Gracefield C of I Church

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Relatively small, single storey gabled church of c.1764-70 with two storey cupola-topped entrance tower; originally built as a Moravian church and originally adjoined to the W side by a two storey preacher’s house, the property was acquired by the Church of Ireland in 1937 and the house demolished some years later. To the E side the church merges with a two storey school section (possibly dating from c.1840) and to the rear are the overgrown random rubble remains of a large two storey stable block. The building is set on the N side of Ballymaguigan Road, within the small hamlet of Gracefield, roughly 3 miles SW of Magherafelt.

The front elevation faces roughly S. The church portion of the elevation is symmetrical, but taken with the school portion, (to left), the whole elevation is asymmetrical. To the left of centre is the square two storey entrance tower. To the left of centre on the ground floor of the W face of the tower is the main entrance. This consists of a panelled timber double door, with panelled pilasters jambs, surmounted by a semicircular fanlight with ‘spoke’ tracery (five panes). There is a string course at fanlight level, with another to first floor level. Markings to the render suggest there was once a small window to the first floor.

To the S face of the tower there is a tall semicircular headed window with fixed frame with Georgian panes. The rest of the windows are similar to this, apart from that to the first floor of this face, which is considerably smaller and consists of joined semicircular headed lights with three pane fixed frames. This face of the tower has string courses as before, as does the E face, which is otherwise blank. Markings to the render suggest, however, that there was once a semicircular headed doorway to this side, as well as a small first floor window.

The tower is finished in plain render with in-out stone quoins, and is topped with a shallow pitched hipped slated roof which rises to a square timber cupola (which presumably once held a bell) with lead-covered ogee roof topped with a weathervane.

To the left of the tower, (on main portion of the building), there are two windows, as ground floor of S face of the tower but with simple stone surrounds with impost and key stones. To the left of the windows (at what is now the W edge of the elevation), there is a full height panelled pilaster. To the right hand side of the tower there are two windows and a pilaster (to their right), all as previous. To the right of this the church merges with the (former) school house section. Here there is a plain timber sheeted door to the ground floor, with a large window, with modern frame, to the right of this. There is an identical window to the first floor. This elevation is finished.

The W gable (which was not originally exposed) is blank. Outlines of doorways, (formerly linking the church to the now demolished preacher’s house), can be seen. The E gable is blank also.

To the rear there are two windows to centre right, as church front but without surrounds.

The front elevation of the church / school is in unpainted cement render, as are the gables. The rear elevation is in unpainted rough cast. The gabled roof is covered in what appear to be asbestos-like tiles and has a slight overhang with plain barges.

To the rear of the building are the random rubble remains of a large outbuilding / stable. This is sited very close to the church itself, but does not appear to have ever been attached to it. The building is now roofless and a large portion of it has been smothered by thick plant growth. The E wall of the is much taller than that to W, suggesting that the building either had a mono-pitched roof (sloping from E to W), or that it was originally fully two storey but that the upper portion of the W wall has fallen away. To the N end of the building there is a small single storey section which appears to have originally had a lean-to roof.

To the W elevation of the outbuilding there are three doorways of various size, that to left larger and the other two pedestrian scale. Those to left and to the centre have elliptical arch heads, whilst that to right is flat arch. To the right again is a small flat arch window, whilst, to right of this there is a relatively small square projection, with a small window to its N face.

To the short N elevation of the outbuilding there is a single central window. To the E elevation there are two large elliptical arch vehicle doorways. To the right hand end there is an upper level window. Much of the short S elevation faces directly into the rear elevation of the church building itself, and is therefore blank. None of the abovementioned openings is filled with a door or a window frame, but most are brick dressed.

To the W side of the church the space formerly occupied by the preacher’s house is now covered in concrete and acts as a small car park. This space and the small space directly in front of the church itself (which is also concrete covered) are surrounded by a low rendered wall with concrete coping. To the S is a recent vehicle gateway with square piers with ‘Bradstone’ cladding and modern wrought iron gates. To the N there is an opening in the wall filled with a recent farm gate.

Historical information

The Moravian Church
The Moravian Church, or ‘Unitas Fratrum’, was founded in Herrnhut, Saxony, in 1727 as a reconstitution of the 15th century Bohemian [Czech] Brethren. The Bohemian Brethren, a religious society, many of whose beliefs prefigured the Protestant Reformation, and which placed special emphasis on the place of the laity in the church, active participation in worship and work, and the education of children, was established in Prague about the middle of the 15th century, with its followers settling on the borders of Silesia and Moravia (modern day Czech Republic) in the 1450s. The group was almost extinguished during the Counter Reformation of the later 1500s and 1600s when many of its numbers were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism. The Brethren survived as an underground movement, however, and in 1722 some migrated, settling on the Berthelsdorf estate of the religious reformer Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf and establishing the village of Herrnhut. Encouraged by Zinzendorf, the ‘Moravians’ set out to spread their Evangelical Protestant message to other European states and beyond, the plan being that the missionaries should form sects within established churches, however, this proved difficult and a separate church was formed.

