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 yesterday.
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.
In recent years, many of the fine buildings on the street have been demolished, leaving the street pock-marked with vacant sites and temporary car parks that do nothing to enhance the streetscape.
I was interested to see last weekend that Great Victoria Street Baptist Church, which once stood at the corner of Great Victoria Street and Hope Street and facing out towards Sandy Row, was demolished ten years ago. Sadly, yet another of Belfast’s rapidly diminishing Victorian properties has been lost to the developers.
Great Victoria Street Baptist Church was built in 1863-1866 at a cost of about £6,000. It was designed by the Belfast architect William Hastings (1814-1892), who was then a member of the congregation, in the ‘Italian Gothic’ style in red brick with stone dressings.
Great Victoria Street Baptist Church traces its origins to a small fellowship of Baptists who were meeting above a cobbler’s shop in King Street by 1811. They had about 15 members In 1847 when they reconstituted as a church supported by the Baptist Irish Society with a pastor and large premises in Academy Street.
New premises were being sought by 1861, and the church met temporarily in Victoria Hall in Queen’s Square until a new church was built. A site was acquired on Great Victoria Street, building work was in progress by August 1865, and the church opened on 8 April 1866, with a seating capacity for 430 people.
Additions and alterations were made to the church in 1923 to designs by the architect James A Hanna, who practised in Dublin, Belfast and Coleraine.
Additional land was bought in 1944 and new halls were built in 1961. The seating capacity was enlarged to 720 and for many years it was one of the largest Baptist church buildings in Ireland. The Baptist churches at Mountpottinger, Strandtown, Windsor, Rathcoole and Finaghy were formed largely from members from Great Victoria Street.
The Association of Baptist Churches, of which the church is a member, celebrated its centenary in 1995, and Great Victoria Street Baptist Church celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1997.
FutureBelfast.com has documented the sad loss of this building over the past decade and how the site has remained a temporary surface car park since the former church was demolished.
Belfast’s changing built environment. McAleer & Rushe Group and Todd Architects submitted a planning application in April 2008, proposing to demolish the church building and develop a 10-storey building with basement car parking spaces, church and ancillary halls at the ground and first floor and office accommodation above.
The application was approved in March 2010, and the congregation vacated the once elegant church and church services were relocated permanently to the rear church halls in February 2011.
Another planning application was submitted in December 2011 that proposed demolishing the church building and creating a temporary surface car park. The application was approved in August 2012 with a condition that the surface car park was permitted for only one year until August 2013.
Yet another planning application was submitted in January 2014. The church building had not been demolished by then, and the application proposed amending the conditions of earlier planning decisions on the temporary car park. That application was approved in April 2014.
Meanwhile, the Victorian church building had deteriorated rapidly. Following a stay of execution, the bulldozers moved in to begin demolition on 28 July 2014, and this was completed by the end of September 2014.
A further planning application in November 2015 sought permission for a temporary surface level private car park on the site of the demolished church for up to two years. Permission was granted in October 2016 for a car park for up to one year.
This situation has continued year after year for the past ten years, and the site of the former Victorian church on the corner of Great Victoria Street and Hope Street remains a fenced off temporary surface car park, and an eyesore.
I wondered last weekend how long anything remains temporary before it becomes permanent.
Great Victoria Street Baptist Church is still planning to develop a replacement church building. Despite the temporary appearance of the present buildings, Great Victoria Street remains one of the largest Baptist churches in Ireland. Although its members are drawn from a very wide geographical area, it retains an interest in the life and work of the city centre.
Across the street, Hope International Christian Fellowship at 113 Great Victoria Street, Belfast, stands on the site of the Apostolic Church, which was demolished in 1993. Previously, it was the site of Belfast’s first synagogue, built in 1871. I hope to look at this building again some evening when I am discussing Great Victoria Street Synagogue.
Further along, Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church was originally Sandy Row Presbyterian Church and is also known as South Kirk Presbyterian Church. But technically it is on Shaftesbury Square, and is worth looking at in another posting.
• Steve Auld has been the pastor of Great Victoria Baptist Church since 2017 and Simon Farewell has been the assistant pastor since 2021. Sunday services are at 11 am and 7 pm.
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