St Patrick's Church of Ireland Church, Antrim Road, Templepatrick, Co Antrim, BT39 0AR

St Patrick's Church of Ireland Church

St Patrick's is a simple Gothic Church of Ireland church built around 1827 on an elevated site off the Antrim Road in Templepatrick, occupying a position of significant historical and spiritual importance. The site itself is ancient, with a holy well associated with St Patrick visible nearby until the early twentieth century. The church has strong connections to Castle Upton through the influence of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem (the Knights Templar), who established a priory there in the twelfth century and took control of an existing church on the present grounds. The original church was dedicated to St John, possibly because of this Templar association, until the dedication was changed to St Patrick in 1886 by Bishop Reeves. From 1898 the rector was responsible for the adjoining parish of Donegore, though the official union of the two parishes did not occur until 1922.

The church is a detached structure aligned east-west, comprising a rectangular nave with a three-stage tower positioned between single-storey wings, a later single-cell chancel to the east, and chancel flanked by additions including a double-height organ outshot to the south and a vestry with basement to the north. The tower is flanked by later single-bay north and south tower wings. The roofs are pitched slate with dressed stone chimneystacks at the vestry junction and dressed stone verges with corbelled kneelers on the gables. The nave walling is roughcast over a chamfered smooth-rendered plinth, while the chancel and its additions are constructed of coursed basalt. Windows throughout are gothic arched lancet casements with splayed stone surrounds and stop-ended hoodmoulds. The tower features diagonal buttresses with stone offsetting, splayed stringcourses between stages, and corner octagonal cusped pinnacles. The tower and its wings have moulded stone parapet coping. The tower contains a single central window to the second stage, with the second stage left blank; the first-stage tower window occupies the position of a former entrance. The tower wing cheeks each have a pointed-arched entrance opening with stop-ended hoodmould surmounted by a diminished blind window; the right (south) wing entrance is blocked, while the left (north) tower cheek features a sheeted painted timber double-leaf door and tympanum. The north elevation of the nave has a cavetto-moulded stone cornice to the eaves and abuts a gabled vestry at its left end. The vestry north gable contains a central diamond-glazed casement lancet window without hoodmould, its right cheek has a square-headed sheeted door accessed by four granite steps, and its left cheek has a single central lancet window similar to the north gable. The east gable of the nave is abutted at the lower ridge by the chancel. The chancel gable has central tripartite lancets of stained glass without hoodmoulds, with flanking windows diminished in size. The chancel right cheek is blank and is abutted to its right end by the vestry, while its left cheek is abutted to its left end by the south chancel wing (organ loft), which has an exposed section with a single lancet window in the style of the vestry windows. The south elevation of the nave mirrors the north elevation and is abutted to its right end by the south chancel wing (organ loft), which has a central lancet window and blank left and right cheeks.

The original church was consecrated in 1827, with construction funded by a £830 gift from the Board of First Fruits. In 1889, a chancel, east window, vestry room, and organ chamber were added to the east end, and a baptistry (to the tower base), choir vestry, and porch were added to the west. This second phase of construction cost £900 and was funded by members of the Templetown family. The church was restored in 1993 following an outbreak of dry rot. During the 1993 restoration, faint traces of a large mural were discovered on the north wall, and wrought-iron roof arches were uncovered, similar to those found in other churches built in the early nineteenth century. The church exhibits characteristics identifiable with other contemporary Boards of First Fruits commissions, sharing similar plan, spatial layouts, ornamentation, and structural systems.

The interior contains a Haighton organ built between 1827 and 1840, and a brass font that originally belonged to a church in Sebastopol on the Crimean peninsula.

The setting comprises an elevated site within a graveyard that overlooks the Antrim Road to the north. The graveyard is formally arranged with a north hillside slope divided by a central yew-lined path, and a third section extends to the south and east of the church with a modern work shed to the west. Numerous granite memorials (mostly twentieth century) are aligned to a grid, and many are enclosed by wrought-iron railings as family plots. A notable stone table tomb is present. Of particular interest is a late-nineteenth-century draped urn memorial to the Irvine family, which records the interment of both an Anglican and a Presbyterian minister from the early and mid-twentieth century. The earliest visible grave, to the southeast of the south chancel wing, is the table tomb of Sarah Thompson (died 1828). The 1836 Townland Valuation map records the graveyard arranged in its present manner with a central path. The church with graveyard was valued at £4 19 shillings in 1836, significantly less than the town's Presbyterian churches that year, whilst the rectory (the house and office of Reverend Hamond Dawson) on a plot to the south of the church, now occupied by Boulderstone House, was separately valued at £13. For the 1860 Townland Valuations, the Immediate Lessor for the church and graveyard was listed as Lord Templetown, with the land valued at £1 5 shillings and the church valued at £15. The church measured with tower at 20 yards in length and 7.5 yards in breadth, with a two-storey nave excluding the tower.

A church may have existed in the area, located within part of the Six Mile Water valley, as far back as the fifth century. The holy well at which converts were reputed to have been baptised by Patrick was still in existence in the early twentieth century.