FORMER REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH CLARENDON ST.

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Former Reformed Presbyterian Church, a gable-fronted Gothic Revival style stone Church with early Arts & Crafts style influences to dressings and carved detailing; built c. 1856-57 attributed to William Raffles Brown. Three-stage tower to the West side and single-storey entrance porch to the West and East side. Decorative pointed arch and Rose window on South gable, with buttresses. T-shaped on plan facing south set on the North side of Clarendon Street with adjoining former manse. The former church building had fallen out of use as a house of worship by 1993, and since then has been converted into modern office premises.

Pitched natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles with 'fleur-de-lys' inserts, lead valleys set behind slightly raised gables with sandstone coping to skews and corbelled kneelers. Narrow tower on West side has a chisel-shaped slate roof with lead ridges. Half-round cast-aluminium guttering on out-and-up iron brackets terminating to circular cast-aluminium downpipes throughout. Un-coursed squared local schist walling with Glasgow Giffnock sandstone ashlar dressings including quoins, window and door surrounds, stepped buttresses to the naves and angle buttresses to the front gable and tower. Windows are generally paired or triple lancets set in sandstone plate tracery with trefoils over and leaded coloured glazing.

Symmetrical front (south) elevation comprises a full-height gable flanked by a single-storey entrance porch to the East and West side. The gable is framed by tapered buttresses. Lower section of gable is filled with sandstone plate tracery windows housing three lancets topped by a roundel with four trefoils with leaded coloured glazing, all framed by a hood moulding terminating onto label-stops with a horizontal moulding below. The principal entrance comprises square headed door openings with pierced diminutive quatrefoil timber panels to either side. Vertically-sheeted timber doors with iron door furniture open onto a tiled floor finish to porch entrance.

Side (west) elevation is abutted towards the north end by a two-storey transept to left and a three-stage rectangular-plan narrow stone tower rising above a pointed arch doorway. The doorway is mirrored on the left side of the transept gable-end. The doors are connected with a continuous cill course which runs beneath paired lancet windows and the cill course forms a hood mould over each pointed arch doorway. Tower is framed by a stepped tapered buttress to the South-West corner. The tower has small lancet openings to the middle section with sandstone ashlar quoins. The upper stage has diminutive stone pointed-arch lucarnes and blind trefoil panels above to all four sides. The transept has two paired lancets and a plate tracery cusped roundel window to the gable with a small lancet opening above, lower level has a pointed-arch doorway with a pair of vertically sheeted timber doors with wrought-iron hinge brackets. Modern lean-to glazing infill between tower and single-storey porch.

Rear (north) gabled elevation appears to have a hipped slate roof (remaining not visible - appears to abut adjoining former manse).

Side (east) elevation abuts neighbouring property (remaining elevation not visible); slate roof has a series of small modern roof lights to the lower section.

Setting:
Located on the North side of Clarendon Street with adjoining former manse to rear (HB01/22/019B), situated on a corner site at the junction of Clarendon Street and Queen Street; principal entrance faces South onto Clarendon Street.

Roof Natural slate
RWG Cast-aluminium
Walling Un-coursed squared local schist / Glasgow Giffnock sandstone ashlar
Windows Leaded coloured glazing

Historical information

The former Reformed Presbyterian Church on Clarendon Street, a Gothic Revival church located at the corner of Clarendon Street and Queen Street, was constructed in c. 1856-57. The Ulster Architectural Heritage Society fixed the date of the church at 1853 but very little development of Clarendon Street had been undertaken by that time. The church was not depicted on the contemporary second edition of the Ordnance Survey map which recorded that few buildings had been erected along the street by that year (Clarendon street only extended as far west as the junction with Queen Street at that time).

