Baronscourt Parish Church, Cloonty Road, Newtownstewart, Co Tyrone, BT78 4TG

Baronscourt Parish Church

A well-proportioned and detailed Gothic Revival Church of Ireland church, built around 1840 and funded by the Board of First Fruits. The church stands on the north side of Cloonty Road near Newtownstewart, County Tyrone, on the site of a former schoolhouse. Originally built as a private chapel for the Abercorn family and their estate workers, it has since adapted to serve the wider local community and remains an important element within the parish of Ardstraw.

The church comprises a rectangular nave with a gabled chancel to the east, abutted by a gabled vestry to the north, and a single-storey gabled porch to the south-west. The pitched roof is of natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles, supported on corbelled eaves with raised leaded verges on cavetto moulded kneelers. A chimney-stack rises from the east end, and a gabled bellcote to the west contains a chamfered pointed-arched opening housing a bronze bell.

The walls are of coursed rubble stone with ashlar sandstone quoins over a projecting plinth. Diagonal buttresses with offsets provide structural support. Windows throughout are pointed-arched-headed with ornate reticulated tracery containing leaded stained glass, set in sandstone surrounds surmounted by hood moulds and rubble voussoirs. The principal south elevation is two windows wide; two timber-framed flat-roofed dormers containing cusped lattice lights were added to the roof slope around 1920 to enhance interior illumination.

The gabled porch on the south-west elevation features pointed-arched-headed double-leaf vertically-sheeted doors surmounted by a hood mould, accessed by two stone steps. Single cusped pointed-arched-headed windows with leaded lattice lights face east and west. The west gable contains a single window, with basement access via sandstone steps. The north elevation is three windows wide with two matching dormers to the roof slope. The east gable is abutted at its centre by the chancel, which contains a large window and a single cusped pointed-arched-headed window to the south elevation. The vestry on the north elevation is entered via a pointed-arched-headed vertically-sheeted timber door accessed by four stone steps, with a pair of cusped pointed-arched-headed windows to the east elevation.

The interior is enlivened by various marble plaques and family memorials. The chancel retains plaques of the Ten Commandments and was paved in 1906. Choir stalls and an organ well were installed in 1905 in memory of the Duchess of Abercorn, the plaques having been kept in her bedroom at Baronscourt before her death. The church is believed to have been designed by Clarke and Bell, the work being consistent with their architectural style.

A single-storey vertically-sheeted timber Sunday school building with pitched slate roof and gabled rubble store stands to the north-west. The churchyard is bounded by rubble walling with rubble coping and contains nineteenth- and twentieth-century memorials, including a large Celtic cross monument to the first Duke of Abercorn, created around 1885 by sculptor Walter G. Doolin. Access to the churchyard is via square pillars supporting a pair of timber gates to the north-west, and pedestrian access is through a gabled Lych-gate to the west—one of only two such gates in the Dioceses of Derry and Raphoe, installed in 1905 in memory of the Duchess of Abercorn. The Lych-gate is timber-framed over a stone plinth with a pointed-arched-headed opening featuring quatrefoil perforations, decorative timber bargeboards, and a quarry-tiled floor, flanked by plinth walls surmounted by timber fencing and square sandstone pillars.

The church was consecrated in 1858, though construction is thought to have begun around 1840. The first Ordnance Survey map to record it is dated 1854. An 1876 drawing shows a proposed replacement chimney, suggesting the original wooden chimney was replaced around that time. Griffith's Valuation records the church as leased from the Marquis of Abercorn at a value of £14 10 shillings. The church was insured for £2,000 in 1908. Recent years have seen careful repair to detailing including the ornate reticulated tracery and stonework.