St Colman’s old church and graveyard, Bridge Street, Kilkeel, Newry, Co Down, BT34 4AD

St Colman's old church and graveyard stands on Bridge Street in Kilkeel, primarily of interest for its antiquity and its location within a rath near the town centre.

The church is a single-storey ruinous building, roughly aligned east-west, now without its pitched roof. All walls are constructed of coursed rounded granite field stones, originally lime dashed, though the render has fallen away in places. The external ground surface has been raised to window cill level on all sides.

The south elevation contains four equally spaced openings. The second opening from the left is a Gothic-headed doorway with brick dressings, accessed by a sunken pathway bounded by a 2-metre-high rubble stone retaining wall. The first and third openings from the left are large Gothic-headed windows with brick surrounds. The fourth opening from the left is a narrow stone-dressed lancet with a trefoil head set in an ogee moulding, with moulded jambs and a sandstone cill.

The north elevation has four openings. At the extreme left is a narrow stone-dressed rectangular window with chamfered jambs and a sandstone cill. The second and fourth openings are large Gothic-headed windows matching those on the south elevation. The third opening is infilled. The right (east) gable has lost its upper portion but retains a large Gothic window at its centre, similar to those elsewhere on the building. All of the larger window openings now lack cills but retain their brick dressings. The left (west) gable is devoid of openings and has a brick-built bellcote attached to the gable, to which a modern flagpole is fastened.

The graveyard is irregularly shaped and enclosed by a high modern polygonal granite wall facing Bridge Street, with a variety of stone and concrete block walls elsewhere. To the north of the church are traces of a low earthen bank, possibly the surviving bank of a former rath. To the west of the church stands a low rough stone cross with a socket stone at its foot. The grounds contain many plain stone slabs marking burial plots, roughly dressed gravestones (earliest dated 1727), and some finely dressed memorials from the 18th and 19th centuries (earliest dated 1798).

The church is believed to have originated in the 15th or 16th century, possibly on the site of an Early Christian rath. The narrow splayed windows at the east end of the north and south walls probably date to this earliest period. Some other openings are likely 17th century in date, whilst those with brick dressings are 19th century additions. The church served as the mother church for Kilkeel Parish until it was abandoned for worship in 1818 following the completion of Christ Church in Newry Street. In 1816, under the auspices of the Kildare Street Society and with the support of the Earl of Kilmorey, the building was converted into a school. It remained in use for this purpose until the mid-19th century.