Gate Screen and Lodges, St. Malachy's Parish Church of Ireland, Main Street, Hillsborough, County Down, BT26 6AE

Gate Screen and Lodges, St. Malachy's Parish Church of Ireland, Main Street, Hillsborough

Built around 1773, this symmetrical gate screen and pair of single-storey former schoolhouses stand at the entrance to St. Malachy's Church of Ireland on Main Street, Hillsborough. The structures are contemporary in style with the church itself, display fine proportions, and form an attractive frame for the avenues leading to the church. The architects are not known with certainty, though James and David McBlain have been proposed among various candidates. The gate screen was largely replaced around 1991, when the stonework was also restored, but it retains its ornate stone mouldings and cast metalwork. The structures sit within a conservation area and form an integral part of an important group of ecclesiastical buildings.

Gate Screen

The screen consists of two pairs of tall decorative iron gates, each with iron pediments and decorative iron side panels. These are attached to tall, square-plan sandstone ashlar piers with engaged columns at the corners, surmounted by a capital moulding and ball finials. At each gateway there is a small pair of hexagonal sandstone gate stops with domed tops. Between the two gateways, a spear-headed iron railing with regular decorative iron panels is set on a sandstone ashlar wall with stone coping; this arrangement is repeated at either end of the screen. A cobbled surface extends across the gateway area between the Sexton's House and the Parish Room.

The Former Schoolhouses

The two single-storey buildings flanking the gate screen are gable-fronted, with pitched natural slate roofs, black clay ridge tiles, and cast-iron guttering to moulded masonry eaves. The front gables have sandstone piers at either end and at the apex, each topped with stone pinnacles. The walls are rubblestone with rough-hewn squared quoins. Window openings in the front gables are lancet-shaped, while those on the side elevations are square-headed with stone sills. The side elevations have 2/2 timber sash windows with Gothic panes to the upper sash and hood mouldings.

The northern building is the Sexton's House and the southern is the Parish Room.

Sexton's House: Five windows deep, with a further three-window extension forming the Maginess Room. The Maginess Room has a tall rendered chimneystack rising from its south wall with a stone pinnacle flue, and square-headed window openings fitted with tripartite iron lattice windows. The front gable has an equilateral-headed door opening with a stone surround, a vertically-sheeted timber door with over-panel, and a sandstone panel above inscribed 'Sexton'. There is a lean-to extension to the north side elevation with stone walling and timber casement windows, and the side area is enclosed by spear-headed wrought-iron railing. The north boundary is defined by rubble stone walling. The rear gable of the Parish Room only also has stone pinnacles, matching the front gable treatment.

Parish Room: Four windows deep, with a square-headed door opening to the easternmost bay featuring a vertically-sheeted timber door and overlight, and a sandstone panel above inscribed 'The Parish Room'. The site to the south is landscaped and enclosed by rubble walling.

Historical Background

When St. Malachy's Church was reconstructed in 1773, a gate screen and two lodges were added at the entrance to the church walk from Main Street. Both a plan of Hillsborough dated 1803 and the later Townland Valuation town plan show the screen and two gate lodges in their present position. Despite their appearance as gate lodges, the buildings were originally founded as schoolhouses. Valuation records of 1834 show the southern lodge used as a boys' school and the northern as a girls' school, each valued at £4 4s. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in the mid-19th century, the boys' school was valued at £5, while the girls' school — by then described as 'Girl's School House, Infant's School House and Playground' — had risen considerably in value to £10, reflecting the addition of the playground and infant's schoolroom. These remained the principal schoolhouses in Hillsborough until the Downshire School was established on Ballynahinch Street in 1887, after which the old boys' school was renamed 'The Parish Room' and both buildings passed into church use.

Around 1910, the Marquis of Downshire granted by lease 'the portion of ground with the buildings thereon situated on the north side of the Church Avenue' to the Representative Church Body, free of rent in perpetuity. A condition of this grant — which included the gate screen and the gate lodges — was that the old Sexton's House, which had previously stood halfway up the church walk, should be demolished. The northern lodge was subsequently reconstructed as a residence for the Sexton. In 1922, a War Memorial in the form of a large Celtic Cross was erected in front of the church screen.

In 1974, C. E. B. Brett recorded that the central pinnacle of the Parish Room had been lost, but noted that a restoration scheme for the screen and pavilions was planned as soon as church finances permitted. The pinnacle was subsequently repaired, most likely shortly after 1974. In 1978, a chimney pinnacle was repaired on one of the gate lodges. Restoration work to the stonework was carried out in 1991. In recent years the Parish Room was refurbished and opened as a Youth Centre in October 2007.