Holy Trinity Parish Church, 62 Main Street, Portrush, Co. Antrim, BT56 8BN, See General Comments

Holy Trinity Parish Church, Portrush

Holy Trinity is a large Gothic Revival parish church built between 1839 and 1843 to designs by Stewart Gordon, County Surveyor for County Londonderry from 1834 to 1860, who also undertook commissions including Presbyterian churches in Londonderry and the Courthouse in Coleraine. The datestone on the tower reads "ERECTED BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS A.D. 1841", and the church was consecrated on 19th July 1843, its first stone having been laid on 5th August 1839. The total cost was £1,800, raised mostly by private subscription. The English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who visited Portrush in 1842, described the new church as a "neat and convenient [edifice] of a rather irregular Gothic."

The church replaced the former parish church of Ballywillan, whose ruins survive to the southeast of the town. That earlier building is thought to have originally dated from the late 13th or early 14th century. By 1835 it was considered to be at an inconvenient distance from the town, which was beginning to expand following the recent construction of a harbour. Before the new church was built, the Methodist chapel served as a chapel of ease and schoolhouse for the entire Protestant population. In 1837 the old church was condemned by the Provincial Architect and a petition for a new church was sent to the Lord Lieutenant and the Privy Council. Part of the roof timbers from the old church, grown in the townland of Islandflackey, were reused in the new building, along with a door from the old church, which was repurposed as the vestry door.

The church has been considerably enlarged since its original construction. On the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1853 it appears as a simple nave with an attached tower and an adjacent schoolhouse facing the main street. In 1858 the nave was brought forward to subsume the tower and side aisles were added, to designs by Joseph Welland, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, representing a radical enlargement of the building. Transepts were built in 1863, the south transept covering the church well. A christening font was donated by parishioner Rebecca Rice in 1870, and a window beside the side chapel was dedicated in her memory in 1875. In 1883 a clock was erected in the tower at a cost of about £80, and in 1885 shutters were applied to the tower window openings. A chancel was added in 1887 to designs by James John Phillips, following the death of the Reverend Canon Ffolliott, who had expressed an earnest desire to build one before dying suddenly after conducting divine service in August 1884. The new chancel, which extended eight feet into the nave, was described in the Belfast Newsletter in 1888 as "most beautiful both as regards architecture and harmony of detail." It consisted of two bays, with arcading opening on one side into an organ chamber and on the other into the clergy porch. Crenellated screens of pitch pine, still present, were added at this time, and the total cost exceeded one thousand pounds. By the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906, the church appears much as it does today.

In 1890, in response to the large influx of summer visitors to Portrush, the organ was replaced by a new instrument built by Conacher and Co. of Huddersfield, including hydraulic machinery, at a cost of about £600, which also freed up additional space for worshippers. By the time of the church's fiftieth anniversary in 1892, it could seat 1,000 worshippers and was said to be one of the largest churches in the north of Ireland. In 1902 the Earl of Antrim donated a chair to the church said to have been used in Dunluce Castle in the 17th century. By the 1930s the church had central heating and electric light, though by then was thought to accommodate only 700 people. After modernisation in 1935 the organ was moved to its present position on the south side of the chancel. In 1942 an air raid shelter for public use was added to the site, now demolished. A choir robing room and small lecture hall were added to the north transept in 1971 at a cost of approximately £2,000. The church was listed in 1976. In 2001 restoration work was carried out including installation of a reredos from the former Ballywillan Church Hall in the side chapel, replacement of the roof, and repair of the tower and windows. A false ceiling in the nave dating from the 1960s was removed at this time. Further work in 2003 included repairs to the tracery of a south elevation window and replacement of the moulded tops to the tower pinnacles.

Architecture

The building is essentially cruciform in plan, with infill side aisles that result in an approximately square footprint, and a chancel dating from around 1880 to the northeast. Abutting the building to the southeast is a vestry, and to the northwest a flat-roofed concrete extension of 1971 housing choir rooms, of no particular architectural interest. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black angled ridge tiles and raised stone verges. Cast-iron ogee-profile rainwater goods run on projecting eaves, with cast-iron downpipes and hoppers.

