Magherally Presbyterian Church, Kilmacrew Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 4ES

Magherally Presbyterian Church

Magherally Presbyterian Church is a plain rendered meeting house of T-plan form, built in the 1730s and located in a declivity on Kilmacrew Road, south of Dromore, County Down. It is considered one of the earliest surviving Presbyterian meeting houses on the island of Ireland — believed at the time of its construction to be only the eighth building erected in Ireland for Presbyterian worship — and is regarded as the mother church of Presbyterianism in the greater Banbridge district. The congregation itself was formed around 1650, with some sources giving 1656 as the founding date.

Architecture and Exterior

The building is a T-plan structure with the lateral part aligned north–south and a section projecting to the west. The walls are of uneven, thick masonry finished in painted roughcast. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with angled ridge tiles and metal ventilation lanterns, and cast-iron gutters run along the projecting rendered eaves. Windows are generally segmental-headed 9/6 timber sashes with margin panes and crown glazing, set in slightly projecting rendered reveals with painted masonry cills. Entrance doors are modern double-leaf timber, also set in rendered reveals.

Each of the three gables is identical in composition, with a window at upper level directly above each entrance door; main access is through the south gable. The long east wall is six windows wide, with the two central windows being taller and round-headed with hubs. The west elevation is centrally abutted by the projecting section of the T, with a window to each side. The re-entrant angle to the left is abutted by a flat-roofed boiler house with a chimneystack, and there is a single window to each cheek of this addition.

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1834 described the building as a "very plain stone building ... 86-and-a-half by 56 feet in a T-shape," capable of accommodating 800 persons, though average attendance at the time was around 500.

Interior

The simple interior retains its original layout. The interior fabric generally dates from the later 19th century, reflecting successive phases of development. A gallery exists above the entrance, installed during major repairs carried out in the 1840s at a cost of £88; unusually, this gallery cannot currently be accessed, and was originally reached by exterior stairs that were removed at an unknown date. Behind the pulpit, a bronze tablet commemorates the Reverend John D. Martin, who ministered at Magherally until his death in 1946.

Historical Development

When originally erected in the 1730s, the church had a thatched roof. Around 1790 the first major alteration was made with the installation of a gallery. The 1840s repairs, which likely included replacing the thatched roof with slate, cost £88, and a new gallery was installed above the entrance at that time. In 1908 the earlier gallery was removed and the church was renovated at a cost of £156. Following the First World War, a granite war memorial was erected in front of the church and unveiled on 24th October 1920. The slate roof was rebuilt in 1937, during which period the congregation used the adjoining schoolhouse; Magherally National School subsequently closed in 1939. Electricity was installed in 1958. The current church hall was erected in 1959 on the site of the former school at a cost of nearly £6,000, and was extended in 1998 to accommodate between 300 and 360 people. The building's T-plan footprint has not been discernibly altered since it was first recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833. Griffith's Valuation of 1861 valued the meeting house and schoolhouse together at £25, a valuation that remained unchanged through the Annual Revisions up to 1929. The church was listed in 1977 and remains in use as a place of Presbyterian worship; membership stood at around 200 families as of 2006.

Setting

The meeting house is set slightly back from Kilmacrew Road in a declivity, with a burial ground to both east and west; the older part lies to the east and contains grave markers dating from around 1832. The forecourt and driveway are surfaced in tarmac and accessed through a pair of cast-iron gates with matching open-ironwork piers supported from roughcast boundary walling. A plaque on the gates records that they were erected in 1931 as a gift from Mary and Margaret J. Adams, who resided in the parish. A modern church hall stands immediately to the left of the meeting house, somewhat compromising the setting. No trace survives of any building that preceded the current structure on the site.

The Reverend John D. Martin, who held the charge here until 1946, resided at Kilmacrew House and was the brother-in-law of Helen Waddell, the medieval scholar and novelist.