St Patrick’s Parish Hall, 33 Downshire Road, Newry, Co Down, BT34 1EE

St Patrick's Parish Hall

This is a double-height rectangular hall with a semi-basement, located on Downshire Road in Newry. Built between 1840 and 1859, it was originally intended as a church but was adapted as a day and Sunday school from 1854. It ceased operating as a day school in 1892 but continued as a Sunday school. The building is now in use as a parish hall.

The building presents an imposing Gothic style façade to the west, facing Downshire Road, while the remainder of the structure is plain. The façade is rendered and painted, with all other walls harled over a smooth rendered base course. A pitched natural slate roof with a smooth-rendered crenellated parapet tops the front, with a low chimney rising at the front left behind the parapet. A projecting granite eaves course runs across, and plastic and metal gutters are fitted. Electric lights are affixed to each corner.

The main façade features a wide projecting central bay flanked by stepped pilasters topped by granite pinnacles. Narrow bays to either side are terminated by matching pinnacled corner pilasters. At the centre is a three-order Gothic door accessed up three steps, with a moulded granite plinth running across the façade and continuing around the remaining three walls as a moulded string course. The doors are double-framed and sheeted, painted, with a radial fanlight above. Painted lettering reads "Church of Ireland Hall" above the door and "Scriptural School" below the arch head. Above the door is a fine tracery window four lancets wide, with diamond quarries and cusped heads, topped by a small cinquefoil rose at the apex. The window is set in a plain two-order chamfered opening with a moulded granite cill. Surmounting the gable apex is a pinnacled ashlar granite bellcote, open to all sides but now without its bell. Flanking bays each contain a single Gothic lancet window with diamond quarries in a splayed opening, the moulded granite cill at spring level of the door arch.

The front façade is approached via a swept tarmaced area with a concrete forecourt, flanked by rubble granite retaining walls. The ground falls away to basement level at the rear, creating a void area beneath the forecourt entrance. This void is vaulted with stone and entered on the left through a timber door set in modern blockwork; the right side is completely infilled. The façade wall within this passageway is unrendered squared granite rubble brought to courses, with a modern concrete floor and no openings into the hall.

The left elevation faces north and has smooth rendered pilasters at each end, with those on the right shared with the façade (pinnacled), while those on the left are pinnacled but without finials. The wall contains three widely spaced windows across the basement and upper section, aligned vertically. The basement windows are four-paned with Gothic heads and crude Y tracery, with opening casements to the lower panes, set in splayed render reveals with moulded granite cills. The upper windows are three lancets wide with Gothic heads, diamond quarries, and a single large diamond to the central lower pane. Central upper panes have hopper vents, and ventilators have been inserted to the left and right windows. They are set in similar reveals to those below. A small modern single-storey porch with a monopitch corrugated asbestos-cement roof abuts the basement right, with a top-hung casement window to the end and a framed and sheeted door to the left cheek.

Projecting to the rear is a return section, narrower and slightly lower than the main block, with a pitched natural slate roof and metal rainwater goods. The exposed section of wall is blank. The right cheek of the return has a Gothic arched door at basement level, up one step. The door is rectangular, framed and sheeted, painted, with a boarded-over fanlight, set in a splayed render reveal with granite plinth blocks to each jamb. The gable of the return is abutted by a one-storey boiler house with an oil tank on top of a flat concrete roof, fitted with a sheeted door and top-hung casement window. At either side of this addition, on the gable of the return, is a small round-headed window divided into three panes, with the middle one having a top-hung opening casement. Above at the centre is a Gothic window comprising two four-paned casements with a broad central mullion and a three-part fanlight above, set into a splayed render reveal with a moulded granite cill and wire mesh grill. Near the apex is a rose window of eight radial panes and a central quatrefoil light in a circular boss, plain glass and crude in detail. The left cheek of the return has a Gothic-headed door at basement level opening up two concrete steps, with modern flush double-leaf doors and a plain transom above, set in a splayed render reveal with granite plinth blocks to the jambs.

The right elevation is as the left elevation except for the insertion of a fire escape door to the right of the right-hand upper floor window, just above the string course, with a metal fire escape descending the wall towards the front. Windows have plastic security covers.

The Downshire Road frontage is bounded by a rendered stone wall with square rendered piers topped with projecting concrete caps, and features original wrought-iron gates with cast finials. Boundaries to the left and rear are enclosed by modern corrugated metal security fencing from the adjoining former police compound. The southern boundary is an overgrown laurel hedge.

The building is in virtually original condition and makes a significant architectural statement worthy of protection.