St Canice’s C of I Church, Balteagh Parish, Drumsurn Road, Limavady, Co Londonderry, BT49

St Canice's Church of Ireland, Balteagh Parish

This is a stone-built four-bay deep simple hall church with a square crenellated and pinnacled three-stage tower at the west end. The tower contains the entrance and is accompanied by a projecting vestry at the south-east corner and a projecting wing on the north side near the east end. The building has recently been reslated, though it retains an unfortunate lean-to pitched roof over the vestry.

The three-stage tower has a pointed door on its south side with plain string courses defining each stage. Above the door is a small square blank recess with a flat sandstone surround and reveal on the west side, and a similarly proportioned window on the north side. The second stage features pointed blank windows on the south and west sides and a window on the north, all of similar size to those on the ground floor. The third stage has a single large pointed and louvred opening on each face, with short and long sandstone surrounds. All openings are topped by whinstone relieving arches over the sandstone. Above the simple moulded string course of the third stage, the parapet has single flat-topped battlements with undecorated sharp pointed pinnacles at each corner.

The nave has a row of two-light pointed windows on the south side, evenly spaced, with short and long smooth sandstone surrounds finishing flush with the random rubble stonework, which is a mixture of whinstone and sandstone with mortar joints buttered—spreading onto the face of the stone. Each window has a whinstone relieving arch. On the north side are three similar windows; the organ wing obscures the fourth. The chancel is undefined externally. The east gable has a comparatively wide three-light window with criss-cross Y tracery and a sandstone surround. A plinth with chamfered sandstone string course, approximately 600 millimetres above floor level, encompasses the entire building except the vestry projection.

The organ projection, probably dating to around 1913, has smooth rendered walls with narrow pointed lancets in the side walls and a circular window high up on the gable with pentagonal patterned glazing. The recently rebuilt vestry, with its discordant lean-to roof, has a pointed vestry door and one slim pointed lancet. Its walls are built of a mixture of squared sandstone, field stones, whinstone, and concrete blocks. Above the vestry door is an ancient-looking stone plaque with a damaged raised border bearing indecipherable markings, the initials T P and C, and the date 1682. This plaque is reported to have come from the demolished Glebe House.

The asbestos-slated roof with timber fascias and bargeboards has a slight barge overhang and masks former barge stones and eaves corbelling. Guttering and downpipes are in PVC. Windows are timber-framed with cast-iron diamond inserts, neatly executed and in good condition, painted white. Cills are in sandstone.

The building stands at right angles to the Drumsurn Road with the tower adjacent. The church is surrounded by a partly filled graveyard with a few mature trees within the boundaries; originally there were more. A stone boundary wall with stone piers and iron gates marks the Drumsurn Road frontage. The site of the former church lies across the road.