St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Dunnamore Road, Cookstown, Co Tyrone

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church

St Mary's is a Victorian stone-built church in Gothic Revival style of Early English type, constructed between 1860 and 1879. The building exhibits good proportions and detailing characteristic of the period, though its original setting has been compromised by the addition of car parking and modern alterations to its entrance.

The church is laid out on a cruciform plan, consisting of a nave, transepts, and a shallow chancel. A square tower rises from the angle between the nave and the right-hand transept. Original sacristy accommodation and later flat-roofed single-storey brickwork extensions extend from the rear.

The walls are constructed of hammer-dressed snecked sandstone rubble with ashlar sandstone dressings, and are topped with Bangor blue slates in regular courses. A projecting plinth runs around the building, with short lateral buttresses to the four main gables and an eaves-height clasping buttress to the tower. Three of the main gables are surmounted by ornamentally treated ironwork crosses. Rainwater goods are of aluminium.

The principal windows are narrow cusped Gothic arched lancets containing stained glass, with small quatrefoil traceried ocular windows set high in each main gable. The square tower rises in three main stages to a parapet with stepped Irish crenellations. Its windows follow the same Gothic character, with timber louvres in the top stage. A Gothic arched doorway in the east wall of the tower at its base contains a pair of arched timber boarded doors with later metal handles.

An octagonal stone font stands outside the tower door, presumably the original font for the church, now repurposed as a flower tub.

The sacristy, situated in the angle between the chancel and the east transept, retains the same architectural character and detailing as the rest of the church. However, it has been altered following the removal of the original parochial house to which it was joined, resulting in a partly swept roof. A modern porch with rectangular door, glazed screen, and asbestos-cement slate tympanum beneath an oversailing gabled roof has been added. A modern rectangular three-light window has been installed in the gable. Loose stonework quoins at one corner have been supported by iron cramps.

The main entrance faces south-west beneath a later modern porch built of reconstituted stone, which encloses the original main entrance in the front gable of the nave. This modern porch, of different coursing and character from the original building, has a flat roof behind a stepped crenellated parapet. Modern rectangular panelled doors occupy the front and sides, with a deep projecting steep rectangular box-like canopy in concrete over the front entrance. A broad flight of concrete flagged steps fitted with modern tubular steel handrails leads to the front entrance.

Modern single-storey accommodation in brickwork extends across the rear of the church, containing modern rectangular windows and doors.

The church stands in a rural setting, surrounded by extensive car parking with tarmac surfacing and no boundary enclosure to the front. A rough grass area occupies the rear. To the east side stands a low single-storey modern parochial house with white painted walls and mansard roof, replacing the original Gothic Revival stone parochial house that was contemporary with the church.

The precise date of construction is not recorded, but the church was built after 1854, when an earlier church stood on the opposite side of the road as shown on the Ordnance Survey map of that year. It has been dated by architectural authority to circa 1870.