St Patrick's RC Church, (off) Barnfield Road, Lagmore, Lisburn, Co Antrim

St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Lagmore

St Patrick's is a small, plain single-storey gabled Roman Catholic church of 1802, possibly built around the fabric of an earlier church of 1745. The building was extensively refurbished in the 1830s, with a small gabled porch added in 1925. It stands in a secluded rural location to the south of Barnfield Road, less than half a mile north of the village of Milltown and approximately two and a half miles west of Dunmurry. The church is surrounded by a small graveyard edged with mature trees, with a single-storey vernacular dwelling of around 1835—originally the sexton's house and vestry—situated to the south-west.

The front gabled elevation faces west. At the centre of the gable sits a small gabled porch, with its entrance consisting of a timber-sheeted door set within a recess with splayed reveal and shallow pointed arch head. The arched head has a simple moulded archivolt above which sits a matching pointed arch dripstone moulding, stretching between two diagonal buttresses at each end of the gable. A recent electric light has been added over the doorway. To both the north and south faces of the porch are small pointed arch windows. The porch roof is covered in concrete tiles, with a rendered parapet with kneelers and stone cross at the apex.

High on the gable of the main portion of the building is a small roundel window with plain surround and moulded dripstone, filled with stained glass. The north façade of the main portion has two pointed arch windows with plain surrounds and dripstone moulding, also filled with stained glass. The south façade repeats this arrangement. The gable features a central grouping of three pointed arch windows set at a high level, with the centre window taller than the others and the mouldings and surrounds linked. Below is a stepped cill course moulding. Reducing angled buttresses stand at the corners of the main portion.

The entire façade is finished in painted rough-cast render with a smooth render base to the gables, porch, verge and eaves courses. Buttress caps are also finished in smooth render. The main roof is covered in concrete tiles and has rendered parapets with kneelers and stone crosses at the apexes. A small cone-topped fleche crowns the ridge. Recent PVC guttering and cast iron downspouts have been added.

The church is surrounded by a small graveyard containing headstones dating from the early 1800s onwards. The graveyard is bounded to the north, south and east by mature trees, and to the west by a low rendered wall with stone coping. The wall bends inward to an entrance gate directly in front of the church, featuring simple square piers with shallow pyramidal caps and simply decorated wrought iron gates, likely made by a local blacksmith in the 19th century or earlier.

History

The land was held by the O'Hamill family in the 17th century. It is possible that Reverend Phelomy O'Hamill, a member of the family in holy orders, built a church here shortly after his ordination in 1667. Until the building of St Mary's Church in Chapel Lane in 1784, the parish of Derriaghy encompassed a large area to the south-west of Belfast as well as the town itself. In 1744, during disturbances occasioned by the threat of invasion from the Young Pretender, the church was burnt. It was rebuilt the following year by Reverend McMullan.

Evidence from the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1837 states that the post-1745 church was 48 feet long and thatched. The building was burnt again during the rising of 1798 and not reopened until 1802, by which time it had been reduced in length to the present 36 feet and given a slate roof. It is uncertain whether the reduction involved complete demolition and reconstruction or simply the removal of part of the old structure. The building's grading as "old" in the valuation of 1835 suggests that much of the mid-18th-century structure survived.

In 1836 the church underwent complete refurbishment and roof replacement at a cost of £100. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1837 describe the building as being "lighted by 4 Gothic, 1 arch and two oblong windows…[with] the altar in the east end elevated some feet above the floor, and on the north side of it a small place enclosed by timber railing for the choir…" The grounds are noted as "a good yard enclosed by a quickset fence and the exterior of it planted with forest trees. Entrance by a wooden gate and only one person buried in the yard."

The small dwelling to the south, which served as the vestry and sexton's house, does not appear in the Ordnance Survey map of 1832 or the valuation of 1835, but was present by 1858 when it appears on the Ordnance Survey map of that year. The church retained its early 19th-century form until the 1920s, when the porch was added. Electricity was installed in 1984, and following a malicious fire in 1986, the roof was replaced.