Maghera Parish Church, Carrigs Road, Carnacavill, Newcastle, County Down, BT33 0JZ

Maghera Parish Church is a simple, single-storey Church of Ireland parish church in the Gothic style, built in 1825 with later additions of around 1861. It stands beside the ruins of the medieval parish church on the east side of Carrigs Road, accessed via a long driveway leading to an open parking area.

The original building is finished in lined rendered rubble, whilst the additions are constructed in dark granite with light-coloured granite dressings to doors and windows. The church features a prominent three-storey tower with a castellated parapet and stone minarets at each corner. The north-west and south-west corners of the tower each have diagonal stepped buttresses.

The main entrance is positioned centrally in the base of the tower on the west gable. The door is a timber sheeted double door with a flat head, with the upper area of the opening similarly sheeted to fill the pointed arch head opening. It has drip moulding and label stops. The north and south faces of the tower base are blank. The first floor to the west of the tower features a tall lancet window with diamond panes and drip moulding; the north and south faces are blank at this level. The second floor has a narrow lancet opening on all four faces (north, south, east and west) with similar drip mouldings. Each opening is filled with a slatted timber frame and rests on a projecting string course. The parapet also rests on a string course.

The north face of the church has three lancet windows, with the central window being slightly wider than those to either side. All have drip mouldings. The south face has a full-length lean-to with three double lancet windows, each with in/out granite dressings. The roof is constructed at the same angle as the main roof but at a slightly lower level. The east face of the original building features a small gabled projection with a central pointed arch window with drip moulding. To the left of this is a lean-to projection with two windows to the east and a shouldered-headed door to the south. Both lean-to projections have in/out quoins and window and door dressings. All roofs have raised parapets to their gables and are finished in Bangor Blue slate with cast iron rainwater goods.

The entrance from Carrigs Road has a decorative cast iron gateway and splayed rendered walls. A low rubble wall and a single-leaf cast iron pedestrian gate separate the parking area from the church grounds. To the north of the grounds is a small outbuilding housing a parish hall. To the south is a small graveyard.

The church was constructed in 1825, partly funded by the Board of First Fruits and possibly designed by John Bowden. It replaced a nearby 13th-century church whose ruins stand just to the east. The medieval church itself appears to have replaced an Early Christian foundation situated a short distance to the north-west, the stump of whose round tower still stands.

The south aisle and vestry date from 1861 and were built to designs by Welland and Gillespie. They were originally said locally to have been constructed as a relief initiative during the Great Famine of 1845–51, but do not appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1859. Cast iron trusses similar to those in the nave have been observed in other contemporary churches, such as Ballyphilip Parish Church at Portaferry, which were re-roofed following the great wind of 1839, though there is no record of similar damage to this building's roof.