St. Thomas' Church

The part of Belfast south of Queen's University between the Malone and Lisburn roads, known as the 'Malone Ridge', underwent rapid expansion from the middle of the 19th century, as a prosperous and fashionable suburb of large detached villas and grand terraces. At the time, the Church of Ireland presence in this area was limited to the old Malone Church, as well as Christ Church in College Square, neither of which was deemed an appropriate place of worship. Following a generous bequest by Andrew Thomas McClean for the endowment and construction of a new parish church, the architect John Lanyon of Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon was appointed in 1866. Building work, by Messrs. Lowry and Son,…

St Thomas' Church was designed by architect John Lanyon, Moore and Weinberg's warehouse in present-day Donegall Square North (now housing the Linen Hall Library) and the main building at Queen's University (now called the Lanyon Building). St Thomas's is one of the grandest and most fully finished examples of High Victorian Gothic ecclesiastical architecture, not only in Belfast, but in Ulster. Built of white Scrabo sandstone with finely dressed masonry round doors and windows, it is adorned with red sandstone banding and coloured marble discs and colonnettes to the tower and spire. The exterior is a confident exercise in eclectic design: generally the style is Early French Gothic, but the…