Former St Columba's Roman Catholic Church, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast, County Down, BT8 8BH

Former St Columba's Roman Catholic Church, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Belfast

This is a double-height Roman Catholic church built around 1910, designed by George Thomas Hine of London — who served as architect to the English Lunacy Commissioners — and supervised by Belfast architects Graeme-Watt and Tulloch. It was constructed simultaneously with an immediately adjacent Inter-denominational Church of matching design, the two forming a pair of simple, modest Gothic Revival buildings. Both churches are now derelict, with little of their interiors surviving.

Architectural Description

The building has a rectangular plan with abutting altar and entrance porches at either end. The roof is pitched and originally covered in natural slate, though the southwest pitch has been partially removed; terracotta ridge tiles remain. Rainwater goods are cast-iron with ogee moulding. The walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond with artificial dressed stone dressings. A red brick chimney with an artificial stone cap and a single terracotta pot is present.

Windows throughout are quadripartite and square-headed, with leaded glazing and long-and-short artificial stone surrounds; cills, heads, and jambs are all chamfered. The principal doors have been removed.

The principal gable faces southwest and is symmetrically arranged, with a skew-table and chamfered coping stones. At its centre is a large Tudor-arched window with long-and-short surrounds, geometric mullions and transoms, and a hood moulding. To either side of this window are matching gabled porches, each with a diminutive two-stage diagonal buttress flanking a Tudor-arched door opening with chamfered artificial stone surrounds, moulded timber bargeboards, and timber soffits; the doors themselves have been removed.

The left elevation is six windows wide, separated by single-stage brick buttresses with artificial stone capping. The far left window has been adapted to incorporate a door into its central panes, with four small squared fixed lights above.

The rear gable faces northeast and is abutted by a gable-ended altar projection. The altar gable features a Tudor-arched window — smaller than the one on the principal elevation — with long-and-short surrounds, two mullions, and a single transom, flanked by two-stage angle buttresses. To the right side of the altar, a hipped-roof vestry abuts the building; this has a square-headed door on its northeast elevation and a tripartite window to the southwest.

The right elevation mirrors the left: six windows wide, separated by single-stage brick buttresses with artificial stone capping, with the far right window similarly adapted to incorporate a door into the central panes and four small squared fixed lights above.

Setting

The church sits immediately beside its matching Inter-denominational counterpart in a rural setting close to the edge of Belfast. Both churches are positioned at the crest of what is known as Scoot Hill, largely concealed from view by mature woodland, with the ground falling away to the north and extended views towards a nearby farm and the city beyond. Access is from the east via a narrow, overgrown path. Unmaintained vegetation surrounds the churches and has in places begun to encroach on the building fabric itself.

The pair of churches form part of the wider group of listed buildings making up Knockbracken Healthcare Park, formerly known as the Purdysburn Villa Colony Asylum Complex, within the grounds of the former Purdysburn House demesne. The hospital buildings of that complex continue to operate today. The churches have group value both with each other and with those nearby listed buildings.

Historical Context

The two churches at Purdysburn Villa Colony were added as part of a phase of expansion that took place between 1909 and 1912, and are first shown on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920–21. Their construction in what was described at the time as a "beautiful grove" reflects the enlightened approach to mental healthcare promoted by pioneering Medical Superintendent William Graham and his architectural advisors. Positioned at what was then the centre of the asylum estate, they were accessible to both female patients housed in Purdysburn House and male patients in the villa colony.

The broader Purdysburn complex is widely regarded as the earliest and most fully realised example in Britain or Ireland of the "villa colony" model of asylum design, representing a landmark in the history of psychiatric architecture. When Purdysburn was established, Belfast's mental patients were housed in the Union workhouse on Lisburn Road and in an asylum of 1829 on the site now occupied by the Royal Victoria Hospital. That earlier Grosvenor Road asylum reflected prevailing attitudes of its time, being of a prison-like design with single cells, small heavily barred windows, and high surrounding walls intended to protect the public from the inmates.

