Christ Church, Church Road, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

Christ Church is a multi-bay mid-Victorian Gothic style church built between 1866 and 1868 to designs by Welland & Gillespie. The building is constructed in local Newry Granodiorite stone with polychrome brickwork detailing and Giffnock Sandstone dressings, set back to the northeast side of Church Road within private grounds accessed through vehicular gates hung on square-section stone pillars with granite pyramidal caps.

The church is planned as a cruciform with a single or double gabled transepts, an octagonal apse to the southeast, and an attached projecting gabled porch and square plan gabled tower with buff brick spire to the southwest. The pitched and gabled natural slate roof features roll top back clay ridge tiles and occasional decorative cockscombs cresting. Transepts have moulded stone chimneys with trefoil detail; the southwest transept retains a tall octagonal buff clay pot. Raised verges and moulded kneelers to gables feature sandstone coping with trefoil detail at gable apexes. Narrowly projecting eaves display exposed painted timber rafter ends. The building is generally fitted with cast iron rainwater goods; half round guttering on decorative brackets discharges to circular section downpipes, with some rectangular hoppers and square section downpipes. The porch has a decorative angular cast iron hopper discharging to a square-section downpipe.

The walling is generally random-coursed squared blocks of rock-faced local 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 with flush red and buff brick sections to the arch and a keystone. Windows generally feature clear lattice glazing with borders or stained glass. Doors are polished sheeted timber with decorative painted metal hinges and handles.

The main elevation faces southwest and consists of a central rectangular plan nave with a polygonal apse (chancel) to the southeast. The nave has two windows and is fronted by a double gabled transept to the southeast and a square-section tower to the northwest. Nave windows are triple lancets with quatrefoil lights above, set within decorative flush red and buff brick arches. The transept projects to the southwest by a single bay with a pointed arch lancet featuring 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 northeast elevation displays similar windows and arrangement. The apse at the southeast is fronted by a monopitched single storey vestry attached to the southeast side of the transept; the vestry door has a decorative pointed arch head with bead moulding to the springers and triangular dentilated detail to the head.

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

The northwest elevation consists of a gabled block with the church tower attached flush to its southwest. The gabled block has four trefoil-headed lancets to ground floor level, a large tracery window in red sandstone to first floor (serving as a gallery window), and an oval window to the gable with moulded trefoil detail at the gable apex. A moulded stone chimney is positioned to the northeast side of the apex. The tower has two staggered square-headed lancets leading to first floor level with a stepped cill course below, which runs horizontally beneath the large window of the gabled block to the northeast.

The rear elevation faces northeast and consists of a rectangular nave with three windows fronted at the southeast by a double gabled transept displaying similar windows to the southwest 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 northwest is defined by a narrowly projecting buttress and a plain pointed lancet window. A replacement square-section red brick mid-ridge chimney appears on the transept.

The southeast elevation is dominated by a central polygonal apse (chancel) at the southeast end of the nave with five sections of canted walling divided by narrowly projecting diagonal buttresses. Four sections each have trefoil-headed lancet windows with stained lattice glazing and decorative brickwork to the arches; the fifth section to the southwest is abutted by the attached vestry. A lancet window with lattice glazing to the northeast is blind. The apse has an angled roof and is flanked by transepts. The southwest transept is fronted by a two-bay single storey monopitched vestry with a paired lancet and a single lancet. The northeast transept has a single pointed lancet window. Moulded stone chimneys to the ridge of each transept are located towards the apse.

The churchyard to the rear northeast and southeast 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 southeast side of the vehicular gate. A decorative metal scrollwork notice board dated 1964 displays service times. A tarmac path leads from the front gate around the church, with a larger graveyard extending down the hill to the northeast beyond a wall of random-course rock-faced stone. Bessbrook's former RUC Station is located to the southeast and the Presbyterian Meeting House is located to the northwest. A newly built church hall completed in 2011 with rendered walling and stone-built gables is located to the north of the church.