Dunluce Presbyterian Church, 17 Priestland Road, Bushmills, Co. Antrim, BT57 8QP

Dunluce Presbyterian Church is a symmetrical, rendered church in the Gothic style, designed by the prominent architect Charles Lanyon and constructed between 1845 and 1846, with the building officially opened on 27th July 1847. It stands on a cruciform plan on the east side of Priestland Road in Bushmills, in the townland of Walk Mills, and is set within a cemetery.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The congregation at Dunluce was first formed in the late 1740s by a minority group formerly of Billy congregation (Bushmills Church), who refused to relocate to a new site on the east side of the River Bush and instead built their first meeting house in the Walk Mills townland, calling the Reverend John Cameron as their first minister. A first church on or near the current site was erected around 1750, positioned closer to the River Bush than the present building.

The earlier meeting house is visible on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832, depicted as a T-shaped building captioned "Meeting Ho[use]" alongside the River Bush. The Townland Valuations of the 1830s recorded it as measuring 76 feet in length by 26 feet in width and valued it at £4 15s., noting it also possessed a sessions house measuring 22 feet by 15 feet. The 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs gave slightly different dimensions, describing it as "a very plain building, the extreme dimensions of which are 66ft long by 44ft wide," capable of accommodating 500 persons. The Memoirs also recorded the prominent Presbyterianism of the region: by the 1834 census there were 2,322 Presbyterians in the parish compared to 532 Episcopalians, 571 other Dissenters, and 179 Roman Catholics, with the Presbyterian clergyman supported by stipend and the regium donum.

The present church was built during the incumbency of the Reverend William Oliver (1836–65), who secured the plot of land. The foundation stone was laid in July 1845, and although the datestone on the front gable reads "AD 1845," the Coleraine Chronicle records that construction took place between 1845 and 1846. The building was not formally opened until 27th July 1847, when the ceremony was conducted by the Reverend Henry Cooke of May Street Presbyterian Church, the foremost proponent of Orthodox Presbyterianism of the period. The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857 shows the church in its current position, slightly to the northwest of the original building's location.

Construction coincided with the Great Irish Famine (1845–52), and the difficulties facing rural communities at the time meant the trustees struggled to raise adequate funds, leaving the church with considerable debt for some years after completion. In 1859 Griffith's Valuation recorded the church as valued at £22, let by the Reverend William Oliver as lessor; the church was exempt from taxation and remained at this valuation until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1929.

Lanyon, who designed primarily Church of Ireland structures, made Dunluce one of his rare commissions for a dissenting congregation, his only other dissenting church being the non-subscribing church in Holywood. It has been suggested that Lanyon may have taken on the Dunluce contract in connection with his 1847 commission to construct Dunderave Mansion for the McNaughten family. Contemporaries and later commentators have noted that the church closely resembles Lanyon's Anglican church at Hollymount, Seaforde, both sharing, "with variations, the central feature of a perpendicular traceried window over a Tudor arched opening." The church is considered an interesting early example of Presbyterian architectural innovation in employing Gothic design at a time when the denomination still largely built meeting houses in a neo-classical style, though this innovative character is largely confined to the west-facing façade.

By the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904, the Dunluce Lecture Hall had been erected to the north of the church on the west side of Priestland Road.

ALTERATIONS AND ADDITIONS

Following the 1859 Revival, the congregation had grown to a size that the original building could not comfortably accommodate. In 1860 a gallery designed to hold 230 people was added. In 1875 a two-storey manse was provided for the minister at a cost of £640 8s. 10d. In 1889 a heating apparatus was installed. In 1892 extensive repairs and renovation were carried out: the pews were remodelled, two rear windows behind the pulpit were installed, and the old pulpit was replaced with the current one, the total cost amounting to approximately £300, after which the church was reopened. With funds remaining from this renovation, the trustees resolved to build a church hall on the opposite side of Priestland Road; this first hall was completed in 1893 but was wrecked in a storm in 1894 and rebuilt from scratch, reopening in 1895, and continues to be used today. Electric lighting was first installed in 1937. In 1970 a Hammond organ was added. In 1972 the church was closed for renovation: the building was reroofed and the exterior replastered before reopening later that year. The church was listed in 1977. In 1994–95 major alterations to the interior were carried out and a sympathetic two-storey extension was added to the rear by W. Atkinson of Ballymoney, housing children's Sunday school rooms, a kitchen, a new choir room, and a minister's room large enough for church session meetings. In 2006 the congregation had a membership of 220 families.

EXTERIOR

The church is built on a cruciform plan comprising a double-height hall and a perpendicular gabled vestibule with a gabled breakfront entrance. The roof is pitched with artificial slate, angled ridge tiles, and leaded valleys; the rendered verges are raised and painted with gableted kneelers. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods run on a smooth rendered eaves course. The walling is painted smooth render with a projecting plinth course. Diagonal buttresses serve the hall and vestibule, while angled buttresses to the breakfront rise to gableted and crocketed pinnacles.

Windows throughout are tall cusped leaded lattice lancets with margin panes and coloured glass, set in stepped painted render surrounds with splayed painted masonry sills. The principal window is a three-light reticulated tracery window to the west, which has a carved archivolt and a hood mould with carved head-stops.

The west-facing front elevation is dominated by the tall gabled breakfront, which rises above the roofline and is lit by the central tracery window and a window to each cheek. A lozenge-shaped datestone at the apex of the gable bears a cusped moulding inscribed "AD 1845." The entrance comprises double-leaf pointed-headed timber-sheeted doors with cast-iron strap hinges and knob, surmounted by a large ornate ogee-shaped hood mould with a crocketed pinnacle and carved stops. The entrance is flanked by buttresses with offsets rising to cusped gablets and crocketed pinnacles, and is accessed via a single concrete step. The vestibule is lit by a window to either side of the breakfront; each cheek has a lancet surmounted by a louvered loop opening in a rendered surround with hood mould.

The north elevation is four evenly spaced windows wide. The south elevation is detailed in the same manner as the north. The east elevation is abutted by the modern two-storey extension, which is detailed to match the main church and opens to the south with a gabled projecting porch accessed via concrete steps and a ramp.

SETTING

The church stands on a large plot to the east side of Priestland Road, with a tarmacadamed car park and a large modern church hall to the south. Directly to the east are the remains of a rectangular rubblestone and red-brick structure and a row of mid-19th century headstones, along with a rubblestone outbuilding with a pitched corrugated tin roof. The cemetery contains a variety of headstones and tombs dating from the mid-19th century, some with Victorian cast-iron railings, and contributes to the historic integrity of the site. The site is bounded to the road to the west by a rock-faced blackstone wall with soldier coping, with two sets of square piers with pointed stone caps supporting iron gates; a cast-iron latch gate is also present to the front. Modern housing lies to the north and open farmland to the south. The site is bounded by mature trees and hedges.