Templecraney Old Church, Church Street, Portaferry, Co Down

Templecraney Old Church is a now heavily overgrown ruin of a church and tower, probably dating from somewhere between around 1600 and 1700, set on a mound off Church Street, Portaferry, within the townland of Ballyphilip. It sits within a disused graveyard enclosed by an imposing stone wall. The site is considered to be of probable early Christian origin, as suggested by the name "Templecraney" itself.

The surviving fabric consists of much of the north (rear) gable wall, broken-down portions of the east and west nave walls, and a rectangular bell tower that remains substantially intact. The entire ruin is now covered in ivy. A photograph taken by W. A. Green sometime between approximately 1910 and 1935 shows the tower free of vegetation and reveals it to be a somewhat crude structure with Romanesque openings to the belfry on the east and west sides, a pyramidal stone roof, and a curved buttress wall at its base. A written description dating from around the same period also refers to a small bell cote on the nave gable wall, though this feature is not visible in any photograph and remains hidden today beneath the ivy. The dimensions of the ruin as it stands do not match the measurements recorded by Walter Harris in his 1744 work, "The Ancient and Present State of the County of Down", a discrepancy that has prompted some scholars to question whether Harris actually visited the sites he described or relied on second-hand reports.

The history of the church is obscure and has been the subject of considerable scholarly confusion. The name "Templecraney" points to great antiquity and possible early Christian origins, though whether a church stood here at any point during the medieval period is uncertain. Papal taxation records of 1306 refer to an "Ecclesia de Felipton" (Church of Ballyphilip), assessed at six marks, and a "Church of St. Nicholas de Phelpeston in Le Ardes" is mentioned in records of 1430 and 1482. Although Templecraney lies within the townland of Ballyphilip, it is not clear whether these records refer to this site or to another local church that once stood on the grounds of what is now the Church of Ireland rectory. All trace of that other church has since disappeared: its ruins were blown up in 1784 by the young Robert Stewart (later Lord Londonderry) and Andrew Nugent of Portaferry, in what appears to have been an act of youthful vandalism.

Walter Harris, writing in 1744, described the "Old Church" of the Parish of Ballyphilip, noting that "the site of the church being changed to Portaferry." If his account is taken as reliable, it would appear that the medieval records refer to the now-vanished church on the rectory site rather than to Templecraney, since his description bears little resemblance to the present ruin: he makes no mention of a bell tower, and his recorded dimensions do not correspond to what survives today. This view is further supported by the apparent absence of any evidence of medieval burials at Templecraney, and by a local folk tradition of ancient graves on the rectory site. Nevertheless, the authors of several respected surveys — including the "Archaeological Survey of County Down" (Belfast, HMSO, 1966), Bishop Reeves's "Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor and Dromore" (Dublin, 1847), and the Ulster Architectural Heritage Survey volume on Portaferry and Strangford (Belfast, 1969) — have accepted without reservation that Templecraney was the medieval church of Ballyphilip, and have applied Harris's description to it accordingly. The 1940 "Preliminary Survey of the Ancient Monuments of Northern Ireland" takes a more cautious position, assuming the identification but wisely noting the discrepancies between Harris's description and the ruin itself.

What can be said with some confidence is that a church on this site was in use by Episcopalian Protestants during the 17th century, and, with the exception of a Cromwellian interlude during which the building came into Presbyterian possession, it remained in the hands of the Established Church until the 1780s, when it was replaced by the new Ballyphilip Parish Church situated between High Street and Church Street. Beyond the physical remains of the walls and tower, no extant written record of the church building itself appears to have survived.

The graveyard surrounding the ruins is, in many respects, of greater historical interest than the church. It contains headstones representing all local denominations, with legible examples dating back at least to 1704; some now illegible stones are thought to date from the 17th century, though a survey carried out in June 1997 was unable to locate certain stones with 17th-century dates recorded by R. S. J. Clarke in "Gravestone Inscriptions, Vol. 13, County Down, Barony of Ards" (Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, c.1975), which may now be covered by vegetation or have lost their detail entirely. The headstones are a valuable source for local social history, shedding light on Portaferry's maritime past and on traumatic episodes such as the cholera epidemic of 1832, in which whole families were wiped out. The graveyard appears to have been used by families of all local denominations until the mid-19th century, after which each denomination began to use its own burial ground. Interments in certain family plots within Templecraney continued, however, until the 1940s. Many of the headstones are now suffering the effects of weathering and detail has been lost.

The site was delisted from the Northern Ireland heritage register on 21 February 2007, having been considered more appropriately protected by Scheduling. It lies within a conservation area and is also recorded as a monument.