Tower Gate of St. Nicholas' Church of Ireland Church, Market Place, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, BT38 7FH

Tower Gate of St. Nicholas' Church of Ireland Church, Market Place, Carrickfergus

A mid-twentieth-century commemorative three-stage bell tower built over a gate, situated on the south-east corner of the boundary wall of St. Nicholas' Church of Ireland. The gateway spans a pedestrian path providing access from Market Place through the churchyard to the Lancasterian Street entrance. The tower incorporates an earlier sandstone arched gate dated 1831 and is well proportioned and detailed, contributing positively to the architectural group centred on St. Nicholas' Church.

The freestanding three-stage gate tower was built between 1961 and 1962 to designs by Denis O'D. Hanna in a loose Perpendicular Gothic Revival style. Square on plan and facing east, the tower has a hipped natural slate pavilion roof with a leaded flat apex and single gabled dormer with cusped louvered aperture to each hip. The moulded cast-iron gutters have a round downpipe bearing the foundry mark "L3 BGS 460 PATENT" on boxed eaves. The walling is block-marked cement render with moulded stringcourse between the first and second stages. Windows are cusped leaded casements. The third stage consists of seven windows divided by mullions with vertically moulded corners and shared sill.

The principal east elevation is symmetrical with recessed quoins to the first stage, corbelled out to the second stage. The first stage features an elliptical arch with V-jointed sandstone voussoirs and dated keystone, flanked by piers incorporating the 1831 ashlar sandstone archway. The second stage has a single tripartite mullioned window with shield-embossed aprons. The south elevation is blank. The rear west elevation has a continuous wall face without recesses and is otherwise detailed as the east elevation. The north elevation is blank except for an off-centre hinged vertically-sheeted timber door to the second stage, with a wrought-iron lantern affixed above and accessed via external metal stairs. Rainwater goods are ogee cast-iron gutters.

The tower was built in memoriam to those of the parish who died in the two world wars, replacing an earlier carillon located at the north of the vestry, which had been built to commemorate the First World War.