an overlight.

The north elevation is largely obscured by neighbouring buildings but shows paired square-headed window openings with some original coloured leaded glazing and some uPVC replacements.

The building stands on an elevated site as part of the Carlisle Memorial Methodist Church complex on the south side of Clifton Street. It is enclosed to the street by decorative iron railings and gates set on a limestone plinth wall with red sandstone piers topped with tapered capstones. A relocated limestone and sandstone font stands in the setting to the north-east of the cloisters.