Saint John's Parish Church of Ireland, Main Street, Moira, County Down

Saint John's Parish Church of Ireland is a rendered Church of Ireland church built around 1723, situated on the east side of Main Street, Moira, County Down, to the north of Meeting Street. It stands on a slightly elevated site and faces west. It is of national significance as a very early classical church, and constitutes an important element of Moira's architectural heritage. The building presents a remarkable example of early classical architecture blended with rural simplicity, notable both for its oddly proportioned front elevation and for the quality of its interior. The listing extends to the church and its gate screen.

Exterior

The church is rectangular in plan, with walls of rubble construction finished in roughcast render, with rusticated sandstone ashlar quoins and a chamfered sandstone trim to the rubblestone plinth course. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles and sandstone coping to both gable ends. A convex moulded sandstone eaves cornice runs along the eaves, with replacement metal guttering on brackets and replacement metal downpipes.

Window openings throughout are segmental-headed, formed in sandstone ashlar surrounds with keystones and sills, and retain their original multi-pane iron-framed windows with cylinder glass.

The symmetrical west front elevation is dominated by a four-stage square-plan tower that projects forward as a shallow breakfront from a two-storey gabled front. The tower has rusticated sandstone ashlar quoins rising to parapet level, a lead-lined sandstone ashlar parapet wall with cornice, and is surmounted by an octagonal copper-clad spire, replaced around 1998. The upper two stages of the tower have diminutive segmental-headed openings with sandstone surrounds and timber louvres. The moulded sandstone eaves cornice continues across the full width of the front elevation, with a plain frieze below.

The principal entrance doorcase on the west front is an elaborate carved sandstone composition, restored around 2008. It features a segmental-headed door opening fitted with replacement double-leaf hardwood panelled doors and an overlight, all within a surround matching the window surrounds, with a foliate keystone and foliate spandrels. The door is flanked by a pair of Doric pilasters on plinth blocks, supporting a full Doric entablature (itself replaced around 2008) and a segmental pediment above.

The north nave elevation is three windows wide and has a segmental-headed door opening at lower level with a rendered surround and replacement double-leaf hardwood panelled doors. The east rear gable is abutted by a slender chimney flue and has a single round-headed window opening with a rendered surround, sandstone sill, and stained glass with storm glazing. Cantilevered sandstone slabs project from the rear. The south nave elevation is also three windows wide.

The church was extensively repaired in 2008, and the copper spire was re-sheeted and cracks in the stone tower repaired in 1998.

Setting

The church is set well back from the east side of Main Street on its slightly elevated site, surrounded by stone, marble, and iron grave markers and table tombs. Access from Main Street is via a long tarmac drive opening through a pair of iron gates on square rendered piers, with quadrant rendered walls extending along the road frontage, coped in flint. A further side entrance opens onto Meeting Street, with modern gates leading to a tarmac parking area.

Interior

The interior contains a number of noteworthy elements. According to J. F. Rankin, writing in 1996, features including the inner doors and the communion rail are said to have come from Moira Castle, which was demolished in the 19th century. A gallery was constructed in 1871, and an additional window was added in 1877 to admit greater light. The church had changed little since the 1830s as of Rankin's account. C. E. B. Brett observed that, while the tower detracts from the building's exterior grandeur, the interior is of greater charm than the exterior, and that both are of sufficient antiquity to command proper regard.

Historical Notes

There is some variation in the historical record regarding the church's founding. An Indenture replicated in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs records that on 9th March 1725, Arthur Hill granted one acre of land opposite Moira Castle to the Reverend Hugh Hill, then Rector of the Parish of Moira, for the purpose of constructing a parish church. However, Walter Harris, writing in 1744, states that the church was built in 1723 at the expense of "the late and present Sir John Rowdon." Lewis adds that it was erected at the joint expense of Sir John Rowdon and the Earl of Hillsborough. The Reverend C. R. J. Rudd, a former Rector, records that the Parish of Moira was created in 1721 and that before that time services were held in a nearby schoolhouse. The church was consecrated in 1723; the first Curate-in-charge was the Reverend Hugh Hill and the first Rector was the Reverend George Howse.

By 1837, the Ordnance Survey Memoirs described the church as "a plain whinstone, rectangular building, corniced with cutstone," measuring 83 feet long and 36 feet broad, with "a handsomely ornamented doorway of cutstone" and a tower at the north-west end with "a low, shingled spire." The interior was described as plain, the windows "nearly rectangular." The church was built to accommodate 400 people, though average attendance in 1837 was 250. The Townland Valuation of around 1835 rated it as a B+ class building worth £28 12s 6d. By Griffith's Valuation of 1861 it was valued at £24, a figure maintained until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1929.

Rudd records a tradition that St. John's held the first Irish Harvest Thanksgiving service in 1726, more than 120 years before the first such services in England. In 1742 repairs were carried out to the interior and windows to make the building watertight. During a visit to Moira in 1756 by the Methodist preacher John Wesley, a controversy arose when the Reverend Thomas Waring refused to grant the Earl of Moira the keys to St. John's, where Wesley had hoped to preach, on the grounds that he "would not tolerate Methodists." The Earl of Moira responded by summoning the people to the ground before Moira Castle, within sight of the church, so that Wesley could be heard.

The original slate spire was blown down in 1884 and was soon after replaced by an octagonal copper-coated wooden spire. The adjoining graveyard contains the graves of many former Rectors. Dr. Frank Harpur, missionary doctor and founder of the Harpur Memorial Hospital in Menouf, Egypt, is buried here, and there is a tradition that a child of the Reverend W. B. Yeats, grandfather of the Irish poet, is also buried at St. John's. A parochial hall opened in June 1961 was demolished in 1981 after being damaged by a car bomb, and a new Parish Centre opened in October 2002. The church was listed at Grade A in 1976.