Church Hall, The Church of the Pentecost (COI), Mount Merrion Avenue, Belfast, County Antrim, BT6 0FS

Church Hall at the Church of the Pentecost

A single-storey red-brick church hall with square tower, built around 1955 and located on the west side of Mount Merrion Avenue south of Belfast city centre. It adjoins the Church of the Pentecost (HB25/11/003A), and together the two buildings form a relatively intact group reflecting the demographic changes brought about by concentrated post-war town planning in the area.

The hall is rectangular on plan with a single-storey flat-roof entrance bay to the east and a later extension to the north. A square tower with open belfry is abutted to the east. The roof is pitched pantile with timber-boarded eaves and aluminium half-round rainwater goods. The walls are stretcher-bonded red-brick. Windows are replacement uPVC.

The principal elevation faces east. At the centre is a simple square tower surmounted by a metal ball finial and cross, with a metal-framed open belfry below. Two diminutive openings exist at ground floor. The left bay contains a full-width glazed panel with uPVC vertical glazing bars. The right bay is recessed and fully abutted by the flat-roof entrance bay. The entrance bay has modern double-leaf timber doors at the left, accessed by two masonry steps, with a full-width narrow glazed panel beneath the eaves. Following a site visit in October 2012, part of the external brick wall and glazing band to the roadside east elevation was removed and replaced with a flat metal seam-roofed entrance porch with red-brick plinth, large-pane aluminium-framed double glazing, and aluminium-framed doors. The interior of the hall remains unaltered. The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining church. The west elevation has an almost full-width glazed panel with uPVC vertical glazing bars. The north elevation is abutted by the single-storey flat-roof extension.

Building work commenced in April 1955, and the dual-purpose church and hall was dedicated in January 1956. The architect is uncertain, though the parish history suggests Dennis O'D Hanna designed it. Cregagh parish provided 50 per cent of the building costs, which amounted to £16,000. The church was added to the original church hall building in 1963 to designs by Dennis O'D Hanna and consecrated in March 1963. The dedication to the Church of the Pentecost was specified under the terms of a bequest by Rev Donald Moore, who left several thousand pounds to the Dioceses of Down, Dromore and Connor for the erection of new churches. The church achieved full parochial status in 1967. Mount Merrion separated from Cregagh and became a parish in its own right in 1962.

The building is situated at the fringes of the Cregagh Estate, a large post-war housing estate designed by architect T.F.O. Rippingham and built between 1945 and 1950 for the Housing Trust (now the Northern Ireland Housing Executive). The estate housed over 2,000 families and gave rise to the need for a new church in the area, a daughter church of St Finnian's in the nearby Upper Knockbreda Road. The church sits alongside a busy carriageway, with Ravenhill Rugby grounds and stadium directly to the west. The site is lawned to all sides and enclosed to the front by mid-height metal railings with gates at entrances. A burial plot lies to the south. Adjacent to the church grounds to the south stands the rectory, recognisably built in a similar modernist style but with most of its original windows, doors and screens replaced with modern alternatives.