Work on the first two villas at Purdysburn began in 1902 to designs by Graeme-Watt and Tulloch, and was completed in 1904. In 1906 the Belfast Asylum Committee invited George T. Hine — described as "the most accomplished and successful of asylum architects" and a committed supporter of the colony model — to consult and advise generally on laying out the scheme on the villa colony system. Hine had been exposed to colony examples in Germany and the United States through the influence of psychiatrist T. Knowles Stansfield, and had incorporated dispersed units into his designs for Long Grove asylum. His involvement at Purdysburn appears to have been largely conceptual: surviving drawings for the next phase of construction are signed by Graeme-Watt and Tulloch, though an article in the Irish Builder of June 1908 suggests that Hine produced complete plans for the colony and was to visit the site before work began. The total cost of this phase was estimated at £110,000.

The colony model offered several clear advantages in the view of those who promoted it. The villas were intended to be "homely", allowing patients to be socialised in a semi-domestic environment with an intimate atmosphere. They permitted patients to be classified according to mental and physical condition. The rural setting was considered beneficial at a time when mental illness was often attributed to overwork in industrial environments, and productive physical labour — including growing food — was seen as integral to the healing process. From an administrative perspective, the villa colony could be expanded incrementally with minimal disruption, and at lower cost than a traditional asylum. Superintendent Graham later stated: "This system, as everybody knows, or ought to know, is the fruit of the highest scientific study in the care of the insane, and springs from the two dominant principles of our time — exact and accurate knowledge and a love of humanity which counts no sacrifice too great for the sake of those who have been grievously handicapped in the race of life."

The term "colony" itself had a long history in therapeutic contexts. At Gheel in Belgium, a pilgrimage site for the sick and insane, visitors had been boarded out with local villagers since the Middle Ages, an arrangement later known as a "family colony." However, it was not until the closing decades of the 19th century that medical authorities began to conceive of a formal "colony" model — a collection of villas around central administration facilities — for the treatment of the insane, epileptics, the "mentally deficient," and even the unemployed. This approach was first widely practised in Germany and the United States. In 1900, when William Graham persuaded his committee to erect the new asylum on the villa colony principle, there were no other examples of such a colony for the insane in Britain or Ireland. The London County Council had investigated the "cottage system" in Maryland, USA, and reported favourably in 1902, subsequently adopting a dispersed plan for their epileptic colony at Ewell, completed in 1903, and adding dispersed units to the nearby Long Grove asylum between 1903 and 1907, though the Long Grove plan remained largely formal and symmetrical. Dispersed plans were also adopted for some Poor Law "imbecile" colonies, including Monyhull Hall in Birmingham (1908) and Prudhoe near Newcastle (1913), but no other lunatic asylums appear to have been purpose-built as fully dispersed villa colonies until the construction of Shenley in Middlesex between 1934 and 1937. Purdysburn was, to a large extent, the architectural pioneer in this field.

In 1906 Purdysburn was visited by the Royal Commission on the Care and Treatment of the Feeble-minded, who came specifically to observe the villa system in operation. The Protestant and Catholic churches were completed in 1912, alongside further villas. That same year, the Lunacy Inspectors praised the "air of freedom and comfort and the pleasant and cheerful surroundings of Purdysburn" as "highly conducive to the physical health of the patients as well as to their mental recovery," concluding that "for healthfulness and comfort the buildings and site at Purdysburn were unsurpassed by any public asylum in the United Kingdom" — and that this had been achieved "at moderate cost." By 1914 more than two thirds of Belfast's mental patients were housed at Purdysburn.

William Graham died suddenly in November 1917 and his work was continued by his nephew, Dr S. J. Graham. The original hospital building was extended in 1917. In 1927 three further villas, a gate lodge, and a Medical Superintendent's residence were added. In 1936 two further villas, an infirmary, and a reception block were completed as continued growth in Belfast maintained sustained pressure on accommodation. The number of patients peaked at over 1,800 in the mid-1950s and now stands at around 300, largely owing to changes in mental health provision and a growing emphasis on community-based treatment. The site is currently shared with around thirty voluntary organisations working in the healthcare field.

The churches themselves have fallen into disuse in recent years and are now derelict.