Christ Church, Church Road, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

Christ Church, Church of Ireland, Bessbrook

Christ Church is a multi-bay, single-phase, mid-Victorian Gothic church built between 1866 and 1868 to designs by Welland & Gillespie, architects appointed jointly to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1860. It was constructed for the local Church of Ireland congregation as part of the broader social development of Bessbrook, the internationally significant early planned mill village initiated in the 1840s by John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a prominent linen merchant from Lambeg and member of the Religious Society of Friends. Richardson purchased one of the derelict mills at the site in 1845 and began building housing for textile workers, establishing Bessbrook as a model village whose layout was influenced by the work of William Pen and the planning of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. His philanthropic intentions were to provide good living and working conditions for his employees, including people brought from the surrounding countryside, in the hope of encouraging self-improvement. The village became famously known as a settlement without the "Three P's" — no public house, no pawn shop, and therefore no need for police — a stipulation preserved by a majority vote of the population in the 1870s and maintained to this day. Despite Richardson's Quaker principles, Bessbrook had a sizeable Church of Ireland population, and the construction of Christ Church replaced an earlier church built in Camlough parish in 1773, made necessary by the mid-19th-century expansion of the village. Richardson provided the plot of land on which the church was built. The builder contracted to carry out the work was Matthew Doolin, and the completed church was consecrated in September 1868.

The church is built in locally quarried Newry Granodiorite — the same granite used in the construction of Manchester Town Hall and the great steps of St George's Hall in Liverpool — with imported Giffnock Sandstone dressings and polychrome brickwork detailing. The combination of rock-faced local stone walling with polychrome brickwork and an unusual buff brick spire gives the building considerable character. The church retains its original cruciform plan, external fabric, and much of its internal joinery, and displays good proportions and quality detailing throughout.

The church faces south-west onto Church Road and takes a cruciform plan form, with lancet windows, double gabled transepts, a polygonal apse at the south-east end, and a square-plan gabled tower with a buff brick spire attached at the south-west. The pitched and gabled roof is covered in natural slate with roll-top clay ridge tiles and occasional decorative cockscomb cresting. Transepts have moulded stone chimneys with trefoil detail; the south-west transept retains a tall octagonal buff clay pot. Gables have raised verges and moulded kneelers, with sandstone coping and trefoil detail to the gable apexes. Eaves project narrowly with exposed painted timber rafter ends. Rainwater goods are generally cast iron, with half-round guttering on decorative brackets discharging to circular-section downpipes; some rectangular hoppers and square-section downpipes are also present. The porch has a decorative angular cast iron hopper discharging to a square-section downpipe.

Walling is generally random-coursed squared blocks of rock-faced Newry Granodiorite set on a double plinth. Windows are typically either single pointed lancets with dressed granite jambs and heads, or grouped lancets with crowning quatrefoil lights set within decorative pointed arches; these arches incorporate flush red and buff brick sections with a keystone. Windows generally have clear lattice glazing with borders, or stained glass. Doors are generally polished sheeted timber with decorative painted metal hinges and handles.

The principal south-west elevation presents a central rectangular nave fronted by a double gabled transept to the south-east and the square-section tower to the north-west. Nave windows are triple lancets with quatrefoil lights above, set within decorative flush red and buff brick arches. The transept projects south-west by a single bay and has a pointed arch lancet with stained glass and storm glazing. Each transept gable has a single decorative pointed arch window composed of quatrefoil lights above paired trefoil-headed lancets, with sandstone hood moulds and stained glass fitted with storm glazing. Blind lancets appear at the top of each gable, with narrowly projecting angled buttresses to the transepts. The arrangement and windows of the north-east elevation transept are similar.

The square-plan tower at the north-west has three separate bands of red brick below belfry level, a stepped string course at ground floor level, and two staggered square-headed lancets above. The belfry has a pair of lancets with a recessed cinquefoil light above on each of its four sides, with slate louvres to the lancets and a flush red brick band forming pointed arches above the cinquefoil windows. The buff brick pointed spire, rising from the tower gables, has five paired bands of red brick and is topped with a decorative copper finial. The gabled single-storey porch is attached at the re-entrant corner between tower and nave, with a moulded granite trefoil-headed arch to the door on the south-east side of the porch.

