St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, (aka Killyclogher Chapel), Old Mountfield Road, Killyclogher, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT79 0AX

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Killyclogher

St. Mary's is a detached double-height stone Roman Catholic church with Gothic detailing, rebuilt in 1879 on the site of an earlier chapel that appears on maps from 1833 and 1854. The church was renovated in 2009. It is Grade B2 listed and situated on an elevated site within a graveyard enclosed by a roughcast boundary wall with saddleback basalt coping.

The church is well-proportioned and finely ornamented, retaining an interesting T-plan. It faces east, with a transept projecting to the east, a chancel projection to the west, a former sacristy to the west, and a modern double-height gabled sacristy with a linking block to the south. The building is constructed of squared and tooled basalt built to courses, set on a plinth with diagonal buttresses, sandstone quoins, and offsets to corners. The pitched natural slate roof is finished with crested blue and black clay ridge tiles and replacement ogee-profile gutters supported on cut sandstone corbels. Cut sandstone verges with crosses at the apex complete the roofline.

The principal east elevation is abutted by the transept at its centre, with three Gothic stained glass lancets on each exposed side. These lancets have splayed sandstone surrounds and flush sills. The transept has two paired windows and a single window to each cheek; the left cheek also contains a Gothic replacement vertically sheeted varnished timber door with splayed sandstone surround. The south gable is abutted by the linking block at its centre; the exposed section is detailed as the transept gable. The rear west elevation is abutted by the chancel projection at its centre and the former sacristy to the right. The exposed section has two windows to the right end and a single window to the left. The chancel gable features a single Gothic sandstone window with Geometric tracery (stained glass was temporarily removed at the time of survey), with a blank left cheek and a right cheek entirely abutted by the sacristy. The sacristy gable is blank with a cut sandstone chimneystack at its apex; its exposed section has two windows, and the right cheek has two additional windows. The north elevation matches the south gable in detail but includes a door at the centre.

Some original interior elements survive, including a fine exposed roof structure with stop-chamfered spine beams. However, recent alterations have compromised the church's character overall. The building remains a good example of a small rural church despite these changes.

Historical Context

Valuation Revisions record the earlier chapel exempted from tax as the "R.C Chapel and graveyard," valued at £12. In 1879, the valuation increased to £60 as the church was "rebuilt." The Roman Catholic Body is recorded as occupier from 1922 onwards. The church appears in its current form on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1905–1906, captioned "St Mary's RC Chapel."

The altar, stained glass window, and a memorial plaque were installed in 1904 as gifts from the late Edward Boyle (died 1898), a local financier and owner of a tobacco factory who was among Omagh's wealthiest businessmen in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The stained glass window is a crucifixion by Mayer & Co. of Munich. Boyle is thought to have given in excess of £11,000 towards Catholic church building in the area.

The graveyard contains burials of patients from the nearby Tyrone and Fermanagh County Hospital, interred there until around 1867, when the hospital's Residential Medical Superintendent recorded that the parish priest had refused to bury further patients. The hospital had proposed a half-acre cemetery in 1861 but had decided against the expense.