Coke Memorial Methodist Church, Church Street, Warrenpoint, Newry, Co Down, BT34 2AH

This late 19th-century church displays many fine free-Gothic details and remains largely unaltered. It was designed by W. J. Watson, an accomplished local architect who also worked on the Presbyterian church at Warrenpoint (HB16/11/017).

The building is a small late 19th-century basilica plan church set back from the south side of Church Street. It is aligned northeast to southwest, with a small gabled porch to the northeast gable and modern halls to the southwest gable. The pitched natural slate roof is finished with crested terracotta ridge tiles and has exposed rafter tails to the eaves and half-round rainwater goods. Set slightly forward of centre on the ridge is a square-section ventilator with a splayed slated base tied into the roof pitches. Its timber cheeks each have a pair of short cusped lancet openings with scalloped louvres and fretted spandrels. Above this sits a slender Germanic-style copper spire with an octagonal metal finial, overhanging eaves, and exposed timber rafter tails. A small chimney to the apex of the front gable is dressed as a Gothic gablet. Masonry skews with gablet coping sit at each end and on the ridge at the rear. The lean-to side aisle roofs have moulded kneelers.

The walls are lined, rendered, and painted with a chamfered base course and painted finely dressed sandstone dressing to openings. The front northeast gable is abutted at its centre by a narrow single-storey porch with a steeply pitched natural slate roof detailed as that to the nave but with a very low eaves line. The walls match the main church, with a single-stage gabled buttress to the front end of each side wall. The entrance is reached by two granite steps and comprises a pair of wrought-iron Gothic gates within a two-order Gothic doorway with chamfered reveals and hood mould. The gates consist of alternated twisted and plain bars set to an angle, with crested finials and dog bars containing foliated detail enclosed within trefoils. Above the entrance is a flush granite plaque reading "THE / COKE MEMORIAL / METHODIST CHURCH / 1885". In the gable apex above is a blind trefoil. Each cheek of the entrance porch has four small contiguous cusped lancet windows with splayed cills, all featuring plain leaded and coloured glazing with rectangular quarries. All other windows are detailed similarly unless otherwise stated.

Above the porch, in the front gable of the main block, is a large Gothic opening with four slender cusped lancets above which, in the common spandrel, are two quatrefoils and a trefoil, all finely executed with splayed cill and hood mould. Each northeast cheek of the side aisles is flush with the front gable. Each contains a Gothic opening with two cusped lancets and a quatrefoil in their common spandrel. The left one bears a rectangular granite plaque on the basecourse with moulded surround, reading in painted incised letters "WESLEYAN / CHAPEL / 1793".

The side elevations of the nave are identical. They are completely abutted to ground floor level by lean-to side aisles. The exposed upper clerestorey level has five openings, each delineated by single-stage buttresses. All but the one at the front end are circular eight-foil lights; the front one is a small cusped lancet. Each monopitched roof of the side aisles has a steeply pitched wall-head gable to its rear southwest end. These gables have crested terracotta ridges and each contains a Gothic window with three tall cusped lancets and a quatrefoil in their common spandrel, with a blind trefoil in the gable apex above. Two-staged buttresses stand on the walls to either side. This gable form possibly mimics the form of a transept. The remaining side aisle walls each have seven cusped lancet windows arranged as three equally-spaced pairs with a single lancet at the front end, delineated by a two-stage buttress (that at the front end is flush with the aisle front cheek). The blank rear southwest gable of the church and the similar rear of the right side aisle are both abutted by a modern church hall running parallel to the street with a shallow pitched natural slate roof and lined rendered walls. It advances beyond the northwest side aisle. Its projecting front northeast wall was retained from the former lecture hall; it is rendered and painted and contains a Gothic-headed tongue-and-groove sheeted door with decorative strap hinges to the right. Above it is a flush granite plaque reading "METHODIST / LECTURE HALL / 1904". To its right are two lancet windows. The opposite southeast gable of the church hall is abutted by a flat-roofed porch which advances beyond the line of the southeast side aisle, containing a modern recessed porch with a pair of doors. At the join between this porch and the left side aisle is a wide buttress, the only remnant of the building demolished for the hall's erection.

The front of the churchyard is enclosed by a rendered dwarf wall carrying spear-headed 19th-century railings with moulded heads and bases and plain braces to the rear. The left and right ends have pedestrian gates, each with finialised cast-iron posts carrying gates detailed as the railings. The left boundary comprises a lane running from the street to the church hall at the rear. The right boundary is formed by the gable of the adjacent shop, and the rear is formed by the church hall.

A Methodist chapel was erected on this site in 1793 and remained in use until 1842, when the congregation moved to a larger church in Duke Street (now a Masonic hall). The present church was commenced in 1884 under the supervision of W. J. Watson, architect of Newry, with Isaac Cunningham of Newry as contractor. The church was completed in 1885 at a cost of £1,500. It was named after Reverend Dr Thomas Coke, an associate of John Wesley. Watson was also involved with Warrenpoint Presbyterian Church, and these two churches share similar details. A lecture hall was constructed to the rear of the church in 1904. The present church hall was built in 1979, replacing a caretaker's house and the earlier hall.