Holy Family RC Church, 156 Screeby Rd, Fivemiletown, Co, Tyrone, BT75 0TP

Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, Screeby Road, Fivemiletown, County Tyrone

This is a single-storey Roman Catholic church of simple rectangular plan, with a steeply pitched gabled roof that places it firmly in the tradition of early Christian-era Irish church architecture. The building is believed to date from around 1805, though sources suggest the construction history is complex and may span several decades. Evidence points to the roof having been replaced, and the wall height raised slightly, around 1906. The walls are finished in cement render, the windows are pointed arch with largely Georgian-style glazing, and the internal detailing appears to belong largely to the early 1900s. The building is currently used as a store, having closed as a place of regular worship around 2000 and since seen only occasional use for events such as weddings.

The church stands at the roadside approximately 3.7 miles northeast of Fivemiletown and 5.5 miles west of Clogher, in the townland of Syunshin, Clogher Parish. It sits immediately south of number 158 Screeby Road, close to the junction with Aghintain Road. The building is orientated approximately northeast to southwest, with the main entrance at the northeast end and a sacristy return to the northwest. A small metal-clad store occupies the northwest corner, and a graveyard extends to the southeast and partly to the southwest.

The walls are of rubble stone with a sand-cement render finish. The render treatment is consistent across all elevations and incorporates a 40mm deep base plinth, raised corner pilasters, and raised window and door surrounds. The ashlar detailing on these raised elements is distinctive: rather than being truly vertical, the joints are set in alternating bands at 60 degrees and 120 degrees to the perpendicular. The roof is covered in Bangor Blue slate, described elsewhere in the record also as natural Welsh slate, with a modest eaves overhang and clipped verges at the gables. An angled ridge tile with a metal Celtic cross is mounted on the southwest gable, and a more substantial cast stone cross sits at the northeast gable. Rainwater goods are cast iron.

The principal elevation faces northeast onto Screeby Road. It is plain, with no openings other than the entrance, which consists of a single-light opening containing a two-leaf timber-panelled door set within a raised surround. Access from the road is marked by a pair of thin wrought iron gateposts with alternating hoop-pattern gates, flanked on either side by a late 20th-century concrete post and wire fence. The short approach to the entrance is over plain grass, with no pathway.

The southeast elevation overlooks the main body of the graveyard and is arranged in four bays. Each bay contains a Gothic-style lancet window set in a low-relief render surround above a stone cill. Each window has a central Y-shaped mullion dividing it into two lancet-shaped sidelights, with a diamond-shaped gap at the top infilled by an irregularly shaped four-pane light. The lancet sidelights are each seven panes over six: the upper section has three irregular panes within the arch and four rectilinear panes below, and the lower section is a hopper-opening light with six regular panes.

The southwest elevation is dominated by a single large tripartite stained-glass altar window set above head height. It comprises three tall, narrow lancet windows within a unified stone surround, now painted, which is flat-faced and deeply recessed. The central lancet arch rises higher than the two flanking lancets, and its outer mullions merge with the inner mullions of the flanking lights.

The northwest elevation has two bays, each with a lancet window similar to those on the southeast elevation. Between these windows, a sacristy extension has been inserted. This is single-storey, with a slate roof that tucks beneath the eaves of the main roof. It has a single timber-panelled door on its northeast elevation and a rectilinear window opening with a raised flat surround on its southwest elevation, which is currently boarded up. A yellow brick chimney is centred on the northeast gable of the sacristy.

The timber windows are multi-paned and single-glazed throughout.

The documentary and cartographic history of the church is rich but contradictory. A rectangular building captioned "R.C. Chapel" appears on this site on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834, its orientation marginally different from the present building, though minor discrepancies of this kind are common on first-edition maps and need not imply a subsequent rebuild. In the first valuation of the townland of Syunshin, Clogher Parish, undertaken in June 1835, the chapel is recorded as a "not new" slated structure measuring 55 feet by 27 feet, with a wall height of 10½ feet to the eaves — dimensions similar but not identical to the present building. The contemporary Ordnance Survey Memoirs offer limited detail, referring only to a chapel in the manor of Aughintain capable of accommodating 500 persons. A separate Memoir entry mentions a Roman Catholic chapel in Aghintain townland described as "a plain whitewashed building 50 feet long and 25 feet broad," capable of holding 900 persons, built in 1805 at a cost of £400 "which was defrayed by the congregation." Since there appears never to have been a chapel or church in Aghintain townland itself, this second entry is likely a reference to the present site. Samuel Lewis's 1837 Topographical Dictionary of Ireland also mentions a chapel at "Aghentine," which appears to support this identification, though the wide discrepancy in the recorded capacities of the building between the two Memoir entries is difficult to explain.

Later sources introduce further uncertainty. A December 1878 newspaper obituary of a local man, Hugh McCaffrey senior, states that as a young man he assisted at "the opening of a commodious chapel at Aughentain in the year 1816." The Reverend J.E. McKenna's 1920 work The Diocese of Clogher Parochial Records states it was built "by the Rev. Patrick Bellew…between the years 1820 and 1825." A more recent article adds that the Reverend Philip MacMahon, Parish Priest of Clogher, left "£63 for a chapel in Clogher or £26-14-0 for one in Aughintaine" in his will of May 1795.

The revised Ordnance Survey map of 1852 depicts a building similar to that shown in 1834, with the house to the north and a small schoolhouse — Syunshin National School — to the northeast on the opposite side of the road. Neither the second valuation of around 1858 nor any of the later valuation books record details of religious structures, so alterations cannot be traced with certainty, and it is not known whether the building was ever wholly rebuilt. The present wall height is taller than the 10½ feet recorded in 1835, and the relatively large windows with their timber sash frames appear consistent with the 1840s, suggesting either that the present structure dates from around that time, or that the openings were enlarged at around that period. The vestry projection to the north appears to be a later 19th-century addition, as it is shown for the first time on the 1906 Ordnance Survey map, and the main roof structure appears to date from the same period or the early 1900s. Work may have been undertaken in the mid-1870s, as the Reverend McKenna records that a bell was added by the Reverend Andrew McGeough sometime between 1874 and 1877. In July 1908, the Tyrone Constitution reported that "Aughentaine Roman Catholic chapel is at present undergoing a process of renovation at the hands of competent workmen." Further renovation is said to have taken place in the 1930s, and it is possible that the bell — which appears to have still been present in 1920 — was removed at that time.

The dwelling house immediately to the north of the church is not recorded in the first valuation, suggesting it was of modest proportions and probably single-storey at that time. By the valuation of around 1858 it was occupied by Samuel Irwin, who remained until around 1881, after which James Culbertson is listed as occupant until at least 1929. Map evidence suggests the present house dates from the mid-1930s. The former schoolhouse on the opposite side of the road dates from 1886 and replaced the earlier school shown on the 1852 map, which stood further to the north. The earlier school was converted to a house when the new building opened, but was demolished around 1930.