Gates and Walling at, Church of the Sacred Heart (RC), Adj. to 134 Dublin Road, Newry, Co Down

A pair of cast and wrought iron gates with granite piers and flanking walls form the main entrance into the grounds of the Church of the Sacred Heart (RC) and the Parochial House. The gates and walls, constructed between 1900 and 1919, share a style and materials with the rest of the church complex, which is set within a mature and attractive landscape.

The gates are black painted wrought iron, featuring plain main bars that terminate in spear heads. Spear-headed dog bars double up to the bottom section, and alternate barley-sugar bars, not of full height, support cast iron flowers in the middle section. The granite piers are cruciform in shape, built on an octagonal rock-faced base and a similar ashlar granite course which transitions to the cruciform plan. They are topped with smoothly dressed ashlar granite coping, with a gablet to each of the four sides, and a truncated ashlar granite fleche rising from the ridge to support a wrought iron cross. Concave screen quadrants in dressed ashlar flank each pier. These consist of a punched granite base course, a smoothly dressed chamfer course, and a punched granite wall with steep, ridged, smoothly dressed copings that do not overhang. The quadrants are terminated by plain rock-faced granite piers with similar copings. Continuing along the boundary on either side is a low rock-faced ashlar granite wall with crenellated rock-faced copings.

The gates are believed to have been constructed at the same time as the church, whose foundation stone was laid by Cardinal Logue on 11th June 1911. The gates, piers and walls contribute to the group value context of the church and its surroundings and remain in good condition.