Dromore Presbyterian Church

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A small vernacular style four-bay Presbyterian church of c.1856-57 sited on a hilltop on the Coolyvenny Road near Coleraine. Single storey, stone built, with plain sand cement render finish it measures approximately 22 meters by 8 meters and has a pitched gable roof of natural slate. The church comprises a main building, with nave and vestibule at the entrance end (N) and at the rear a single storey adjunct with slated gable roof and containing the minister’s robing room, also a w.c. and a small porch with a secondary entrance.

The main entrance façade (N) has tight-clipped slate gable and a render finish (with barely discernible ashlar-stone-like horizontal scribing). It is plain saving a single arched entranceway that contains a two-leaf door set with three-panel timber doors and a semicircular leaded fanlight, square and rectilinear patterned plain and colored glass. Surrounding the entrance is the sole expression of ornament on the building’s exterior; two square-profile pilasters are surmounted by a fluted arch with a central raised voussoir to which is attached a single globe light fitting.

The nave is symmetrically composed with four round headed windows on each long side, set within the lightly horizontal scribed render walls. Apart from stone cills, the window openings have no architraves or other adornment. Each timber window has a central mullion and single transom creating two vertical lights and a semi-circular top light all of which are leaded in small rectilinear pane design with plain and colored glass. The building retains its Cast iron rainwater goods.

The adjunct to the rear has a plain elevation to the South and to the east, two square headed openings light the minister’s room, while to the west, there is a single square headed opening to the w.c. next to a small porch opening beneath the roof that leads to a single timber entrance door.

Setting: The church is set within waist height rendered wall and coping that encloses a lawn with mature perimeter trees to the west and an entrance car park to the north. There is a walled graveyard to the south and larger car park to the SE.
The church and grounds are in good order and repair at present.

Materials:
Roof: Natural slate
RWGs: Cast iron
Walling; Stone and sand cement render
Windows: Timber with geometrical patterned leaded lights

Historical information

The Dromore congregation was founded in or shortly after 1852 as a breakaway from that of Ballylintagh, following the decision by Rev. William Matthews and part of the latter congregation to join the Free Church of Scotland. The new group - which remained part of the United Original Secession Synod - is initially said to have worshipped in a barn and then a school, before constructing this church in c.1856-57.

The church is shown on the 1904 OS map as ‘Presbyterian Church’, with the ‘burial ground’ marked to the immediate south. On later maps it is captioned 'Dromore Presbyterian Church'.

After the Scottish Secession Churches united with the Church of Scotland in 1956, Dromore joined with the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

Always small, the Dromore congregation apears to have remained in existence into the 2010s, though it is not known when the church finally closed. The building is now in privare ownership and an application for the conversion to a dwelling house was submitted in Summer 2024.

References – Primary sources
1 OS maps, County series, Londonderry sheet 11 – 1904; IG sheet 21-13 - 1971
2 ‘Belfast News-Letter’ – 25 May 1956, p.4
3 ‘Ballymena Weekly Telegraph’ – 28 October 1987, p.15 [Notice mentions an interment at the church graveyard.]

Secondary sources
4 ‘A history of the Presbyterian congregations in Ireland 1610-1982’, (Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland, Belfast, 1982), pp.405-06
5 Planning Portal Application reference LA01/2024/0742/F

Evaluation

Much of the original fabric has been lost, the floor and internal furnishings have been removed and according to the current owner both roof and windows were replaced early in the new millennia. Whilst the building has an attractive setting and is a good example of simple reformed vernacular place of worship, there is insufficient original material remaining to warrant listing.

General comments

Previously a LQ HB03/LQ092