1st Limavady Presbyterian Church

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A basalt faced, trimmed with ashlar sandstone, hall church with shallow projecting porch and shallow transepts on either side giving the impression of a cruciform layout except that it is back to front. The three bay wide entrance front has clasping sandstone buttresses framing the projecting porch and terminated with gabled and pointed finial each crowned with a crotchet. The round headed entrance door is emphasised with narrow buttresses on either side and an ogee label moulding over the top cuts through a short string course. Above is a wide round headed window and above that in the steep sloping gable a sandstone lozenge. This gable matches those in the narrow transepts. There are tall narrow round headed lancets on each side of the projecting porch which is trimmed with sandstone in a Gibbsian manner. The porch projects just far enough to squeeze in narrow and very slender lancets. The transept gables have single lancets with a small one in the gable. The hall is then lighted by four round headed lancets on each side and the transepts punctuated with short shouldered sandstone diagonal buttresses. Sandstone is used for the bargestones and kneelers and for all quoins. The roof is slated in welsh blues.

Beyond the church and facing the Scroggy Road a new hall is erected in 1980s in a post modern manner and between it and the church and projecting forward of the main building line an octagonal minister’s room built in basalt and finished at top with white painted plastered parapet behind which is a slated pyramidal roof.

The building is sited in the angle formed by Church Street and Scroggy Road with a building line set well back from the roadways. Around two sides of the complex there is a graveyard. A sea of bitmac fills the other two sides

Historical information

The congregation of the 1st Limavady was established in 1650. Mullan describes their meeting house as a ‘thatched biggin’. It would appear that a replacement building was erected c1773. The Ordnance Survey Memoir refers to Mr Wilson’s (minister 1828-60) Presbyterian Meeting House with accommodation for 300 and states that it is “in the form of the letter T, the transverse arm of which is 73 feet by 23 and the upright arm 38 by 21 feet, measured on the inside”. It was not in a good state of maintenance and had no ceiling. In 1856/57 it was demolished and a new church erected at “right angles” to the former. It cost £1,200, Mr Wilson contributed £200 and Mr McCausland of Drenagh supplied stone free of charge.

The church plan is remarkably similar to that in Hollymount, Co Down and Dunluce. Donald Girvan states that it was a plan prepared by Charles Lanyon for the Down and Connor Church Accommodation Society. The organ was installed c1930s and a new heating system in 1955. In 1981 the church suffered bomb damage.

In the graveyard a headstone records seven infant children d. 1865 The parents were Elizabeth and George Given who died 1 Oct 1893 age 69 years. This may have been George Given, architect who was involved in St Mary’s Church, Irish Green Street.

The manse, Roe Vista, Killane Road was erected 1906.

References:

The Presbyterians of Limavady - J E Mullan
Ordnance Survey Memoirs Vol. 9
The Great Church of the Roe - Philip Donnelly
U A H S Buildings of North Derry
The Churches and Abbeys of Ireland - Brian De Breffny
Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A mid Victorian neo-Gothic church whose character and setting have been degraded by modern extensions.