St Colmans Church, Gallows Street, Dromore, Co Down, BT32 1BG

St Colman's Church, Gallows Street, Dromore

A free-standing Gothic-Revival stone Roman Catholic church, dated 1871, located on the east side of Gallows Street in Dromore town centre. The building is set on an elevated site and is oriented on an east-west axis.

The church comprises a double-height nave with clerestory and side aisles, a four-stage square entrance tower, baptistery and sacristy to the northwest. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with banded fishscale tiles, decorative ridge crestings, raised stone skews and kneelers finished with masonry and cast-iron cross finials. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are mounted on bracketed eaves.

The walls are built of squared greystone in rough coursed rock with a chamfered plinth and sandstone string courses. Sandstone dressings and buttresses feature sandstone offsets and caps. Windows are predominantly replacement leaded-and-stained glass lancets in sandstone surrounds with chamfered sills.

The entrance tower stands to the south and features a double-leaf timber-sheeted entrance door on the southeast elevation with cast-iron strap-hinges and door furniture, set within a sandstone Gothic surround and flanked by Armagh granite colonettes, with a hood mould and carved stops overhead. The tower displays a trefoil to the second stage and a narrow lancet to the third stage. The belfry has paired louvred openings to all four sides with a carved band at impost level. The tower is crowned by a stone broach spire with a metal cross finial and lucarnes. A three-stage stairwell turret abuts the southeast elevation.

The southwest elevation is gabled, with three narrow square-headed windows to the ground floor in sandstone surrounds with Gothic heads. Two lancet windows light the gallery level with label moulds and head stops, flanking a sandstone Gothic statuary niche. An eight-cusped circular window crowns this elevation.

The northwest elevation is eight windows wide to the nave, with alternate cinquefoil and quatrefoil windows to the clerestory. The gabled baptistry projects slightly at the right and features a double-leaf timber-sheeted door with cast-iron furniture set in a Gothic sandstone surround flanked by semi-engaged polished Armagh granite colonettes. This door is surmounted by a sandstone string course inscribed "A. 1871. D" and a carved medallion. The southwest elevation of the baptistry displays paired Gothic lancets with dividing semi-engaged colonettes. The sacristy sits to the far left with a tall polygonal sandstone chimneystack to its gable, a mullioned window to the southwest elevation, and a Gothic-headed 1/1 timber-framed sash window with a timber-sheeted door featuring a Gothic-headed transom light in a sandstone surround to the northeast elevation.

The northeast elevation features an apsidal end at centre, five windows wide, flanked on either side by lean-to side-chapels, each with a cinquefoil window. The southeast elevation has six windows to the nave; a geometric mullioned window stands to the far right. A transept housing the confessional occupies the far left, with an eight-cusped circular window to the southeast elevation.

The church is surrounded by late twentieth-century housing. A cemetery extends to the south and east with headstones dating from at least 1845; the western area is lawned with tarmacadamed vehicular access from Gallows Street. A two-storey detached rectory stands to the south, and a twentieth-century single-storey community hall to the southeast.

The boundary to Gallows Street is marked by a rubble stone wall with coping topped by original cast-iron railings with decorative cross-finials. Three original square gate piers with pointed Gothic caps are surmounted by decorative cast-iron cross-finials and support original cast-iron gates. A cross finial from the original building is preserved in the north yard.