Ballinderry Middle Church, Lower Ballinderry Road, Brakenhill, Glenavy, Crumlin, County Antrim, BT28 2JH

Ballinderry Middle Church is a gable-fronted, double-height rendered church dated 1668, set on an elevated and largely unspoiled rural site on the south side of Ballinderry Road Lower, near Glenavy in County Antrim. It is a rare and remarkably intact example of a mid-17th-century church, notable above all for its original oak furnishings and interior fittings, which survive essentially undisturbed. The church is rectangular in plan, facing west, and was extensively restored and modified around 1902 by Belfast-based architect William John Fennell, whose interventions — including a new roof, bell-cote, gallery, and external staircase — enhanced rather than compromised the building's historic character. The church is now only in occasional use and services are conducted by candlelight, as no electricity has ever been installed.

EXTERIOR

The pitched natural slate roof has black clay ridge tiles and sits behind slightly raised moulded stone coping to each gable end, terminating in sandstone gable shoulder stones and carved skew corbels. Rainwater goods consist of replacement iron guttering on iron brackets to exposed timber rafter feet, with iron downpipes. The walling is dry-dash rendered throughout.

Window openings are square-headed, modified around 1902, and contain timber-framed multi-pane arched fixed-pane lights with bulls-eye glazing. The west gable front is surmounted by a plain rendered bell-cote with sandstone coping and a square-headed bell arch housing a cast-iron bell, with a date stone below inscribed "1668 1902." A pair of oculi with spoked iron windows light the gallery at upper level on the west front. The central entrance on this elevation is a square-headed door opening with a moulded timber architrave surround set on masonry plinth blocks, housing a segmental-headed opening fitted with a pair of raised and fielded timber panelled doors with iron furniture.

The north nave elevation is three windows wide and is abutted at its west end by a stone external staircase with rubblestone coping and arches below, giving access to the gallery through a square-headed door opening with a recessed diagonally-sheeted timber door adorned with decorative iron furniture. The east gable has a single square-headed window of five arched lights with a single transom. The south nave elevation is two windows wide.

INTERIOR

The interior is considered remarkable for the quality and completeness of its surviving 17th-century fabric. It retains its original box pews and a central pulpit in three stages rising one above the other, both in oak. Other notable original features include a wide stone-flagged aisle, a small red-tiled chancel, and the bell-cote on the west gable. As one contemporary account put it, "in no country church could better examples of the conditions under which worship was held three hundred years ago be found." A wall cupboard dated 1668, an offering chest bearing the date 1706 (returned to the church at an unclear date after being moved to the Parish Church around 1824), and a hatchment bearing the arms of Bishop Jeremy Taylor are also housed within the church.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

According to Charles Brett, Jeremy Taylor, the Bishop of Down, decided to erect Ballinderry Middle Church in 1666 to replace an older church in the parish. Taylor was a former Chaplain of King Charles I who had been deprived of his living under Cromwell. Retiring to Wales, he wrote two famous works, Holy Living and Holy Dying. He came to Ballinderry in 1658 to live with his patron, Viscount Conway, and remained there until he was installed as Bishop of Down following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. With the re-establishment of the Anglican Church as the national church, Taylor was charged with depriving Covenanting Presbyterians in 36 parishes of their tithes and pulpits. He died aged 54, before the church he had commissioned was consecrated in 1668.

The church appears on the first Ordnance Survey map of the Ballinderry area in 1832, described simply as "Old Church" — a small oblong building on the road between Lower and Upper Ballinderry, with a graveyard in its grounds. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs for the area (1833–38) record that the church measures 66 feet by 27 feet and was capable of accommodating a congregation of 275 people, though the memoir writer noted it was impossible to ascertain the date or cost of erection from its appearance. By 1832 the church was used only for burial services, following the erection of Upper Ballinderry Church in 1824, and there was active debate as to whether it should be demolished or repaired. No repairs were carried out, and by the time of the second Ordnance Survey map in 1857 it was recorded as a "Church in ruins." Griffith's Valuation valued it at £6, a figure maintained in the Annual Revisions until their cancellation in 1929.

ALTERATIONS AND RESTORATION

In 1791 the original shingle roof was replaced with Aberdovey slates. In 1824 the church was abandoned for all except burial services. In 1834 the church and graveyard were enclosed with an iron fence and gates. In 1859 the Royal Arms of Charles II were removed from the Middle Church and rehung in the Parish Church. In 1869, the original 13 cwt church bell, cast by Sir George Raidon in 1681, was taken down and sold in Dublin for £6 10s 6d.

In 1902 a major restoration was undertaken by Rector Canon Sayers, antiquarian F. J. Bigger, and architect W. J. Fennell, under the patronage of Mrs Walkington, who commissioned the work in memory of her late husband Samuel Walkington. Fennell, who was also responsible for restoring other religious structures including the High Cross of Downpatrick, replaced the roof, re-glazed the windows, added the bell-cote, gallery, and external staircase, and erected the lych gate. During this period the road between Upper and Lower Ballinderry was also diverted and a new pathway was formed from the main road to the church entrance. In 1955, a new bell was given to the church by the Higginson family to replace the one sold in 1869.

SETTING

The church is set on an east–west axis on a landscaped, elevated site containing numerous stone and marble grave markers and box-tombs dating from the late 17th century to the present. The oldest headstone in the adjoining graveyard dates from the 17th century. A bitmac footpath leads from the front entrance to the lych gate.

The lych gate, erected around 1902, has a pitched terracotta-tiled roof with terracotta ridge comb tiles, king-post trusses to front and rear with arched trusses within, all supported on timber posts and a low rendered wall with sandstone saddle-back coping, and a pair of decorative sheeted timber gates with turned squat balusters. The cross member of the front truss carries carved raised lettering reading "I.Am.The.Resurrection.And.The.Life."

To the east, the vehicular entrance is fitted with a set of unusually designed cast and wrought iron gates supported on intricately detailed cast iron pillars.