The design of Clarendon Street Reformed Presbyterian Church has been incorrectly attributed to the Scottish practise of John James Stevenson (1831-1908) and Campbell Douglas (1828-1910), a firm based in Glasgow. Douglas’s obituary states that he designed a church in Derry between 1860 and 1868. Alastair Rowan, Williams and Calley have attributed this reference to the Reformed Presbyterian Church, noting that Douglas most likely constructed the building in c. 1863. In that year the Dublin Builder recorded that Douglas was in Derry at that time, having proposed alterations to Derry First Presbyterian Church (HB01/19/015A) in the previous year. However, Griffith’s Valuation records that the church had already been constructed in the mid-1850s and appeared in the valuation sources from 1856 onwards. In 1856 the valuer noted that the ‘Covenanters Church’ was leased by a Mr. John W. Johnston and was valued at £50.

The Presbyterian Historic Almanac (1859) records that the former Reformed Presbyterian Church was designed by a ‘rising young English architect’ who was a relative of the ‘celebrated Dr. Raffles of Liverpool.’ The architect was likely William Raffles Brown (c. 1822-c. 1867), an architect and surveyor based in London, Liverpool and Dublin who was the nephew of the Rev. Thomas Raffles of Liverpool. William Raffles Brown practiced in England before moving to Ireland in the mid-1850s after gaining some success in local architectural competitions. He lived in Derry for a short period of time and was responsible for the design of two local churches, the Congregational Church on the corner of Great James Street and Queen Street (1856-58) and the Covenanters’ Church on Bond’s Hill in the Waterside (1857-58), both immediately contemporary with the former Reformed Presbyterian Church on Clarendon Street. Such was the aesthetic sophistication of Brown’s design that the Presbyterian Historic Almanac held the church up as ‘a favourable specimen of the progress of modern architects in the study of Ecclesiastical Gothic [and an example of] what may be accomplished by talent and taste, in securing a pleasing structure which will ornament any landscape and delight the eye’ (Presbyterian Historic Almanac).

The Covenanters Church, or Reformed Presbyterian Church, was formed in the late-17th century when a minority broke away from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. In the aftermath of the Williamite War the Irish Covenanters refused to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith (which they claimed did not recognise the position of Christ as King) subsequently forming their own denomination. Prior to the construction of the new church on Clarendon Street, the Covenanters of Derry had met at an earlier meeting house on Fountain Street led by the Rev. Robert Niven (who would later be elected the Moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ireland). The Ordnance Survey Memoirs (1837) record that the original meeting house was built in 1810-11 and contained seats for 300 persons (OSM, p. 108). The congregation, which had originally stood under the shadow of the city walls, was relocated to the new residential district of Clarendon Street (the Rev. Niven coordinated the move), following the general trend of the mid-nineteenth century in which the professional and merchant classes shunned the walled city in favour of the new Georgian-style terraces to the north.

Although the church was recorded in Griffith’s Valuation in 1856, the Presbyterian Historic Almanac records that the church trustees procured the current site in 1857 ‘in the most improving part of the city … with aid from many sympathising friends both in Great Britain and America.’ The church was opened for public worship on 3rd January 1858 and originally possessed a schoolroom (the adjoining manse was not erected until c. 1862). The ‘Covenanters Church’ was renamed the Reformed Presbyterian Meeting house by the 1870s at which time the Rev. Nevin continued to serve as minister. The Annual Revisions noted little change to the building over the following decades and the church continued to be valued at £50 until the cancellation of the valuation in 1931. The value of the church was increased to £90 under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1935) but this was further increased to £136 by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956-72). The church celebrated its centenary year in 1958 and in that year the Derry Standard recorded that the church had been kept in a good state of repair for over two decades since the appointment of the Rev. Hugh Wright in the 1930s (Derry Standard).

