Survey Data
Reg No
40903824
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social
Original Use
Church/chapel
In Use As
Church/chapel
Date
1820 - 1870
Coordinates
236412, 425628
Date Recorded
28/10/2008
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Freestanding gable-fronted five-bay nave Catholic church, built in 1833 or c. 1860, with two-bay single-storey sacristy to east, and breakfront to north gable. Modified c. 1970 and c. 2000. Pitched natural slate roof with grey clayware ridge tiles, smooth rendered eaves course, cast-iron rainwater goods, and cross finial to north. Smooth rendered walls and plinth course. Pointed-arch headed window openings with Y-tracery mullions, with leaded coloured glass windows, and sloping ashlar sills. Triangular-headed door opening with smooth rendered chamfered surround and replacement timber double doors with glazed sidelights and overlights. Modernised interior with plaster walls and ceiling with exposed timber trusses, timber altar with and timber panelling to rear of altar. Set within own grounds with graveyard with eighteenth and nineteenth century headstones, some with cast-iron and wrought-iron surrounds. Cast-iron gateway with squared-rubble piers with ashlar pyramidal coping; random rubble boundary wall with smooth rendered saddle-back coping. Detached three-bay two-storey Parochial House to south-west , dated 1860, comprising pitched natural slate roof and smooth rendered ruled-and-lined walls, with date stone inscribed ‘ ERECTED BY THE REVD BMcELDOWNY AD 1860’.
Appraisal
A simple church which has been significantly modified and modernised, but still retains a great deal of its architectural form and integrity with original windows and natural slate roof. The rural setting of this church, and the survival of some splendid gravemarkers, some with cast-iron and wrought-iron surrounds, enhances ones appreciation of the site as a single entity. A church is shown on this site on the Ordnance Survey first edition six-inch map of c. 1837, but this building appears to be significantly later in date or that it was later heavily modified. This church was originally built in 1833 (Lewis) for the Most Revd. Dr Maginn. It may have been rebuilt in 1860 at the same time the adjacent parochial house (not in survey) was constructed. This building is an integral element of the built heritage and social history of the local area as the earliest post-Emancipation Catholic church in the Fahan Upper parish. The gravemarkers to site, the attractive cast-iron gates to the north, and the rubble stone boundary walls to site add to the setting and context, and complete this composition.