Inishargy Church, 11 Inishargy Road, Inishargy, Kircubbin, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 2RG

Inishargy Church

Split rubble foundation ruins of a medieval church, situated within the garden of a hilltop house north of Kircubbin. The ruin is rectangular in plan, measuring approximately 22 metres by 5 metres, with a height not exceeding 0.25 metres on the north side and approximately 0.5 metres on the south side. The rubble appears to have been recently reconstructed or rearranged and may not therefore follow exactly the original coursing of the building. A small gap in the rubble on the north side possibly represents an original doorway. Within the former interior of the church are three grave slabs, two of which remain legible and date to 1661 and 1758 respectively. Both graves relate to the Bailie family, who built the adjacent Inishargy House in the 1620s.

The Church of Inishargy (ecclesiam de Ynchemackargi) is mentioned in a Papal document of 1204. An incised grave slab with a plain cross and Gaelic characters, removed from the site some years ago, suggests the building may predate the Norman arrival in the Ards. Throughout the later medieval period Inishargy features in various ecclesiastical sources, including the taxation of Pope Nicholas of 1306, in which the church is valued at 8 marks (£5 2s 2d). By the mid-seventeenth century, when the Bailie family built the adjacent house, the church had fallen into disuse. William Montgomery recorded it as being in a ruinous state in 1683. In 1703 the parish was amalgamated with those of Ballywalter and Ballyhalbert, and a new church was built the following year at Balligan.

Inishargy House itself was constructed in the 1620s by Alexander Bailie and added to later in the century. It remained in Bailie family hands until the 1780s when it was sold by James Bailie to Reverend R. Ward. The building was extensively remodelled in the 1930s, and whilst some original fabric remains, the present house is largely modern and bears little resemblance to the seventeenth-century original.