Boyle Methodist Church

Detached single-bay (two-bay deep) single-storey barrel-roofed hall, built 1948, on a rectangular plan. Sold, 1966. Now disused. Corrugated-iron-covered barrel roof behind parapet with rendered chimney stack (north) having chamfered capping. Rendered wall to front (south) elevation with rendered coping to crow stepped parapet; rendered surface finish (remainder). Lancet central door opening with concealed dressings framing glazed timber panelled door having overlight. Lancet flanking window openings with concrete sills, and concealed dressings framing timber casement windows having overlights. Square-headed window openings (side elevations) with timber surrounds framing timber casement windows. Set in grounds originally shared with Boyle Methodist Church.

A hall representing an important component of the twentieth-century built heritage of Boyle with a streamlined neo-Gothic frontispiece disguising a semi-standard prefabricated "Nissen Hut" invented and patented (1916) by the American-born engineer, Major Peter Norman Nissen DSO (1871-1930), to meet the demand for cost-effective makeshift barracks and camps during the First World War (1914-9). Having been reasonably well maintained, the form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, both to the exterior and to the wholly utilitarian interior, thus upholding the character or integrity of a hall making a pleasing visual statement in Military Road. NOTE: The "Nissen Hut" was purchased (1948) by the draper Robert Samuel Boles (1896-1982) of Bridge Street for the benefit of his live-in apprentices (Methodist Minutes 1948) and may have been sold as part of a job lot following the Second World War (1939-45) as "Nissen Huts" were also purchased (1948) by the Belfast-based Methodist congregations in Bloomfield, Dundonald and Joanmount.