St Joseph's RC Church, Moorlough Road, Glenmornan, Strabane, Co Tyrone, BT82 0ER

St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church is a simple late Victorian single-cell church built around 1879, located on the north side of Moorlough Road in the rural hamlet of Glenmornan, County Tyrone. The church stands on an elevated site by the roadside and represents the latest in a succession of Catholic places of worship on this location, replacing an earlier church dating from around 1793 and an open-air mass centre known as the Church of the Apple Tree.

The church is rectangular in plan with a four-stage tower to the west and a vestry to the north. The main body is constructed of painted roughcast with painted stepped quoins over a smooth rendered plinth. The roof is pitched with natural slate, angled clay ridge tiles, and stone Celtic cross finials to each gable. Bargeboards are plain, and half-round cast-iron rainwater goods complete the detailing.

The south-facing elevation is five windows wide, featuring Y-tracery timber diamond-lattice lancets with blocked rendered surrounds and hood moulds, painted projecting stone sills. The entrance gable faces west and is abutted by the tower. Windows throughout the church follow the same Y-tracery pattern with gothic arched stone surrounds. The east gable contains a circular stained glass window at upper level.

The tower is the principal architectural feature, mostly roughcast except for the third stage, which is constructed of random course rubble blackstone. Quoins mark each stage, with upper stages delineated by a moulded stringcourse. The south face has a gothic arched entrance with reveals detailed as windows, now fitted with double-leaf replacement timber boarded doors and accessed by a concrete ramp. The second stage features a gothic arched window to the south. The third stage displays a quatrefoil roundel in rendered reveal on each principal face. The fourth stage is diminished in size with louvred lancets to each face, topped with a crenellated parapet.

The vestry to the north has four windows and is further extended by a small L-shaped extension built into a bank to the rear, detailed as the main church with gothic arched windows in plain reveals. A square-headed timber-sheeted door to the west serves the vestry, with a window to its left. The east side has a single window. A roughcast chimney with decorative pot serves the vestry gable.

The church has been recently refurbished, with replacement of internal fabric and entrance doors reducing its original architectural character. However, the timber lattice windows remain intact, providing visual interest to the otherwise plain exterior.

The churchyard is surrounded by a roughcast retaining boundary wall with rubble stone soldier-coursed coping, accessed by concrete perimeter paths. Square piers to the left end support decorative cast-iron gates. A wall-mounted post-box dating from the reign of Queen Victoria, plainly detailed with V.R. in raised letters, represents early communication infrastructure in this rural area. The earliest recorded gravemarker in the churchyard dates to 1860.

The current church replaced an earlier Catholic chapel erected in the early 1790s, probably 1793, at the same site. Townland Valuation Records of 1828–40 document an "R.C. Chapel" of dimensions 70 by 24.6 by 11.6 feet. The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1833 captions this as "R C Chapel", and a subsequent edition in 1854 shows the chapel had been enlarged by an extension along the northern façade. Griffith's Valuation records the chapel with similar dimensions but the addition of a vestry measuring 14 by 15 by 6 feet, valued at £7 15 shillings. The leaseholder at this time was the Marquis of Abercorn, and the priest was Reverend B. McKenna. The original church was replaced in 1879 by the present stone building, which remains as the chapel for the area.

Historical sources indicate that the first church in Leckpatrick parish was erected in the early 1790s, probably 1793, at Glenmornan, with land made available by the Abercorn estate. This chapel appears to have been erected near the site of an open-air mass centre in the area, with folk tradition recording a mass rock known as the Church of the Apple Tree in close proximity. The choice of Glenmornan as the chapel site likely owed much to its location in a strongly Catholic area and its remoteness, making it unlikely to cause offence to nearby Protestant families and providing refuge in penal times. Folk tradition suggests the original church served as a burial ground for the surrounding parishes for a considerable period in the nineteenth century, highlighting its importance as one of the earliest post-penal Catholic establishments in the region.