Western Transept

Built in 1878, this fine new church was at that time surrounded by fields and woodland. This was the affluent Strandtown area of Belfast, where many of the Ulster-Scots industrialists of the day had their homes – families such as the Heyns, the Pirries and the Ewarts.

St Mark’s Dundela is not ‘owned’ by the Church of Ireland but is vested in a group of trustees. In the first 50 years or so, the business and finances of the parish were managed by a small group of well-to-men, many of them of Ulster-Scots ancestry. Some had been among the founders in 1878.