Dunmurry Presbyterian Church

History

The congregation was constituted at a service on 23 March 1860 and met in a temporary church for three years. A lease of land was dated 29 May 1863 and the new church building opened on 22 November of that year.

Dunmurry grew through the nineteenth century as a mill village developed around the mills on the banks of the Glen River, and the railway made it possible to live in the village while working in Belfast.

In 1895 the congregation opened a school, known as Trinity School, on the south side of the main road through the village. It closed in 1930 when a new public elementary school opened on the Glenburn Road, and the former schoolhouse was renovated and extended in 1931 to create a church hall, which took the name Trinity Hall. The church and its hall were separated by both the main road and the railway line.

A major renovation of the church building was completed in 1950. A second hall, the Davey Hall, opened in 1967, connected to Trinity Hall and larger than it. Trinity Hall and the adjacent Minor Hall were later demolished, and a new Trinity Hall opened on the site of the original in 1974 along with the Lynas Hall on the site of the old Minor Hall.

In 2006 the congregation voted to sell the church building and move across the road and railway line to the hall site, where a new complex was completed in 2010. The first service held there took place in October 2010.

The building

The church built in 1863 was originally rectangular in plan and much simpler in form. The extension and alteration of 1903 gave it a T-shaped plan and added the spire, and the ornate brickwork on the exterior may also date from that work. The complex completed on the hall site in 2010 contains a sanctuary, a main hall, two meeting rooms, a kitchen, a foyer and a manse.