St Mary's R C Church, Leitrim, Ballyward, Banbridge, Co Down, BT31 9TH

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Leitrim, Ballyward

St Mary's is a double-height Gothic Revival Roman Catholic church dating from 1871 to 1874, designed by the Belfast-based architect Timothy Hevey. It stands directly on the Dromara Road at its junction with Ballydrumman Road, at the centre of Leitrim village, where it forms a prominent landmark within the surrounding valley. The listing covers the church itself together with its boundary walling and gate piers.

The building has a rectangular plan comprising a nave with side aisles, an apsidal chancel, and a tower completed in 1874. The walls are of squared, uncoursed granite with a battered plinth to the sides and rear, a projected plinth with a plain plinth course to the front, and granite dress stone and plain string courses throughout. The roof is finished in natural slate with a scalloped course and crested terracotta ridge tiles, with painted aluminium ogee-moulded rainwater goods fixed to exposed decorative rafter-ends. Windows are generally lancet-arched with long-and-short granite ashlar surrounds, chamfered reveals, cills, and granite voussoirs. The replacement timber-sheeted double-leaf entrance doors have decorative strap hinges and are set into a moulded, voussoired pointed-arched opening with a hood moulding and foliated stops, cross motifs to the impost stones, a label course, and long-and-short surrounds with polished granite half-columns on enlarged bases and plinth blocks. The front entrance is reached by steps with replica cast-iron handrails and lamps.

The principal elevation faces east and is asymmetrically arranged. The front entrance is centrally positioned on the gable, flanked by three equally sized lancet-arched windows. A rose window comprising a central quatrefoil surrounded by eight trefoils with a moulded surround is set into the gable head, which is surmounted by an apex cross. To the right, the gable is abutted by a three-stage gableted angle buttress; to the left, by the tower with its spire.

The four-stage tower has angled buttresses and is surmounted by a broach spire with trefoil detailing and moulded lucarnes with timber louvres. The first stage of the tower's south face contains a replacement timber-sheeted double-leaf door set into a pointed-arched opening with a moulded archivolt and label course, and moulded chamfered jambs with plinth stops; the east face of this stage has three inclining arrow-loop windows, while the north and west faces abut the nave and side aisle. The second stage on the south face has a cusped niche with chamfered long-and-short surrounds embracing a moulded pedestal, currently without a statuette, and a blank oculus above inscribed "D.O.M. SUB. INVO. E.M.V.J. [indecipherable portion] REV. AR.J. FINNEGAN, PAROCHUS, A.D. 1871". The north face of the second stage has a cinquefoil window. The third stage has lancet windows to the south, east, and west faces. The fourth stage has paired round-headed arched openings with timber louvres, dress stone surrounds, and a decorative colonette mullion to all sides.

The nave, to the left of the tower, is five paired lancets wide and is abutted at ground-floor level by a lean-to side aisle; bays are distinguished by two-stage buttresses. The far left bay has a cusped tripartite window. The central bay has a slight projection below cill level with a trefoil light. The west gable contains an enlarged sexfoil window. Clerestory glazing to the nave comprises alternating cinquefoil and quatrefoil windows.

The west gable is symmetrically arranged. The apsidal chancel has a hipped roof with leaded hips, terminated by a finial cross. Each face of the chancel contains a plate-tracery window comprising paired round-headed lights terminated by a cinquefoil rose light, set into a pointed-arched opening with chamfered long-and-short surrounds and continuous plain impost and cill courses. The chancel is flanked by the west elevation of the side aisles, each with a rose window. To the left, the angle is abutted by a bowed sacristy with a slate conical roof terminated by a finial cross; this sacristy has three square-headed 1-over-1 timber sash windows with horns and dress stone surrounds facing west, and a flat-roofed porch to the north with a moulded parapet and a single timber-sheeted door with a corbelled lintel.

The right elevation is asymmetrically arranged, with the nave and side aisle matching the left elevation. The left gable is abutted by a hipped-roof bay with an enlarged footprint projecting beyond the line of the aisle, fully buttressed, with a single pointed-arched window to the north and east faces.

The interior is richly decorated and of high craft value. The interior carvings and altars were fitted by C. W. Harrison of Dublin. A renovation carried out between 1924 and 1926 saw the interior redecorated and fitted with new materials including a mosaic sanctuary floor and altar steps. The Stations of the Cross and the Lourdes stained glass windows were gifted to the church by a Mrs McEvoy, a local parishioner, and the stained glass window depicting the Resurrection of Jesus was donated by Mr John Owens. A further restoration was carried out between 1998 and 1999, following which the church was subject to arson and temporarily closed; it reopened at the end of 1999.

The church grounds are bounded to the east by replacement decorative railings fixed to a squared masonry wall with chamfered coping. The grounds are accessed from the road through gates matching the railings, fixed to square-plan masonry piers with diminutive buttresses to each face terminated by gableted caps with trefoil motifs. A decorative iron arch above is inscribed "DOM SUB INVO MARIAE IMM". The paving to the front of the church consists of modern buff-coloured sets. Immediately to the south of the church stands a rubble masonry grotto with Virgin Mary statuettes; an inscribed stone reads "THIS GROTTO WAS ERECTED BY MR AND MRS PATRICK OWENS BELFAST FORMERLY BACKADERRY AND SOLEMNLY BLESSED BY MOST REV DR. MULHERN ON THE 26th MAY 1929. THE REV E. Mc GIVERN BEING PARISH PRIEST." Burial grounds lie to the north and west, with an adjacent complex of outbuildings with corrugated-iron roofs. The south boundary is formed by a partially rendered rubble masonry wall with a decorative iron gate matching the detailing of the front gates.

There is a striking similarity between the exterior of St Mary's and that of St Colman's Roman Catholic Church in Dromore, also designed by Timothy Hevey, the principal difference being the position of the square tower and spire on each building. The builders contracted to carry out Hevey's design were O'Flynn and Mackin. The tower and spire were added in 1874, by which point the construction work had cost almost £3,000. The church was officially opened and dedicated on 2nd August 1874.

The history of Catholic worship on this site extends considerably further back. The Roman Catholic Parish of Upper Drumgooland was established in 1784, and the first church on the current site was built in 1786 under the supervision of the parish priest, the Reverend Patrick McKay. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 depicts the earlier chapel as a cruciform-shaped building on the exact location of the present structure; the contemporary Townland Valuations valued it at £7 9s. In the 1830s it was described as "a plain slated rectangular building ... [measuring] 60 by 30ft, cross-shape." The Ordnance Survey Memoirs record that the original chapel was extensively renovated and modified in 1835, after which it could accommodate the average weekly attendance of 300 parishioners on open seats and in a gallery (the total Roman Catholic population of Upper Drumgooland Parish at that time stood at 3,594). The congregation was still paying for the 1835 renovation in 1842, when Father Theobald Matthew, the leader of the Catholic Temperance Movement, preached a sermon in the newly modified chapel to help alleviate the remaining debt. By Griffith's Valuation of 1862 the value of the original church had risen to £12, partly as a result of the 1835 additions. The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859 showed no discernible change to the site, and between 1862 and the end of the annual valuation revisions in 1929 no alteration in value was recorded despite the erection of the present church in 1871 to 1874. Despite the enlargement of the original chapel in 1835, by the mid-19th century plans were made to replace it with a new building, undertaken at the urging of the parish priest Father A. J. Finnegan. The church building was constructed first using granite quarried in the area; the square tower and spire followed in 1874. The centenary of the new church was celebrated with a commemorative mass on 10th October 1971. The church was first listed as a building of special architectural or historic interest in 1977.