St John's Church, Kilmacrew Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 4EP

St John's Church (Church of Ireland), Kilmacrew Road, Magherally, Banbridge — Gothic Celtic Revival, 1885–87

This is a double-height Gothic Celtic Revival Church of Ireland, designed by the Armagh-based architect John Henry Fullerton (1844–1924) and built between 1885 and 1887. The foundation stone was laid on 28th November 1885 by the Marquis of Downshire, and the completed church — dedicated to St John the Evangelist — was opened on 31st August 1887. It replaced the earlier Parish Church of Magherally, Magherally Old Church, which had served the Protestant congregation of the area since the mid-18th century and was in ruins by the turn of the 20th century. The new church was built a short distance from Magherally Rectory, with a path connecting the two.

Fullerton was appointed district architect to the Representative Church Body for the dioceses of Armagh, Derry and Down in 1880. Throughout his career he designed exclusively Anglican churches and residences for clergymen, taking no contracts for Presbyterian or Roman Catholic buildings. The builder contracted to carry out his design was a firm named Finney of Belfast, whose estimated construction cost was £2,000. During construction, materials salvaged from the roof of Magherally Old Church were incorporated into the new roof, which accounts for the absence of the original slate covering at the old church. The church was listed in 1977, the same year in which Magherally and Annaclone — formerly grouped as a Bishop's curacy — were granted full Parochial status. The parish of Magherally itself has medieval origins, first recorded in the 1306 Papal Taxation as "Analle."

The plan form comprises a single nave with a side aisle, chancel, south transept, and round tower. The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles. Throughout the building, masonry copings with kneelers, moulded gable shoulders, and moulded masonry apex finials are used, along with exposed timber rafter ends and ogee-moulded cast-iron rainwater goods. The walling is squared masonry with dressed stone surrounds and string course, buttressing, and a projected plinth. Windows are leaded-lattice lights with coloured margin panes set into pointed-arched openings with chamfered long-and-short surrounds. The principal entrance doors are double-leaf, diagonally sheeted timber with wrought-iron strap hinges and ironmongery, set within a pointed-arched opening with long-and-short surrounds. The jambs have engaged polished granite half-columns with moulded bases and imposts leading to a moulded archivolt with hood moulding and foliated stops.

The principal elevation faces south. The clerestory nave is four windows wide and is abutted by a lean-to side aisle, which terminates in a gabled porch at the left and a larger gabled transept to the right. The porch is abutted to the west by the round tower and flanked by buttresses, with a leaded trefoil window to its right cheek. The transept has a plate-tracery pointed-arched window comprising paired lancet-arched lights with a quatrefoil above, with long-and-short surrounds and hood moulding, and a diminutive trefoil window above that; there is also a single window to the right cheek. The round tower is monolithic, rising above the ridge level of the nave, with inclining lancet-arched loopholes. Its upper portion features an ashlar pointed-arched rotund arcade with hood mouldings and a moulded cornice supporting a conical spire with decorative banding that embraces diminutive trefoil lights, surmounted by a wrought-iron finial.

The east gable has two lancet-arched windows with a quatrefoil window and arrow-loop above, and is surmounted by an apex finial, with single-stage angle buttresses. The north elevation is symmetrically arranged and four windows wide, with ladder storage to the bottom right. The west gable is abutted by a semi-octagonal chancel with a hipped slated roof surmounted by a finial cross; each facet of the chancel is framed by buttresses and contains a cusped pointed-arched window with hood mouldings and foliated stops. The right cheek of the chancel is abutted by a single-storey lean-to vestry, which has paired diminished windows to the north elevation; its west gable contains a timber diagonally sheeted door with strap hinges and long-and-short chamfered-stopped surrounds with a corbelled lintel. The left cheek is abutted by an angled projection with a single diminished-in-scale window. A chimney with dressed stone and a moulded ashlar pot sits over the right gable pitch.

The church is set back from Kilmacrew Road, west of its junction with The Cut, and is partially screened from view by surrounding mature trees, though it sits elevated above the rural landscape with the tower projecting above the tree line. Access is through gabled ashlar piers with decorative wrought-iron gates. Rubble masonry walls laid to courses bound the site to the east. A short driveway leads to a car park facing the principal elevation. A secondary replica entrance further south provides rear access and also serves the church hall — a modern T-shaped gable hall with a pitched slate roof, roughcast rendered walling, and uPVC windows, which is of no historic interest. To the east of the chancel, a path leads to the adjacent rectory.

St John's Church forms part of a group with the rectory and the old church it was built to replace, and is recognised as a good example of both the Gothic Celtic Revival type and the work of a notable local architect, with much of its original detailing and fabric surviving intact.