St Colman’s RC Church, Massforth, Newry Road, Kilkeel, Newry, Co. Down, BT34 4HA

St Colman's RC Church, Massforth

This is a substantial church in the English Gothic Revival style, built in local granite and designed by Belfast architects O'Neill and Byrne. It opened in 1879, replacing an earlier church erected on the same site between 1811 and 1818.

The church is cruciform in plan with its axis running roughly east to west, liturgically correct. A single centrally placed tower rises over the western entrance. An unusual architectural feature is that each transept is two bays in width. The building is constructed of squared granite laid in a distinctive pattern of irregular large and small stones creating diagonal rows. The walling has raised pointing, rounded and convex rather than struck, avoiding a hard line. All openings, buttresses, and coping are fully dressed and flush pointed.

The tower has three stages with paired corner buttresses set at right angles to each other. The first stage contains the entrance on its west face, comprising paired sheeted and varnished doors with cusped stone jambs and a stopped chamfer to the lintel. The doors are set within an outer Gothic arch framing a blind quatrefoil in the tympanum. The arch is moulded with a label mould and cubical stops, its extrados formed by a relieving arch in rubble stonework. This treatment is repeated for all other doorways and lancet windows. The jambs are flanked by single engaged colonettes with undecorated Romanesque capitals, cushioned bases and chamfered plinths.

The second stage of the tower features paired lights on the west face, each with a trefoil head. Above them, centred on the axis, is a single quatrefoil, all with standard dressings. Only the west face is marked by a stringcourse at this level; the north and south faces have two small quatrefoil lights without other dressings. The third stage is marked by a stringcourse on all sides, just clearing the ridge of the main roof. On all four facades are pairs of bell vents with trefoil heads and a quatrefoil opening centred above, all set within Gothic arches with standard detailing. The parapet is marked by a projecting cornice mould and is stepped. The central panel of each face is decorated with a blind Gothic arch. The coping oversails the parapet walls. Corner pinnacles have pyramidal caps and iron cross finials; each external face of the pinnacles is decorated with a blind Gothic arch.

The nave and transept roofs are pitched and covered in Welsh slate with blue clay ridges. Cast iron rainwater goods of unusual chamfered box section run to square downpipes. A projecting chamfered eaves course sits on projecting chamfered brackets. The gable is coped to front with projecting cross gable kneelers.

The nave has two-stage buttresses between each window, with pitched coping at the first stage and gabled coping at the second. Windows are single lancets, detailed as in the tower. The transepts are similarly detailed to the nave. Each has an entrance door in the last bay of the west wall, set in an advanced gabled porch with a cusped head within a moulded arch and dressings similar to the main tower door.

The end walls of both transepts have paired gables, each coped with a stone cross finial. Three single-stage buttresses with gabled coping are positioned accordingly. A modern wet dash render flue rises up the west wall of the north transept, terminating in a red clay chimney pot just above eaves level.

Each transept gable is over a six-part rose window of plate tracery within circular moulding. Below each rose window are two lancet lights of standard detailing. Windows on the east wall all have plate tracery and standard dressings.

The rear east walls of both transepts are advanced with a double gabled facade and central single-stage buttress. Each gable contains a paired lancet window with a quatrefoil over in a Gothic ashlar surround.

The sanctuary gable has a granite cross finial and corner buttresses rising in three stages with oversailing pyramidal caps bearing branching iron finials. A large centred tracery window set high in the wall comprises three Gothic-headed lancets with a cinquefoil window over, all in a Gothic-headed opening with moulded label and square block label stops. High in each side wall of the sanctuary is a cinquefoil window set in a circular opening.

A sacristy is built against the north wall of the sanctuary, with a natural slate mono-pitched roof. It is lit by two plain lancet windows without dressings. A modern shallow pitched slate-roofed extension with semicircular cast-iron rainwater goods extends along the north wall, bringing the complete group to three-quarters of the length of the transept up to cill level. Detailing on the extension is similar to the original sacristy wall: the base is chamfered, arrises are stop-chamfered, the moulded cap projects, and there are five small rectangular-headed stained glass windows, two with aluminium opening vents inserted. Two stained timber sheeted doors are set into the north wall. At the junction of the rear transept wall and sanctuary wall, on the north side, is an ashlar granite chimney rising six courses above eaves level, capped with lead.

Between the west wall of the transept and the north wall of the nave sits a small flat-roofed modern boiler house with rendered walls and raised strap pointing matching the joint lines of the church.

The graveyard is surrounded by a rubble granite wall approximately 1.5 metres high capped with concrete. The entrance gates are modern, hung on ashlar gate piers five courses high with canted plinth and cap. The wider setting contains no features of note and there is no planting.