St John’s Church of Ireland, Dunnalong, Victoria Road, Bready, Co Tyrone, BT82 0EB

St John's Church of Ireland is a Gothic Revival church built in 1865 and extensively renovated around 1998, located on the west side of Victoria Road at its corner with Dunnalong Road in Drumgauty. The church was consecrated on 1 November 1866.

The building is characterised by simple proportions enlivened by eclectic ornamentation typical of the Victorian period, including Romanesque chevron stone detailing and Gothic windows with buttressing, polychromatic brick dressings showing the influence of Ruskin's principles. The steeply sloping roof, mirrored in the boundary wall coping, and the treatment of the main entrance and attached belfry are influenced by early Christian Irish church architecture. The church forms an impressive local landmark on the main road between Derry and Strabane.

The church consists of a central nave with a full-height gabled vestry to the south-east, a single-storey gabled porch to the south-west, and an engaged belfry also to the south-west. The roof is replacement pitched natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles set over deep overhanging eaves with exposed rafter-ends, raised sandstone verges, and a stone chimney-stack with original clay pot to the east. Walls are of roughly coursed granite rubble with ashlar sandstone quoins and red brick string course.

Windows throughout are pointed-arched-headed in sandstone with plate tracery, containing cusped pointed-arched-headed leaded lattice lights set within stepped sandstone surrounds surmounted by red and yellow brick voussoirs. The principal elevation faces south and consists of a two-window-wide nave at the centre, with the right-hand window containing leaded stained glass. To the left stands the gabled porch with a pointed-arched-headed rebated entrance opening with red and yellow brick voussoirs containing double-leaf vertically sheeted timber doors with cast-iron strap hinges. The porch is flanked left and right by buttresses containing cusped chamfered apertures at the base and surmounted by a blind oculus in pointed-arched-headed stone to the apex, enclosed by chevron carving to the eaves. The gabled vestry to the right contains a large plate tracery window and features a pointed-arched-headed entrance to the left with a cusped round-arched-headed opening containing a vertically sheeted timber door, and a single cusped pointed-arched-headed window to the west elevation. The west elevation contains two small pointed-arched-headed windows at low level surmounted by a central rose window with pointed-arched-headed voussoirs, adjoined at the right by a gabled belfry containing a pointed-arched-headed chamfered bellcote with a bronze bell supported on chamfered piers and accessed via concrete steps to the basement. The north elevation contains three windows, the left-hand window having three lights surmounted by an oculus.

The building stands within a rural churchyard containing a selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century memorials and gravestones to north and south. The site is bounded on all sides by rubble walling with rubble coping. The entrance gates are wrought iron in distinctive design set in sandstone pillars.

The church first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1905, captioned "St John's Church" and "Grave Yard." The Annual Revisions for 1864 note that the church was being built but had not been completed. By 1879 the church had been valued at £49 10 shillings and the yard at 10 shillings. According to the Diocesan History for Derry and Raphoe, Dunnalong was formed as a perpetual curacy out of Donagheady parish. From the 1830s to 1860s, requests were made for a church to be built in the lower part of the parish of Donagheady. Finally, a decision was made to create the perpetual curacy of Dunnalong, with bounds corresponding closely to those of the manor of Dunnalong. The perpetual curate was to be paid a salary of £80 per annum. The church of St John was built in 1865 on a plot of land formerly leased from James McGettigan, with building costs covered by a grant from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The first perpetual curate was Frederick James Clark, who had previously been curate of Donagheady. The church is remarkable for its steeply pitched roof and remains one of the landmarks on the main road between Derry and Strabane.