Warrenpoint Parish Church, Church Street, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34 2AH

Warrenpoint Parish Church is an early 19th-century Church of Ireland building in cruciform plan, with a tower to the front gable, set within a churchyard on the north side of Church Street. Though plain in appearance from the outside, the interior is impressive throughout, with an elaborate timber roof structure, numerous fine marble memorials, good stained glass windows, and relatively rare wall paintings to the chancel. The church, its gates, and its railings are all included in the listing.

EXTERIOR

The tower is three-staged, with corner buttresses rising to the base of the third stage. Walls are lime-rendered with a chamfered base course. The buttresses have pitched granite copings between stages and a two-stage base course. The upper section of the third stage has stepped quoins. Moulded string courses run level with the first and second stages of the buttresses, a third sits between the second and third stages, and a fourth is at the upper section of the third stage.

The right-hand (south-east) face of the tower contains the main entrance at ground-floor level. This consists of a finely dressed coved doorcase with a depressed Gothic head and hood mould over it, containing a pair of tongue-and-groove sheeted doors with Gothic strap hinges, escutcheon, and door pull. Above the doors is an infilled transom, probably once glazed. There is a concrete step at the threshold. Between the first and second stages of this face is a flush, shield-shaped granite plaque inscribed "THIS CHAPEL / WAS ENDOWNED / BY REV / JOHN DAVIS / 1825". The second stage has a lancet window with a chamfered granite architrave and cast-iron quarry-framed glazing. The third stage forms the belfry, with a large Gothic opening with a chamfered granite architrave and rendered head containing two cusped lancets and a quatrefoil in their common spandrel, filled with scalloped timber louvres.

The tower roof is flat with an overhanging edge of rendered or concrete construction, above which is a stepped and embattled ashlar granite parapet with octagonal corner pinnacles.

The front (south-west) face of the tower has a Gothic window at first-stage level, detailed similarly to the belfry openings but narrower, with a rendered hood mould that continues to the left and right buttresses as a string course. The second stage has a modern circular clock face with Roman numerals set in a circular recess, with the string course at this level rising over it as a hood mould. The third stage is detailed as the other elevations. The left-hand (north-west) elevation of the tower is blank to the first and second stages; the belfry is detailed as before, and below its opening are three advanced rendered roundel panels. The rear (north-east) elevation of the tower is abutted at first- and second-stage level by the south-west gable of the nave, with the exposed third stage detailed as the others.

The main body of the church has a pitched natural slate roof with a slightly lower ridge level to the transepts. Half-round metal gutters sit on advanced granite eaves, with matching granite skews to each gable. All walls are cement wet-dashed. Each corner has a two-staged angled buttress in ashlar granite. The front (south-west) gable is abutted to the centre by the tower; the exposed walling to each side is blank, with a smooth base course and platband that returns around from the eaves line of the side walls. Hood moulds appear only on the windows to the south-east side of the church.

Each side wall of the nave has three lancet windows, detailed as the window on the front face of the first stage of the tower. There is a similar lancet to the south-west-facing wall of each transept.

In the angle between the south-west wall of the south-east transept and the north-west wall of the nave there is a small single-storey porch with a monopitched artificial slate roof sloping away from the nave, with skews. Its eaves and walls match the main block. The right-hand (south-west-facing) cheek has a four-panelled door with bolection mouldings and a narrow transom over, set within a finely dressed granite surround with a shouldered head. The left-hand (north-west) cheek has a single lancet window with cast-iron quarry glazing; on the corner to its right is a single-staged, non-angled buttress.

The gable of the north-west transept has a large Gothic window with a granite architrave, into which three Y-tracery lancets have been inserted. Above it in the gable is a blind Gothic trefoil. The rear (north-east) elevation of this transept is blank and is abutted by a single-storey vestry, which also abuts the north-west cheek of the chancel (also blank).

The vestry has a pitched natural slate roof that ties into the rear pitch of the transept but at a lower eaves level. Its end gable faces north-east and is detailed as the church but with irregular stepped granite quoins and no buttresses. The gable has three lancet windows with cast-iron quarry glazing grouped together under a common granite hood mould. The north-west cheek has a modern timber door to the right-hand side with an infilled Gothic fanlight, set in a dressed granite architrave; to its left are a pair of small lancet lights with cast-iron quarry glazing, all within a dressed granite architrave. The south-east cheek of the vestry abuts the chancel.

