Former Reformed Presbyterian Church Clarendon St., Londonderry

Former Reformed Presbyterian Church, Clarendon Street, Londonderry

This former Reformed Presbyterian Church is a Gothic Revival building with early Arts and Crafts influences, constructed around 1856–57 and attributed to the architect William Raffles Brown (c.1822–c.1867). It stands on a corner site at the junction of Clarendon Street and Queen Street, with its principal entrance facing south onto Clarendon Street. The building has since been converted to office use, having ceased to serve as a place of worship by 1993.

Exterior

The church is built of uncoursed squared local Derry schist walling with Glasgow Giffnock sandstone ashlar dressings, including quoins, window and door surrounds, and buttresses. The plan is T-shaped, facing south, and the building is gable-fronted with a narrow three-stage tower to the west side and single-storey entrance porches to both the west and east sides.

The roof is finished in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles featuring fleur-de-lys inserts, lead valleys set behind slightly raised gables, sandstone coping to skews, and corbelled kneelers. The narrow tower has a distinctive chisel-shaped slate roof with lead ridges. Half-round cast-aluminium guttering on out-and-up iron brackets discharges to circular cast-aluminium downpipes throughout.

Windows are generally paired or triple lancets set in sandstone plate tracery with trefoils above, fitted with leaded coloured glazing.

The symmetrical south (front) elevation presents a full-height gable flanked by single-storey entrance porches to each side. The gable is framed by tapered buttresses. The lower section of the gable is filled with sandstone plate tracery housing three lancets topped by a roundel with four trefoils, all with leaded coloured glazing and framed by a hood moulding terminating onto label-stops with a horizontal moulding below. The principal entrance consists of square-headed door openings with pierced diminutive quatrefoil timber panels to either side; vertically sheeted timber doors with iron door furniture open onto a tiled floor in the porch entrance.

The west (side) elevation is abutted towards its north end by a two-storey transept to the left and by the three-stage tower, which rises above a pointed arch doorway. This doorway is mirrored on the left side of the transept gable-end, and the two doorways are connected by a continuous sill course that runs beneath paired lancet windows and also forms a hood mould over each pointed arch doorway. The tower is framed by a stepped tapered buttress to its south-west corner and has small lancet openings to the middle stage with sandstone ashlar quoins. The upper stage has diminutive stone pointed-arch lucarnes and blind trefoil panels above to all four sides. The transept has two paired lancets and a plate tracery cusped roundel window to the gable with a small lancet opening above; at lower level there is a pointed arch doorway fitted with a pair of vertically sheeted timber doors with wrought-iron hinge brackets. A modern lean-to glazing infill fills the gap between the tower and the single-storey porch.

The north (rear) gabled elevation appears to have a hipped slate roof, though much of it is not visible as it abuts the adjoining former manse. The east (side) elevation abuts a neighbouring property and is not visible; the slate roof on this side has a series of small modern rooflights to the lower section.

Interior

Despite alterations to the original plan form, some historic interior detailing survives.

Historical Background

The building is attributed to William Raffles Brown, an architect and surveyor who practised in London, Liverpool, and Dublin before moving to Ireland in the mid-1850s. He was the nephew of the Reverend Thomas Raffles of Liverpool, and the Presbyterian Historic Almanac of 1859 refers to the church's designer as a "rising young English architect" who was a relative of the "celebrated Dr. Raffles of Liverpool." Brown was responsible for two other Derry churches of the same period: the Congregational Church on the corner of Great James Street and Queen Street (1856–58) and the Covenanters' Church on Bond's Hill in the Waterside (1857–58).

The design has sometimes been incorrectly attributed to the Scottish practice of John James Stevenson (1831–1908) and Campbell Douglas (1828–1910) of Glasgow. Douglas's obituary records that he designed a church in Derry between 1860 and 1868, and various scholars including Alastair Rowan, Williams, and Calley have associated this reference with the Reformed Presbyterian Church, suggesting Douglas may have carried out work around 1863. However, Griffith's Valuation records confirm the church was already in existence by the mid-1850s, appearing in valuation sources from 1856 onwards, when a "Covenanters Church" leased by a Mr. John W. Johnston was valued at £50.

The Ulster Architectural Heritage Society suggested a construction date of 1853, but documentary evidence does not support this: the church did not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of that year, which showed few buildings along Clarendon Street, and the street itself only extended as far west as the junction with Queen Street at that time.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church — known as the Covenanters — was formed in the late 17th century when a minority broke away from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Following the Williamite War, the Irish Covenanters refused to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith, which they held did not sufficiently recognise the position of Christ as King, and subsequently formed their own denomination. Before the Clarendon Street church was built, the Derry congregation had met at an earlier meeting house on Fountain Street, led by the Reverend Robert Niven, who would later become Moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1837 record that this original meeting house was built in 1810–11 and could seat 300 persons.

The move to Clarendon Street followed the broader mid-19th-century trend by which professional and merchant classes left the walled city in favour of the new Georgian-style terraces to the north. The church trustees procured the Clarendon Street site in 1857, described in the Presbyterian Historic Almanac as being "in the most improving part of the city… with aid from many sympathising friends both in Great Britain and America." The church opened for public worship on 3rd January 1858 and originally included a schoolroom; the adjoining manse was not built until around 1862.

The congregation continued under the ministry of Reverend Niven and the building was valued at £50 through the Annual Revisions with little change recorded until the valuation was cancelled in 1931. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1935) the value rose to £90, and by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72) it had reached £136.

The church celebrated its centenary in 1958, at which point the Derry Standard reported that it had been kept in good repair for over two decades since the appointment of the Reverend Hugh Wright in the 1930s. In 1970 the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society described the church as "a small neo-Gothic building of almost domestic scale on a corner site. Excellently handled in whinstone with a delicately conceived rectangular tower culminating in a steeply pitched roof… a very good example of neo-Gothic rogue architecture in the manner of William Butterfield." Butterfield (1814–1900) was a leading English Gothic Revival architect; however, the aesthetic of this building has been noted as appearing to pre-empt the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century. The Presbyterian Historic Almanac praised Brown's design as "a favourable specimen of the progress of modern architects in the study of Ecclesiastical Gothic [and an example of] what may be accomplished by talent and taste, in securing a pleasing structure which will ornament any landscape and delight the eye."

The church was listed in 1979 and had already been included in the designation of Clarendon Street and its surrounding streets as a Conservation Area in 1978, with the Department of the Environment describing the area as one "of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance."

Setting and Group Value

The building occupies a prominent corner site at the junction of Clarendon Street and Queen Street, within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. Its small scale, fine exterior detailing, and corner position make it a local landmark. It has group value with the adjacent former Manse on Queen Street, with which it is directly associated.