Drumgooland Parish Church, Ballyward Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT31 9PP

Drumgooland Parish Church is a Church of Ireland place of worship built in the Gothic Revival style, with its foundation stone laid on 18 June 1821 and the building consecrated in 1822. It stands at the junction of Castlewellan Road and Station Road, approximately two miles east of Castlewellan, and is accessed from the main road between Castlewellan and Banbridge. The church is double-height and follows a cruciform plan, with a three-stage tower, transepts, a side aisle, chancel, and vestry added at various points during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The walls are built of rubble granite masonry with ashlar dressings. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, and cast-iron rainwater goods are carried on corbelled masonry eaves brackets. Windows throughout are pointed-arched, timber-framed with Y-tracery, and glazed with coloured leaded lattice lights. They have plain jambs, squared masonry cills, and hood mouldings with stops. The main entrance door is a double-leaf timber sheeted door with wrought-iron ironmongery and strap hinges, set into a pointed-arched surround matching the windows, with a solid timber Y-tracery tympanum above.

The principal gable faces west and is symmetrically arranged, with kneelers, shoulders, and pinnacles — though the right-hand pinnacle is missing. The gable is blank and is abutted centrally by the three-stage tower, which is intersected by projecting string courses. The first stage contains the entrance door on the right cheek, with a window of diminished scale to the front and a recessed blank shield-plaque directly above it. The second stage has bipartite square-headed windows with label mouldings to the right and front faces, blank to the front. The third stage has timber louvered pointed-arch openings to all faces, and the tower is surmounted by an Irish crenellation with pinnacles at the corners.

The north elevation is largely occupied by the north transept and side aisle. The aisle is two windows wide, with bipartite pointed-arch lattice lights set in chamfered long-and-short surrounds with central masonry mullions and cills. The west gable of the aisle is asymmetrical, with a central pointed-arched timber sheeted door and a cusped window set into a lozenge light above. The north transept is gable-ended, surmounted by a finial, and symmetrically arranged with a central window and a diminished-scale Y-tracery louvered pointed-arch opening directly above. The left cheek of the transept has a single leaded light adjacent to a single-storey lean-to organ chamber, which has a single window to its east cheek and finishes flush with the east gable.

The east gable is symmetrically arranged with a single central window featuring intersecting tracery, pinnacles over the gable shoulders, and a small chimney over the apex. The organ chamber extends it to the right, and the vestry extends it to the left.

The south elevation is asymmetrically arranged. The south transept, which matches the north transept, sits to the left and has a window on its left cheek. To the right of the south transept, a single-storey lean-to vestry is abutted against the nave, with a bipartite lattice light to its east face, a raised door on the left of the front face giving external access to the room, and a lower door to the right giving access to the basement. To the left of the transept, the nave is two windows wide.

The interior has remained largely unaltered and retains modest detailing throughout.

The church grounds are largely enclosed by replacement railings and are accessed through wrought-iron gates fixed to squared masonry piers, which are surmounted by a modern metal-framed arch supporting a lantern. Burial grounds lie to the east, north, and west of the church, including an underground burial chamber adjacent to the chancel. To the north-east of the site stands the former sexton's cottage, which bears a plaque inscribed "FORMERLY SEXTON'S COTTAGE AND STABLE RECONSTRUCTED 1980."

The listing covers both the church and its gate screen.

The parish of Drumgooland has medieval origins, first recorded in valuations of 1422 and 1546. The early congregation met at a church at a place called Dechomet on the Dromara Road, later moving to the nearby townland of Drumadonnel. The Dechomet church was in ruins by 1657. The current church replaced an earlier building in the townland of Drumballyroney. In the mid to late 18th century, the Reverend Thomas Tighe became rector and sought out a site for a new parish church. The land was leased from the Beers family of Ballyward Lodge, who attended services at Drumgooland and were buried in a vault beneath the church. The 1836 Ordnance Survey Memoirs recorded the church as having been built in 1820 at a cost of £900 granted by the Board of First Fruits, describing it as "a neat building with a square tower, 63 feet long and 28 feet broad." Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland described it as being in the early English style but gave a construction date of 1822. The church was valued at £17 3s. in the Townland Valuation of the 1830s.

A marble monument to the Reverend Thomas Tighe, who had been rector for 56 years and oversaw the construction of the church, dates from at least the 1830s. When first built, the church had smaller north and south transepts; the enlarged transepts were not constructed until around 1860, first appearing on the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map in 1859. Their addition raised the church's valuation to £25 by around 1862, a figure maintained in the Annual Revisions until 1929 despite further alterations in the 1890s. In 1893, the chancel and vestry room were added in a second major modification. The former sexton's cottage and stable, which had been erected between the first and second editions of the Ordnance Survey maps, were reconstructed in 1980.

The Reverend Tighe has an indirect but notable connection to literary history: he is recorded as having established the Reverend Patrick Brontë (1777–1861), father of the novelists Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, as a schoolmaster in the neighbouring schoolhouse in Drumballyroney, and also assisted him in gaining acceptance to Cambridge University to study for ordination.

In 1975 the church suffered damage in an attack, during which the original stained glass windows on the north side were smashed. These were later restored with the current glazing, and a plaque was dedicated to the memory of Patrick Brontë. Drumgooland Parish was grouped with the parish of Kilcoo in 1930 and remained connected with it for 36 years. In 1976 it was joined with Drumballyroney and Drumgath. The church was listed in 1977 and continues to be used as a place of worship.