Formoyle Parish Church, 16 Formoyle Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4JP

Formoyle Parish Church is an unusual small freestanding early Victorian hall-type stone church built around 1843 by the Clothworkers Company. It stands in a remote rural setting in the foothills of the Sperrin Mountains to the east of Coleraine, and while modest in scale, it is embellished with decorative Gothic Revival detailing that significantly elevates its architectural interest and reflects the ambitious intentions envisioned for the church at the time of its construction. The character and fabric of the interior, exterior and setting have remained largely unaltered, though the building is now rarely used.

The church is a freestanding single-cell Gothic-style Church of Ireland building, rectangular on plan comprising a central hall four openings deep with a porch and canted chancel to the west and east respectively. The deep roof rises to a small ornate stone bell-cote. Buttresses articulate the window bays. The pitched slate roof has black and grey angled ridge-tiles and flat stone coping to the gables, surmounted by a small finial to the east. A stone pinnacled bell-cote rises from the west gable; the three-pointed structure is pierced by a cusped opening in which a single bronze bell is hung. The sides are carved with Gothic panels and below is a stone plaque with plain carving and mock machicolations supported on brackets to the west gable. uPVC rainwater goods to overhanging eaves are mounted by wall-driven brackets to a projecting stone eaves course.

The walling is uncoursed, roughly-squared, rock-faced blackstone with sandstone dressings. A projecting plinth of sandstone with small vent openings sits above an un-mortared squared rubblestone base. Three-tiered offset buttresses and a moulded sill course occur to all elevations except the west. The Gothic-style lancet windows are plain-glass in metal diamond-lattice panes with raised pointed and splayed architraves surmounted by hood moulds with decorative stops. The principal elevation faces north and comprises four windows with buttresses on each side. The east elevation is abutted by the canted chancel, which has a hipped slate roof and is lighted by three windows to the three easterly faces; the remaining sides and elevation are blank. The south elevation is detailed as the north. The west elevation contains an advancing gabled porch to the centre, otherwise blank. The stone porch is executed in the style of the main church and contains a pointed-arch doorway to the centre with a double-leaf sheeted and braced timber door encased within a chamfered stone architrave and hood mould above. A single small window occurs to each cheek.

The church stands in a remote rural setting at the foothills of the Sperrin Mountains, to the east of Coleraine town. The mature, elevated site is situated on the corner of Formoyle Road, which is lined with a small group of houses. The churchyard is somewhat overgrown, falling away steeply to the east and south where a handful of 20th-century graves are situated. Rubble and squared-stone walls and vegetation bound the site to the west and north. Access is via a small pedestrian iron gate supported by a large circular rendered stone pier, leading to a small gravel path with a shallow sandstone step to the porch.

The Church of the Ascension, Formoyle, was built by the Clothworkers Company around 1843 and is first shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1849 with a schoolhouse (now gone) to the west. The church commands a view of the surrounding countryside including the hill of Slemish, which is associated with St Patrick. The chancel is a later addition first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1904. Formoyle was established as a perpetual curacy comprising nine townlands that had originally been part of Dunboe parish. The church was built by the Clothworkers with the intention that it would be at the centre of a town between Coleraine and Limavady, but due to the famine of the 1840s and the associated depopulation of the area, this scheme did not materialise.

The building of the church was instigated by Archdeacon Monsell, who contributed £200 towards its endowment but contracted fever at the time of the famine and died in 1846. A monument on the east wall commemorates the Archdeacon. The church was dedicated to St Matthew but is known as the Church of the Ascension. Griffith's Valuation lists the church at £11 and the schoolhouse (which was in use until 1918) at £3 10s. The associated land was valued at 10s. When the Clothworkers sold their estates in the area they gave the parish a gift of £300, and in 1869 the lands of Formoyle were purchased by the Representative Church Body. Formoyle was united with the mother church at Dunboe in 1873. The building was listed in 1977, at which period it was lit by gas lamps. No parishioners remain in the area and the church is currently used for a small number of services each year in connection with Orange Order parades.