St Mary’s RC Church, Forkhill Road, Mullaghbawn, Armagh, BT35 9RA

St Mary's RC Church

St Mary's is a freestanding, symmetrical double-height Neo-Gothic Catholic church built in 1862 on the site of an earlier church. It stands at the edge of the graveyard on the eastern side of Forkhill Road in the centre of Mullaghbawn village, Armagh.

The church is cruciform in plan, oriented west to east, with a three-bay nave and two-bay transepts to north and south. A vestry and toilet block extension was added to the north-east around 1940.

The exterior is finished in roughcast render, painted, with stepped painted smooth rendered quoins to the south and west elevations and straight quoins to the north and east elevations. The smooth rendered plinth runs around the base of the building. The pitched slate roof is fitted with black terracotta ridge tiles. The gables are topped with stone saddle coping terminating in kneeler stones with cusped detailing and profiled skew corbels. Stone Celtic-style cross finials crown all four gables. A plain rendered chimney sits on the southern pitch of the western gable. Metal rainwater goods with decorative trefoil brackets serve the downpipes.

Windows throughout feature gothic arches with lancet openings to the side walls. All windows have stepped painted smooth render surrounds, hood moulds, and flush chamfered sills. The windows are leaded glass, with several containing stained-glass motifs. The west elevation features a projecting gable with a full-height six-light window containing Y-tracery and lattice panes with stained-glass details. The west elevation of the transepts has two bays of lancet-headed openings with lattice stained-glass windows. The north elevation is generally similar to the west, with the addition of the single-storey lean-to vestry and toilet block extension to the east, which has stone gothic arched openings and a square-headed timber casement window. The east elevation has a full-height gable with a gothic-arched window containing leaded stained glass. The transept to the right is abutted by the lean-to vestry and toilet block extension, which comprises three gothic arched windows with smooth render surrounds and square-headed timber casement windows. A single-bay two-storey lean-to at the south-east corner of the transept and nave has a timber sheeted door with a plain glazed transom light above, and a timber sheet shutter at the upper floor level. The south elevation has a projecting gabled bay with moulded-stone coping and kneelers, stepped and straight smooth rendered quoins, and a gothic-arched window with a lattice stained-glass window. Entrance doors have gothic arches, hood moulds, and stepped painted surrounds formed of smooth render, with double-leafed timber sheet doors featuring gothic tracery tympana.

The church is set beside Tullymacreeve Road in the north-western corner of a churchyard that slopes gently down towards the Forkhill river to the east. The churchyard contains gravemarkers dating from the early 19th century to the present, including one signed by the celebrated stonemason, poet and scribe Arthur Bennett (Art MacBionaid). A tarmac car park lies to the north. The churchyard is bounded at the roadside by a coursed granite rubblestone wall, which is non-original, with a stepped concrete section to the south. Access to the churchyard from the south is through a pair of modern steel gates on square piers with castellated coping.