John Cennick* was the grandson of a Moravian who had fled to England from Bohemia in the early 1600s. Born in Reading in 1718, he became a close advocate of John Wesley in the late 1730s and a preacher of some note. After various disagreements with Wesley (Cennick was Calvinistic, Wesley was not) he was dismissed from the latter’s service in 1739 and later came in contact with some Moravian preachers in London. After being received a member of the brethren in 1746, he embarked upon an evangelising mission in Ireland, concentrating firstly in Dublin and then, between c.1748 and 1755, in Ulster. Much of his work was centred on the area immediately around Lough Neagh, with converts mostly from RC and Presbyterian backgrounds. He established over 200 congregations, mainly in Co Antrim. Cennick’s early death in 1755 stifled the impetus of the church in Ireland and despite the establishment of a Moravian ‘model’ village at Gracehill in the in the years following 1755 the church rapidly declined in importance throughout the country, its members, as historian David Hempton has stated, ‘never able to fulfil the evangelistic promise of their first decade in Ireland’.

Gracefield
According to the OS Memoirs of the 1830s, the small village of Gracefield was established in 1749, when some local Moravian converts acquired land in Ballymaguigan and proceeded to build the church, preacher’s house and other dwellings. This version of events is not borne out by an important contemporary source, however- the diary of the Lisnamorrow / Gracefield Moravian Congregation. This diary, which survives for the years 1759-63, 1770-72, 1776-77, 1793-95, 1799-1800, 1804-12, 1825-27, 1848-52 and intermittently up to 1902, was written by successive Moravian ministers. It is clear from its entries -penned initially by Rev John Browne- that although there appear to have been Moravian converts in Ballymaguigan, (and the surrounding townlands), in the early 1760s, their place of worship was at a [?now gone] thatched chapel at Lisnamorrow, some miles to the south-west. It was in the Church of Ireland at Lisnamorrow that John Cennick is said to have preached in 1748 or 1749, thus suggesting that the date ‘1749’ referred to in the OS Memoirs, rather than applying to the foundation of Gracefield in particular, refers to the establishment of a Moravian congregation in this general area.

Indeed, the townland of Ballymaguigan only begins to be mentioned on a frequent basis by Rev Browne in May 1763, when, on the 9th of that month, he writes of ‘viewing the place and thinking over the situation where would be the best place to build our new church’. Land was acquired by the congregation shortly after and the following month masons are recorded as working on in the area, with Browne going with ‘Brother Jonathan Simpson to look on some timber for the building of Ballymaguigan’ in late July and acquiring ‘55 barrels of lime as preparation against spring for the building of Ballymaguigan’ in October. Unfortunately no diaries have survived [?or were ever written] for the years 1764-69, but on the last page of that for 1763 there are two sketches of roof trusses and a list of accounts, suggesting that building had begun or was about to begin.

Entries in the diary of 1770 make it clear that the chapel was in place by that date, along with a ‘congregational house’ [presumably the preacher’s residence which stood next to the church], a ‘hall,’ a ‘farm house’ with frequent
references made to ‘families’ houses’. It is apparent however, that building work to the settlement as a whole was ongoing, for the minutes of a congregational meeting of 5th August, (transcribed at the end of the diary), mention ‘subscriptions for the seeling [sic] of the chappel’, whilst the construction of new houses are recorded in April and June, with a new burial ground laid out (to east of the chapel) some time early in the year. Moreover, at this point the settlement may not even have had a name- simply being referred to as ‘Ballymaguigan’, the name ‘Gracefield’ first mentioned -in the diary at least- in July 1776.The lack of regular diary entries after from 1777 onward, (or any other comprehensive source material), makes it difficult to trace the development of Gracefield in that latter decades of the 18th and opening decades of the 19th century, however it is clear that the settlement, like Moravianism in Ireland as a whole, made little headway after its initial gains of the 1760s and 70s. Evidence of this is provided by the OS map and first valuation survey, both of 1832. On the former are the church, preacher’s house and sisters’ house to the north side of the present Ballymaguigan Road, but there is little else of note save a scattering of small houses stringing this and the present Gracefield Road to the south side, and a spade mill to the north-west, whilst the valuation records nothing but ‘old’ buildings with few above rateable value- suggesting most of the houses were modest single storey affairs probably dating from the establishment of the village 70 odd years before. The aforementioned OS memoirs of 1836 confirm this, telling of ‘2 little streets; one…principally formed by the Moravian church with the clergyman's residence, the sisters' house and a few other houses, all of which are neat, cleanly and uniform’, the other street consisting ‘of an irregular and straggling row of dirty houses principally occupied by the poorer class of weavers and mechanics’, adding that of the 25 houses ‘19 are 1 -storey and the remainder are 2-storey’ and that the village was ‘neither improving in size, trade or appearance’. Although a new school house was added to the east side of the church in c.1840, the stagnation of the settlement remarked upon in the Memoirs was not reversed. The revised OS map of 1856 and the second valuation survey of the following year bear this out, both recording a picture remarkably similar to that of 1832, but with less inhabitants and (somewhat symbolically) with the spade mill to the north-west ‘in ruins’. Though not all of the members of the Gracefield Moravian congregation lived exclusively within the village at any one point in time, the latter’s decline was intertwined with that of the congregation itself. Thus in 1937 Moravian worship within Gracefield ended and the chapel building was sold to the Church of Ireland. The attached preacher’s house was demolished some years later, with the school reverting to the role of Sunday school.

