Grosvenor Hall: Our City Centre Sister

Another of our stops en route last Sunday was opposite the site of what for many years was the Grosvenor Hall's city centre sister congregation, or perhaps, arguably step mother, Donegall Square Methodist on the east side on of City Hall. It opened on that site in 1806, with the remaining façade being part of a building erected in 1846, and is referred to as the Mother Church because in its lifetime it birthed many other congregations...Indeed when I previously asked where the story of the Grosvenor Hall began, it could be argued that it began in earnest here. Because in February 1889 two lay mission workers John Coulter and John Adams who had been employed to work among the unchurched of Belfast gave a graphic account of the social and spiritual plight of the poor of the city...

This led directly to the petition which went to Conference in June 1889 for the establishment of a City Mission. However when Crawford Johnson was set aside as Mission Superintendent, he was not attached to the Donegall Square circuit... as the leaders there were wary of taking on an unfunded project from Conference... Instead he was nominally attached to the suburban Knock Circuit in the east of the city. But Donegall Square and Carlisle Memorial Circuits did promise, together with Knock to help fund the new work...

Donegall Square made its own contribution to the wellbeing of the city. Its members played an active part in the commercial and civic life of the city throughout its history, and during the second world war and subsequently the early years of the troubles they also played an active part in ministering to a city under threat.

The imposing building however, always had inherent problems. The whole edifice, indeed the whole square is built on a swamp… with City Hall having had to spend millions addressing that problem, and Donegall Square Methodist Church certainly didn’t have millions to spend on it, especially as their congregation shrank, as most did in the latter 20th century exacerbated by the Troubles. For a while Donegall Square and BCM Circuit’s merged, but that was never really successful and there was an amicable divorce (these familial metaphors are becoming quite difficult). Eventually they took the decision to close in the 1990s as the Grosvenor Hall congregation has also recently done. The building was bought out by the Ulster Bank, but I am told that even a £7 million rebuild didn’t entirely sort out the problems because apparently the carpark in the basement is still subject to flooding.

There is a plaque on the building to mark its history. Indeed there are many plaques and memorials in its vicinity, especially in the City Hall grounds, not least the Titanic Memorial. But Grosvenor House preserves a memory of Donegall Square Methodist in our Gallagher Chapel with the Bell window which came from Donegall Square.

I didn't write a new poem for our walk on Sunday, but rather I used one I had previously written for a walking tour missioned by the Methodist Conference in 2022. In it I don't raise any of the old questions about whether we should have evacuated these particular premises in the centre of the city, but it does raise the question, that many churches are wrestling with across the western world, as to what presence should we have in the city centres? What relationship should we have with civic authorities? With financial institutions? With those who live and work and come to the city centre for entertainment? With those who sleep on its streets? And that question is as pertinent now as it was when Belfast had only just become a city:

What happened here?

Did Mammon turn the tables

rather than flip them,

and drive Christ out of his temple,
rather than allowing him

to whip their representatives
from out of the sacred
heart of this scarred city?

The city is still sacred,
and Christ still weeps
over the choices we make.
but is he to be found
at tables in pillared palaces
and marbled halls,
and places with plaques
telling us what to remember?

Or is he there in bread broken
and wine shared at tables
in cafes and bars,
rather than sanctuaries
with their sanctified rituals?
Or in broken brothers and sisters
sleeping on the city's streets,
inviting us to toss tables again?

David A. Campton 2022