Presbyterian Church, Meeting Street, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34

Presbyterian Church, Meeting Street, Warrenpoint, County Down

This Presbyterian church was originally erected in 1834 at a cost of £750. It has been extensively altered, first in the late Victorian period and again in the 1960s, and is not considered to be of special architectural or historical interest. It was delisted in 2004.

The building is a complex of several phases forming a single structure. The original early 19th-century meeting house sits parallel to the north-west side of Meeting Street, with its front elevation facing south-east. To its rear is an early 20th-century church hall. To the front, a large late Victorian gabled return and a three-stage tower were added in the 1880s, believed to have been designed by architect W. J. Watson of Newry. According to the writer George Bassett, writing in 1886, the works were carried out in 1883 under contract with a Mr Wheelan and included the addition of a tower and spire, along with re-seating the interior in pitch pine, at a cost of £900. A Valuation town map of 1834 shows the original building had a cruciform plan.

The original church has a hipped natural slate roof with slightly advanced eaves supporting half-round metal rainwater goods. Most of its front elevation is concealed by the later tower and gabled return, leaving only a narrow section of wall exposed at the right end. This exposed wall is wet-dashed and painted, and contains a tall stained glass lancet with Y-tracery, rendered chamfered reveals, and a splayed cill. Unless otherwise noted, all windows throughout the building are detailed in this same manner. The left (south-west) elevation of the original church is pebble-dashed and unpainted, with a large window at its centre. The rear wall is blank and almost entirely abutted by the later hall.

The gabled return, which projects towards Meeting Street, has a pitched natural slate roof that ties into the front pitch of the original church. Its ridge line is higher, its eaves slightly lower, and it features scalloped ridge tiles with a small rendered chimney on the ridge. Walls are finished in painted smooth-lined render. On its right (north-east) cheek are two openings: to the left, a tongue-and-groove sheeted door set within a Gothic opening with a chamfered reveal, flanked by a two-stage buttress; to the right, a small window matching those elsewhere. The front (south-east) gable has three small windows at ground floor level, with single-stage buttresses to either side of the central window and two-stage buttresses at each corner. At first floor level, a large Gothic window fills the gable. This window is divided into three lancet panes — the central one taller — with glazed spandrels, and is finished with a hood mould.

The three-stage tower stands against the left (south-west) cheek of the gabled return and the left portion of the original church front. It has a steep pyramidal natural slate roof with an iron finial, exposed rafter tails, and half-round rainwater goods. The first and second stages are exposed on the south-east and south-west sides only; the third stage is free-standing on all four sides. The first two stages have two-stage buttresses to left and right, rising to the base of the third stage. A moulded stringcourse runs between the second and third stages, stepping upward at its centre on all four elevations. The third stage has stop-end chamfered corners.

At ground floor level on the south-east elevation, the tower features an advanced gabled entrance porch, its front wall flush with the front gable of the return. The porch has a pitched natural slate roof with a longer left pitch that continues to a moulded gabled kneeler and a small front buttress; the right pitch is shorter where it meets the tower. The porch gable is coped and has a small granite gablet at its apex, with a small blind roundel below. The main entrance is a Gothic opening with stop-end chamfered jambs and head, fitted with a tongue-and-groove sheeted door with strap hinges. The left cheek of the porch has a pair of tiny lancets at ground floor level with painted stepped architraves. The second stage of the tower serves as the stairwell and has a single window on each cheek. The third stage is the belfry, with four narrow lancet openings on each face, separated by thin mullions, each fitted with four scalloped timber louvres and a steeply sloping flush common cill.

The church hall at the rear has a pitched natural slate roof at a lower eaves level than the original church, tying into the rear pitch of the main building at its upper end. There is a small ventilation flue to the centre of the ridge and a small cast iron skylight to the left end of the north-east pitch. Walls are pebble-dashed and unpainted. The south-west elevation has a tongue-and-groove sheeted door at centre, set within a Gothic opening with a rendered architrave, flanked by two-stage buttresses. To either side of the door is a Gothic window opening with a rendered architrave containing Y-tracery timber lancets with a quatrefoil light in the common spandrel. On the wall above the door is a circular panel reading "WAR MEMORIAL HALL 1914–1919." The rear (north-west) elevation of the hall has three similar window openings containing leaded lights, with a large rectangular timber ventilator in the gable apex above. The north-east cheek of the hall is entirely abutted at ground floor level by a lower modern flat-roofed extension block with pebble-dashed walls and modern openings, which is of no interest. Above this, the remaining wall retains the lancet heads of two former window openings at centre and right, still with their leaded glazing, along with the tops of dividing buttresses.

Regarding the interior: it is likely that the pulpit, gallery, and organ were installed or remodelled during the 1880s works, as they are all of similar style with matching details. A photograph from 1905, taken from the west corner of the interior, shows the church largely as it appeared at the time of the survey in 1999, except that the windows visible in the photograph have plate tracery glazed with rectangular quarried leaded lights. The north-east gable window of the original church originally had three cusped lancets with three trefoils in the arch head. The south-east front window of the original church was a pair of lancets with cusped lights in its head, and the window to the right cheek of the front gable was similar but smaller. These windows were presumably replaced with the current glazing during alterations carried out in the 1960s.

The churchyard is paved, with rubble stone boundary walls on all sides except the front. The front boundary consists of original railings comprising spear-headed verticals and matching dog bars set on a chamfered granite plinth, with plain godfather posts to the rear. The central gates and their posts are modern, in a similar style but with scrolled finials. A plaque set into the ground abutting the front gable reads: "THE RENOVATIONS TO / CHURCH GROUNDS / WERE MADE AT THE EXPENSE OF / DR GRAHAM, SOUTH AFRICA / AS A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF / MRS SUSAN GRAHAM / IN THE CENTENARY YEAR / OF THE CHURCH 1934."