Seapatrick Parish Church, Church Square, Banbridge, County Down, BT32 4AA

Seapatrick Parish Church (Holy Trinity), Church Square, Banbridge

This is a large, free-standing Gothic-revival Church of Ireland parish church with a square entrance tower and spire, built between 1834 and 1837 to designs by William Farrell, a Dublin-based architect who served as architect to the Board of First Fruits for the ecclesiastical province of Armagh from 1823 to 1843. The church was consecrated on 7 November 1837. It was subsequently altered in 1864 to designs by W. J. Barre, again in 1883 to designs by Thomas Drew, and once more in 1987 to designs by Gordon McKnight. The tower, spire, and elements of the east transept are the only portions surviving from the original 1830s construction.

The church replaced an earlier Parish Church of Seapatrick located approximately one mile to the north-west of Banbridge in the townland of Kilpike. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the 1830s described that earlier building as a very plain structure measuring 69 feet 6 inches long and 27 feet 6 inches broad, capable of accommodating 300 persons — insufficient for the congregation — and said to have been one ordered by King William III, whose forces crossed the River Bann near its site. The original church was later purchased by the Hayes family, who demolished it and used the stones to build the graveyard walls still present on the site in Kilpike; only one gable wall now survives. The foundation stone of the new Banbridge church was laid in 1834 and the earlier building was abandoned in 1835.

The new church was constructed of local whinstone and granite, with the buttresses, cornices, and spire built from freestone transported from Scotland. It was originally designed to accommodate 550 persons and was built without a gallery. The estimated cost was £3,100, funded by £1,500 from the Ecclesiastical Board, £800 from the Marquis of Downshire, and the remainder from subscribers. An Ordnance Survey Memoir written in April 1837, just before consecration, described the church as being of modern Gothic architecture with a tower at the east end standing 60 feet high; the spire had not yet been added at that point, though it was intended to rise a further 60 feet. The Townland Valuation of the 1830s valued the church at £40 and depicted it as a cruciform structure.

Between 1864 and 1867, W. J. Barre — who had also designed the Crozier Memorial on Church Square in 1861–62 — added the double transept on the west side of the church at a cost of £2,000. Holy Trinity was reopened in April 1867. It closed again in 1883 for further alteration work carried out by Sir Thomas Drew, who raised the roof by six feet, removed a west gallery (presumed to have been installed by Barre, as the church was originally constructed without one), and enlarged the chancel at a cost of £3,000. These works substantially increased the church's size and capacity to approximately 800 persons. The Griffith's Valuation of 1863 had recorded the church's value at £60; following Drew's alterations the Annual Revisions increased this to £98. The valuation remained unchanged until the Annual Revisions ceased in 1930. In 1987, one of the west transepts was converted into a side chapel dedicated to All Saints to mark the church's 150th anniversary, to designs by Gordon McKnight; the chapel window was provided by the Mothers' Union.

The church is set on a north–south axis and comprises a double-height nave with clerestory and transepts (with a paired transept to the west), porches to the east and west, a vestry to the east, and a two-stage square entrance tower with spire to the south. The roof is pitched natural slate with profiled ridge tiles, raised stone skews, and kneelers with finials to some gables. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are carried on projecting sandstone eaves with brackets. The walling is roughly coursed rubble stone on a cavetto-moulded stone plinth, with cornices and buttresses in stone. Windows throughout are Gothic-arched, leaded-and-stained glass bar-tracery set in ashlar surrounds with hood moulds and chamfered sills, except where otherwise described below.

