Christ Church of Ireland, 22 Derriaghy Road, Magheralave, Lisburn, Co.Antrim, BT28 3SH

Christ Church of Ireland, Derriaghy

This free-standing Church of Ireland parish church was built in 1871–2 to designs by the architects Welland and Gillespie, on a site where a church has stood since at least 1204. It is considered one of the most striking churches in Northern Ireland. The listing covers the church itself together with its gate screen, gates, and boundary walling.

The building is rectangular on plan, facing west, constructed in uncoursed random rock-faced sandstone with tooled dressings. Its most dramatic external feature is a tall, obliquely set, square-plan tower to the northwest corner, rising to a four-sided stone needle-spire. The tower has lancet belfry openings to all four sides, each fitted with two large stone louvres and a continuous decorative impost moulding. The spire rises in three stages of decorative apertures, finishing in ashlar stonework at the upper section and surmounted by a copper finial. The spire reaches a height of 120 feet and holds a bell by Sheridan of Dublin. A squat stair turret projects from the southwest corner of the south nave wall, with a series of vesica openings below eaves level and slender lancets that reveal the spiral stair within; it is covered by a semi-conical roof with a lead ridge and decorative copper finial.

The principal roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, lead valleys, and replacement metal rainwater goods carried on exposed rafter feet. The chancel roof is steeper in pitch, with hipped sections to either side where it meets the lower pitch of the nave. There is a lean-to roof to the porch and a hipped roof to the rear vestry.

The west front is defined by a crow-stepped gable — an unusual and distinctive choice within the Gothic idiom — with lead flashing, ashlar stone coping, and moulded kneeler stones. A large circular window of plate tracery, featuring a series of cusped circles with a Gothic hood moulding above, dominates this gable. A lean-to open porch spans the full width between the steeple and the stair turret below the gable, its rubble sandstone walls having rounded jambs to the opening, small square-headed windows to either side, and an oversized elaborately carved foliate course below a concave eaves course. The porch is entered through a pair of wrought-iron gates and has a terrazzo floor.

Window openings throughout are Gothic-arched, formed in chamfered sandstone ashlar, and filled with stained glass protected by storm glazing. On the north elevation, the nave is abutted at the northeast corner by an angled gabled organ chamber, added in 1904, with two window openings flanked by buttresses. These windows contain geometric tracery made up of four cusped lancets each, three roundels above, and hood mouldings with foliate label stops. A tall lancet opening sits at the west end of the north nave wall, with small lancets to either side of the organ chamber. The east end presents a gabled chancel with a large Gothic-arched east window containing geometric tracery of six cusped lancets, several trefoil roundels, clustered colonettes to the jambs, and a compound archivolt. The south nave elevation mirrors the arrangement of the north, and is abutted at the southeast corner by an angled vestry — itself an addition to the original building — with a pointed-headed door opening. Raised gables to the chancel and organ chamber have moulded apex stones, ashlar coping, and moulded kneeler stones. The nave walling has tooled corners and stepped buttresses with tooled offsets, and a projecting plinth course with a tooled finish runs at the base.

The interior is of particular note. It has a semicircular-ribbed roof springing from carved corbels — an impressively vaulted ceiling of a kind more usually associated with stone roofs of early English Gothic churches. The roof boarding and the seating are stained and varnished. The organ chamber houses an unaltered organ by Norman and Beard of Norwich. The present reredos was installed in 1972.

The entrance to the site from Derriaghy Road to the northwest is through a pair of decorative wrought-iron gates hung between a pair of rock-faced sandstone ashlar piers set at oblique angles, with capstones and iron lanterns. Curved rubble stone walls with stacked coping extend to enclose the site along Derriaghy Road to the north. A bitmac avenue leads from these gates to the church entrance, passing the former stable block on the right. The church sits within a large, sloping, tree-lined cemetery containing many stone, marble, and iron grave markers and box tombs dating from the 18th century to the present. A single-storey hall to the south dates from around 1950.

The church has group value with the adjacent former stable block.

Historical background

There has been a church at Derriaghy since at least 1204, though the precise locations of the earliest buildings are uncertain. The church that immediately preceded the present one was built in 1806–7, replacing an earlier structure on the same site; it appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–3. That church was listed in the Townland Valuation of 1828–40 at a value of £7 6s, and in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 at £11 5s, with dimensions recorded on both occasions. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs for the period provide a detailed description of the earlier church, and photographs of it are held by the vestry.

By the 1860s, the poor condition of the earlier building and the growth of the congregation made a replacement necessary. In 1864, the rector, Reverend Henry Stewart, reported that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had promised £2,000 toward a new church, on condition that the parish contributed. The new church was designed by William Gillespie of Welland and Gillespie, and the foundation stone was laid in 1871. The building was consecrated in October 1872. The Irish Builder of 1 November 1872 reported the completed church as consisting of a nave 90 feet by 40 feet with an apse at the end, the whole costing approximately £3,500; the builders were Messrs Lowry and Son of Belfast. Valuation fieldbook records from 1866–79 reflect the construction, noting an increase in value to £28. The organ chamber was added in 1904.