Patrick Comerford
Great Victoria Street was once an elegant and fashionable street in Victorian Belfast, leading from College Square at the north end, to Shaftesbury Square at the south end, and lined with landmark buildings including Belfast Central Station, the Grand Opera House and the Crown Bar, which I discussed in a blog posting on Saturday (21 September 2024).
Great Victoria Street – like so many other streets in Belfast – at one time was also home to a number of churches and places of worship, including Great Victoria Street Baptist Church on the east side and Great Victoria Street Synagogue on the west side.
During our recent year visit to Belfast, I walked along the street a few times, between Botanic Aven where we staying and the city centre. On those walkabouts, some of the buildings I stopped to see, out of architectural interest, included two Presbyterian buildings at either end of the street – Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church at the south end and Church House at the north end – as well as May Street Presbyterian Church near Donegall Square.
Estimates say that 31 Presbyterian churches in Belfast have closed since 1964, so the surviving Presbyterian churches in the inner city are important as landmark buildings and as part of the city’s Victorian architectural legacy.
Fisherwick Presbyterian Church, Malone Road … Gothic architecture only became acceptable for Presbyterian churches in the late 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Presbyterians in Ireland were divided between ‘Old Light’ and ‘New Light’ parties in the 18th and early 19th century and by debates, schisms and splits. The Non-Subscribing Presbyterians came together in 1835, and the Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod came together in 1840, forming the General Assembly with almost 450 congregations and 650,000 members.
The 19th century was a period of expansion for the Presbyterianism in Ireland. Hundreds of new congregations were formed as the population role in the early 1800s and urban centres expanded, boosted by the 1859 Revival.. The Presbyterian population in Belfast quadrupled between 1850 and 1900, and the number of congregations rose from 15 to 47.
Presbyterians in Ireland began to build their own places of worship in the second half of the 17th century, but their early meeting houses were often in less conspicuous rural areas or on the edges of towns.
The early churches were marked by a preference for classicism and a rejection of the Gothic. In Belfast, both the church built on May Street for the Revd Dr Henry Cooke and Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church illustrate that preference for the classical style in architecture.
Gothic architecture became the preferred style for many new Presbyterian churches built in the second half of the 1800s, and this is reflected in the architecture of Church House and the new or Fisherwick Church built on Malone Road in 1898-1901 to replace the original classical church on Fishwerwick Place that was demolished to make way for Church House.
Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church was originally built Sandy Row Presbyterian Church and is also known as South Kirk Presbyterian Church. But technically it is on Shaftesbury Square.
Shaftesbury Square is named after Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1869-1961), 9th Earl of Shaftesbury, who was the Lord Lieutenant of Belfast (1904-1911), Lord Lieutenant of Antrim (1911-1916), Lord Mayor of Belfast (1907) and Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast (1909-1923).
He was a grandson of Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1801-1885), 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, the evangelical philanthropist and social reformer who campaigned for better working conditions, reform of the lunacy laws, education and the end of child labour. The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, London, known popularly as ‘Eros’, was erected in 1893 to commemorate his philanthropic works.
The Belfast family connections of Lord Shaftesbury who gives his name to Shaftesbury Square came through his mother, Lady Harriet Chichester (1836-1898), daughter of George Chichester, 3rd Marquess of Donegall, while his aunt Lady Victoria Elizabeth Ashley (1837-1927), also married into the Chichester family when she married Harry Chichester (1821-1906), 2nd Baron Templemore.
Lord Shaftesbury inherited the remaining Chichester and Donegall family estates in Belfast, including Belfast Castle, which he presented to the City of Belfast in 1934.
Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church, described as classical stucco, was built to accommodate 800. It was designed by 'Mr McNea' and opened in January 1861. It was originally known as the Sandy Row Presbyterian Church, and it served a growing population on Sandy Row, which runs parallel to Great Victoria Street. The streets in the area have long been a heartland of Protestant working class life and of loyalist politics.
The church was designed by the Belfast architect, surveyor and developer, James McNea. He was commercially active throughout the 1850s and 1860s, and also designed Presbyterian churches in Stewartstown, Co Tyrone (1851), Hill Street, Lurgan (1861), and Armagh (1866), and Saint John’s Church (Church of Ireland) on Laganbank Road, Belfast (1852).
McNea’s new church opened on 13 January 1861. He designed the church in the classical style, dominated by its decorative stucco work. It could seat a congregation of 800 people.
