Christ Church (C of I), Bowling Green, Strabane, County Tyrone, BT82 8BW

Christ Church (Church of Ireland) is a boldly detailed Early English Gothic church built between 1874 and 1879 to designs by John Kennedy of Londonderry. It stands on a restricted corner site on the north side of Bowling Green, Strabane, and makes an important contribution to the town's architectural heritage. It is well preserved both internally and externally.

The building is basically cruciform in plan, with a nave, side aisles, transepts, and a chancel. A large three-stage tower with a broach spire and a half-round stair-turret rises to the southeast, a vestry projects to the southwest, and a porch projects to the northeast. The church is set on a northwest-to-southeast axis, though for the purposes of the description that follows, northeast is treated as north and so on accordingly.

The walls are constructed in squared, rock-faced limestone, with sandstone quoins, tracery, dressings, stringcourses, parapets, finials, and gargoyles. All walls rise from bevelled bases. Reducing corner buttresses serve the nave, tower, and chancel; those to the tower are decorated with roundel panels. The roofs of the nave, transepts, and other projections are slated with red clay ridge tiles. The spire is clad in sandstone and features pairs of niches set within small gabled projections to all faces at roughly the midpoint of its length, and is topped with a cockerel weathervane. The rainwater goods are metal and include square downspouts fixed to the walls with decorative brackets.

The south elevation presents the chancel gable at the centre, the vestry to the left, and the tower set back to the right. The main entrance at ground-floor level of the tower consists of a recessed pointed-arch opening fitted with a timber double door with elaborate strap hinges. The opening is flanked by small marble colonnettes with decorative floral capitals, which support a deeply moulded archivolt with bands of decoration. The entrance sits within a shallow gable-topped bay whose gable is filled with moulded geometric decoration and a roundel recess; the gable also has a moulded verge with a finial and crockets. To the second stage of the tower, directly above this gable, are two tall slit windows filled with lattice panes. The third, belfry stage has a pair of large pointed-arch openings to each face of the tower, each containing geometric tracery made up of a pair of tall cusped louvred lights with a trefoil above. Each opening has gable mouldings over with finials, and between the gables there is a gargoyle. The chancel gable projects well beyond the line of the tower and contains a very large pointed-arch window with geometric tracery and a drip moulding; its lights are filled with pictorial stained glass, each protected by a fine metal grille, the action of rainwater against which has discoloured the stonework beneath. At the apex of the chancel gable is a small, unusual lemon-shaped niche with moulding over. The south face of the vestry has a pair of relatively small cusped windows with lattice panes. Directly in front of this face of the vestry, a sunken flight of stone steps leads to a basement-level doorway with a wrought-iron security gate, giving access to the boiler house situated directly below the vestry. The boiler house is no longer in use. A low wall on the south side, matching the stonework of the church, obscures the sunken steps from view.

The west elevation consists of the side aisle with the nave set back above it, the gable of the west transept, and the gable of the vestry. The side aisle has three pointed-arch windows with geometric tracery, each filled with pictorial stained glass; the window to the far left is notably narrower than the others. Above, the nave has three windows each with three cusped lights, the central light being taller, filled with lattice panes. The gable of the west transept contains a large window made up of a grouping of five tall narrow cusped lights rising in height towards the centre, the tallest central light also incorporating a trefoil; the dressings to this window appear to be relatively recent replacements. To the apex of this gable are three small pointed-arch niches. The gable of the vestry to this elevation is blank. Between the vestry gable and the transept gable there is a small pitched, lean-to-like roof section belonging to the vestry, which contains a doorway with shouldered head and a timber door, with a small flat-arch window with lattice panes to its right. Below this window there is a small lean-to projection with a timber door to the front.

The north elevation presents the nave gable flanked by the ends of the side aisles, with the north face of the porch projection to the left. The porch has a narrow cusped window with lattice panes. The side aisles each have a narrow pointed-arch window with geometric tracery and pictorial stained glass. The nave has a large window made up of three tall curved-arch-headed lights with geometric tracery and pictorial stained glass; the dressings to this window may have been replaced. To the apex of the nave gable are three very small pointed-arch niches.

The east elevation consists of the tower to the left, the gable of the east transept, the side aisle, and the front gable of the porch. At ground-floor level of the tower there is a cusped window with lattice panes; to the right of this projects the half-round stair-turret, which has a half-conical stone roof with a finial and slit windows to both stages. The gable of the east transept matches that to the west but has a drip moulding over the window. The side aisle has two windows similar to those on the west side aisle, with a quatrefoil to one and a trefoil to the other. The porch gable has an entrance similar in form to that on the tower, but slightly smaller, with two colonnettes to each side rather than three; it also has a drip moulding and the flanking buttresses have decorative gables. Directly above the porch doorway are three small cusped windows with lattice panes.

A tall stone chimneystack with curved sides to its upper stage stands at the west edge of the chancel roof, adjacent to the vestry. The church is encompassed by a gravel-covered pathway, and a recently constructed concrete disabled-access ramp leads to the entrance at the base of the tower. The grounds are enclosed by a low wall of similar construction to the church, with decorative octagonal piers rising from tall square bases and topped with octagonal pyramidal caps, some with finials. The wall has decorative iron railings and iron gates to the south and west, both of which may be replacements.

The church was built to replace an earlier 17th-century church that had stood in the old graveyard on the corner of Patrick Street and Church Street. It was designed by John Kennedy following a competition between him and eight other architects, and was built on ground purchased by the then rector, Reverend William Alexander. The builder was Hugh McClay, and the total cost came to £6,503 3s 1d. The church was consecrated by William Alexander, who by that time had become Bishop of Derry, and was dedicated to Reverend James Smith, a much-loved former rector who died in 1870.