Church of Ireland Church, Church Hill, Jonesborough, Newry, Co Armagh, BT35 8HP

Church of Ireland Church, Jonesborough

A mid-19th-century granite church set within a churchyard on the east side of Church Hill, overlooking the Ring of Gullion. Although it has lost most of its internal furnishings, the building retains much of its external character and remains a significant architectural feature in the landscape.

The church was constructed in 1866 and consists of a nave, chancel, and entrance porch, aligned west to east. It is built of squared granite blocks laid irregularly throughout.

The roof is steeply pitched with natural slate and is finished with a crested terracotta ridge, raised stone skews, and two small square-section metal vents. The eaves course is advanced and chamfered. Cast-iron half-round gutters run along the nave (now mostly missing) with ogee gutters to the porch.

The west gable apex features a finely dressed granite bellcote with pitched coping and moulded cornice, supported on moulded kneelers. The bell niche is cusped with a trefoil opening above, surmounted by a diamond-shaped cloverleaf stone cross. The east gable is topped with a granite trefoil finial.

All windows are plainly glazed lancets set in stepped chamfered surrounds, now covered with metal security grilles. Buttresses are two-stage, with the top of the first stage forming a sloping cill course and the top of the second stage having five offsets.

The principal west gable has a buttress at either side of two windows and a pointed oval louvred opening above, whose head rests in the apex of a flush voussoired relieving arch. The gable apex contains a trefoil niche.

Each side elevation is four openings wide with five buttresses. The south elevation features a projecting entrance porch between the second and third buttresses from the left. The porch is detailed as the main church with its roof rising almost to eaves level. The south-facing gable of the porch is supported by a single tapering buttress on either side and contains the entrance door (now infilled with concrete blocks) set within a moulded stone reveal with stepped surround and hood mould. Above is a granite datestone inscribed "1866". The gable apex has a small trefoil lattice-framed window, with blank cheeks.

The north elevation is abutted by a lean-to sacristy at the extreme left end, with the buttress here rising above eaves level to form a chimney. The east gable has a buttress at either end and is abutted by a five-sided chancel detailed as the main church but with a hipped roof. Each face of the chancel has a lancet window with cusped head except the south face (blank) and north face (abutted by the sacristy).

The sacristy is detailed as the main church with a monopitched natural slate roof sloping to the north. Its north face is blank, its left cheek has a cusped lancet, and its right cheek has two tongue-and-groove sheeted doors in shouldered chamfered openings, the right one accessed by granite steps (now eroded).

The church is enclosed within a churchyard bounded by a squared granite wall with saddle coping. Access is via a pair of wrought-iron gates supported on square-section granite gate piers with oversailing pyramidal coping. The churchyard contains several 19th-century memorials, notably a large memorial with shrouded urn in the southwest, dedicated to the employees of Lord Clermont (died 1887).

Although a church is depicted at this location on both the 1835 and 1861 Ordnance Survey maps, the present structure dates from 1866, recorded as "new church finished" in the 1866 Valuation Revision book entry.