St. Mary'S R C Church, Gates, Railings And Walling, Cushendall, Co.Antrim

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church is a free-standing, double-height, gable-fronted Romanesque-style church built in 1913–14 to the designs of Belfast-based architect William J. Moore (c.1873–1921). Constructed from locally quarried Devonian Sandstone (Cross Slieve Group) and Ballycastle Sandstone, it occupies a narrow riverside site on the western outskirts of Cushendall village, bounded by the River Dall to the south, the main A2 road to the north, and graveyards on both the east and west sides. The church is rectangular on plan, facing northeast, and retains much of its original internal and external historic fabric. It lies within the Cushendall Conservation Area.

The building replaces an earlier Roman Catholic chapel dedicated on the same site in 1836. That earlier chapel itself succeeded a plain building erected around 1800, described in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1830–38 as ruinous and inadequate, though capable of holding a congregation of 400. The 1836 chapel was recorded on the second-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1857, and its rateable value was set at £19 and 10 shillings in Griffith's Valuation of 1859. In 1874, a memorial cross of Portland stone and Wicklow granite was erected in the graveyard to the memory of the Reverend John Fitzsimmons, parish priest. Designed by Timothy Hevey of Belfast and executed by Dublin-based sculptor Charles William Harrison, the cross was subsequently blown down and destroyed in a storm. In 1909, Building News reported a planned renovation and extension to the chapel, to designs by William J. Moore and John G. Flanigan of Belfast, but this was abandoned in favour of demolishing the original chapel entirely and erecting the present church. The new church was built at the bequest of Parish Priest the Very Reverend J. McCartan. Tenders were invited in January 1913 and the Belfast-based contractors Courtney & Co. were selected as builders. Despite the replacement of the original building, the church's rateable valuation remained at £19 and 10 shillings in the Annual Revisions, rising to £153 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) and to £336 under the Second General Revaluation (1956–72). The church was listed in 1976.

Moore designed the church in a Romanesque style with a seven-bay nave, a three-stage bell tower to the west, and a two-bay side chapel to the southwest that incorporates a two-storey vestry. The pitched roof is clad in natural slate with fish-scale courses and roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles, set behind raised gables with decorative ashlar coping, gableted kneeler stones, and stone crosses to the apexes. Rainwater goods are replacement moulded steel throughout, with a chamfered ashlar eaves course. The walling is random-coursed, quarry-faced pink sandstone ashlar with a plinth course, dressed with pale sandstone trims to the plinth, two-stage buttresses, and door and window surrounds.

The three-bay, two-storey gabled front elevation is framed by two-stage buttresses. Its most prominent feature is a carved stone plate tracery rose window set within a large pointed arch surround with foliate mouldings, supported on engaged columns with stiff-leaf capitals. The rose window comprises eight quatrefoils arranged around a central quatrefoil, with coloured leaded glazing and carved spandrel panels below, and an offset splayed sill. A framed carved stone frieze spans the full width of the gable and the adjoining bell tower at first-floor level. Paired trefoil-headed window openings with compound flush stone surrounds and coloured leaded glazing flank the entrance porch. To the apex of the gable is a hooded niche housing a stone statue of Mary.

The gabled entrance porch is surmounted by a stone cross and decorative kneeler stones. It has a squat pointed-arched door opening with a compound moulded voussoired dressed sandstone arch rising from stepped splayed jambs, with a hood moulding and decorative label stops. The original double-leaf vertically-sheeted hardwood sliding doors retain their original iron door furniture, and open onto a small cobblelock forecourt area.

The seven-bay east nave elevation has each bay framed by two-stage buttresses. One of the left bays has an outshot projection housing the confessional, with a stone-tiled roof and an oculus. Nave window openings throughout are lancets with flush chamfered sandstone surrounds, hood mouldings, and stained leaded glazing with storm glazing.

The gabled rear elevation features a lower gabled chancel with a large pointed-arched window opening containing a sandstone tracery frame set in a stepped chamfered surround with hood moulding, coloured leaded glazing, and storm glazing.

The west nave elevation carries the bell tower to the left and the double-height side chapel with incorporated two-storey vestry to the right. The roof and gables match those of the main nave. A rendered profiled chimneystack rises from the south gable of the vestry, and there is a wall-head dormer window to the west pitch. The side chapel has buttresses and smaller lancet windows; the vestry has square-headed window openings with single-pane timber sash windows. To the front gable of the chapel is a further gabled entrance projection with a stone-tiled roof and a pointed-arched door opening with a chamfered sandstone surround, hood moulding, and original double-leaf vertically-sheeted hardwood doors with iron door furniture, opening onto two stone steps.

The square-plan bell tower has pointed-arched openings to the lower stage and square-headed openings to the middle stage, all staggered to the stair. The third stage is a broached octagonal open arcaded bell-stage framed with colonettes and supporting a squat stone spire with a lead cap and iron cross. A pointed-headed door opening to the north has a deeply set sandstone surround, hood moulding, and a single-leaf door matching those elsewhere on the building.

A 1972 Ulster Architectural Heritage Society publication described the interior as "large, tall, and wide, with a timber roof," noting a very good white Caen stone high altar set before a warmly-coloured Victorian east window, with the chancel framed by fat Romanesque-capitalled columns bearing a pointed arch.

The church is enclosed by its original boundary treatment: quarry-faced sandstone plinth walls with dressed sandstone piers supporting original iron railings, matching gates, and cast-iron lamps on the entrance piers. To the front there is a largely bitmac footpath with cobblelock immediately before the entrance. The site backs onto a raised river bank to the rear. A large cemetery to the west, enclosed by a grassy bank to the road, is occupied by modern polished granite grave markers, with a parking area further west. The listing extends to the church, gates, railings, walls, piers, lamps on entrance piers, and pillar.