Survey Data
Reg No
41401012
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Social
Original Use
Church/chapel
In Use As
Church/chapel
Date
1825 - 1925
Coordinates
272232, 335923
Date Recorded
27/03/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Freestanding barn-style Roman Catholic church, dated 1827, having masonry belfry to west elevation erected 1921-2 after designs by William Scott. Projecting single-bay two-storey sacristy to side (north) elevation, constructed at same time as church. Four-bay nave. Pitched slate roof, gabled to east and west, having cast-iron rainwater goods. Pitched slate roof to sacristy having recent red brick chimneystack. Three-stage engaged limestone belfry with pointed cap surmounted by limestone cross and having round-arch opening with rock-faced voussoirs and bronze bell (founder's mark not visible). Stepped engaged piers with pointed caps flanking belfry, having recessed crosses to apex. Roughcast rendered walls to nave and sacristy. Stone wall plaque to south. Pointed-arch window openings with concrete tracery windows to south and north elevations, tripartite arrangement of lancet windows to east elevation having figurative stained glass and coursed snecked limestone rubble surround with block-and-start edging and stone voussoirs, and lancet windows flanking belfry to west elevation. Tooled limestone quoins and voussoirs to windows of east and west elevations. Pointed-arch door opening with ashlar limestone surround to west elevation, having square-headed double-leaf timber battened door surmounted by stained-glass overlight. Church set back from road surrounded by graveyard, bounded by hedging on to west, north and east, with roughcast curved stone wall to south with limestone coping and exposed limestone piers. Monument to road front commemorating Fenians.
Appraisal
Saint Patrick’s Church is prominently situated to the north of the main Monaghan to Armagh road, and is bounded to the south by the now disused Ulster Canal constructed c.1837. The cut-stone window and door dressings and early twentieth-century belfry show evidence of skilled craftsmanship and stone-cutting. The Catholic church has an important social function in this rural area as a local centre for Catholic worship. The church is set in a graveyard containing an attractive Celtic Revival monument to James Rice, leader of the republican movement in 1865-7. The simple appearance of this church is typical of churches built before Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and though extended to the west in the early twentieth century, the building retains its original character and many features including stained-glass windows, a slate roof and cast-iron rainwater goods.