Former Donaghmore Methodist Church, Cargabane Road, Cargabane, Newry, Co Down, BT34 1SB

Former Donaghmore Methodist Church

This is a former mid-19th-century Methodist church of considerable historical importance, being one of only eight Primitive Methodist churches built in Ireland. The building dates to 1841–1844 and remains substantially original.

The church is a small barn-like structure set up a lane between fields on the east side of Cargabane Road, aligned northeast to southwest with its principal gable facing northeast. It has a pitched natural slate roof with render skews, a metal flue pipe on the southeast pitch, and half-round metal rainwater goods. The walls are constructed of harled rubble stone.

The front gable is three openings wide. At ground floor centre is the main entrance comprising a pair of scumbled tongue-and-groove sheeted and beaded moulded doors with wrought-iron door handle and escutcheon, set within a frame with two foliated cast iron boot scrapers positioned into the granite threshold. The remaining openings on the façade are exposed box sliding sash windows with dressed granite cills. Those at ground floor are 4/2 pane with margin panes, while those at first floor are similar but semicircular headed with spoked heads also having margin panes. The gable apex displays a rectangular render panel inscribed "DONAGHMORE / METHODIST / CHURCH".

The left (southeast) and right (northwest) elevations are identical, each featuring three tall shallow segmental-headed wall niches. The central niche on each elevation has a pair of seven-paned metal-framed casement windows inserted. The rear (southwest) gable contains two large semicircular-headed windows, each with timber-framed Gothic tracery, leaded glazing, and a dressed granite cill.

The church opened in July 1841 for a congregation of Primitive Methodists, a separate Methodist connection established in England in 1811 following a revivalist movement. The leaders, Mr Bourne and Mr Clowes, had been expelled from the main Methodist church but went on to establish stations in England, Wales, and Ireland. The Primitive Methodist presence in Ireland was limited, with stations in Belfast (three), Portadown, Lisburn, Newry, and Dublin.

Contemporary accounts record that the chapel initially remained unfloored and unplastered, though a gallery, pulpit, and communion table were subsequently added and the building was reopened on 5 October 1841. The church is depicted on the 1859 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as "Methodist meeting house". The building passed to the Irish Methodist Church in 1879 and was reopened on 2 November 1879 by Reverend Doctor Crook of Kingstown. It remained in use until approximately 1992, when it was deemed unfit for worship and the small congregation dispersed to other local churches. The building is now recorded as derelict, and the Methodist church does not intend to reuse it as a place of worship.

The setting includes a pair of flat-iron gates worked into a grid of open squares and supported on granite rock-faced gate piers with pyramidal heads at the road frontage. A pair of similar but lower gates with additional scrolls across the top rail stands at the end of the lane. The small triangular churchyard is enclosed by hedges.