Grand Central Cinema

Attached three-bay three-storey former cinema, façade built c. 1930, to the front of a former Methodist chapel, built c. 1820, which has been incorporated within. Pitched roof of meeting house, obscured by Art Deco façade parapet. Cast-iron rainwater goods. Limestone ashlar crow-stepped gable of façade survives behind existing façade which is pebbledash rendered with smooth render detailing. Curvilinear parapet to parapet wall with stringcourse delineating second floor and parapet level, with rusticated quoins to sides. Original meeting house elevation facing lane, with squared rubble limestone walls, with localised cement rendering. To façade, boarded-up square-headed window openings at first floor, and oculi to second floor, each with label stop hood moulding, rendered sills to first floor openings, and centrally-hung pivoting steel-framed windows to oculi. Blocked-up pointed arch brick formed openings to side elevation, with limestone sills. Additional window openings, c. 1950. Trace of one ogee-arched brick formed opening survives, with door opening, c. 2000, cutting through. Shopfront with canted fascia, c. 2000.

While this early twentieth-century façade is interesting in itself, it is the earlier Gothick Revival façade of the Methodist preaching house, which is historical and architecturally more significant. Together the two quite disparate developments form an unsettling, though noteworthy, essay in the adaptation of religious buildings to secular uses. The Methodist Church was established in 1739 by John Wesley, as an evangelical Protestant Christian cultivation. The first conference of the Irish Methodists Church was held in Limerick in 1752, and it was chaired by John Wesley.