Agherton Parish Church, The Church of St John the Baptist, 19 Church Street, Portstewart, Co. Londonderry, BT55 7AH

Agherton Parish Church, Church of St John the Baptist, Portstewart

This freestanding Gothic Revival parish church stands on an island site between Church Street and The Promenade, just north of The Diamond in Portstewart town centre. It was built in 1839, incorporating stone from its predecessor on a different site, and extended and altered in 1879 to designs by Thomas Drew, the diocesan architect. The listing extends to the church itself, the boundary wall, railings and gates.

The building has a rectangular plan aligned north to south — an unusual orientation forced by the constraints of the town-centre site when the church was relocated stone by stone from its original position on the parish glebe lands to the south-east of town. The principal elements are a three-stage square tower to the west, an entrance porch and single-storey vestry to the north, and a lower Romanesque-style chancel added to the south in 1879. A gabled extension to the west of the chancel was added later to house the organ, and a cat-slide lean-to extension is set back to the east of the chancel.

The walls are built of uncoursed rock-faced grey blackstone on a chamfered sandstone plinth, with Ballycastle sandstone dressings including flush quoins and a string course to the north elevation. The chancel uses red sandstone dressings in place of the grey. The exposed section of the south gable is finished in smooth render. The roof is natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles, and there is a rock-faced stone chimney stack with a single clay pot. Raised masonry verges appear to the south gable of the nave, and the chancel gables carry trefoil finials. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are carried on projecting eaves.

The west elevation is dominated by the tower at its centre, flanked on either side by two tall lancet windows. The tower steps in slightly at each of its three stages and is finished at the top with crenellations and slender polygonal corner pinnacles. The belfry stage has pointed-headed louvered openings in Gothic-headed surrounds with hood moulds; below this are clock faces to the north and south elevations, with a blind roundel to the west. The second stage has a square leaded lattice window with margin panes, and single lancets appear at the base. The tower entrance on its south face has been altered and now has a narrow modern timber door in a chamfered sandstone reveal with a drip mould, surrounded by rock-faced stone infill, accessed by a single stone step with a modern metal handrail.

The north gable has a cinquefoil tracery rose window above a flat-roofed porch. The porch opens to the west through a modern panelled-and-glazed double-leaf timber door with a leaded glass transom light in a Gothic sandstone surround with hood mould. Modern stone steps with metal handrails to the walls lead up to the porch from both the north and the west. The porch has a window to its north elevation, and is abutted to the east by the vestry. The vestry has a modern timber-sheeted door to the north elevation in a smooth painted surround, reached by two stone steps, and a modern square-headed leaded-and-stained glass window in a smooth painted surround to the east gable.

The east elevation has three pointed-headed windows, the central one being wider than the others, with a slated lean-to abutment at the far left. The south gable is almost entirely taken up by the later gabled chancel, which is lower than the nave. A round-headed window sits above a group of three windows to the south elevation. A gabled extension, flush with the nave to its left, has to its right a lean-to porch opening to the south, with a modern timber-sheeted door in a square-headed red sandstone surround.

Windows throughout are generally replacement leaded-and-stained glass lancets in sandstone surrounds with chamfered sills, surmounted by hood moulds on the nave elevations.

The interior retains much of its early character despite extensive refurbishment in around 1980, which resulted in the loss of some historic fabric including the original windows, entrance doors and nave roof structure. The focal point of the interior is a large round-headed stone arch. Of particular architectural interest is Thomas Drew's deliberate choice of the Romanesque style for his 1879 chancel addition, rather than continuing the Gothic of the existing building.

The church is set slightly above street level on its island site, with lawned ground to all sides. It is bounded by a roughcast-rendered wall with cement coping surmounted by cast-iron railings. Square roughcast-rendered piers with gabled caps mark the southwest corner and the west and northwest entrances; those at the entrances support original cast-iron gates, designed in 1905 by Belfast architect Samuel Close and made by Cockburn and Company.

The history of the site and building is remarkably well documented. The parish is first recorded in 1262, and ecclesiastical taxation records from around 1306 suggest a church existed by that date. By 1622 the church of Ahorton was described as decayed; its remains, including a medieval piscina, can still be seen opposite nearby Flowerfield House. Ordnance Survey Memoirs date this early church to around 1535 and attribute it to the O'Neills of Flowerfield demesne. The oldest surviving tombstone in the graveyard is dated 1713.

