St Joseph's RC Church,

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A Roman Catholic church, built c.1880, located on the north side of Moorlough Road in the hamlet of Glenmornan. The church is rectangular on plan, with four-stage tower to west and vestry to north.

Pitched natural slate roof, angled clay ridge tiles, stone Celtic cross finial to each gable. Plain bargeboards and half-round cast-iron rainwater goods. There is a roughcast chimney with decorative pot to the vestry gable. Walling is painted roughcast with painted stepped quoins all over a painted smooth rendered plinth. Windows are Y-tracery timber diamond lattice lancets with blocked rendered surrounds and hood moulds, painted projecting stone sills.

Road-facing elevation faces south and is five windows wide.

Entrance gable faces west and is abutted by tower. Exposed section is blank. The tower is roughcast with the exception of the third stage which is random course rubble blackstone; quoins throughout with upper stages delineated by a moulded stringcourse. Gothic arched entrance to south, with reveals as windows, double-leaf replacement timber boarded doors, fixed tympanum, accessed by a concrete ramp. Stage 2 has a gothic arched window to south. Stage 3 has a quatrefoil roundel in rendered reveal to each principal face. Stage 4 is diminished in size with louvred lancets to each face, topped with a crenellated parapet.

North elevation has four windows with vestry to left end. The vestry is further extended by a small L-shaped extension to the gable, built into a bank to rear. All are detailed as main church, and windows are gothic arched set in plain reveals. There is a square-headed timber-sheeted door to west, with window to its left. East side has a single window.

The east gable has a circular stained glass window to upper level.

Setting:
The church occupies an elevated site by the roadside, surrounded by a churchyard, all accessed by concrete perimeter paths. The earliest noted gravemarker is dated 1860. It is bounded to the road by a roughcast retaining boundary wall with rubble stone soldier coursed coping; square piers to left end support decorative cast-iron gates. To the left end is a wall-mounded post-box, plainly detailed with V.R. in raised letters.

Roof: Pitched natural slate
Walling: Painted roughcast
Windows: Y-tracery timber diamond-lattice
RWG: Half-round cast-iron

Historical information

There is an “R C Chapel” captioned on the first edition of the OS Map of 1833 and this appears to have been enlarged by the addition of an extension along the northern façade by the subsequent edition in 1854. Townland Valuation Records (1828-40) record an “R.C. Chapel” of dimensions 70x24.6x11.6 valued at £3 18s 7¼d.

In 1905, on the third edition of the OS Map, the church is captioned “St Joseph’s R.C. Chapel” and is a new church of a different plan with a tower to the west and vestry to the north east, although substantially on the same site as the old one.

Griffith’s Valuation records the chapel as having similar dimensions but with the addition of a vestry of 14x15x6 and now valued at £7 15s. In the Annual Revision Records we learn that the leaseholder is the Marquis of Abercorn and the Rev. B. McKenna is the priest but the rebuilding of the church is not recorded by any changes.

Bradley et al, state, “The first church in Leckpatrick parish was erected in the early 1790s, probably 1793, at Glenmornan, with the land being made available by Abercorn. This chapel appears to have been erected near the site of an open air mass centre in the area and Dr. George Sigerson wrote in the later nineteenth century of the folk tradition of mass celebrated at the ‘Church of the Apple Tree.’ This has been identified as being in close proximity to the chapel site [which was] partly on the site of the present chapel…. The choice of Glenmornan as the chapel site probably owed much to its location, in a strongly Catholic area and unlikely to cause offence to nearby Protestant families…out of the limelight and seen as inaccessible to outsiders. Thus it would have been a place of refuge in penal times and could build on that tradition in the new era of openness…. The original church was replaced in 1879 by a stone building which remains to the present as the chapel for the area. Folk tradition suggests that it served as a burial ground for the surrounding parishes for a considerable period in the nineteenth century and this serves to highlight its importance as one of the earliest post-penal establishments” (Bradley, p.325).

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/6/5/1-3 First Edition OS Map (1833)
2. PRONI OS/6/6/5/2 Second Edition OS Map (1854)
3. PRONI OS/6/6/5/3 Third Edition OS Map (1905)
4. PRONI VAL/1/A/6/5 -Townland Valuation Map (1828-40)
5. PRONI VAL/1/B/640 -Townland Valuation Records (1828-40)
6. PRONI VAL/2/A/6/5 - Griffith’s Valuation Map (1856-64)
7. PRONI VAL/2/B/6/43A -Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
8. PRONI VAL/12/B/42/22A-F -Annual Revision Records (1860-1929)

Secondary Sources

1. Bradley, J et al, “The Fair River Valley – Strabane Through the Ages”, Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast: 2000
2. Lewis, Samuel. “A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, Comprising the Several Counties, Cities, Boroughs, Corporate, Market, and Post Towns, Parishes, and Villages, With Historical and Statistical Descriptions; Embellished with Engravings of the Arms of the Cities, Bishopricks, Corporate Towns, and Boroughs; Of the Seals of the Several Municipal Corporations.” London: S. Lewis & Co., 1837

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

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

Evaluation

St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church is a simple late Victorian single-cell Catholic church located at the west side of the rural hamlet of Glenmornan. The church design is largely without ornament, with interest provided in the details of the tower such as the exposed rubble stone section and crenellated parapet. The church has recently been refurbished and the resulting replacement of internal fabric and entrance doors has reduced its architectural character. Timber lattice windows remain intact, and do much to enliven the plain exterior. The church is of historic and social interest, representing the latest place of worship in a longstanding Catholic tradition in the area, and having replaced a previous pre-Emancipation church on the site and an earlier mass rock. Of social interest also is the boundary-wall-mounted post-box, dating from the reign of Queen Victoria and representing early communication links and infrastructure changes in rural areas such as Glenmornan.