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

St Colman's Roman Catholic Church at Massforth, Kilkeel, is a cruciform granite church built in the English Gothic Revival style. The building is oriented liturgically correct on an east-west axis and features a centrally placed west tower over the entrance. An unusual architectural characteristic is that each transept measures two bays in width.

The church is constructed from squared granite laid in a distinctive pattern of irregularly sized large and small stones creating diagonal rows. The mortar pointing is raised with rounded, convex finish rather than struck, avoiding a hard line. All openings, buttresses, and coping are fully dressed with flush pointing.

The three-stage tower has paired corner buttresses set at right angles to each other. The first stage contains the main entrance on its west face. The doors are paired, sheeted and varnished timber, with cusped stone jambs. The lintel stone arris carries a stopped chamfer. The doorway sits within a moulded Gothic arch in whose tympanum is a blind quatrefoil, with label mould and cubical stops. The relieving arch above is formed in rubble stonework. This format repeats at all other doorways and lancet windows. The jambs are flanked by single engaged colonettes with undecorated Romanesque cushioned capitals, chamfered plinth, and base. The north and south walls each have a single lancet window with splayed reveals.

The second tower stage carries paired lights on the west face, each with a trefoil head and a single quatrefoil centred above, all with standard dressings. Only the west face is marked by a stringcourse at this stage; the north and south faces have two small quatrefoil lights without further dressings. The third stage is marked by a stringcourse on all four sides, just clearing the ridge of the main roof. All four façades display a pair of bell vents with trefoil heads and a quatrefoil opening centred above, each set within a Gothic arch with standard detailing. The parapet is marked by a projecting cornice mould and is stepped. Each central panel is decorated with a blind Gothic arch. Corner pinnacles carry pyramidal caps topped with iron cross finials, each face decorated with a blind Gothic arch. The coping oversails the parapet walls.

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 and square downpipes are installed. A projecting chamfered eaves course runs on projecting chamfered brackets. The front gable is coped with projecting cross gable kneelers.

The nave has two-stage buttresses between each window with pitched coping at first stage and gabled coping to the second. Windows are single lancets matching the tower pattern. The transepts are similarly detailed. A gabled porch containing an entrance door advances from the last bay of the west wall at each transept end. The doorway has a cusped head within a moulded arch with dressings similar to the main tower door. The end walls of both transepts have paired gables coped with stone cross finials. Three single-stage buttresses with gabled coping serve each gable. A modern wet dash render flue with red clay chimney pot rises the west wall of the north transept just above eaves level.

Each gable is over a six-part rose window of plate tracery within a circular moulding. Below each rose window are two lancet lights of standard detailing. All east wall windows carry plate tracery with standard dressings.

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

The sanctuary gable carries a granite cross finial and corner buttresses rising in three stages with oversailing pyramidal caps topped by branching iron finials, otherwise detailed as other buttresses. A large centred tracery window set high in the wall contains three Gothic-headed lancets and a cinquefoil window above within a Gothic-headed opening with moulded label and square block stops. High in each sanctuary sidewall is a cinquefoil window set in a circular opening.

The Sacristy is against the north wall of the Sanctuary. It has a natural slate mono-pitched roof and is lit by two plain lancet windows without dressings. A shallow pitched slate-roofed extension with semicircular cast-iron rainwater goods now extends along nearly three-quarters of the transept length to cill level. The sacristy base is chamfered with stop-chamfered arrises and a projecting moulded cap. Five small rectangular-headed stained glass windows (two with aluminium opening vents inserted) light the extension. Two stained timber sheeted doors open 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 with lead-capped flue.

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

The church stands in a graveyard with few setting features. There is no planting. A rubble granite wall approximately 1.5 metres high capped with concrete surrounds the graveyard. Modern entrance gates hang on ashlar gate piers five courses high with canted plinth and cap.