St Mary’s Church (RC), Gortnahey Road, Dungiven, Co Londonderry, BT47 4PY

St Mary's Church is a Roman Catholic chapel built in 1830 on land given by J.F.C.C. Hunter, with Father Patrick O'Loughlin as parish priest at the time. The building was substantially rebuilt in 1892 under Father Edward Loughrey. It was closed in 1990 when a new Church of St Mary opened further west along Gortnahey Road, and has remained vacant since.

The church is a four-bay gabled structure measuring approximately 8 metres wide by 24 metres in overall length. It is built of smooth rendered and painted walls with a natural slate roof. The entrance is located in the northeast gable and features a central pointed doorway with a solid panelled fanlight. Above the doorway and to each side are narrow pointed lancets lighting the gallery, with diamond panes set in timber frames. The gable terminates in plastered barges with simulated unadorned kneelers. The apex contains a small gabled bellcote in stone with corbels to support the bell axle, though the bell is now missing.

The southeast facade has four tall narrow sharply pointed lancets with cast iron frames featuring diamond panes with narrow margins in yellow coloured glass, the diamond panes themselves clear glazed. These windows are pivoted about a central point to open, though now secured. Most glass is broken. The walls have a single cast iron downpipe and half-round metal gutter.

A gabled sacristy projects from the southwest gable, accessible via a four-panelled door with a shallow plain glazed fanlight reached by three steps. Boldly chamfered sandstone quoins dress the corners of the sacristy. The southwest gable of the sacristy is unadorned except for the sandstone quoins, with a small chimney centred on the gable. The southwest nave gable is plain and smooth rendered with a slightly projecting barge, its apex surmounted by a small plain Celtic cross. Centred on the southwest nave gable is a quatrefoil window with a diamond-shaped surround moulding. This was originally filled with good quality turn-of-the-century stained glass, which has been transferred to the baptistery of the new church. The northwest facade is similar to the southeast, though the window lighting the sanctuary has been reduced in height to allow a higher sill to accommodate a corridor extension between the sacristy and sanctuary for side entry.

The roofs are slated with Bangor blue slates with plain ridge tiles.

The church nestles on a tiny site at the junction of Mill Lane with Gortnahey Road. The entrance gates fronting onto Gortnahey Road are a pair of decorative cast iron gates fixed to smooth rendered piers with short wing walls. The top gate hinges on each side are in the form of clenched fists. Several decorative finials have been lost from the gates.

The Ordnance Survey Memoir of 1835 records the original 1830 chapel as a plain rectangular building with a Maltese cross of stone on one gable, measuring 67 feet by 25 and a half feet on the outside, with two doors (one in each gable) and five square windows (three on one side, two on the other). The interior was unfinished with only two pews, one on each side of the southern door, and could hold 300 persons allowing four square feet per person. The original chapel most likely had the altar in the long wall; in the 1892 rebuild, the altar and sanctuary were relocated to the southwest gable.

The church has been stripped of all its fittings and greatly vandalised. All glazing has been shattered, the gallery front is damaged, and there is much deterioration of both interior and exterior plasterwork.