In 1970 the UAHS guide for Londonderry described the church as ‘a small neo-Gothic building of almost domestic scale on a corner site. Excellently handled in whinstone with a delicately conceived rectangular tower culminating in a steeply pitched roof … a very good example of neo-Gothic rogue architecture in the manner of William Butterfield’ (UAHS, p. 31). Butterfield (1814-1900), an English architect, was prominent in the Gothic Revival, however the aesthetic design of the former Reformed Presbyterian Church appears to pre-empt the Arts and Craft movement of the late-19th century (Calley, pp 113-114). The Natural Stone Database records that the church was constructed of locally-quarried Derry Schist with Giffnock Sandstone from Glasgow utilised as a secondary material for the dressings and carved details (UAHS guide; NSD).

The church was listed in 1979 and had been included in the designation of Clarendon Street (and the surrounding streets) as a Conservation Area in 1978. The Department of the Environment stated that the church and its environment represented ‘an area of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance’ (Londonderry Clarendon Street Conservation Area Booklet). The NIEA HB Records note that the former Reformed Presbyterian Church (and its adjoining manse) had fallen out of use as a house of worship by 1993 when the church was converted into modern office premises (NIEA HB Records).

References

Primary Sources
1. PRONI OS/6/5/20/1 – First Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1830)
2. PRONI OS/6/5/20/2 – Second Edition Ordnance Survey Map (1853)
3. PRONI VAL/2/B/5/16G – Griffith’s Valuation (1856)
4. PRONI VAL/12/B/32/11B-ZA – Annual Revisions (1862-1897)
5. PRONI VAL/12/B/33/2C-2F – Annual Revisions (1898-1931)
6. PRONI VAL/3/B/6/4 - First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1935)
7. PRONI VAL/4/B/5/13-14 – Second General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1956-72)
8. Ordnance Survey Memoir of Parish of Templemore (1837)
9. Presbyterian Historic Almanac (1859)
10. Dublin Builder (1 May 1862)
11. Ulster Town Directories (1852-1918)
12. The Derry Standard (14 Apr 1958)
13. First Survey Record – HB01/22/019 (1970)
14. NIEA HB Records – HB01/22/019

Secondary Sources
1. Calley, D., ‘City of Derry: An historical gazetteer to the buildings of Londonderry’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 2013.
2. Ferguson, W. S; Rowan, A. J; Tracey, J. J., ‘List of historic buildings, groups of buildings, areas of architectural importance in and near the city of Derry’ Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1970.
3. Hume, J., ‘Derry beyond the walls: Social and economic aspects of the growth of Derry 1825-1850’ Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2002.
4. Rowan, A. J., ‘The Buildings of Ireland: North West Ulster’ London: Yale University Press, 2003.
5. Williams, J., ‘A companion guide to architecture in Ireland: 1837-1921’ Dublin: Irish Academic Press Ltd, 1994.

Online Resources
1. Dictionary of Irish Architects - http://www.dia.ie
2. Dictionary of Scottish Architects - www.scottisharchitects.org
3. Natural Stone Database website - http://www.stonedatabase.com/
4. Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland website - http://rpc.org

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
H-. Alterations detracting from building
H+. Alterations enhancing the building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
X. Local Interest
R. Age
T. Historic Importance
S. Authenticity

Evaluation

A former Reformed Presbyterian Church of Gothic Revival-style with gabled front elevation and narrow three-stage tower with a chisel-shaped slate roof to the west side, built c. 1857 and attributed to the design of William Raffles Brown. Constructed in uncoursed squared local schist walling with Glasgow Giffnock sandstone ashlar dressings, the church has early Arts & Crafts style influences to dressings and carved detailing. It is located on the corner of Clarendon Street and Queen Street with the main entrance located on the north side of Clarendon Street, a road which links Strand Road on the east side and Northland Road on the west. Much external historic detailing remains such as the rose window on south gable, tapered buttresses and lancet windows. Despite alterations to the original plan form, some interior historic detailing still remains. The small scale of the building, its fine exterior detailing and its corner location make this building stand out as a local landmark within the Clarendon Street Conservation Area. The former church has group value with the adjacent former Manse on Queen Street (HB01/22/019B).

General comments

This record is adjacent to the former Manse on Queen Street with which this church is associated (HB01/22/019B).