Methodist Church, Middle Road, Islandmagee, Larne, Co Antrim

Methodist Church, Middle Road, Islandmagee

A single-storey Methodist chapel built in 1829 on a rectangular plan, forming part of an attractive group with adjoining cottages. The building is rendered with a hipped roof of Bangor blue slates and sits on a level, rural site set back slightly from the road corner.

The south-facing entrance elevation is three openings wide, with a semi-circular headed doorway in the centre flanked by semi-circular headed windows on either side. The door comprises two triple-panelled varnished wood leaves, replaced in 1984 to the presumed original pattern, set beneath a fanlight with intersecting glazing bars (original) and surmounted by an oval datestone inscribed "Wesleyan Methodist Church MDCCCXXIX". Two sandstone steps lead to the entrance with a recent metal tubeclamp handrail. The windows are divided by three transoms and a central mullion into six square panes of translucent glass and two upper quadrant panes of decorative leaded work; all are later replacements for original Georgian glazing bars, with sandstone painted cills.

The west elevation is blank with roughcast finish using crushed stones and smooth rendered painted quoins. The east facade is four windows wide, with semi-circular headed timber fixed lights divided by three horizontal and two vertical glazing bars into twelve near-square panes beneath a transom, with a semi-circular top panel of intersecting tracery. The north or rear elevation has two large semi-circular headed windows similarly detailed.

The roof throughout is of Bangor blue slates in regular courses with cast iron guttering, supplemented with PVC returns to side elevations and cast iron downpipes. The base has an offset plinth with raised quoins at extremities.

A flat-roofed single-storey extension of late 20th-century appearance has been added to the rear with asphalt roof covering, roughcast walls using crushed stones, and a timber fascia. A further flat-roofed glazed porch of poor quality links this extension to a small roughcast lean-to block adjoining the terrace of 1½-storey gabled cottages roofed in matching Bangor blue slates.

The front and side boundary wall is smooth rendered and painted with square piers and iron gates, all replacements. The original boundary wall (visible in a 1940 photograph) comprised whitened rubble to the west pier with vernacular flat iron gates with loops, and the front gate piers were previously whitened circular piers with conical caps.

The chapel was built to accommodate approximately 450 persons at a cost of about 565 pounds and was opened on Sunday 13th September 1829. A meeting room was added to the rear in 1978. The building has been substantially altered internally and externally and no longer retains sufficient architectural character to warrant listing.