St. Patrick’s RC Church, Upper North Street, Newtownards, Co Down, BT23 4JD

St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Upper North Street, Newtownards

St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church is a distinctive and complex building completed in 1877, situated on a commanding rise on the east side of North Street, overlooking Newtownards town centre. Though fundamentally gothic in style, it displays an eclectic mixture of Celtic Revival, Anglo-Saxon, and Romanesque elements that give it a particularly distinctive appearance.

The church is roughly rectangular in plan, single storey with a gallery, and built in squared Scrabo sandstone with red Dumfriesshire sandstone courses used as dressings and quoins. All roofs are covered in Bangor blue slate.

The west gable end of the nave contains the principal entrance, a relatively small pointed arch doorway with timber sheeted double doors set in a chamfered reveal. Directly above is a large rose window with intricate tracery. To the left of the door is an almost slit-like window, with a larger pointed arch window containing double lancets and a quatrefoil further to the left. To the right of the entrance is a projecting three-sided stair tower with a steep hipped roof and various slit windows. Adjacent to this is a gabled porch projection with three narrow cusped windows.

The south facade features a gabled porch projection containing a doorway similar to the main entrance. Above this is a small cusped recess holding a Portland stone statue, presumably of St. Patrick. The gable is topped with a Celtic cross finial. To the right extends the long facade of a lean-to aisle section running along the nave's side, with three squat pointed arch windows, each containing triple lancets, trefoils and infills. Above the lean-to roof, the south facade of the main nave features a series of nautical-looking roundel windows. The north facade repeats this arrangement without the gabled porch projection.

To the west, the nave meets a squat tower with a pyramidal roof and roundel windows. Both the north and south faces of this tower have tall gabled transept projections, each with a tall triple cusped window with trefoils above, a large buttress to the west, and a small lean-to section beneath the windows. A small gabled porch with pointed arch doorway sits on the right side of the south gable projection's lean-to.

Projecting from the east face of the squat tower is a large semicircular apse with high-level cusped windows with trefoils. To the north of this, projecting from the short west face of the gabled projection on the north side of the tower, is a side altar section with a semicircular west end featuring roundel windows. To the south of the apse is a gabled vestry projection with narrow rectangular windows and a tall decorative chimney stack, predominantly in Dumfriesshire sandstone, at the gable apex. A small lean-to projection with slit windows sits to the left of the gable itself. Attached to the southwest corner of the tower and positioned behind the vestry section is a round tower, taller than the main square tower, with slit windows at two levels and louvered cusped openings at the highest level. Small gabled-dormer-like openings punctuate the round tower's roof. Cast iron rainwater goods are present throughout.

The church was consecrated in October 1877. Its construction was entirely financed by Lady Londonderry, herself a Catholic. The building was renovated in 1962-63 and again in 1988 following an arson attack. The interior has been altered in recent times and now possesses a modernised altar area, though the facade remains intact and well preserved.