Christ Church, Infirmary Road, Londonderry, County Londonderry, BT48 7HH

Christ Church, Infirmary Road, Londonderry

Christ Church is a Gothic Revival church built in 1830 to the designs of John Ferguson, constructed under the patronage of Bishop of Derry William Knox (1762–1831) at a cost of £760. It was consecrated on 22nd August 1830. The church holds the distinction of being the first purpose-built Protestant church erected outside the city walls of Londonderry, and stands as one of a group of significant early 19th-century buildings — alongside the nearby Lunatic Asylum (1825–29), Foyle College (1814) and the Infirmary (1810) — that marked the beginning of Derry's northward expansion. Originally known as the Free Church, it was intended as a chapel-of-ease for the lower classes, though its congregation quickly came to include all classes and professions as the city's population grew through the mid-19th century. The Townland Valuation of around 1830 set its initial value at £14 14s.

The church is a free-standing, hall-type Gothic Revival building on a cruciform plan, with a battlemented three-stage square tower to the south. It is built of rubble schist and whinstone with Barony Glen Sandstone dressings — locally quarried materials recorded in the Natural Stone Database. The church is set behind a low boundary sandstone wall with modern railings above, on the west side of Infirmary Road. The entrance gates, which give access to the tower on the east side, are a pair of cast-iron gates with vertical bars hung on square sandstone pillars, flanked by a further pair of pillars with vertical bar railings between them on a low plinth wall.

The east elevation faces onto Infirmary Road and features four stained glass Y-tracery openings set in the rubble wall, with painted quoins to the gable corner close to the tower. A projecting gabled transept has double Y-tracery stained glass windows, a rose window above, and a crocketed finial at the apex. A small entrance porch has been added to the north side of the transept. The eaves are carried on corbel brackets and the pitched roof is covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and sandstone barge stones.

The south elevation faces onto the entrance to Brooke Park and its associated Gate Lodge. The square tower at this end has corner buttresses, sandstone string courses, quatrefoil and lancet louvred openings, and double timber-sheeted doors to both east and west set within slightly recessed arched openings with shouldered hood moulds. There is a large tracery window to the south. The nave windows on this elevation are Y-tracery with quatrefoil lights, hood moulds, and foliated label stops. The tower is crowned with a crenellated parapet above a sandstone string course and square pinnacles at the four corners. The west elevation was not accessible at the time of survey but follows a similar pattern of fenestration and materials to the east elevation.

The north elevation faces onto a small laneway with a modern housing development to the rear. The chancel gable has a large Y-tracery window with a single cusped light to the centre, flanked by paired cusped lights with quatrefoils and trefoils above, a sill mould with label stops below, and a hood mould with foliated label stops. A small sandstone cross sits at the apex.

Materials throughout include natural slate roofing, cast-iron rainwater goods, schist, whinstone and sandstone walling, sandstone mullions, and modern timber-sheeted doors.

The church has undergone several phases of alteration and expansion since its construction. Almost immediately after consecration in 1830, a gallery and vestry room were added and gas pipes installed at a cost of £145; the gallery increased the church's capacity to 340 persons. By the time of the second edition Ordnance Survey map (1853), the church had been extended to its north side, most likely corresponding to the vestry room added in 1832. In 1862, Welland and Gillespie — newly appointed architects to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1860 — installed a new pulpit and replaced the church pews; the building work was contracted to Richard Gailey of Maxwell and Gailey, a local firm with offices on the Strand Road. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 valued the church at £70 and noted it continued to be administered by the Bishop of Derry and Raphoe; this valuation remained unchanged through the Annual Revisions until 1931, despite subsequent works.

The most extensive changes came in 1881, when John Guy Ferguson (died 1901) — son of the original architect and the designer of St Augustine's Church and the Apprentice Boys' Hall — added the transepts and chancel, transforming the plain Gothic hall church into its present cruciform form. This work, which cost £2,000 as recorded in the Irish Builder, required the removal of the 1832 vestry room and gallery. Renovation work was proposed for 1921 at an estimated cost of £2,500, though it is not known whether this was carried out. In 1969 a foundation fault necessitated the complete reconstruction of the east nave wall, undertaken by W. and M. Given. The First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1935) increased the church's value to £250, rising further to £320 by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72).

In 1978 the Department of the Environment included Christ Church within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area, and the building was subsequently listed in 1979. In 1996 the church was severely damaged by an arson attack that reduced it to an empty shell and destroyed all original interior fabric. Thanks to the efforts of the congregation, reconstruction works totalling £760,000 restored the church to its former external appearance, and it was rededicated on 1st May 1998 by the Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. Despite the substantial loss of historic interior fabric and detailing, the building remains an impressive and well-proportioned structure whose external detailing is consistent with its period and style.

Christ Church forms part of an important architectural group together with the Gate Lodge, Craig Memorial Hall, and St Eugene's Cathedral. Its entrance gates are also considered part of the ensemble of piers, low walls, and railings forming the entrance to Brooke Park. The listing extends to the church itself, the gate pillars, railings, and walling.