St Joseph’s R.C. Church

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A step pitched gabled and slated high hall with projecting entrance porch and 2 storey rear sacrisity block, smooth rendered and painted.

The west front which is gabled with protruding gabled porch has pointed and chamfered door openings on each flanking wall. Each has a pair of hardwood panelled doors, also pointed. In the gable 2 small pointed lancets with splayed reveals and sloping cills and filled with decorative glass. Overhanging barge stones with gabled kneelers and small moulded corbel under. Apex of gable has small pedestal for metal cross. Metal box gutters resting on moulded corbels. There is a smooth plaster plinth with splayed top edge. A flight of 5 steps in quadrant arrangement lead to each door. On the nave gable 2 small pointed lancets with decorative glass. Above the porch ridge traceried rose window with a central trefoil encompassed by 8 quatrefoils. The rose window and the small lancets probably have sandstone trim, all now painted. Just below the cill line of the main gable lancet there is a bold high plinth with top edge splayed and it continues round all the walls of the nave but not the sacristy. The main gable has similar barge, kneelers and cross as the porch.

The nave walls, 5 bays long, are each similar with 5 no pointed windows without divide and plastered cills without drip. Each window is filled with decorative glass and storm glazed with condensation strip at bottom. Box gutters are supported on moulded corbels. Roofs are slated with natural slates and simple clay ridge tiles. A lower smooth rendered plinth, same height as porch, encompasses the entire church.

The sacristy block is 1 bay long, 2 wide, 2 storeys high, with walls set back a couple of metres from the nave walls on each side. 5no. steps lead up to a single door on the “S” side. The gable has 2no. double hung sliding sash 8 pane windows at ground floor level and 2 more of equal size above. The gables of nave and sacristy are similar to the other without crosses but there is a former chimney on the sacristy gable. In the angle of the nave and sacristy “N” side is a shallow pitched lean-to boiler room with low masonry chimney.

The church walls are probably built of stone and rendered with a paint finish.

There is a fine set of decorative metal gates with stone piers and stone boundary wall along the main road. The church sits in the extensive graveyard, close to the road and at an oblique angle to it. The site was at one time tree clad but these were all cut down in the late 1960s leaving a bleak site. Within the graveyard are 3 priests graves which may have been taken from within the former church. These are: Rev John O’Regan PP, Banagher d.13/2/1836; Rev John Murphy PP, Banagher d. 22/3/1847; Rev Simon Peter Mullholland d. 14/5/1847. Another interesting headstone with incised drawings of Patrick Duddy d. 23/6/1823.

Historical information

The present building replaced an earlier building at the eastern side of the present graveyard which is shown as a T-plan in the O.S.map 1830.

O.S. Memoirs described it “The Roman Catholic chapel in Fincarn is a good substantial building in perfect repair in a cruciform shape but wanting one of the transverse arms. The body of the building measures 60 feet and the transverse arm 35 feet by 18 feet. Being unprovided with seats and having a small gallery, it can accommodate 800 persons. It was erected above 80 years ago and was thatched until lately, but it has now a very good slated roof.” This would date the building of it around 1754. It was replaced in 1889. The Derry Journal of 9th July 1888 at the laying of the foundation stone quoted the parsh priest, Rev William O’Donnell: “The new church is to be a plain substantial building of rectangular form built in the Gothic style of architecture. The building will be 90 feet long, 35 feet wide and 42 feet high to the apex of the roof.” The nave lancet originally had Y tracery with good cast-iron rectangular small Georgian panes.

The sanctuary mosaic was carried out in c1935 when the porch was also added and the present cast iron gates and stone piers. The trees around the site were removed in 1960s. The building was renovated in the early 1980s when it lost its cast iron windows and these were replaced with the present glass work.

References:

Primary Sources
1. O.S. map 1830 Londonderry sh 30
2. O.S. map 1830 rev. 1905 Londonderry sh. 30
3. O.S. memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of Co Londonderry X, 1833-4, 1838
Ed. by Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams P.29
4. Derry Journal 9th July 1988
5. Daly & Devlin, The Clergy of the Diocese of Derry. P.138
6. Tracey, unpublished manuscript, Church Building Activities, Diocese of Derry 1829-1939.
7. Donnelly, the Parish of Banaghar, P.115-118, 147.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
X. Local Interest
V. Authorship

Evaluation

A rather bleak plain Gothic style church of the late 19th cent. which has a more interesting interior because of its dominant wagon type ceiling and the sanctuary wall mosaics. The site includes the early graveyard which was extended with entrance gates, piers, steps and front boundary wall.