‘You will be made most welcome’: Belfast’s small evangelical halls.

Despite a significant impact from Belfast’s history of conflict and division, and even from post peace process redevelopment, small streetside Christian worship halls exist, sometimes precariously, in a complex network across many parts of the city. With exteriors that are visually distinguished by their use of biblical text, their lack of ostentation, and, often, by their expediency, these buildings are overlooked as meaningful places. They are largely disregarded by architectural discourses and by the flourishing scholarship on evangelical culture in the region. Triangulating photographic evidence, maps and documentary sources, this paper focuses on exploring the ways in which the halls have interacted with transformations on the streets of Belfast. Considering how material changes relate to efforts to maintain and interpret 'sacred' space,1 whilst adapting to a changing environment and changing population patterns. The paper examines a set of three responses to change: halls that have remained, been reintegrated, or that have been displaced. The paper finds that the designs of mission hall exteriors have been responsive to changes on the city streets, displaying concerns with blending-in to daily life,2 visibility and scale, and reflecting wider changes in the permeability and accessibility of Belfast’s streets.3