St Michael's RC Church, Clontigora Road, Newry, Co Armagh, BT35 8RW

St Michael's Roman Catholic Church, Clontigora Road, Newry

A well-proportioned Gothic Revival church of the later 19th century, constructed in dressed granite with contrasting stone detailing throughout. The building was consecrated in 1872 and is set within a churchyard enclosed on all sides by a rubble stone boundary wall.

The church consists of a rectangular nave aligned east to west, with side chapels at its west end, a projecting entrance porch to the east end, and a rear sanctuary. All external walls are roughly dressed random rubble with heavy cement pointing, except where otherwise detailed. Reveals and buttresses are ashlar granite.

The pitched natural slate roofs have stone skews and lead flashing. The east gable of the nave features an ashlar bellcote containing a bell, surmounted by a pinnacle topped with a cloverleaf cross. The west gable is similarly crowned with a cross featuring diamond punctuation to its centre, raised on a plinth block. An advanced eaves course supports modern metal ogee rainwater goods and downpipes.

The principal elevation faces east and is flanked by three-stage angled buttresses at each corner, delineated by insteps. The third stage of each buttress is flush with the wall and rises above eaves level, topped by a pinnacle with moulded finial. At ground floor centre stands the entrance porch, which has a pitched roof rising above the cill level of the nave window, with gablets to north and south sides. A Celtic cross surmounts its east gable. The porch is detailed as the church and is flanked by a single-stage buttress with stepped offsets rising to eaves level. It contains a window to its east face and a plain lancet to its left cheek. Its right cheek contains a Gothic-headed entrance with chamfered reveal sweeping outwards to ground level, fitted with a pair of tongue-and-groove sheeted doors.

Above the porch is a Gothic-headed timber window with chamfered and stepped trim and a splayed keyblock. The window is perpendicular in style, containing three cusped-headed panes with four smaller ones filling the spandrel.

The right and left nave walls are identical, each with four equally spaced timber lancets with splayed cills. Between each window, tie plates extend to eaves level. The nave is abutted at its west end by a side chapel. The west gable contains a large perpendicular tracery window to its centre, detailed as the principal window but wider and containing four cusped-headed panes.

The west gable is abutted at each end by a lower flush lean-to sacristy, their east cheeks abutting the west face of each side chapel. Each sacristy has a monopitched natural slate roof with stone skews. The left sacristy has a modern timber sheeted door in a stepped reveal set to its right end, and a squat lancet to its left, with its south cheek completely abutting the sanctuary. The right sacristy is similarly detailed but is abutted by a modern extension to its west face. The extension has a monopitched natural slate roof and lined cement rendered walls, with a modern timber lancet window to its west face and a marble memorial slab to the Very Reverend Canon Murphy (died 1875) on its right cheek.

Each side chapel is a mirror image of the other. A cloverleaf Celtic cross surmounts the east gable, and the west gable has a small chimney. The east gable is abutted to its centre by a small porch with pitched natural slate roof, containing a pair of shouldered tongue-and-groove sheeted doors within a chamfered, shouldered reveal with keyblock. The left and right cheeks of the porch are blank. Above the porch are three lancet windows with interlocking reveals, the centre one taller. The south and north faces of each side chapel respectively have two plain metal lancet windows with shallow splayed cills, stepped jambs and plainly detailed heads. The exposed section of the west face above the abutting sacristy has a single lancet.

The interior has been refurbished, and the roof structure is of interest.

The church is enclosed on all four sides by a rubble stone boundary wall, wet dashed to the road, with embattled stone coping. Granite posts support a pair of wrought iron gates with scrolled detail, with small pedestrian gates to either side.

The churchyard contains many 19th-century stone and slate memorials, all facing east. A notable monument is a granite Celtic cross raised on a stepped granite plinth and enclosed by cast iron railings, dedicated to the crew of the SS Clonallan, which foundered at sea on 8 December 1904. The inscription reads: "Erected to the memory / of the crew of the ill fated / S.S. Clonallan of Newry / which foundered at sea / on 8th December 1904 / James Hollywood, Captain……." Captain Hollywood resided in a house on the Forkhill Road.