Mountpottinger – velvethummingbee

I’ve blogged before about Mountpottinger – most notably here and here where more details about its history can be seen – it is an interesting building on a prominent site in that part of Belfast and the congregation has a very distinctive history. Today the building is leased to the Bright Umbrella Drama Company who are turning the old school hall into the Studio Theatre and the church itself into the Sanctuary Theatre. But the congregation still has a place on the premises and the exact date of the anniversary of the opening of the building – 3rd January 2025 – was the occasion for this remarkable celebration of the 150 years of Mountpottinger.

A lot of credit must go to Adrian Moir, the church secretary and former ‘Warden of the Fabrique’, as the Very Rev Charlie Kelly once termed him, who wrote and narrated this excellent celebration of the life of the congregation. It was a very positive collaboration between the church and the Drama Company which brought the history of the church to life covering three themes:

Foundation and Hope

Tragedy and Remembrance

Adapting to the times and a glimpse of the future

Trevor Gill delivers the Rev David Maginnis’s speech at the opening of the building in 1875. David Maginnis was a controversial but effective minister at York Street who came back to Belfast from Stourbridge to participate in the opening ceremony

The evening was interesting, engaging and witty and also very moving as it looked at the story of Ellen Mary Davies, the wife of the Rev William Jenkin Davies, who died tragically young and in whose memory the school room was built.

Lindsay Charrington playing the role of Ellen Mary Davies

There was further tragedy with the loss of members of the church in the First World War, including Captain James Samuel Davidson in 1916, on the first day of the battle of the Somme. Also remembered on the evening was church member Sydney Agnew who was killed during the ‘Troubles’ in 1971 to prevent him giving evidence at a trial. It was both fitting and touching that members of Sydney’s family were there to lay a wreath in his memory.

Glenn McGivern writing home from the front as Captain J.S. Davidson

But the whole evening was very impressive, a fitting tribute to 150 years of work and witness which now has the opportunity to be part of a brave new venture as a community hub working in the arts and in drama in the Mountpottinger area.

One of the ‘Regal Heads’ of Mountpottinger

On my History of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland blog I have been gradually posting two images of every church in the denomination together with a short description of the building. My aim is to include every active church plus as many of the former churches for which images survive. You can view them here:

https://nonsubscribingpresbyterian.wordpress.com/blog/

I have amassed a large database of images in various formats over the years but passing near the Mountpottinger church in Belfast recently I decided to stop to take an up to date view.

Looking at the church close up I noticed something that I had never seen before, namely that there are four corbel heads at the base of the main entrance arches which depict crowned heads. I know I am not alone in having previously missed this intriguing detail but close up you can see four regal faces, two of them male and two female:

Who are they meant to represent? Biblical figures? Historical? Shakespearean perhaps? Or are they purely decorative? It seems clear that they were added when the church was extended in 1899. The foundation stone for the original church was laid in 1874 but the young congregation was very successful and in 1899 they extended the building.

Adrian Moir, the congregational treasurer and representative elder, has sent me the follwing interesting photograph of the original building as it looked before 1899. Standing in front, he thinks, is the Rev William Jenkin Davies minister from 1896 – 1903 who was married to the niece of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence who donated the new schoolroom as a memorial to her following her death:

Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence was a major Unitarian benefactor, an MP who declared the Unitarian College, Manchester open when it moved to Summerville in 1905, a friend of the Rev Alexander Gordon and the leading proponent of the theory that Shakespeare’s plays were actually the work of Francis Bacon!

A comparison of the new buildings of 1899 with the old one shows how they added a schoolroom and ancillary rooms on both sides of the original church with a common frontage uniting all the structures. In very recent times a disabled ramp was added to the church.

A view of the church published in 1907, showing the new additions to the building

But it would be interesting to know the identity of the four regal heads who adorn the outside wall of Mountpottinger church.

velvethummingbee

Tag: Mountpottinger

Mountpottinger 150th Anniversary

The regal heads of Mountpottinger