KILBRONEY PARISH CHURCH, ROSTREVOR CO.DOWN

The Department's description

Historical information

This church was built between 1818 and 1822 and is believed to have been designed by Newry architect Thomas Duff. It replaced the former parish church of 1733 sited south of The Square / Mary Street (whose ruins are still in place), which in turn had superseded the medieval church to the northeast of the village.

Plans for the construction of the present church were commenced in 1811, the existing 1730s building having been deemed inadequate for the needs of the congregation. A plot for the new structure was donated soon after by General Robert Ross and a loan of £1,100 was subsequently granted by the Board of First Fruits. The churchwardens were given permission by the Bishop of Dromore to begin immediate construction in 1816; however, the foundation stone was only laid (by Edward Ross) on 22 July 1818. The date of consecration is not known, but the building was in use by Easter 1822. Fred Rankin has suggested that it may have been consecrated on 2 April, the Feast Day of the St. Bronach, to whom the new building was dedicated.

According to the OS Memoirs of October 1836, the construction costs amounted to a total of £1,837-4-0, £200 of which (on top of the aforementioned loan) came as a gift from the Board of First Fruits, with the remaining £537-4-0 for this ‘good building of stone with square tower’, raised by subscription. The Memoirs also state that a gallery was added in 1827 at a cost of £150 and that the church ‘can accommodate 350 persons, the average attendance being 310 in summer’. The church is recorded in the valuation of 1836 as measuring 65ft x 33 x 22 with the tower amounting to 18 x 18 x 50 and two ‘returns’ (to the north and east sides of the nave) of 19 x 6 x 22 and 10 x 11 x 7.

The building retained its original form until 1866-67 when the chancel, transepts and robing room were added by the Ecclesiastical Commission’s then architects, (Joseph) Welland and (William) Gillespie, with the previous ‘returns’ cleared away in the process. The roof and pews were replaced in 1883-84, improvements which were carried out by architect William James Watson of Newry. Rankin states that a new ‘Trelford’ organ installed in 1892 and moved to the gallery in 1906.

References - primary sources
1 PRONI MIC1/87 Parish vestry minutes, 1798-1917
2 OS map, Co. Down sheet 54, 1834
3 PRONI VAL1B/361 (1835-36)
4 Day, Angelique and McWilliams, Patrick ed. ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland…vol.3’ (QUB, 1990), p.33 (1836)
5 ‘Newry Reporter’, 20 February 1883, p.3
6 OS map, Co. Down sheet 54, 1919

Secondary sources
7 Rankin, Fred, ‘Clergy of Down and Dromore’, (UHF, Belfast, 1996), pp.196-97