St. Aidan's Church of Ireland Church, Glenavy, Crumlin, County Antrim, BT29 4LY

St. Aidan's Church of Ireland, Glenavy

St. Aidan's is a well-proportioned Church of Ireland parish church standing on the north side of Belfast Road, Glenavy, on a site with origins stretching back to at least medieval times and possibly earlier. The present building is a stone Board of First Fruits church of the hall-and-tower type, built around 1810–1814, destroyed by fire on Christmas Eve 1938, and rebuilt in 1939 by Belfast architect D. W. Boyd. The rebuilding preserved the external form of the original structure but resulted in the loss of virtually all original interior fabric. The listing covers the church itself together with the lych-gate, boundary walls, gates, pillars, and railings.

Historical Background

A church settlement on this site is believed to date from medieval times, and local tradition holds that St. Patrick himself founded the first church at Glenavy. A structure dating from 1644 stood here until it was demolished in 1812 to make way for the present building, which was needed to accommodate a growing congregation. Construction was carried out under the incumbency of the Reverend Edward Cupples and was funded by a combination of sources: the Board of First Fruits contributed either £450 or £500 as a gift and lent a further £250; the Marquis of Hertford gave £300; the Countess of Longford supplied £20; and the remainder was raised by presentment and subscription, bringing the total cost to £1,220. The Townland Valuation of around 1830 recorded the church as a first-class building measuring 66 feet by 37 feet and 19 feet tall, valued at £24 7s., with the 50-foot steeple separately valued at £2 18s. By that date the church could seat 364 parishioners, with 47 seats in the aisle and 15 in the gallery. A second contemporary account suggests it could accommodate 400 persons and noted that it possessed a good clock with three dials.

The first Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33 depicted the church as a single oblong building. The 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoir described it as a plain building that had recently received an addition of a square turret with ornamented corners, giving it the appearance from a distance of a handsome building. In 1855 the church was renovated and extensively repaired. In 1863 the Reverend Edward Johnston Smith added the north transept. Griffith's Valuation of 1859 recorded the church's value as having risen to £26 10s., a figure that remained unchanged through the Annual Revisions until they ended in 1929. In 1887, following alterations to parish boundaries, St. Aidan's found itself within the newly created Parish of Stoneyford.

The fire of Christmas Eve 1938 was caused by severe frost damaging the heating system, which resulted in the building being engulfed in flames. The church was swiftly reconstructed by D. W. Boyd and consecrated on 28th October 1939, incorporating new woodwork throughout. No original interior features survive as a result of the fire damage. In October 2009 the floor was excavated to install cables, a new drainage system, and a toilet; a new central heating system and a small single-height vestibule were also added at this time.

Architecture

The church is rectangular in plan. A three-stage western tower adjoins the west end, flanked by single-storey annexes. At the east end there is a slightly lower chancel, abutted to the north by a transept and to the south by a vestry. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with grey ridge tiles. Rainwater goods consist of replacement half-round gutters on projecting eaves courses and cast-iron downpipes.

The walls are built of roughly coursed rubble stone over a slightly battered plinth. The north transept and chancel have diagonal buttresses with offsets.

The western entrance front faces west, with the three-stage tower projecting centrally from the gable, flanked at left and right by single-storey, gabled perpendicular annexes. The tower is divided by moulded string courses. The exposed sections of the west gable on either side of the tower each contain a single pointed-arched lattice window set in chamfered, stepped ashlar sandstone reveals.

The first stage of the tower contains the principal entrance: a double-leaf timber panelled door surmounted by a sandstone inscribed panel reading CHURCH OF ST AIDANS / DESTROYED / BY FIRE A.D. 1938 / REBUILT A.D. 1939, set within a pointed-arched, painted ashlar surround. Above the door is a blind oculus with a moulded surround. The north and south elevations of the first stage are abutted by the single-storey gabled annexes, whose ridges run parallel with the elevation; each is also surmounted by a blind oculus.

The second stage of the tower contains a clock face to the north, west, and south elevations, and a blind lunette to the east, each surmounted by a semi-circular ovolo label mould.

The third stage contains pointed-arched louvered belfry openings to all four sides, set in stepped ashlar sandstone reveals. The tower is crowned by a crenellated parapet with decorative crocket-enriched pinnacles with crops at the four corners.

The single-storey flanking annexes each contain a triple pointed-arched lattice-glazed window within chamfered, stepped ashlar sandstone reveals, surmounted by a square-headed ovolo label mould.

The nave windows are lattice-glazed Y-tracery lights set in chamfered, stepped ashlar sandstone reveals. The north elevation is abutted at the left by the double-height north transept with a pitched roof; a single nave window is visible to the right of it. The transept's north gable contains a central intersecting tracery window, with single Y-tracery windows to the east and west faces.

The east gable of the chancel contains a reticulated curvilinear stained-glass tracery window. In the internal angle between the chancel and the north transept there is a lean-to extension with similar detailing, abutted to the north by a single-storey flat-roofed extension serving as a boiler house at basement level, accessed by steps from the north. The chancel is abutted to the south by a single-storey vestry with a hipped roof, containing two modern windows to the east and accessed by a single-leaf square-headed timber panelled entrance door to the west. The south elevation of the nave is three windows wide, with pointed-arched headed lattice windows in the remaining openings.

Setting

The church stands within a large cemetery site and looks out over the adjacent graveyard. The grounds are entered from Belfast Road at the north side of Glenavy town centre through an alcoved entrance comprising cast-metal gates mounted on pairs of painted square ashlar pillars with casement mouldings, pyramidal caps, and stop-chamfers. These are separated by modern mild-steel railings supported on a random rubble plinth wall with segmental coping. The outer piers are abutted by roughcast rendered rubble walling with soldier coping at left and right. A long, narrow, tree-lined driveway leads from this entrance to a car park and then to the lych-gate, which is situated to the south of the cemetery.

The lych-gate dates from 1943, replacing an earlier gate of around 1885 that was destroyed when trees fell upon it in a storm. It was dedicated on 1st August 1943 by the Lord Bishop of Down in memory of Archdeacon Charles Watson, a former Rector of the Parish, and also in memory of Sergeant-Pilot Colin Vernon Finlay, a Royal Air Force pilot shot down over Malta in May 1942. The lych-gate has a pitched rosemary tile roof and decorative bargeboards, and is abutted at the sides by roughcast rendered walls with bolection coping.

The graveyard contains a range of plain stone grave markers and decorative burial enclosures enclosed by cast-iron railings. The earliest legible gravestone reads: HERE LIETH / THE BODY OF MARTHA / HURDMAN DAUGHTER / TO GEORGE HURDMEN / WHO DIED 3 DAY OF / MARCH 1740 / AGED 19 YEARS.

A church hall to the south-west is of no architectural interest.