Presbyterian Church, Drumnagreagh Road, Carncastle, Larne, Co Antrim

Presbyterian Church, Drumnagreagh Road, Carncastle

A late Georgian church extended in the Victorian period. Many alterations have degraded the building's architectural worth.

The church is a rectangular structure with rendered walls and a slate roof, built in 1832. The main entrance faces east. The east front comprises a two-storey gabled main block five windows wide, with a slightly lower gabled two-storey stair hall set back to the left, which contains the main entrance.

The roofs are covered in Bangor blue slates in regular courses with overhanging eaves, cast iron gutters and downpipes, and white painted timber barge boards to each gable. The windows of the main block are set in semi-circular headed openings. All but one on the east front are vertically hung timber sliding sashes, white painted, with 6 over 6 panes, tracery lights, no horns, and exposed sash boxes; they have concrete cills, painted. The central window to the ground floor is of stained glass.

The main entrance is recessed in a two-centre arched opening with a moulded cement surround and comprises a two-leaf Gothic arched timber door, panelled, approached by two concrete steps with modern iron handrails. Above the doorway is a small iron lamp bracket with a spherical glass light, and above that, a white marble datestone inscribed 'Cairncastle Presbyterian Church AD 1832' in a moulded cement surround with triangular top.

The south gable is two-storey and rendered. It has two windows to each floor, arch-headed with raised cement surrounds and painted concrete cills. The windows are mainly fixed lights with horizontal glazing bars. Returning from the left extremity of the gable is a gabled single-storey entrance bay to a church hall at the rear, featuring a two-centre arched doorway with a rectangular timber panelled two-leaf replacement door and plain fanlight, surmounted by a white shield-shaped datestone inscribed 'Lecture Hall 1891'. The wall to the left of the doorway has a flat felt-covered roof and a small rectangular timber fixed light with two panes of reeded and translucent glass. Beyond is the taller slated pitched roof of the hall.

The rear elevation of the church is rendered and without quoins. It has two large semi-circular headed sash windows as on the entrance facade. The north gable is similar to the south with two windows containing stained glass. Projecting from the north gable is an archway, smooth cement rendered to the front with unrendered red brick to the rear, single-storey height with rounded coping, containing an original Victorian wrought iron pedestrian gate. This archway is connected to a single-storey smooth cement rendered school of late 19th-century appearance, which returns to the front facade of the church. The school is slated and gabled with PVC rainwater goods and rectangular timber windows of modern appearance in plain unmoulded openings, with a rendered chimney to the west gable.

The church was built in 1832. Around 1884, the present porch, vestry and gallery were added, at which time the interior was rearranged: the pulpit moved from the long west wall to the short north wall, the original gallery on the long east wall was removed, and the pews were realigned. The lecture hall to the rear was built in 1891, the front gates were erected in 1892, and the school house dates from around the same period.

The church is pleasantly sited on a slight eminence above the main road, facing the road and set back from it beyond a lawn. The front boundary comprises a snecked basalt rubble wall with square corner piers and a pair of main entrance gate piers mounted with original Victorian wrought iron gates, with a secondary gateway to the north comprising a pair of similar gates set in modern steel posts flanked by modern railings. Mounted in the front boundary wall to the left of the gateway is a Victorian cast iron post box inscribed 'VR'. Similar walls form the side boundaries. On the lawn in front of the church is a stone memorial slab of mid-Victorian date but of no special historic or architectural interest.