Glenavy Methodist Church, Main Street, Glenavy, County Antrim, BT29 4LP

Glenavy Methodist Church is a Gothic Revival place of worship built in 1891–92 to designs by James John Phillips (1841/2–1936), a Belfast-based architect who was the principal designer of Methodist churches in the north of Ireland, responsible for designing or substantially altering at least seventeen churches between 1884 and around 1905. The listing covers the church itself together with its gates, gate pillars, railings and boundary walling. The church stands off the main thoroughfare through the village of Glenavy, opposite the Protestant Hall, and is one of the few architecturally significant buildings on Main Street. It sits within the Glenavy Area of Village Character.

The building is of rectangular plan with a modern extension to the rear. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, corbelled eaves, and cast-iron ogee-moulded gutters with circular downpipes. The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish Bond with sandstone dressings, and the front façade has a squared, rock-faced coursed masonry plinth. The windows are lancet-arched with stained glass, chamfered long-and-short sandstone surrounds, chamfered cills, and hood mouldings with scrolled head-stops. The timber sheeted front door has wrought-iron filigree strap hinges and breaks through the plinth course at the lower level, with chamfered long-and-short sandstone surrounds and a corbelled lintel over.

The principal gable faces west and is symmetrically composed. Weathered coping with roll moulding rises to a foliated finial at the apex. A sandstone rose window sits centrally in the gable head beneath a half-circle hood moulding with scroll head-stops. The upper portion of the gable is decorated with narrow arcaded brick mouldings. The corners are embraced by single-stage lateral buttresses rising to hexagonally arranged pinnacles. At ground floor level, single windows flank a single-storey gabled porch. The north and south cheeks of the porch each have an entrance door. The porch gable has weathered coping rising to a foliated finial, large gable shoulders, and symmetrically arranged arcaded windows with a taller central window.

The south elevation is symmetrically arranged in five bays, each bay comprising a pair of lancet-arched windows with brick surrounds, segmented by single-stage lateral buttresses, with brick plinth and corbel courses. The north elevation is essentially identical to the south, except that the second bay from the left has a single window and a bricked-up door opening, and the far right bay is abutted by the gabled secondary entrance of the modern hall to the rear. The rear gable is blank and smooth rendered, abutted at ground floor level by a single-storey link block connecting to the modern brick hall; there are gabled porch entrances at the re-entrants of the north and south elevations.

The boundary to the east of the site consists of a wrought-iron railing on a low rubble masonry wall, with robust piers surmounted by sandstone lancet-faced upper portions, wrought-iron gates and a segmental arch over. The southern boundary is partially formed by a rubble masonry wall with modern gates and railing. To the south of the site is a modern two-storey housing development, and to the north a two-storey retail and storage building. A large hall complex erected to the rear has some impact on the setting, though it does not significantly detract from the church's special interest. The exterior has otherwise remained largely unchanged and retains its historic character. The interior is of good quality with much historic fabric retained.

The history of Methodism in Glenavy stretches back to the mid-18th century, when John Wesley founded the Methodist Church in Ireland. The first Methodist Meeting House in the town was built around 1830 — the 1832–33 Ordnance Survey map shows a small oblong building midway along Main Street, and the Ordnance Survey Memoirs confirm the 1830 date, though one secondary account suggests 1836. The original meeting house measured 33 feet by 23 feet, cost £100 to build, and accommodated a congregation of 90–100 people. By around 1836–38 it was described as "an exceedingly plain building, much out of repair." In 1859 it was valued at £5 10s. and was let by a Ms Jane Johnston. Until 1878 the congregation were Primitive Methodists, administering their own affairs, but that year they joined the Wesleyan Society of Methodists. A manse was purchased for the first incumbent minister in 1885, though its location is not recorded.

The foundation stone of the present church was laid on 10 October 1891, with a Mr Robert Calwell employed as chief builder. The building was constructed to accommodate a congregation of 140 worshippers at a cost of £1,500 and was dedicated on 25 June 1892. The Rev. Charles Watson, writing in 1892, noted that the Methodist congregation in Glenavy was the oldest in the area and recorded that the original meeting house bore a date stone of 1826.

In 1931 centenary celebrations prompted renovation and repair of the building, including the installation of a new roof at a cost of £270. At this time the original meeting house continued to serve as a Sunday school. No vestry had been included in the original 1891–92 design, though the church had been planned to allow one to be added later; a building fund was begun in 1951 aiming to raise approximately £800 for this purpose. The vestry was eventually added in October 1967, at which time a modern electric heating system was also installed. In September 2009 a new church hall was constructed adjoining the rear of the church, incorporating a modern kitchen and toilet facilities. The construction of this hall necessitated the demolition of the original c.1830 meeting house, which had until recently continued in use as a meeting place and Sunday school.