St Columbkilles Roman Catholic Church, 1 Creggan Road, Carrickmore, Omagh, Co. Tyrone, BT79 9BD

St Columbkilles Roman Catholic Church is a detached, double-height Gothic Revival church dated 1846, built to replace an earlier chapel on the north side of Creggan Road, on an elevated site above the village of Carrickmore. Construction began in 1846 under the guidance of Canon Vincent, parish priest, and was completed in 1859 according to church records. The building was subsequently delisted in March 2011, the decision reflecting that while later additions have been handled appropriately in external appearance, the complete modernisation of the interior has compromised its character to the point that it no longer meets the statutory and policy tests as a building of special architectural or historic interest.

PLAN AND STRUCTURE

The church is cruciform in plan, consisting of a nave with chancel to the east, north and south transepts, a square tower to the west, and a single-storey sacristy to the north-east added around 1990. The roof is pitched natural slate (a replacement covering) with blue/black clay ridge tiles over a corbelled eaves course and raised concrete verges. Walls are painted roughcast with diagonal sandstone buttresses with offsets terminating in square stacks above the eaves line. A porch added to the south around 1890 is constructed of squared-and-snecked sandstone with ashlar sandstone quoins, and is double-height and gabled. A smaller single-storey gabled porch was added to the north transept around 1990. Windows throughout are gothic in form, containing leaded stained glass set in smooth painted surrounds, with secondary glazing and painted sandstone sills. Rainwater goods are replacement cast-iron.

PRINCIPAL (SOUTH) ELEVATION

The principal elevation faces south and presents a two-window-wide nave to the left, abutted to the right by the gabled south transept. The transept contains a single window over a single-storey outshoot on its west side, and a single window at gallery level on its east side. The south face of the transept is abutted at its centre by the double-height sandstone porch. The exposed transept gable carries a single window to each side. The porch itself features a pair of cusped gothic windows in stepped sandstone surrounds surmounted by a quatrefoil oculus at the apex, with a cross finial to the gable. The west elevation of the porch has a single cusped gothic window. The east elevation of the porch contains the gothic entrance opening, which is fitted with replacement double-leaf vertically sheeted timber doors surmounted by a corbelled bracket supporting a bronze statue of St Columbkille, with a cusped gablet above.

WEST ELEVATION AND TOWER

The west gable is abutted at its centre by a three-stage tower. The exposed gable is abutted at ground floor level by a canted single-storey extension containing a single window to the left and a single-storey outshoot to the right. The tower's first stage contains a single window. To the south of the tower is a Tudor-arched entrance containing replacement square-headed double-leaf vertically sheeted timber doors with a slate spandrel, all in a sandstone surround and surmounted by a datestone inscribed "Erected by the Very Rev'd PTK Cannon Vincent AD 1846." A moulded string course separates the first and second stages, with head stops to the north and south elevations (which are otherwise blank at this level). A further moulded string course separates the second stage from the sandstone belfry stage above, which contains a gothic louvred opening with a hood moulding to each elevation. The tower is finished with a crenellated parapet supported on stone corbels, a gabled parapet to the west surmounted by a stone cross finial, and pinnacles with finials at the corners.

NORTH AND EAST ELEVATIONS

The north elevation presents a two-window-wide nave to the right, abutted to the left by the gabled north transept. The transept has a single window to each of its east and west faces, and its north elevation is abutted at the centre by the circa-1990 porch, which contains two windows with concrete sills and a depressed gothic double-leaf vertically sheeted timber door to the east. The exposed north gable has a single window to each side and a louvred quatrefoil oculus at the apex. The east elevation is abutted to the right by the sacristy, and its exposed gable contains a single Tudor-arched window. A sandstone chimney-stack rises above, surmounted by a stone cross finial.

SETTING

The church sits within a modern churchyard on an elevated site above Carrickmore. A graveyard to the south and west contains a range of 19th- and 20th-century grave markers and memorials, including the MacGurk memorial to the south. The site is bounded to the south along the road by rendered and rubble walling, and to the west along the car park by a rendered retaining wall. A dolmen tomb is located in the car park.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

A simple rectangular building appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 captioned as "RC Chapel," with a "church in ruins" noted nearby to the west. A number of monuments in the vicinity of this older site include one captioned "St Columbkille's bed and well." By the second edition OS map of 1854 a much larger, roughly cruciform structure had replaced the earlier chapel. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 records an "R.C. Chapel and yard" under exemptions, valued at £4. The Valuation Revisions of 1860–1929 record the lessor as Sir John M. Stewart Bt, with the chapel and yard valued at £25 0s 0d. The Stewart family had arrived in the area in 1770. In 1869 Sir John Stewart was forced to back down from a large proposed rent increase following a rousing speech delivered outside this church to an audience of 4,000 by Fr. Bernard Murphy, who served as parish priest for twenty-two years from 1869 and continued throughout his career to speak out against evictions and rent increases. The Termonmaguirke Parish Almanack of 1864 records that "the first Parish church in Termon, of which we have any record, was built in the year 1622 in the reign of King James I, after the settlement of Ulster. Its ruins are still standing in the old burial ground, near the modern Roman Catholic chapel." The wider parish is described as a relic sanctuary preserving pre-Christian monuments, portal graves, and dolmen tombs, with evidence of civilisation dating back to around 4,500 BC.

In the late 20th century the church interior was completely modernised, with extensive removal of original fabric and replacement work carried out to address modern liturgical requirements. It is this comprehensive loss of interior character that led to the building's removal from the statutory list in March 2011.