When the first building of Malone Presbyterian Church was opened by Rev Dr Henry Cooke on 4 September 1836 it was surrounded by open
fields and was the only Presbyterian church between the centre of Belfast and Dunmurry, where the Minister, Cooke’s great rival Rev Dr Henry Montgomery, had recently led his and sixteen other congregations into what was to become eventually the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church.
Malone was therefore designated by a stone set into the front wall as “The Orthodox Presbyterian Church”. Malone’s first minister was a Ramelton man, Rev Joseph Mackenzie, who served until his death in 1883. Under his stewardship a National School was built beside
the church, and on the other side of the Lisburn Road and beyond the railway line he established the Balmoral Cemetery, where he himself was to lie buried, along with Cooke and many other Presbyterian notables.
During the ministry of his successor, Rev Andrew J. Wilson, hymns were introduced to church services, and an afternoon Sunday School began. The South Belfast suburbs grew rapidly, and with it the congregation, and the culmination of his work was the opening of our present building on 18 June 1899. Since then it has undergone many renovations, most recently in 2009. Its most striking recent addition is the backlit Millennium window, which faces the Lisburn Road.
The Church Micro IE series is open to everyone; if you have a church you would like to place a cache at then please contact THE_Chris through Geocaching.com. This is to keep track of the numbers of the churches and give you the general format for the cache page. In the UK there are thousands in the series so we have some catching up to do! Also, if you currently have a published cache at a church that you would like to include in the series, get in contact and we can add it.