The schoolhouse at the rear of church was designed by Boyd and Batt and opened in 1868. Improvements and renovations were designed by Young and Mackenzie – who also designed Church House on Fisherwick Place – and were carried out by T&W Lowry in 1909.
When Windsor Presbyterian Church closed in January 2022, the congregation found a new home at Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church at 34 Shaftesbury Square in February 2022. Windsor Presbyterian Church opened on Lisburn Road in 1887.
In its heyday, Windsor was one of the most fashionable and influential Presbyterian churches in Ireland. Two of its ministers became moderators – the Revd John Irwin (1917) and the Revd William Corkey (1933). But the congregation had to leave over two years ago when it could no longer afford the expensive refurbishment of the 19th century building.
The minister of Great Victoria Street Church, the Revd William Harkness, moved to Belmont Presbyterian Church on Sydenham Avenue last year (2023). Meanwhile, there are plans to develop the former Windsor Presbyterian Church as an arts and drama centre.
At the other end of Great Victoria Street, the Assembly Buildings or Church House is the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. It actually stands on Fisherwick Place, a tiny stretch of street linking Great Victoria Street and College Square.
Church House was built on the corner of Fisherwick Place and Howard Street in 1905 in the Gothic style. The three story building is styled on the architecture of a Scottish baronial castle. Church House is dominated by a 40 metre tower, which is modelled on that of Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. The bell tower houses Belfast’s only peal of 12 bells.
Church House was opened by the Duke of Argyll at the start of General Assembly week in June 1905. Inside, the oval Assembly Hall with a gallery can seat 1,300 people.
Fisherwick Presbyterian Church originally stood on the site, and Fisherwick Place took its name from Fisherwick Hall, the Staffordshire home near Lichfield of the Chichester family, who held the Donegall titles and who owned much of the land on which Belfast was built.
Church House was designed by Young and Mackenzie and was built in local Scrabo stone by Robert Corry. For almost 80 years the Assembly Buildings served solely entirely as the headquarters and General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. In 1992, however, after its first significant refurbishment, the building found additional commercial uses, with retail facilities on the ground floor and the Main Hall becoming a conference venue. Further refurbishment and redevelopment took place in 2010 and 2017-2018.
Nearby, to the east of Donegall Square, May Street Presbyterian Church was built on May Street in 1829 as the Synod of Ulster Meeting House or the Memorial Church.
It was designed by William Smith and built by John Brown, and is a Palladian example of the Presbyterian taste for the solidly classical. It has a brick and stucco pedimented façade, with a recessed central entrance bay between ‘Scamozzian Ionic’ columns, pilasters arranged in antis, and contrasting patterns of painted stucco architraves and brickwork.
Smith was active from the 1820s into the 1840s. He was also the architect of the Belfast Savings Bank on King Street, also built in 1829, as well as the Lying-In Hospital, Antrim Road (1830), the old Albert Bridge (1834), and the Wesleyan church in Linenhall Street, Derry (1835).
May Street Church, which opened on 18 October 1829, was built specially built for the fiery and controversial evangelical Henry Cooke (1788-1868), who clashed regularly with the liberals among Presbyterians minister, opposed Catholic Emancipation, was a vocal advocate of ‘Protestant unity’ and drove the Non-Subscribing ministers out of the General Assembly.
He remained active as a minister in May Street Church until 1867 and his reputation as a preacher drew large crowds to the church. Cooke died on 13 December 1868.
John Boyd was the architect of the Cooke memorial doorway built at the church in 1872, and a plaque over the entrance was erected in 1879 ‘in recognition’ of Cooke’s ‘eminent and successful labours … against the prevailing errors of the times.’
The church received grants for repairs and refurbishment in 2016. But it faced serious difficulties, and eventually closed in December 2018 due to dwindling numbers and was formally amalgamated with Fisherwick Church on the Malone Road.
The former May Street church is now known as ‘Central,’ a church plant from Carnmoney Church into the city centre of Belfast, which meets in the May Street Presbyterian Church building on Sundays at 11 am.
Cooke’s statue in Belfast, popularly known as ‘Black Man,’ was erected in 1875 in front of Royal Belfast Academical Institution and facing Fisherwick Place Presbyterian Church, later the site of Church House. His statue replaced a statue of Frederick Richard Chichester, Marquess of Donegall and Earl of Belfast, and to this day is often seen an enduring symbol of evangelical Protestantism in Northern Ireland.