The south gable elevation is abutted at its centre by the square entrance tower. The exposed sections of the gable are blank and flanked by clasping octagonal sandstone buttresses with square plinths and octagonal pinnacles. The south gable is flanked by lean-to side aisles — the one to the left has a raking buttress — each with a tripartite cusped Gothic window. The tower has an opening to the east with a depressed Gothic-arched, timber-sheeted door with ornate cast-iron strap hinges and handle, set in a moulded chamfered ashlar surround with a square-headed label mould, decorative diamond label-stops, and plain spandrels. Evidence survives in the rubble stonework above the door of a former larger Gothic opening that has since been infilled. A cast-iron lamp is fixed above the door. The first stage of the tower has a leaded-and-stained glass lancet with hood mould to the south elevation; the west elevation at this stage is blank. A moulded string course runs between the first and second stages, with a clock face to the south and east elevations and a blank roundel to the west. The second stage has a louvered lancet with hood mould to all four sides and is surmounted by a cornice. Corner pinnacles surmount clasping octagonal sandstone buttresses with square plinths that rise the full height of the tower. Above the cornice rises an octagonal stone spire with two levels of diminishing lucarnes on the cardinal points.

The west elevation is abutted by the paired transept added in the 1860s, which is in turn abutted to the south by a projecting lean-to porch. This porch opens to the west with a Gothic timber-sheeted door with decorative cast-iron strap hinges and door furniture. Two quatrefoil windows with ashlar surrounds are set into the right cheek of the porch. The north elevation of the main body has two paired cusped geometric windows and is abutted to the left by the vestry and porch, accessed by two bull-nosed stone steps and a pointed-arch-headed, timber-sheeted door with decorative cast-iron strap hinges. The vestry has paired mullioned leaded casement windows to the north and a chimney flue and tall replacement chimneystack to the west wall of the chancel. The gables of the transepts each have a geometric tracery window. The north elevation is also abutted by the slightly lower north transept of 1864, which has corner buttresses and a five-paned geometric window to its gable, together with a cusped leaded-and-stained glass lancet to the west elevation. Stone steps enclosed by metal railings lead down to a basement. The east elevation has four sets of tripartite mullioned windows to the left; to the right is a transept with a tripartite geometric window and an entrance porch projecting to the north, which opens to the east with a timber-sheeted door with cast-iron strap hinges and door furniture in an ashlar surround with a tripartite cusped Gothic leaded-and-stained glass transom above.

The interior retains its Victorian character and fabric to a high degree. The red floor tiles are said to be copies of those in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. The brass lectern was the gift of Canon Hayes and his family. The pulpit was erected in memory of the Reverend Daniel Dickinson, who served as Rector of Holy Trinity for 38 years and was the incumbent minister during the original construction of the church; he is also commemorated by a marble portrait on the left wall of the chancel. In 1856 a marble memorial plaque was unveiled within the church to commemorate Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier (1796–c.1848), the Arctic explorer who was lost at sea while attempting to navigate the North-West Passage in the mid-1840s. Crozier was born at Avonmore House and is additionally commemorated by a large monument on Church Square. The inscription records that the tablet was erected in his native place by his surviving brothers and sisters in heartfelt and affectionate testimony to his fraternal love and Christian character. On 26 March 1922 a memorial service was held for those killed in the First World War, during which a memorial stained glass window, a marble tablet bearing the names of the fallen, and the Roll of Honour were unveiled; 371 men from Seapatrick Parish served during the war, of whom 80 died and are commemorated within the church. A large number of other commemorative stained glass windows and plaques adorn the church, the most recent installed in 1994. In 1920 a chime of ten bells and a tower clock were installed at a cost of £2,750, gifted by a Mrs White in memory of her husband and father-in-law. The original bell donated to the church by William Waugh — a linen merchant and Justice of the Peace for Banbridge in the late 19th century — was relocated and is now in the chapel-of-ease in Seapatrick village. In 1881 a church of ease was established in the village of Seapatrick, close to the site of the original 17th-century church, at a cost of £800 and designed to accommodate 200 persons from the rural parts of the parish.

The church is prominently sited on a large plot at the junction of Church Square and Church Street, on the approach to Banbridge town centre. The grounds are lawned to three sides with a tarmacadam pathway and mature trees. To the north is a large tarmacadam car park and a large 20th-century two-storey church hall, which impinges somewhat on the church's setting. The site is bounded on all sides by a low, roughly coursed granite wall with coping stones topped by metal railings and granite piers. The main entrance to the south has replacement metal gates. A modern ramped access with a stone parapet wall and metal handrail has been provided at the west elevation porch.