St Patrick’s R.C. Church, Glenshane Road, Dungiven, Co Londonderry, BT47 4RT

St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Dungiven

St Patrick's is an aisled nave church with a round apsidal sanctuary end, built in sandstone with natural slate roofs and a gabled west front. The church is graded B2.

The west front is the principal elevation, featuring a high nave defined by shouldered buttresses on either side. Three separate pointed doors form the main entrance, each with moulded label moulding and stops. Above runs a straight stringcourse between the buttresses, forming the sills of two tall two-light lancets with tracery. A large sexfoil window occupies the gable apex. On either side of the nave gable, single large two-light pointed lancets with quatrefoil tracery and label moulding light the aisle gables. Shouldered buttresses define the corners, with stone barges featuring pronounced gabled kneelers.

The north façade is seven bays long, with the end bays narrower than the central bays, and the semi-circular apse projects beyond. Shouldered buttresses define each bay, three of which are of greater depth. In the second bay from the west, a small north gabled porch with central pointed doors and two small flanking lancets provides a secondary entrance. The narrower end bays each have a single lancet; the others have pairs. Above the aisle roof, the clerestorey is punctuated with two quatrefoils in each bay. The south façade largely mirrors the north side but without a porch. A large single-storey L-plan extension was added to the south side, completed in 1999, replacing a small gabled sacristy. The extension wraps around the south-east end but connects only at the original sacristy position. Its design repeats the apsidal motif on the north gable and features a curious cylindrical lantern lighting a sacramental chapel. A secondary entrance has been formed in the angle of the addition.

The east façade is dominated by the semi-circular sanctuary end, articulated with five slim, tall lancets with cills at high level. The roof of the nave is neatly curved with Welsh slates and has a crested ridge. The decorative finial over the apse roof apex is missing. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

The walls are faced with rubble sandstone with neat ashlar sandstone trim to openings. Several label mouldings terminate in sculpted stops, some carved as heads and others as rosettes.

The church occupies a pleasant, landscaped site at the south-east end of Dungiven town on the perimeter of development, not far from the previous church of 1819. It is set back from Glenshane Road (Chapel Road) behind a random rubble stone boundary wall and a modern lych gate. A sweep of lawn interspersed with trees and shrubs leads to a curving entrance avenue approaching the portal, with the graveyard behind the church. The well-filled graveyard contains substantial grave monuments and, in a central position, a large bronze bell on an inappropriate steel frame.