The chancel has a steeply pitched natural slate roof, steeper than the nave roof. The rear gable of the nave has granite skews and a small granite chimney pot finial serving the vestry. The chancel roof has granite skews and exposed timber rafter tails at the eaves. The walls match the main church, with matching buttresses to the end (north-east) gable. This gable has a large Gothic window containing three cusped lancets with three multi-foil rose windows in the head above, with sandstone mullions and leaded lights.

The left-hand (south-east) cheek of the chancel is blank and almost completely abutted by the organ room, which also abuts the north-east elevation of the south-east transept (also blank). The organ room is detailed as the chancel but is lower and narrower, with no buttresses. Its end (north-east) gable has a single lancet window with a dressed granite architrave and hood mould; its left-hand (south-east) cheek is blank. The rear north-east wall of the south-east transept is blank. The south-east gable of the south-east transept has a large Gothic window with a granite architrave, into which three Y-tracery lancets are inset; in the gable above is a blind Gothic trefoil with a sandstone hood mould.

SETTING

The church is set back from the street within a linear rectangular plot backing onto Summer Hill. The boundary to Church Street is enclosed by an ashlar granite dwarf wall with a chamfered coping carrying decorative cast-iron railings, terminated at both ends by a granite pier. Similar piers at the centre support a pair of gates. The piers are square in section with a chamfered base course, shallow gabled coping, and cast-iron finial. The railings are in Gothic style and comprise a quatrefoil-repeat bottom frieze (which also forms the top of the dog bars on the gates), Gothic cusped tracery arches spanning the top of each bar, and spearhead finials. The dog bars of the gates carry decorative Gothic tracery arches, each crowned by a spearhead finial.

The front of the church has a driveway, and the sides are landscaped with shrubs and trimmed bushes. To the rear, an avenue leads to Summer Hill, flanked by attractive mature beech trees. The rear boundary is an irregularly coped rubble granite wall with gates to the centre.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The church was constructed in 1825 as a chapel of ease to Clonallan Parish Church. It originally comprised a rectangular block measuring 68 feet by 28 feet in plan, with a tower, and was built for approximately £850. The site was donated by the Hall family of Narrow Water Castle. A gallery was erected in 1840 by the Hall family for their own use, and the transepts were in place by 1861.

A late 19th-century Lawrence photograph shows the church with plain rendered walls, angled two-stage buttresses at the west end of the nave, and a three-stage tower with a platband between each stage and an embattled parapet. At that time the first stage was tall with a leaded Y-tracery lancet window, the second stage the shortest and containing a circular clock face, and the belfry stage having a hood-moulded Y-tracery lancet with louvres, an embattled parapet, and corner pinnacles on panelled plinths. The church railings and gates visible in that photograph are those still in existence today.

Substantial improvements were carried out in around 1890, supervised by architect W. J. Watson at a cost of £1,130. These works involved the addition of a chancel, a new high-pitched roof to the nave and transepts, and a remodelling of the tower. The old roof with its groined ceiling was replaced with a new one supported by three principals with semicircular tracery ribs carrying folded purlins and V-jointed sheeting. All the old timber windows were removed and the openings filled with freestone mullioned and traceried windows, as reported in The Irish Builder in 1890. The church reopened that year.

A 1920s photograph in the Green Collection shows the church after this work, at which time it was considerably more ornate than at present, with three roundel vents below the belfry on the front of the tower, further roundels in the belfry spandrels, and a fretted traceried parapet with stouter octagonal pinnacles.

A new bell weighing 18 hundredweight was purchased from Messrs Murphy & Co. of Dublin and dedicated on 12 May 1898. It is inscribed: "TO GOD'S GLORY WARREN- / POINT CHURCH 1898 / RECTOR THOMAS B. NAYLOR / D.D / CHURCH WARDENS JOSEPH MAYNE J.P. / THOMAS BOND". The original bell, a gift from the Hall family, was left in the tower but was eventually broken up, recast, and donated to Newcastle Parish Church.

In 1900 the church received a font — the gift of the Reverend W. W. Williams, Archdeacon of Madras, in memory of his wife Jane Williams — originally placed in the central aisle. The pulpit cost £70 in 1909, and at the same time the windows in the chancel were installed by Captain R. Hall. In 1920 the marble chancel steps were provided as a First World War memorial, and the mosaic chancel floor was laid in 1921. The Green Collection photograph records elaborate wall paintings to the left and right cheeks of the chancel walls. Electric lighting was installed in 1934, and the clock was electrified in 1969 and no longer strikes the hour.