Intended Meeting House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Built in 1789 on the east side of Killinchy Road by the intersection of Ardmillan Road, this building was intended as a Presbyterian Meeting House, but was never fitted out internally nor dedicated for worship. It would appear that during it’s long life it has only ever been used as a farm out house / barn. It is a large gabled, single storey structure in split stone rubble with a corrugated iron roof. The east facade has two large door openings each with sliding doors. To the north and south of this facade are small stone lean to sheds. The north gable has no openings but has a small lean to shed which was used as a dry closet belonging to No 1 Ardmillan road (see Ref: HB24/17/059). The south gable has one centrally placed but damaged sliding sash and case window with Georgian panes. The present owners have erected a small plaque below the window inscribed ‘The Meeting House 1789’. The west face has six high level and three low level windows, all almost square and without window bars. No evidence could be discerned regarding any ecclesiastical door or window openings

Historical information

In the Belfast News-Letter of the 19th of May 1789 the following notice appeared under the title ‘A Meeting-House to be built’:
‘At Lisban near Killinchy, masons and carpenters are requested to send their proposals before the 27th inst. to Messrs. Joseph Snoddan or Robt. Maxwell of Ballyminestra, Samuel Johnston of Lisbarnet, Robt. Minis of Tullynagie, Wm. Shiels or Wm. Sloan of Lisban. Sufficent security, will be expected. Lisban May 18th 1789’.

A month later, on the 23rd of June a further notice appeared signed by James Lowry, the Session clerk of the Killinchy Presbyterian congregation, informing the public that ‘the meeting-house now building at Lisban is not only un-necessary…but may prove injurious to the dissenting interest’. In the column directly below this, however, there was another notice ‘signed by the unanimous consent of the congregation by Alexander Johnson, Session Clerk’. This was a riposte to the previous entry, speaking of the ‘indispensable necessity to build a meeting house, as they have not experienced the most useful and pastoral labours amongst them for several years past’.

One week after this a lengthy explanation of the situation as regards the new building was printed in the same paper. It recounted all that had happened over the previous month, and explained that the apparent ‘split’ within the Killinchy congregation had resulted from objections by certain ‘gentlemen’ as to the personal character of the minister, Rev. George McEwen, and that most of those who had been responsible for the construction of the new structure at Lisbane were now making light of their supposed opposition to the minister and even the de facto head of the supposed malcontents, Alexander Johnson had calmly ‘professed himself influenced in this business not by religion but motives of interest, expecting as he expresses it, profits from keeping public entertainment’!?!.
This was followed by an open letter (dated 28th June) in which the ‘inhabitants of Tullynakill in the meeting-house of Ballow’ supported by the ‘Presbyterians of the parish of Killinchy and Kilmud’ openly declared their support for McEwen who had ‘discharged the sacred duties of the pastoral office’. McEwen then himself entered the public arena, with an open letter of June 29th, thanking ‘the worthy members of the congregation’ for their efforts on his behalf.

But a further twist was to come for printed below McEwen’s letter was a another statement from Alexander Johnson declaring that ‘The congregation of Lisban are considerably advanced in building a Meeting-House, and all they contend for is a privilege they think themselves entitled to in common with every subject in the British Empire- namely, liberty to worship their maker how and where they please’. But Johnson added that he felt his congregation’s efforts would be thwarted for they were ‘in the neighbourhood of a clergyman [McEwen], who after assembling his congregation in the same house where he preaches the gospel of peace, declares his intention of going at their head on the glorious expedition of horse-whipping their [Lisbane’s] Minister out of the country’.
By this stage, however, it had become clear to those who had signed the original notice concerning the building of meeting house that Johnson’s public attacks upon McEwen did not represent their own views, and in a final notice dated 3rd of July declared that although they intended to press ahead with the building of the new ‘church’ (which they maintained had been a plan of long standing which had not motivated by current personal dissentions), they bore no ill will to the minister of the Killinchy congregation.

What happened next is uncertain. The projected congregation of Lisbane appears never to have met for worship with the split among the Killinchy brethren apparently healed soon after the appearance of the final notice in July 1789. Alexander Johnson’s public comments regarding Rev. McEwen seem to have amounted to a personal vendetta against a minister who, although he appears to (in the words of the historian of Killinchy congregation Rev. David Stewart) to have been somewhat ‘worldly’ and ‘imbibed with the secular spirit of the time’, traits which had alienated some of his flock, he gave little offence to the vast majority of the congregation. It may be conjectured, therefore, that Johnson’s comments were too much for his more sedate colleagues who then decided to abandon the whole scheme and return to worship at Balloo. Whatever the case, the intended meeting house was never fitted out nor dedicated and remained, as it does to this day, a large outbuilding.

In the time of the revised OS map (1859-60), a house had been built to the rear of this building with the unusual name ‘Asphalto Cottage’. Interestingly in 1861 this house is listed as the property of a Rev. McCaw, suggesting that this piece of land may have remained within church hands.

References- Primary sources
1 Linenhall Library 'Belfast News-Letter' (‘BNL’) May 19 1789.
2 Linenhall Library 'BNL' June 23 1789.
3 Linenhall Library 'BNL' June 30 1789.
4 PRONI OS maps 1st ed. 1834, Co. Down 16.
5 PRONI OS maps 1st rev. 1859-60, Co. Down 16.
6 PRONI 2nd valuation Tullynakill parish, Lisbane Td., c.1861.

Secondary sources
1 Rev. David Stewart 'Killinchy Presbyterian Church…' (Belfast 1930), pp.41-43.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A large stone building constructed in 1789 as a Presbyterian Meeting House but never fitted out internally nor dedicated for worship, and used thereafter as a barn, of little architectural interest.