First Holywood Presbyterian Church

History

The congregation worshipped in the Old Priory church until 1661, when its minister, Donald Richmond, was ejected for non-conformity following the Act of Uniformity and the congregation vacated the parish church. It then met in a wooden meeting house whose site is not recorded; the congregation's history places it on the seaward side of the present railway embankment, where the ground has since been lost to sea erosion.

Holywood separated from Dundonald about 1704, when the Rev Thomas Cobham resigned from Dundonald to become minister at Holywood until his death in 1706. In 1725 the congregation divided over subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and those who sided with the Rev Michael Bruce and the non-subscribers left to form a separate congregation. The remaining body was known at that time as Second Holywood. William Smith was ordained as minister in 1729 at a salary of £17 a year, and in the late 1740s, under his successor William Rodgers, a meeting house was erected in Strand Street which served as the place of worship for almost 100 years.

In 1841 the congregation moved to the present building on the Bangor Road, opposite the old Priory, and the Strand Street meeting house became a school. In 1855, 52 families sought the permission of the Belfast Presbytery to establish a second Presbyterian congregation in the town, which began in a small mission hall at the bottom of Downshire Road the following year.

The building

The site on the Bangor Road was acquired from William Patton, the owner of a windmill, under a lease made in 1839 between Patton and four trustees. The church was designed by the minister, the Rev William Blackwood, who also superintended its construction, and was built at a cost of £1,500. It was built in the Gothic Revival style and was at that time cruciform in shape, with a tower 70 feet high forming part of the west gable and centrally positioned, echoing the appearance of the old Priory church.

A worship centre was opened in 2004 in place of the front of the Houston Halls, adding a welcome area, a minister's room, a church office and further small halls.