St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church, Nursery Avenue, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52

St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church is a large, free-standing gabled sandstone church in the neo-Romanesque style, designed by Belfast-based architect Patrick (Padraig) Bernard Gregory (1886–1967) and constructed between 1936 and 1937. It stands on the south side of Nursery Avenue in Coleraine town centre and represents an important landmark in both the architectural and social history of the town.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

St Malachy's was the third Roman Catholic place of worship built in Coleraine. The first, St John's Roman Catholic Church, was constructed on the west side of the River Bann in 1834–36. The second, also called St Malachy's, was erected in 1836 in Chapel Square and served the congregation for a century. During that period, the parish priest resided in the Parochial House that still stands beside the current church and was built before it. The foundation stone of the present church was laid in April 1936 and the building was completed in June 1937, at an estimated cost of £20,000. Construction was carried out by J. & R. Thompson, Belfast-based builders. Gregory, who established his independent practice in 1906 and was best known for his Roman Catholic church designs throughout Northern Ireland, produced a remarkably similar building contemporaneously: the Church of St Anthony on the Woodstock Road, Belfast, also designed in 1936–38 in the neo-Romanesque manner.

The fifth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1949 records the church in its current rectangular layout, positioned a few feet to the northeast of the earlier Parochial House. By that date, the former chapel in Chapel Square still stood, though it was no longer used for worship. Because the church was built immediately after the 1935 First General Revaluation of property in Northern Ireland, it was not assessed until the second revaluation beginning in 1956, which set its total rateable value at £428. A schoolhouse to the northwest, St Malachy's Primary School, which predated the church and had been built while the congregation still met at Chapel Square, was valued separately at £116. That school building was subsequently demolished sometime before the 1967–68 Ordnance Survey map, by which time the school had relocated to a modern building on Beresford Avenue. Before the first chapels were built in Coleraine, the Catholic population of the town gathered for Mass at a disused store in Queen Street. Writing in 1979, architectural historian Alistair Rowan noted that St Malachy's was not only the third Roman Catholic church built in Coleraine but also the last church of any denomination to be erected in the town up to that point, describing it as a "powerful neo-Romanesque composition with an offset stumpy tower half way down one side" with a "seven-bay nave with paired clerestory windows and a big wheel in the entrance gable." W. D. Girvan characterised it as Hiberno-Romanesque in style, though he was critical of the interior, noting that the cement walls contrasted sharply with the coved plaster ceiling and curved rear gallery. The church was listed in 1990 and celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2012. It continues to serve as a place of worship for the Roman Catholic population of Coleraine.

EXTERIOR

The church is built to a rectangular plan with side aisles, a projecting porch to the north and west, a semi-engaged square tower to the west, and a sacristy at the southwest corner. The roof is pitched natural slate with angled ridge tiles, raised stone verges with kneeler stones, and cross finials to the gables. Rainwater goods are cast iron with ogee profiles carried on a Lombardic stone frieze, with cast-iron hoppers and square downpipes. The walls are uncoursed quarry-faced sandstone with flush pointing on a chamfered plinth, with sandstone dressings and angle buttresses with offsets. Windows throughout are paired round-headed leaded and coloured glass set in ashlar sandstone surrounds with chamfered sills.

The north-facing principal gable front is entered through a projecting porch at ground floor level, above which rises a parapet that steps up to the centre and incorporates a carved stone cross. Above the porch is a slender Celtic rose window flanked by semi-engaged colonettes with a hood mould on square stops; carved stone roundels to the left and right of the window read "AD" and "1936" respectively. A louvred vent sits at the apex of the gable. The Romanesque-style portal is set in a sandstone surround with a hood mould on square stops, and features a triple recessed archivolt with carved chevron and circular motifs on semi-engaged colonettes. The doorway contains two original round-headed four-panelled timber doors with chevron-carved heads, divided by a pair of semi-engaged colonettes. The entrance is approached by eight stone steps with modern metal handrails.

The east elevation has eight sets of paired windows at clerestory level. At ground floor, the elevation is almost entirely occupied by the side aisle, which has seven sets of paired windows divided by buttresses and incorporates a taller entrance vestibule to the right. To each side of the central bay are projecting confessionals under sandstone lean-to roofs. An undercroft extends across two bays at the far right, each three windows wide, enclosed by a quarry-faced sandstone wall with a coping topped by metal railings.

The south gable has a round-headed slender ventilator over a tall buttressed projection with a Lombardic frieze and a set of three slender arch-headed niches.

The west elevation has irregular massing, dominated by the large semi-engaged square tower at the centre, with the projecting entrance porch, a side aisle with projecting confessional, and the sacristy to the far right. Stone steps to the undercroft are to the left. The tower has angled buttresses rising to parapets, a Lombardic frieze, and three round-headed vented openings at belfry level to each face, with windows at varying heights at the second stage on the north and west faces, and a window to the exposed section at ground-floor north. The porch has angled buttresses rising to a castellated parapet topped by a cross finial and opens to the west with a round-headed four-panelled timber door in a portal detailed to match the north entrance; there is a window at the left cheek. The sacristy extends to the south and is lit by three windows to the west; its south face has two sets of paired windows flanking a central projecting porch with a modern six-panelled timber door surmounted by a round-headed transom light in a sandstone blocked surround with voussoirs.

SETTING

The church occupies a large site on the south side of Nursery Avenue. The ground to the front is laid to lawn with two tarmacadamed pathways leading to the north entrance. Directly to the southwest stands the Parochial House: a symmetrical rendered three-bay two-storey building with single-storey canted bays and a projecting entrance porch to the front, fronted by shrubbery and with a gabled outbuilding to the rear. To the west of the church stands a freestanding cast-iron cross with copper detailing. An early stone font is also positioned to the front of the west porch. The site is bounded by mature hedges on three sides. To the north, the boundary is formed by an uncoursed quarry-faced sandstone wall with a chamfered plinth and rounded coping, interrupted by decorative square piers with corniced caps and semi-engaged colonettes at four corners (some missing); the north face of the piers carries carved two-tier stone crosses. The main entrance to the northeast of the site comprises two gate piers of the same form, supporting metal gates. To the northwest, a tarmacadamed entry leads to a car park at the west, serving both the church and the modern primary school also to the west.