The walls are of rock-faced squared blackstone built to courses on a chamfered stone plinth, with sandstone dressings and ashlar quoins. Windows are generally pointed-headed cusped lancets to the principal elevations, set in chamfered surrounds with flush stone voussoirs and label moulds with plain stops. Glazing is a variety of leaded lattice and stained glass.

The principal, southwest-facing elevation is symmetrically arranged, with a central three-stage square clock tower set within the central gable, flanked by gabled aisles. The tower is framed by ashlar piers rising to a castellated parapet with corner pinnacles. The belfry stage has paired louvred lancets. The second stage carries a Roman numeral clock face, added in 1883, in a moulded sandstone surround with voussoirs, set above a sandstone datestone with dripstone bearing the inscription "ERECTED BY/ VOLUNTARY/ CONTRIBUTIONS/ A.D./1841". At ground floor level, a Gothic doorway is set in an ogee sandstone ashlar surround with a hood mould, a carved finial to the apex, and flush stone voussoirs. The door itself is a double-leaf cusped four-panel design with twin circular motifs to the central panel and a cast-iron latch handle, surmounted by a transom light in interlocking lead cames. To the left and right of the tower, slender lancets sit above small Gothic doorways, each containing double-leaf timber-sheeted doors set in cusped sandstone surrounds with label moulds and plain stops. The gabled aisles to either side each have a stained glass tracery rose window above triple cusped lancets.

The northwest elevation has two intersecting bar-tracery replacement hardwood windows to the aisle, and a transept to the left with a three-pane geometrical tracery window and a single lancet to the left cheek. The flat-roofed concrete extension abuts at the far right.

On the northeast elevation, the nave gable is entirely abutted by the chancel, which is lit by a large perpendicular tracery window and cat-slides to either side to incorporate a porch and a gabled vestry with a lean-to addition at the left. The porch has a pointed-headed timber-sheeted door with cast-iron strap hinges and a latch handle, surmounted by a plain transom light, in a sandstone surround accessed via a stone step. The vestry has a large pointed-headed leaded lattice window in a sandstone surround. A slightly recessed lean-to abutment to the left has a small timber-framed bipartite lancet window with frosted glass. Stone steps at the left lead down to a metal door to the basement.

The southeast elevation mirrors the northwest.

Interior

The interior is well preserved and retains much of its original character. Crenellated screens of pitch pine, installed when the chancel was added in 1887, remain in place.

Setting

The church is situated on a level rectangular plot between Bath Street and Main Street in Portrush town centre, adjacent to the Northern Bank, with views over the Irish Sea to the northeast. It is set back from Main Street with a lawned forecourt and a central concrete pathway to the entrance. The boundary is defined by a low stone plinth wall with rounded coping stones topped by steel railings. At the centre of the boundary are polygonal ashlar gate piers with polygonal caps topped by finials, supporting ornate steel gates. A side entrance to the southeast has a large polygonal stone pier with a polygonal cap and an ornate steel latch gate in the wall. To the rear garden at the southeast, twin blackstone square piers with pointed sandstone caps support an ornate steel latch gate, with an ashlar pier with cornice and pointed cap at the east corner of the garden. The rear yard is laid with flagstones, enclosed by a tall blackstone wall, and accessed via a modern steel gate.

To the east of the site stands a gabled two-storey Parochial Hall, dating from around 1841 but subsequently altered and extended. It is built in a similar style to the church, of roughly coursed blackstone with a pitched natural slate roof, raised verges and cast-iron ogee rainwater goods. Its windows are replacement square-headed bipartite and tripartite timber casements with projecting stone sills and hood moulds. The roofline of this building has been somewhat altered at the southwestern end since photographs taken around 1900, but it retains its original character. By the 1930s it was recorded as functioning as a working men's club with membership confined to members of the parish. A modern four-storey rendered apartment block stands to the southeast of the site.

Architectural commentator W.D. Girvan noted that the church, the Belfast Bank, and the group of buildings opposite "form the best composition in the town — almost the town square", and singled out the gate piers for particular praise.