Cooneen Old Church, Cooneen, Co Fermanagh

Cooneen Old Church is a rare surviving example of a late 18th century Roman Catholic chapel in its original, unaltered form. Built around 1795 — and possibly extended to its current shape around 1810 — it is a single-storey, T-plan building of Georgian vernacular character, constructed in rubble masonry with squared stone quoins. Its significance lies largely in what was not done to it: in the decades following Catholic Emancipation, most chapels of this type were either demolished and rebuilt or heavily altered with Gothic additions. This building escaped that fate, retaining its plain, unfussy pre-1830s appearance almost intact. The only decorative additions are several cross finials of around the 1890s to some of the gables. A neighbouring mid-19th century National School, now renovated as a community centre, survives to the west and adds group value to the setting.

The building sits to the north of a rural road junction, surrounded by overgrown ground with a tarmac car park to the south. The upright of the T-plan extends northward, with a small gabled porch at its northern gable end. At the centre of the south face of the horizontal section there is a hipped-roof projection that formerly served as the vestry. To the west gable of the same horizontal section is a 1950s lean-to porch, with a small concrete block addition of around the 1970s. A further lean-to of similar date sits within the eastern intersection of the two main sections of the T, and another stands to the east side of the vestry.

The walls are finished in lime-based roughcast, and where this has fallen away it reveals the rubble construction beneath. Cut sandstone eaves courses run across and onto the gables. The 1950s additions are largely cement rendered. The main T-shaped roof is gabled and slated, with clay ridge tiles and stone parapets to the gables, two of which carry cross finials. A significant central portion of the roof has collapsed. The vestry has a hipped roof finished to match, with a rendered chimneystack to its south side. The lean-to roofs are slated, except for that in the eastern intersection, which is covered in corrugated metal.

The original main entrance is to the west side of the north porch: a doorway with a shallow pointed arch head, sheeted timber double doors, and an overlight above. The vestry and western porch doorways have flat arch heads; the vestry door is a plain sheeted timber door. The windows to the main body of the building are of Georgian proportions. Those to the northern section have shallow pointed arch heads, while those to the southern section have elliptical arch heads — only one of which remains fully visible. All have stone cills and are glazed with timber sash frames with multiple Georgian panes arranged 12 over 10. The windows to the projections are smaller, with flat arch heads and the remains of various frame types including both sash and metal casement. One window opening on the west face of the northern section has been lengthened downward to form a doorway.

The interior retains details that point to building work carried out around 1880 to 1900: turned balusters and a newel post, machined roof timbers, and horizontal glazing bars to the vestry window which, although Regency in appearance, tend to be of late 19th century date in buildings of this modest scale.

The building's history is well documented through a combination of estate maps, valuation records, and local tradition. According to Reverend James E. McKenna's 1921 work Parishes of Clogher (Vol. II), the chapel was built by parish priest Reverend Thomas Rafferty (who served 1795–1814) on a site secured from a woman named Baxter, née Maguire. An 1804 estate map by Francis Elliott, held in the Brooke Papers at PRONI (D.998/1/111), shows a building marked "Chappel" on an east-west axis within a small plot of one rood ten perches, apparently carved out of a larger holding of just over 15 acres in the name of John Baxter. Much of the surrounding land in Cooneen was held by various members of the Baxter family from at least the 1780s onwards: a Robert and John Baxter of Cooneen are mentioned in a lease of May 1787, a Patrick Baxter in one of April 1800, and leases of December 1803 confirm James, Sarah, Robert, John, and Patrick Baxter in their respective holdings. Whether the tradition that a "woman named Baxter" conveyed the land is strictly accurate remains uncertain — she may have been John Baxter's wife — but the chapel was clearly in existence by February 1804 at the latest, and may well have been built in 1795 or shortly afterwards as tradition suggests.

By 1834 the present road layout had been established and the chapel is shown on maps much as it appears today. The first valuation, carried out in August 1835 or 1836, records the building as perceived to be relatively old at that point — at least 25 to 30 years old — with a slate roof and un-rendered stone walls. It measured 58½ feet by 25½ feet by 14½ feet, with an addition to the north of 25½ feet by 25½ feet by 14½ feet. The chapel yard measured 297 feet by 130½ feet. At the same time, a single-storey thatched public house run by a Mrs Jane Baxter stood to the north-west along the new road. The chapel is notably absent from both the contemporary Ordnance Survey Memoirs and Lewis's Topographical Dictionary. The second valuation of August 1860 confirms the same dimensions, minus the later vestry and porch additions, and notes that a small National School had by then been built within the chapel grounds. By 1860 the grounds were being leased directly from the Brooke estate, and the former roadside public house to the north-west had become a private dwelling.

In or around May 1899 a "dastardly outrage" was reportedly committed in connection with the chapel, the precise nature of which is not recorded in surviving sources, though it may have occasioned repairs to the building or even replacement of the roof. The parish acquired the freehold of the site sometime between 1929 and 1935. In 1942, a new and larger Romanesque-style church designed by J. L. Donnelly was built at the crossroads a short distance to the west, next to the parochial house built in 1898 to a design by the then parish priest, Canon McKenna. With the old chapel deconsecrated around 1942, the local curate Father George McCarron had it converted into a dance hall in 1949–50. Alterations made at that time included the erection of a stage at the east end of the former nave, the construction of a wall enclosing the stairs and gallery, and the addition of the lean-to to the west gable; the other minor extensions were probably added around the same time. The building was abandoned around 1985 and is recorded as derelict.