Former Inter-denominational Church, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast, County Down, BT8 8BH

Former Inter-denominational Church, Knockbracken Healthcare Park, Saintfield Road, Belfast

This is a double-height inter-denominational church built around 1910, designed by George Thomas Hine of London and supervised by Belfast architects Graeme-Watt and Tulloch. It was constructed simultaneously with a matching adjacent Roman Catholic church as part of a phase of expansion at the Purdysburn Villa Colony Asylum between 1909 and 1912. The building is now derelict and little of its interior survives.

Architectural Description

The church follows a rectangular plan with an abutting chancel and entrance porches. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles. Rainwater goods are cast-iron with an ogee moulded profile. The walls are red brick laid in Flemish bond, dressed with artificial stone. Windows throughout are quadripartite, square-headed, with leaded glazing and long-and-short artificial stone surrounds; chamfered cills, heads and jambs. 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 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 barge boards and timber soffits; the doors themselves have been removed.

The left elevation is six windows wide, with the windows separated by single-stage brick buttresses capped in artificial stone. 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 chancel. The chancel gable has a Tudor-arched window — smaller than that on the principal elevation — with long-and-short surrounds, two mullions, and a single transom, flanked by two-stage angle buttresses. To the right cheek of the chancel is a hipped-roof vestry, which has a square-headed door entrance 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, and with the far right window similarly adapted to include a door in its central panes and four small squared fixed lights above.

Setting

The church sits beside its matching Roman Catholic counterpart in a rural setting close to the city. It is positioned at the crest of what is known as Scoot Hill, largely concealed from view by mature woodland. The ground falls away to the north, giving extended views towards the nearby farm and Belfast beyond. Access is from the east via a narrow, overgrown path. Unmaintained vegetation has in some instances taken hold of the building fabric itself.

Historical Context

The two churches at Purdysburn Villa Colony were added during an expansion phase between 1909 and 1912. They are first shown and captioned on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920–21, situated on part of the demesne of the former Purdysburn House of 1825 (now demolished), within what the map labels the Belfast District Asylum (Purdysburn Villa Colony). The churches are not separately listed in valuation records.

Their construction in what was described at the time as a beautiful grove reflected the enlightened approach to mental health care championed by pioneering Medical Superintendent William Graham. Positioned on Scoot Hill at what was then the centre of the asylum estate, the churches were accessible to both the female patients housed in Purdysburn House and the male patients in the villa colony. Protestant and Catholic churches were completed in 1912, the same year that Lunacy Inspectors praised the air of freedom and comfort and the pleasant and cheerful surroundings at Purdysburn as highly conducive to the physical health of the patients as well as to their mental recovery, and declared that for healthfulness and comfort the buildings and site at Purdysburn were unsurpassed by any public asylum in the United Kingdom — and, notably, that this had been achieved at moderate cost.

Purdysburn Villa Colony and Its Significance

The wider Purdysburn complex represents what is considered the earliest and most fully realised example in Britain or Ireland of the villa colony model of asylum design, and as such is an important landmark in the history of asylum architecture. The colony model can be seen both as the peak of a century-long evolution of asylum design and as a final flourish in the era of centralised mass treatment of the mentally ill.

The concept of a therapeutic colony has a long history. At Gheel in Belgium, a pilgrimage site for the sick and insane, visitors had boarded with local villagers since the Middle Ages, an arrangement that became 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 colony model — consisting of a collection of villas arranged 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, William Graham, Medical Superintendent of the Committee of Management of Purdysburn Lunatic Asylum (then housed in the former Purdysburn House), persuaded his committee to erect the new asylum on the villa colony principle. At that point, there were no comparable examples of such a colony for the insane anywhere in Britain or Ireland.

For Graham, the villa colony offered several clear advantages over earlier asylum designs. The villas were intended to be homely, allowing patients to be socialised in a semi-domestic environment with an intimate atmosphere, and they permitted patients to be classified according to mental and physical condition. The overwhelmingly working-class patients could benefit from an idyllic rural setting at a time when mental problems were often attributed to overwork in an industrial environment. Productive physical labour was also considered central to recovery, and patients were set to work growing their own food — a strategy that benefitted both the patients and the institution. For administrators, the colony model solved the problem of overcrowding, since it could expand villa by villa as required with minimal disruption and at lower cost than a traditional asylum. Graham himself 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."

Work on the first two villas began in 1902, to designs by Graeme-Watt and Tulloch, and was completed in 1904. Meanwhile, London County Council investigated the cottage system in Maryland, USA, and reported favourably on it in 1902, subsequently adopting a dispersed plan for their epileptic colony at Ewell, completed in 1903. Dispersed units were also added to their nearby lunatic asylum at Long Grove (1903–7), though its plan remained largely formal and symmetrical with attached pavilions. A dispersed plan was similarly adopted in some Poor Law imbecile colonies, such as 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 in 1934–7, which was built around a pre-existing mansion and outbuildings. 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 wished to observe the working of the villa system in practice. That same year, with two further villas nearing completion, the Belfast Asylum Committee demonstrated its confidence in the new model by stating its intention to complete Purdysburn to accommodate the entire insane of the city, and by inviting George T. Hine — architect to the English Lunacy Commissioners and described as the most accomplished and successful of asylum architects — to consult and advise generally the committee, medical superintendent and architects regarding the laying down of the scheme on the villa colony system. Hine was a supporter of the colony idea, having been exposed to German and American examples through the influence of psychiatrist T. Knowles Stansfield, and had incorporated dispersed units into his designs for Long Grove. His involvement at Purdysburn appears to have been largely conceptual: the surviving drawings for the next phase of construction — comprising four further villas, an administration building, a recreation hall, and a hospital — are signed by Graeme-Watt and Tulloch. However, 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 was estimated at £110,000, and the new accommodation was intended to house patients transferred from Grosvenor Road and Ballymena.

When Purdysburn was begun, it was intended that all of Belfast's mental patients would eventually move there. These patients had been housed in the Belfast Union workhouse on the Lisburn Road and in an asylum of 1829 on the site now occupied by the Royal Victoria Hospital. That earlier Grosvenor Road asylum reflected the prevailing attitudes of its time and was of a prison-like design, comprising numerous single cells with small, heavily-barred windows and surrounded by high walls designed to protect the public from the inmates.

By 1914, more than two thirds of Belfast's mental patients were housed at Purdysburn. Dr Graham remarked that the transfer represented far more than a physical move: "The change from the old to the new order...was not a mere bodily transference from one place to another. Indeed for many of them it must mean almost as if they took part in a transformation scene. No longer with visions contained in narrow limits, they can enjoy the ever shifting scenery of earth and sky, and experience the healing influences of nature...it is impossible to exaggerate the significance of the work as a historical contribution to asylum care and management."

William Graham died suddenly in November 1917 and his work was continued by his nephew, Dr S. J. Graham. In 1917 the original hospital building was extended. In 1927, three further villas, a gate lodge and a Medical Superintendent's residence were added. In 1936, two further villas and an infirmary and reception block were completed as Belfast continued to grow and sustained pressure on accommodation intensified. The number of patients at Purdysburn peaked at over 1,800 in the mid-1950s but now stands at around 300, largely as a result of changes in mental health provision and an increased emphasis on treating people within the community. The site is now shared with around thirty voluntary organisations working in the healthcare field. Despite being renamed and contracted in size, Purdysburn continues to provide mental health services, a testament to the flexibility of the villa colony model.

The churches hold group value both with each other and with the nearby listed hospital buildings that continue to operate today. In recent years the churches have fallen into disuse and are now derelict.