The church
As mentioned above, the church- or ‘chapel’ as it was originally referred to- was constructed some time between 1764 and 1770. There appears to be very little documentary evidence regarding its early appearance, the first detailed descriptions being those supplied by the OS map, valuations and OS Memoirs of the 1830s. On the map the a long building is shown much as today, but with a small projection to the rear no long outbuilding return, and no indication of an entrance tower. The omission of the latter may simply have been due to a decision taken by the cartographer (a not uncommon occurrence), a theory supported by the fact that it is not shown on any of the later 6in maps; however we cannot be sure if the tower was indeed present at this stage for it is not referred to in the dimensions provided by the contemporary valuation, although an entry in the 1836 OS Memoirs does refer to the building being ‘surrounded [?sic ?surmounted] by a by a wooden cupola’. Aside from the tower (or lack of it) the Memoirs also tell us that the chapel was capable of accommodating 130 persons’, was ‘neatly fitted with forms with railed backs’, that the men and women sat apart and that the residence of the clergyman, ‘a neat 2-storey house’ was next to the church. This house (to the west side of the chapel) is also recorded in the valuations and may be the ‘congregational house’ referred in the diaries of the 1770s- it was certainly considered old by the valuers. To the east side of the chapel was a slightly taller two storey section which was used as a school house. Sometime between c.1836 and c.1856 (possibly c.1840) the church and the attached buildings appear to have undergone some major changes. To the east the school house section was rebuilt, the small return to the rear of the church (which the valuers suggest was single storey) demolished and a large two storey outbuilding added to the north-eastern corner. It is possible that the preacher’s house was extended further westwards at this point (or later) also, for the dimensions given in the 1832 valuation (25ft x 26 x 14) do not appear to match a drawing of the building dating from 1889 which shows a building as long as the chapel itself. The asymmetrical arrangement of the house’s chimneystacks on the same drawing also suggests a building that had been extended. The absence of dimensions in the second valuation of 1857 does not allow us to confirm this, however.

The decrease in the Moravian congregation in the area led to the selling of the chapel to the Church of Ireland in 1937. Some time later the former preacher’s house was demolished.

References- Primary sources

1 PRONI MIC/1F/3/26 Gracefield title deeds, 1719-1927
2 PRONI MIC/1F/3/14 Registers of baptisms, marriages and burials of members of the Lisnamorrow / Gracefield Moravian Congregation, 1750-1931
3 PRONI MIC/1F/3/13 Diaries of the Lisnamorrow / Gracefield Moravian Congregation, 1759-63, 1770-72, 1776-77, 1793-95, 1799-1800, 1804-12, 1825-27, 1848-52 etc.
4 PRONI MIC/1F/3/19 Gracefield accounts, 1819-29, 1894-1917
5 PRONI VAL/1B/523 First valuation book, Artrea, 1832
6 PRONI VAL/1A/5/47 First valuation map, Co Londonderry, sh 47, 1832 [This map is based on the OS map of the same year.]
7 ‘OS Memoirs of Ireland…Co Londonderry vol.…’ ed Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB)1993
8 ‘Notes relating to the Manor of Sal, explanatory of The terrier of 1845’ (London, The Salters’ Company, 1846) [This publication relates to a survey (or ‘terrier’) of the Salters’ Company’s lands in Co Londonderry, carried out in 1845.]
9 PRONI VAL/2B/5/26a Second valuation notebook, Artrea, 1857
10 PRONI VAL/2A/5/47b Second valuation map, Co Londonderry, sh 47 (Artrea Parish) [This map is based on the OS map of the same year.]
11 Drawing of Gracefield Moravian chapel etc. by John England, 1889 [A copy of this drawing is presently kept within the church itself. Incidentally, the drawing includes the caption ‘commenced 1767’- seemingly suggesting that the chapel etc. was built in this year.]
12 PRONI OS/6/5/47/3 OS 6in map, Co Londonderry, sh 47, 1905

Secondary sources

1 Bro. James Mitchell, ‘A history of Gracehill’ (1943, with additions by Rev Richard Ingram, 1977)
2 S.G. Hanna, ‘The origin and nature of the Gracehill Moravian settlement’ (QUB thesis, 1967)
3 S.J. Connolly ed, ‘The Oxford companion to Irish history’ (OUP 1998), pp.80-368

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

Relatively small, single storey, rendered gabled church of c.1764-70 with two storey cupola-topped entrance tower; originally built as a Moravian chapel and originally adjoined to the W side by a two storey preacher’s house, the property was acquired by the Church of Ireland in 1937 and the house demolished some years later.