The north-west elevation consists of a gabled block with the church tower attached flush to its south-west. The gabled block has four trefoil-headed lancets at ground floor level, a large tracery window in red sandstone at first floor level serving the gallery, an oval window to the gable with moulded trefoil detail to the gable apex, and a moulded stone chimney to the north-east side of the apex. The tower has two staggered square-headed lancets leading to first floor level, with a stepped cill course below running horizontally beneath the large window of the gabled block to the north-east.

The north-east elevation presents a rectangular nave with three windows fronted at the south-east by a double gabled transept with similar windows to those of the south-west elevation transept but with lattice glazing. Two nave windows have triple lancets with quatrefoil lights above set within pointed decorative brick arches. The first bay from the north-west is defined by a narrowly projecting buttress and a plain pointed lancet window. A replacement square-section red brick mid-ridge chimney serves the transept.

The south-east elevation is dominated by the central polygonal apse at the south-east end of the nave. The apse has five sections of canted walling divided by narrowly projecting diagonal buttresses. Four sections each have a trefoil-headed lancet window with stained lattice glazing and decorative brickwork to the arches; the fifth section to the south-west is abutted by the attached vestry. The lancet window to the north-east is blind. The apse has an angled roof and is flanked by the transepts. The south-west transept is fronted by a two-bay, single-storey, monopitched vestry with a paired lancet and a single lancet. The vestry door has a decorative pointed arch head with bead moulding to the springers and triangular dentilated detail to the head. The north-east transept has a single pointed lancet window. Moulded stone chimneys to the ridge of each transept are located towards the apse. The apse at the south-east end of the nave is preceded by a monopitched single-storey vestry attached to the south-east side of the transept.

The church contains a number of notable stained glass windows. The north transept has a pair of memorial windows: the Henry Memorial window, installed in 1868 to commemorate the Reverend Joseph Henry, the first incumbent of Camlough Parish, and his wife Isabella; and the adjoining White Memorial window, erected in the mid-to-late 19th century to commemorate John White, a local magistrate and Justice of the Peace, and his wife Elizabeth, both of whom had died by 1867. A further window in the north transept, the McConnell Memorial window, was added in 1979 to commemorate Hugh McConnell, a Royal Ulster Constabulary Constable who was shot in 1978; this was installed by CWS Design Stained Glass Studios of Lisburn. The church was damaged in a mortar bomb attack on the neighbouring police station on 1st March 1993, receiving moderate damage to the roof and cast iron rainwater goods, with much of the original glazing to the north transept and sanctuary smashed.

The church was initially valued at £55 in the Annual Revisions, rising to £160 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57) and further to £172 by the close of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72). The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of Bessbrook of 1906 depicts the church in its current cruciform layout, suggesting few major structural changes have been made since the early 20th century. The church was listed in 1988. A new church hall with rendered walling and stone-built gables was erected to the north of the church in 2011.

Christ Church is set back to the north-east side of Church Road within private grounds accessed through a set of vehicular gates; the painted metal gates have spearhead finials and are hung on square-section stone-built pillars with granite pyramidal caps. The site is bounded along Church Road by dwarf stone walling with concrete coping topped by plain painted metal railings. A similar foot gate is hung on slim posts to the south-east side of the vehicular gate. A decorative metal scrollwork noticeboard dated 1964 displays service times. A tarmac path leads from the front gate around the church. A graveyard lies to the rear, north-east and south-east, and a larger graveyard extends down the hill to the north-east beyond a wall of random-coursed rock-faced stone.

Christ Church has group value with the adjacent Presbyterian Meeting House, The Town Hall, The Former Schoolhouse, and The Shop/Former Quaker Meeting House — all significant public buildings within this internationally significant early planned mill village. The church and its surrounding graveyard are of significant historical and social importance.