St Mary's Church, 31 Dunderg Road, Macosquin, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4NE

St Mary's Parish Church, Macosquin

St Mary's is an early 19th-century Gothic Revival parish church built of blackstone, dated 1827, and situated on the south side of Dunderg Road in the village of Macosquin, in the townland of Camus Macosquin Glebe, County Londonderry. It is a Church of Ireland church, still in active use, and represents one of the best-preserved examples of a rural Georgian parish church of its type in the area. The architectural detailing is of good quality and remains largely intact.

Architectural Description

The church is rectangular in plan, with a three-stage square entrance tower to the west, a gabled chancel to the east, and a gabled vestry to the north. The chancel and vestry were added in 1867–68 to designs by Welland and Gillespie, who served as architects to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners between 1860 and 1870. The construction of these additions was carried out by George Given of Limavady, and the church was officially reopened on 9th March 1868.

The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with blue/black angled ridge tiles. The vestry gables have raised sandstone verges. Rainwater goods are plastic. The walls are of random rubblestone, squared and brought to courses on the tower, with partial ribbon pointing and sandstone dressings. The nave and chancel have buttresses with masonry offsets, with sandstone quoins to the chancel.

Windows to the nave are bipartite, leaded and stained, with cusped tracery — generally replacements — set in blocked sandstone surrounds with chamfered reveals and sills, each surmounted by a hood mould with plain square stops. The vestry and the west face of the tower have pointed-arched margined diamond metal lattice lights in chamfered sandstone surrounds with splayed sills; the tower's west-face window is also surmounted by a hood mould with plain stops. The east gable of the chancel has a window with three-light cusped tracery.

The Tower

The west-facing gabled front is abutted at its centre by the square tower. The tower rises through three stages to a crenellated parapet with corner pinnacles. The belfry stage has louvered lancets with hood moulds on all four sides. Roman numeral clockfaces are set in sandstone roundels on the north and west faces of the second stage; the south face has a square four-pane timber window. At ground-floor level on the west face there is a lattice lancet and a sandstone datestone inscribed "1827." The tower is abutted to the north by a single-storey modern entrance lobby — added in 2010 — which connects the church to the former Sunday school building to the west. This lobby opens to the south through a pointed-arched timber-sheeted door in a chamfered sandstone reveal with blackstone voussoirs.

The Nave

The nave is lit on the north side by three tracery windows. To the far left of the north elevation there is a narrow window opening with rubblestone infill, beyond which the vestry abuts the wall. The south side of the nave is similarly lit by three tracery windows. The east gable is abutted at its centre by the gabled chancel.

The Vestry

The vestry extends around from the north side of the nave to abut the right cheek of the chancel. It is lit by a lattice lancet to the east gable and two further lattice lancets to the north. Access is via a timber-sheeted door with a shouldered head set in a blocked sandstone surround on the west cheek, reached by two stone steps.

Interior

A marble memorial tablet on the north wall of the church dates from before the 1825–27 reconstruction and was erected in memory of the Richardson family of Somerset House, who were chiefly responsible for financing the repair and reconstruction of the church.

Historical Background

The site of St Mary's has an ecclesiastical history stretching back to the 6th century. According to Lewis's Topographical Dictionary, the area known as Macosquin — also called Camus Juxta Bann — takes its Latin name from a monastery founded by St Comgal of Bangor along the river Bann around 580 AD. The more commonly used name of Macosquin is derived from a medieval Cistercian abbey dedicated to St Mary de Fontana, believed to have been established at the site in 1172 and also known as Beatae Marie Clarafonte, meaning the abbey of Blessed Mary of the Clear Spring. The Cistercian Order operated there unimpeded until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the mid-16th century, after which the abbey fell into decline. In 1609, as part of the Plantation of Ulster, King James I granted the site to the London Companies Merchant Taylors Guild. According to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs, the remains of St Comgal's 6th-century monastery were demolished to provide masonry for the current graveyard wall, though an ancient Celtic cross believed to originate from the early Christian community has survived and stands in the graveyard at 6 feet 6 inches in height. In the 1830s it was described as having four compartments, each containing three apostles sculpted in high relief and profusely ornamented with scrolls and wreaths. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs also record that the final remains of the medieval Cistercian abbey were demolished to construct the parish's Glebe House, located to the south-west of the current church. St Mary's Church itself claims that the northern wall of the current building incorporates an original portion of the Cistercian abbey's north wall.

