St James’ Parish Church of Ireland, Lany Road, Ballykeel, Hillsborough, Co. Down, BT26 6JR

St James' Parish Church of Ireland, Ballykeel

A Gothic Revival church of rendered masonry, designed by Charles Lanyon and dated 1840, standing on a corner site between Lany Road and St James Road on the northwest side of the M1. The church is Grade B1 listed.

The building is a free-standing rendered hall and tower church, rectangular on plan and facing south. It comprises a main nave with a lower gabled chancel to the east, a vestry to the northeast, and a square-plan tower positioned unusually at the centre of the front elevation rather than at an end. The pitched roof is natural slate with black clay ridge tiles and replacement metal rainwater goods to timber boxed eaves. The walls are painted ruled and lined cement rendered with a cement plinth course, corner piers, and rendered weathered buttresses to both nave elevations.

The south-facing front elevation contains four lancet window openings across the width of the nave, each with splayed sills, chamfered surrounds, stained glass and storm glazing. The central entrance is a square-plan tower with two stages. The lower stage features an equilateral-arched sandstone ashlar entrance with sandstone hood moulding and replacement double-leaf vertically-sheeted timber doors, opening onto a concrete step. Above the entrance is a circular stone architrave surround to a clock-face. The tower's upper belfry stage has pairs of lancet openings to the east, south and west, fitted with latticed timber louvers on a continuous chamfered string course. The tower is topped with a crenellated parapet wall and panelled pinnacles with spirelets terminated in poppy-head finials, corbelled out to the base of the parapet and connected by a string course.

An inscribed white marble plaque on the entrance reads: "Glory to God, Goodwill to Man, This Church by the name of, St. James's, Lower kilwarlin, was built from contributions of, The Marquis of Downshire, The Early of Hillsborough. The Down and Connor, Church Accommodation Society, and others. By the Ven. Walter B. Mant. M.A., Archdeacon of Down, MDCCCXL."

The west gabled elevation contains a group of three lancet window openings with leaded coloured glazing. The rear nave elevation is abutted by a gabled-ended vestry and lean-to structure, both with equilateral-arched door and window openings, sheeted timber doors, and leaded glazing. The lean-to has a diminutive equilateral-arched window opening. The east gabled elevation has a concrete coping and painted moulded kneeler stones, with a decorative equilateral-arched window opening featuring a sandstone hood moulding with foliate label stops. This window contains stone plate tracery comprising cusped window openings with a quatrefoil opening above, filled with stained glass and storm glazing.

The foundation stone was laid on 5 September 1839, the church was completed and open for worship on 11 August 1841, and was consecrated by Bishop Mant on 30 December 1842. The church was erected following the collapse of an old schoolhouse used for worship, which had blown down in a storm in January 1839. Funding came from the Church Accommodation Society, an organisation established in 1838 by Archdeacon Walter B. Mant to raise money for new churches. Charles Lanyon, who would become a renowned architect, donated his professional services without fee to the Society. The church first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858. The chancel was added in 1896, funded by monies raised by Canon Kernan, who is commemorated along with Canon Matchett in a stained glass window installed by parishioners in 1953. The clock on the south face of the tower was installed in 1919.

The building is set on a lawned site enclosed to both roads by a low brick wall dating to around 1980. A single-storey redbrick former schoolhouse of St James stands to the northeast. A concrete footpath encircles the church. Despite its cement rendered walling, the building retains most of its internal and external fabric and its pinnacled tower, representing a modest but accomplished exercise in Gothic Revival church architecture. It holds social and cultural significance for the local community.