A new church on a different site was built in 1826 at a cost of just under one thousand pounds, most of which was advanced by the Board of First Fruits and later cancelled by its successor the Commissioners of Church Temporalities. It was consecrated on 25th April 1827. As Portstewart grew in popularity as a bathing resort, the church of 200 seats proved too small, and competition from Methodist and Presbyterian congregations in the town added further impetus for change. A decision was taken to move the church stone by stone to a new site in the town centre offered by a Mr Cromie — a notably unusual undertaking. The move allowed the seating capacity to be increased from 200 to 280. The name of the architect involved in the 1839 rebuilding is not known. The stone from the earlier building was reused, with basalt for the main walling and contrasting dressed stone for quoins and architraves; the west side facing the promenade was laid in more carefully dressed courses than the less prominent elevations. The new church opened on 18th December 1839 and was dedicated on 15th July 1841. The estimated cost was nearly £1,200, part raised by subscription, with a grant of £100 from the Irish Society. A ground plan of the 1839 church, which survives, shows a nave, tower and entrance porch, with a pulpit at the north end, an altar at the east end, box pews throughout, a central stove and font, and separate entrances for the congregation through the tower and the rector through the north porch and vestry.

An early engraving of around 1850 and photographs of around 1900 show that the tower doorway was altered in the second half of the 19th century: crocketed finials originally on the tower were replaced, and the tracery in the ground-floor tower window was altered.

The church and yard were valued at £35 in Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864, with no significant changes recorded in the Annual Revisions. In January 1856, a circular memorial tablet — still present in the church — was placed there by William W. Campbell Esquire of the Castle, in memory of Captain John Robinson of the 84th Regiment, killed at Sebastopol on 18th June 1855 at the age of 29. In April 1858 a memorial tablet of Carrara marble, carved by Fitzpatrick Brothers of Belfast, was installed in memory of Colonel and Mrs Cairnes and their son Lieutenant Cairnes. Lieutenant Cairnes had served with Victorian hero John Nicholson during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and survived the assault on Delhi near the Kashmir Gate — in which Nicholson and many others died — only to fall ill and die of cholera shortly afterwards.

As the Gothic Revival reached its full flowering in the later 19th century, a chancel was considered a necessary addition. Designs were commissioned from Thomas Drew, and Emily Cromie offered to finance the project in memory of her husband, who had provided the original site forty years earlier. Construction took place during the winter of 1878 to 1879 at a cost of £1,100. The congregation was reoriented to face south towards the new chancel, and the pews were rearranged in two rows with a central aisle. The pulpit and reading desk of the former triple-decker pulpit were separated and placed on either side of the entrance. A small vestry was provided to the east but was altered in 1880 after proceedings were threatened because it encroached on the road.

The north porch was slightly altered in 1899 and then more radically extended in 1961 to provide a robing room for the choir. A new pulpit of Caen stone was installed in 1893. In 1933 an organ was purchased from the Liverpool firm of Rushworth and Dreaper for £1,175 (renovated in 1990), and a gabled extension was added to the west of the chancel to house it. Work on the chancel continued through the 1920s to 1940s, including terrazzo flooring, oak panelling and upgraded seating and furniture, mostly by Belfast firm Purdy and Millard. A new set of four bells was cast in a Dublin foundry in 1919 as a war memorial, replacing the former single bell, and recast there by M. F. O'Byrne in 1982. New choir pews were installed in 1947.

Major renovations including work to the roof took place in 1981 to 1982 in preparation for the church's 150th anniversary. The lancet window glass, which had been renewed in 1936 by Clokey and Company of Belfast, was replaced at this time with modern stained glass panels on biblical themes, all gifts of parishioners; the designs were by George Nicholl and the maker was Caldermac of Lisburn. A new memorial east window was fitted in 1993, and a new opening was made for a window in the west wall of the nave in 2001.

Agherton Parish Church is a good example of the work of Thomas Drew, a prominent architect, and despite the loss of some historic fabric during the 1980s refurbishment, retains much of its early character. It remains a landmark building in Portstewart and continues to hold considerable social interest for the local community.