Sixmilecross Presbyterian Church, Meeting House Road, Sixmilecross, Omagh, Co Tyrone, BT79 9NQ

Sixmilecross Presbyterian Church

This detached double-height single-cell Presbyterian Church was built around 1860 on the east side of Meeting House Road in Sixmilecross, on the site of an earlier meeting house. The building is a plain meeting house of good quality, well set within its graveyard. It was largely renovated around 1900 to designs by Matthew Alexander Robinson, M.R.I.A.I., of Londonderry.

The church consists of a rectangular nave with a single-storey porch to the west and a single-storey gabled extension to the north-east, added around 1900. The roof is pitched natural slate with blue and black clay ridge tiles over a corbelled eaves course, with raised stone verges on moulded kneelers. A chimney-stack rises from the east gable, and two metal ventilation cowls are positioned on the ridge.

The walls are coursed rubble with ashlar sandstone quoins. The west elevation has ruled-and-lined render. Windows are gothic in form, set within stepped sandstone surrounds and containing leaded stained glass, with chamfered sandstone sills. The principal gable faces west and is abutted at ground floor by the porch. The exposed section of this gable contains a stone plaque with a hood mould surmounted by a gothic louvred opening.

The porch has a flat roof with moulded coping to the parapet. The central opening is gothic and chamfered, with a stepped sandstone surround and a hood mould with label stops. This contains vertically-sheeted double-leaf timber doors surmounted by a gablet. Single windows flank the doors to left and right; the north and south elevations of the porch are blank. The north elevation of the main building is four windows wide. The east gable contains a single gothic louvred opening to the apex, abutted at ground floor right by a flat-roofed link block to the extension. The south elevation is four windows wide.

The 1900 renovations, described in The Irish Builder of 15 November 1900, were comprehensive. A new porch was built, along with a minister's room and heating chamber beneath. The interior was completely cleared out and refitted with new flooring, pews, wainscoting and ceiling all in pitch pine. The pulpit is of pitch pine and walnut, with panels of selected figured pine featuring cushed open work. New leaded windows were installed by Messrs S W Clokey and Co. of Belfast. The work was executed by John Thompson of Newmills, Dungannon. At this period the church seated 300 people and comprised a main block, entrance, vestry, porch and outbuilding.

A previous meeting house existed on this site, appearing on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 as a "Meeting House" and "Grave Yard". The Townland Valuation records it as a "Seceding Meeting House" with a Study House and Stable, valued at £3.18s. The building is mentioned in Lewis's Topographical Dictionary in 1837. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 lists it as a "Presbyterian Meeting House and Burial Ground" valued initially at £10.10s, with a subsequent revision to £15.10s, possibly coinciding with the rebuilding around 1860. The third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905–6 shows the replacement building captioned as "Presbyterian Church". By 1933, the church was valued at £65 and held in fee. The lessor was recorded in Annual Revisions as the Earl of Belmore.

The setting comprises a graveyard containing nineteenth and twentieth-century grave markers and memorials; the earliest marker dates from 1854. A church hall was built to the north-west around 1960. The site is bounded to the road at the west by board-marked rendered walling with stone coping. Entry is through a pair of square pillars with pyramidal coping supporting a pair of cast-iron gates to the south-west. A smooth rendered alcoved plinth wall surmounted by wrought-iron railings extends along the west, with vehicular access through a pair of wrought-iron gates supported by square pillars.