Glascar Presbyterian Church, Glascar Road, Glaskermore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 5DT

Glascar Presbyterian Church is a simple, double-height Presbyterian meeting house dating from 1814, located approximately two miles north-east of Rathfriland in a rural setting. It stands on the site of an earlier meeting house and represents a rare surviving example of an early 19th-century seceding Presbyterian congregation, one whose origins go back to the mid-18th century.

The building is rectangular in plan with a rear return and side porches, and is five windows wide. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, roof vents, and masonry skews; the rainwater goods have been replaced in uPVC. The external walls are painted roughcast. The windows are replacement timber-framed, Y-tracery, pointed-arch units with painted masonry cills. Single-storey, gable-ended porches were added around 1855 and have modern timber-sheeted double-leaf entrance doors.

The principal elevation faces north-east and is symmetrically arranged. At its centre stands a two-stage, square-plan bell tower with a parapet and leaded pyramidal roof, erected in 1939. The upper portion of the tower is smooth rendered. On the front face of the tower, the lower level has a single window, and the upper level has paired timber-louvred pointed-arch openings; the left and right sides of the tower each have a single timber-louvred opening at the upper level. The tower is flanked on either side by two windows. The left gable has a ground-floor porch to the right of centre, and a first-floor door to the left of centre accessed by modern galvanised steps; the gable head is smooth rendered. The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged and all its windows are replacement casements. A centrally positioned, gable-ended rear return features kneelers, eaves and a lower ridge level matching the main body of the church, and a chimney over the apex. To the left of this return's left cheek is a single ground-floor window; to the gable is a single first-floor window. The return is further abutted by a single-storey, gable-ended store, with a door to the right cheek and single windows to the gable and left cheek. The left cheek of the return also has double-leaf timber panelled doors to the right and a single window to the left at first-floor level. Either side of the return are two windows at both ground and gallery levels. The right gable is blank and is abutted by a porch positioned left of centre.

The building retains its traditional internal layout, though there have been some changes to the fittings. When first built in 1814, during the ministry of the Reverend John Rogers, the church had an earthen floor, a gallery, no pews, and no ceiling — families were expected to bring their own seating, and the roof rafters and beams were left exposed. The current flat plaster ceiling was probably added around 1827. The current pine pews were installed between 1853 and 1861, and during the same period the side porches and minister's room were added. Memorials within the church include a tablet under the gallery commemorating the Reverend John Rogers, who oversaw the construction of the present building and served as a moderator of the Seceding church before his death in 1854, and his son the Reverend James Rogers, who died in 1939. A further monument within the church commemorates the Reverend John Brown Lusk, in whose memory the bell tower was erected by his family around 1939.

A datestone records the church's reconstruction in 1814. It appears on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 as a rectangular building labelled "Seceders Meeting House," at which point it had no tower. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1834 recorded that it held the largest seceding Presbyterian congregation under the Synod of Ulster, numbering between 400 and 500 people. The Townland Valuations assessed the building at £10 10s. By the time of the second-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853, a National schoolhouse had been built at the entrance to the site and a rear return had been added to the church, giving it a distinct T-shaped plan; by around 1862 the value of the building had risen to £17. The schoolhouse was valued at £5, and neither valuation changed through the Annual Revisions up to 1923.

The congregation was originally founded in 1756 as a seceding church — the seceding branch of the Presbyterian Church having been formed in 1712 following a split in the Church of Scotland over the issue of official patronage. The congregation was established with the assistance of the Reverend Thomas Mayne of Drumgooland Presbyterian Church, though its first minister was not appointed until 1778. The first meeting house on the site was erected in 1769 and was a simple barn-church of stone and clay with a thatched roof and an earth floor. Like most seceding congregations across Ireland, Glascar was readmitted into the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ireland in the mid-19th century. The church was united with Donaghmore Presbyterian Church on 1 December 1973 and was listed in 1977. The congregation currently stands at over 90 families.

The setting is rural. The north-east boundary of the site is defined by a wrought-iron railing with associated gates fixed to decorative cast-iron piers, with rubble masonry walls with soldier coping extending further to the left. To the right of the gates stands the former National schoolhouse; further to the right is an earlier school building associated with Patrick Brontë — father of the literary sisters Anne, Charlotte, and Emily — now functioning as the church hall and caretaker's houses respectively. Brontë worked as a teacher in the original schoolhouse on this site before travelling to England to pursue a career in the church, but was dismissed from the post in 1798, after which he became schoolmaster at Drumballyroney schoolhouse. Local tradition holds that he was dismissed after being discovered in a romantic relationship with one of his pupils. Glaskermore National schoolhouse, which replaced the earlier building, was constructed in 1848. To the south and south-east lie the burial grounds, and hedgerows bound the remaining sides of the site.

While the character of the building survives, changes to the windows detract somewhat from its architectural integrity.