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

St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Mullaghbawn

St Mary's is a freestanding, double-height rural Catholic church built in 1862 on the site of an earlier chapel, designed in a simple neo-Gothic style on a cruciform plan. It was designed by architect Richard Hynes of Newry, who also designed Catholic churches at Bessbrook and Rostrevor. A small vestry and toilet block extension was added to the north-east around 1940.

Exterior

The church is symmetrically composed, with a west-east oriented three-bay nave and two-bay transepts to the north and south. The roof is pitched natural slate 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; these are of granite quarried at Lislea and were added during renovations in 1912. There is a plain rendered chimney to the southern pitch of the western gable. Metal rainwater goods are fitted with decorative trefoil brackets to the downpipes.

The walls are roughcast rendered and painted. Corner quoins are stepped and painted smooth render to the south and west elevations, and straight to the north and east elevations, with a smooth rendered plinth at the base. The window openings are full-height gothic arches to the gables and lancet-headed openings to the side walls, all with stepped painted smooth render surrounds, hood moulds, and flush chamfered sills. The windows are leaded glass. Entrance doorways have gothic arches, hood moulds, and stepped painted smooth render surrounds. The doors themselves are double-leafed timber sheet with gothic tracery tympana.

The west elevation features a projecting gable with a full-height six-light window with Y-tracery and lattice panes containing stained-glass motifs. The west face of the transepts is two-bay with lancet-headed openings containing lattice stained-glass windows and timber-sheeted doors.

The north elevation follows the same general arrangement as the west. A two-bay single-storey lean-to vestry and toilet block extension dating from around 1940 occupies the east end of this elevation. It has stone gothic-arched openings, a square-headed door, and a square-headed timber casement window with smooth render to the tympanum.

The east elevation has a full-height gable with a gothic-arched window containing leaded stained glass. The north transept at this end is abutted by the lean-to vestry and toilet block extension, which has three gothic-arched windows with smooth render surrounds and square-headed timber casement windows with smooth rendered tympana. At the south-east corner of the transept and nave there is a single-bay two-storey lean-to structure with a timber-sheeted door and plain glazed transom light, and an opening at upper floor level fitted with a timber sheet shutter.

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 lattice stained glass.

Interior

The interior retains its historic form and several notable original features despite modifications carried out over several phases of renovation. The timber truss roof survives in good condition. The church contains a six-light east window by Clokey, installed in 1951, donated by an emigrant to the United States whose father came from Mullaghbawn. This window depicts the Assumption of Our Lady of Lourdes and Fatima. A further window by McManus Design was installed in 1982 as part of a major renovation carried out between June 1981 and April 1982 at a cost of approximately £100,000, undertaken to align the interior with modern liturgical requirements. Further renovations took place around 2015.

A valuation survey of the interior carried out in 1933 recorded an altar of simple character and seating for 1,500 on loose forms with backs. At that time there were three galleries — one in the nave and two in the transepts — and hot water ran through pipes beneath iron gratings in the floor. The two transept galleries, added in 1912, have since been removed.

Historical Background

The 1862 church replaced an earlier chapel shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1835, captioned "R.C. Chapel." The earlier building had a roughly cruciform plan — a variation of the traditional T-plan form of early Catholic chapels in Ireland — and its dimensions are recorded in the Townland Valuation of the 1830s. The nave was 88 feet long and 25½ feet wide, with a 75-foot transept and a low extension to the eastern elevation measuring 16½ by 15½ feet and standing 6 feet in height. The main body of the church stood 10 to 10½ feet to the eaves. The valuator noted it was not new but in sound order, good repair, and constructed of stone or brick and lime with a slated roof.

Close to the church in MacSherry's Glen is the site of a mass garden where open-air masses were celebrated during the period of suppression of Catholic worship under the Penal Laws. This site is thought to have influenced the location of the original chapel.

An offer by the local rector — described in contemporary sources as an aggressive proselytiser — to finance a new Catholic chapel at Forkhill was rejected by the congregation, who raised the funds themselves. The fundraising effort was launched by a charity sermon in 1857. Tenders for the building of the walls were invited in July 1861, and the foundation stone was laid in September of that year. By March 1862 the building was roofed and required only the interior to be completed. However, funds ran out and the parish priest Father Mulligan was forced to appeal for support from the people of Dundalk and other towns and districts. The new Catholic Church of Forkhill was dedicated on Sunday 19 October 1862 by the Archbishop of Armagh and the Lord Bishop of Down and Connor. The new church replicated the cruciform plan of its predecessor.

The golden jubilee of the church — known at that time as St Mary's in the Valley — was celebrated on 20 October 1912. Renovation works were undertaken at great cost: tenders had been invited in April and May 1910 for extension works including stonework, plastering, and joinery. These works introduced two new galleries and carried out exterior treatment of the church, including the Celtic cross finials of Lislea granite to the gables and a new wall covering of Portland cement incorporating pebble inclusions from the Cooley Peninsula. The cement quoins used granite sand from Shanroe quarries, and the roof was decorated with a cast-iron ridge crest bearing gilded trefoils. The architect for the jubilee renovations was John F. McGahon of Dundalk, and the contract was carried out by Bernard Duffy, also of Dundalk, at a cost of £819. The congregation of nearly 800 families celebrated the jubilee by lighting bonfires on the surrounding mountains, illuminating their houses, and erecting triumphal arches in Mullaghbawn and Forkhill. A fireworks display lasting two hours was held in the old mass garden in MacSherry's Glen.

Setting

The church stands 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 grave markers dating from the early 19th century to the present day. Among the notable monuments is the headstone of Gaelic poet, scribe, and stonemason Arthur Bennett (Art Mac Bionaid) of Ballykeel (1793–1879), which he carved himself. Bennett was one of the most competent and prolific scribes of Irish in the 19th century, with particular interests in Irish history, lore, archaeology, and the literature of his native area. He was regarded as a prominent Irish scholar during his lifetime and has since been assessed as the last of the school of South East Ulster Poets. The churchyard also contains a grey marble tablet monument to the Reverend Hugh Mulligan, the former parish priest who was instrumental in building the church and who died in 1878.

A tarmac car park lies to the north. The churchyard is bounded at the roadside by a coursed granite rubblestone wall, which is not 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.