Crumlin Presbyterian Church, Main Street, Crumlin, Co Antrim

Crumlin Presbyterian Church is a fine early 19th-century Gothic Revival church designed by John Millar, architect of Belfast, and built in 1839 on a site given by the Honourable General Pakenham. The congregation was founded in 1838. Millar is recognised as an important Irish architect, and his authorship is recorded in an inscription on the entrance arch reading "MILLAR ARCHITECT" (incised without a crossbar to the letter A). The church forms an attractive group with its associated Session Room and Sexton's House within the same grounds.

The building consists of a rectangular nave with a gabled two-storey extension to the rear and a three-storey entrance tower to the front. The main entrance faces south.

EXTERIOR

The entrance elevation is symmetrical except for a circular stair turret set into the angle between the tower and the church body on the right-hand side. Walls throughout are finished in smooth cement render, lined and blocked, with a moulded plinth and a moulded projecting eaves course that continues as a string course around the tower. Two further string courses appear at higher levels of the tower. The south gable has a moulded coping and a two-stage weathered buttress at each extremity.

The tower is square in plan with octagonal projections at its corners. At the rear corners these are corbelled out at eaves course level, while at the front corners they rise from diagonal buttresses. All four corner projections continue upward into pinnacles at the top of the tower, with crenellated parapets between them. The second floor of the tower has a central Gothic-arched opening in each face filled with wooden louvres and set beneath a Gothic-arched label moulding. The first floor has a square window centred on the front face, containing lozenge-pattern cast iron tracery set in chamfered reveals; the other faces of the first floor are blank.

The main entrance occupies the centre of the ground floor of the tower. It consists of rectangular timber double doors, panelled, which are modern replacements for the original ledged timber doors. These are set within a Tudor-arched surround inscribed "MILLAR ARCHITECT" at the top, which is itself surrounded by a label moulding surmounted by a framed stone panel inscribed "Ecclesia Scotica." Two granite steps lead to the front door, combined with a concrete doorstep. On the west face of the ground floor of the tower there is a small rectangular window of lozenge-pattern cast iron tracery in a chamfered reveal, with a Tudor-style drip moulding above; a perspex storm-proofing panel has been affixed over this window.

To the left of the tower, the south gable of the church has a tall Gothic-arched lancet in a chamfered reveal with a cusped-headed frame to the window, glazing continued behind the frame, a deep splayed cill with a coved underside, and a label moulding above. The circular stair turret to the right of the tower has walling consistent with the rest of the building, a flat roof behind a blocking course, and a window facing south that matches the lancet in the south gable. A cast iron downpipe occupies the corner between turret and tower.

The west elevation of the nave is divided into four bays by two-stage weathered buttresses. A recessed two-storey end bay rises to the same ridge height and is also marked by a buttress. A later two-storey extension is set back further to the left with a lower roofline. The main roof is covered in Bangor blue slates in regular courses with dark blue ridge tiles, six small ventilators at mid-pitch intervals, and cast iron gutters with circular cast iron downpipes in the second and fourth bays from the tower. Each nave bay contains a two-light Gothic-arched lancet with a tracery spandrel, with detailing otherwise similar to the south gable window. In the second, third, and fourth bays, a circular cast iron ventilator grille is set deep into the wall below the cill, with a modern rectangular air vent at plinth level directly beneath it. The set-back rear stair bay has two windows, one per floor, each consisting of a rectangular timber fixed light with a top-hung vent, served by PVC guttering and downpipe. The north gable of this set-back bay is blank above the later projecting gabled extension.

The extension has walls plastered, lined, and blocked with an unmoulded plinth, and a roof covered in slates in regular courses, with PVC guttering on a timber fascia and PVC downpipe and soil pipe. The west elevation of the extension has one first-floor window, a rectangular timber fixed light with a top-hung vent. Its north gable is two-storey, with timber bargeboards and two windows on each floor — Gothic-arched, with varnished timber fixed lights of leaded glazing and perspex mounted over the face. The east side of the extension is blank with PVC guttering on a wooden fascia and a PVC downpipe.

The east elevation of the nave mirrors the west side. The east elevation of the set-back bay similarly mirrors its western counterpart except that in place of windows it has a Gothic-arched doorway with chamfered reveals, a modern replacement Gothic-arched ledged wooden door with modern handle set in a chamfered wooden frame, and three concrete steps, served by cast iron guttering and downpipe.

BELL

The bell was made by M. Byrne of the Fountain Head Foundry, James's Street, Dublin, in 1905, and erected in memory of the Reverend Alexander Canning, the first minister of the church, who died in 1896.

SETTING

The church stands set back from the main road within its own grounds, which form a grassed graveyard with a concrete path around the building. The front of the church is approached by a modern brown concrete brick-paved path leading from the front gateway and splaying out towards each extremity of the entrance front. There are no graveyard memorial stones of particular architectural interest.

The front boundary is formed by a gateway and screen walls that run between the Sexton's House and the Session Room, both built within the church grounds and together creating a semi-formal arrangement with the church. The eastern boundary is a pebble-dashed wall with a cement coping. The western boundary is concrete post and wire fencing. The rear boundary is a wall finished with a wet dash of crushed stones and a cement coping, containing a modern Gothic-styled steel gate set within a tall Gothic-shaped rendered archway. A flight of concrete steps with modern tubular steel handrails leads up from the road to the path at the rear of the church.

The front gateway consists of a pair of square piers with roughcast panels and chamfered smooth-rendered borders, topped with shallow pyramidal smooth-rendered caps surmounted by cylindrical metal lamp standards, and fitted with double gates of restrained scrolling design. Curving forward from the piers are low screen walls of roughcast with broad concrete copings surmounted by plain modern iron railings, which return on each side to abut the adjoining gabled Session Room and Sexton's House.