The Merchant Taylors Guild erected a church at Macosquin by 1619–22, described in Guild records from 1630 as follows: "We have one faire church built of lyme and stone, consecrated and appointed to be the Parish Church of Macosquin and Camus. It conteyneth in length four score and eight foote and in breadth thirtie two foote and it was later re-edified and repaired with a strong roofe of tymber, slated and in addition of three windows and two doors." The Ordnance Survey Memoirs record that before 1825 the church had possessed a steeple with a spire of oaken wood, which was blown down in 1805 and sold to fund repairs to the chancel. The Merchant Taylors Guild subsequently sold the parish to the Richardson family, who established themselves at Somerset House in the townland of Tullyreavy and became the most influential family in the parish.

Having stood for over two centuries, the 17th-century church was reported to be in a state of dilapidation by 1825, and the church trustees resolved to undertake its repair. The Rev. Thomas Rumbold Richardson, who had become Rector of Macosquin in 1821, instigated and largely funded the reconstruction at his own personal expense. Repair work commenced in 1825, with the Memoirs recording that £450 was spent on reconstructing the body of the church and £400 on constructing the new tower and belfry. The datestone records that major construction work was completed by 1827 — it is possible that this date specifically commemorates the completion of the tower — though the Memoirs state that work was not finally completed until 1830. The newly completed church was first recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey maps for Macosquin in 1830, which depicted it as a rectangular structure. Those maps also showed a small school building to the north side of the church, which had been demolished by around 1850 and replaced by the current single-storey schoolhouse. Between 1831 and 1836, the Ordnance Survey Memoirs described the completed church as follows: "[It] has a neat appearance. There is a new belfry with minarets at the four corners and a slated roof with the sides and gables dashed with lime and gravel. There is one entrance door and four lancet-shaped windows, and the pulpit, pews and seats are in very good repair … 238 is the total number capable of being accommodated … the length of the church is 59 feet 2 inches, breadth of the church is 23 feet 3 inches … the walls are 3 feet 10 inches thick." The Townland Valuations of around 1830 valued the church at £11. By the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map in 1849–50, no discernible alteration had been made to the church. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 recorded the church at £16, a value unchanged through the Annual Revisions until 1930. From the third edition of the Ordnance Survey maps in 1904, the church was recorded as St Mary's Church, in reference to St Mary de Fontana and the former Cistercian abbey. Under the First General Revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the value was increased to £40, and following the Second World War it was further increased to £52 under the second revaluation of 1956–72.

The church's clock was first installed in 1899 in memory of James Sinclair, a churchwarden. Its bell mechanism was damaged in 1948, and the chimes were not heard again until 1997, when the clock was repaired by a parishioner, Mr John McAllister. In 2010, a modern extension was added linking the church with the former Sunday school — now used as a church hall — and serving as an entrance foyer. This addition has resulted in some loss of integrity to the building. The church was listed in 1977.

Setting

The church occupies a square plot on the south side of Dunderg Road in Macosquin village, with the former Sunday school — now a single-storey rubblestone church hall — directly to the west. A cemetery surrounds the church on three sides and contains a variety of headstones dating from the early part of the 19th century onward, which adds considerably to the historic integrity of the site. A burial plot on the north side of the church is enclosed by rubblestone walls with sandstone coping topped by cast-iron railings with fleur-de-lis heads and a gate; this plot contains two 19th-century headstones. The remainder of the site is bounded on three sides by a random rubble wall, partly dry-stone construction. To the front, a rubble stone wall with sandstone coping is in part topped by replacement cast-metal railings, and square sandstone piers support replacement cast-metal entrance gates. The church has group value with the adjoining hall, and the whole forms part of an unspoilt rural setting.