Presbyterian Church, New Street, Dungiven, Co Londonderry, BT47 4LJ

Presbyterian Church, New Street, Dungiven

This is a Presbyterian meeting house with an eclectic Gothic-style front, notable for its rusticated exterior and successful early twentieth-century internal modifications. The building stands as the most prominent structure on New Street.

The church comprises a three-bay-wide gabled entrance front facing a three-bay-deep hall set behind a decorative cast-iron railing and gates mounted on a low boundary wall. The gabled front is executed in Gothic style with a central pointed doorway having a moulded hood with decorative stops and two orders. On either side are tall two-light pointed windows with tracery and moulded hoods with plain block stops. At the gable corners, diagonal shouldered buttresses rise above the gutter line to form gabled pinnacles. Their bases are joined across the gable by a decorative string course that wraps around the pinnacles. Above this string course and centred on the gable is a group of three small lancets unified by an ogee-shaped hood moulding. On either side is a panelled pilaster with flat pedestal, these piercing the crenellated barge to form octagonal pointed pinnacles surmounted by small spheres. The crenellations between the corner and centre pinnacles are vertical with ridge tops; between the centre pinnacles they change to pierced arcading. The gable wall is finished in rusticated cast coursed blocks with mouldings in smooth rendering and a plinth at the base.

The side walls are five bays deep, with round-headed windows set in plain painted sandstone architraves in short and long work, fitted with coloured glass. A projecting string course forms the plinth, with a smooth plaster frieze band at the wall top beneath the minimal overhang and half-round gutter. The walls are smooth rendered and painted. The roof is pitched with natural slates. The rear gable is plain, crossed by a flat-roofed single-storey structure with single square-headed doors on each side. The building is set back approximately three metres from New Street's footpath, with small strips of lawn flanking the long walls. The site is tight, with buildings to side and rear; to the north lies a small river with good tree cover.

The present church represents an amalgamation of First and Second Dungiven congregations. First Dungiven was established in 1835, a small congregation initially meeting on a site liberally granted by Robert Ogilby. During construction, a gable was blown down in a storm just before the ordination of the first minister, Reverend William McHinch. The original church was four bays long. In 1849, the first and second congregations amalgamated. The church was renovated in 1864 and again in 1887 when the interior was gutted, with old-fashioned high pews replaced by new seating. The plaster ceiling was replaced with wood, an end gallery seating 100 was added, and a minister's room was added to the rear. A heating system was installed with underground stoves causing warm air to rise through ornamental grilles in the passageways. William Barker was architect and James Wray of Limavady the builder. The front boundary wall and railings and gates were probably executed in 1887; the cast-iron railings and gates were supplied by Brown of Derry.

In 1909, the church was enlarged and a new vestibule added at a cost of £720. Samuel McCartney was the architect, and R Colhoun of Derry the builder. This vestibule extension created an intimate interior space of considerable merit. In 1923 a new heating system was installed and a committee room added. The interior features good joinery detail of the early twentieth century. In 1971 a new suite of rooms was added to the rear and new heating and lighting systems installed. The church suffered bomb damage in 1972, which badly damaged stained glass windows either side of the pulpit that had been installed as a First World War memorial. The same design was replicated from Portstewart church and the windows reinstated as before. The other decorative glass windows in the nave were installed at this time. Recently the church has been redecorated and the main façade cleaned to remove lime staining from the joints.

The building's relatively recent date and the extent of alteration and new building preclude formal listing, though it remains a structure of architectural and historical note within the townland.