Drumbo Presbyterian Church

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A double-height three-bay classically styled, rectangular plan form church dated 1882 to replace a former meeting house built c.1750. Located at the junction of Drumbo Road and Pinehill Road in the centre of Drumbo Village adjacent to the ruins of an ancient Round Tower.

Natural slate hipped roof with gable end to front elevation; red clay ridge and hip tiles. Ogee moulded cast-iron gutter fixed to exposed rafter ends; extruded metal circular downpipes. Walling is basalt rubble with smooth render and stucco surrounds, pilasters, string course and cornice details. Side and rear elevation is rough-cast painted off-white. uPVC window frames throughout. Modern timber doors.

The principal elevation faces east and is symmetrically arranged, comprising gabled central section flanked by parapet bays to either side. Paired front doors centrally located and accessed by modern stone steps with access ramp to the left hand side. Galvanised circular section hand rails. Round-headed arch doorway flanked by plain pilasters, rising to fluted capital with cornice detail; architraves rising above and over arch with panelled spandrels and key block; pulvinated frieze with cornice and small central projected pediment over. Marble date stone inscribed with ‘AD 1882’ located centrally over front entrance. Double string course at first floor level with large palladian window opening centrally over with stucco pilasters rising to corniced imposts, supporting moulded archivolt with key block. Matching bays to either side have a smaller round-headed arched window with stucco moulded surrounds, key block and projected cill at ground floor; single string course moulding with oculus with key blocks at cardinal points at first floor.

The south elevation is uniformly arranged, six windows wide to each level. The parapet front elevation wraps around the side to the depth of one window, matching in style and detail. Ground floor windows are rectangular; gallery windows are round-headed, all with simple moulded architraves. A smooth plaster plinth with a continuous string course at the cill level of both ground and first floor openings.

The west elevation is symmetrically arranged with a central hipped roof bay, with a tall roughcast chimney stack, flanked by a pair of half-hipped gables with round-headed arch windows at first floor. A single-storey hipped lean-to projected secondary accommodation with various sized plain rectangular window openings running the full length of the ground floor, each cheek comprising an arched opening serving rear access with a small rectangular window to the left

The north elevation matches the left elevation.

Setting:

The
setting of the church is a small village which overlooks a rural landscape. The church grounds are enclosed by a random rubble wall with a pair of galvanised gates hung off smooth rendered piers. The front and right hand side of the church is a tarmac car park, with a small cenotaph located adjacent to the front entrance. To the rear and left hand side of the church is the grave yard beyond which stands the ruins of a former round tower.

Roofing Natural slate
Walling Basalt rubble/roughcast render
Windows uPVC
RWG Extruded metal

Historical information

The current Drumbo Presbyterian building is dated 1882. It replaced an earlier meeting house built in 1750. The OS memoirs from the 1830’s (p.56) describe the former building as being ‘very much out of repair, especially the interior’. The memoirs also note, ‘This meeting house would accommodate all Presbyterians of the parish and might have been perfectly repaired for the one-sixth of the sum exhausted in the erection and completion of the new meeting house in the adjoining townland’.

The present church was built during the ministry of the Rev James McNeill (Kelly) of whom it was noted in the Presbyterian Quarterly Visitor, “was a preacher of no mean order, and the beautiful church at Drumbo which was erected during his ministry and largely through his exertions, is a monument of his zeal and energy." (Wallace)

The former meeting house was a plain pitched roof T-shaped building with 20 pane sash windows (Photo Rankin p.108). It appear on the first OS maps of 1824 and was captioned as a ‘Meeting Ho(use)’. The later maps of 1858 extended the caption as ‘Presbyterian Meeting Ho(use) and Graveyard’ although the plan form did not alter. Griffiths valued the building in 1864 at £18, an increase of nearly £8 from the earlier Townland Valuations, and the church remained at that value until it was demolished.

The new church, valued at £49, by the Annual Revisions, first appears on OS maps on the 1901 edition, caption with ‘Presbyterian Church’ and illustrate a footprint which closely resembles today’s building. With the exception of small extensions to the rear in 1979 (Kelly), the church has largely remained unaltered.

Reference – Primary Source

1. PRONI OS/6/1/9/1 – OS Map 1834
2. PRONI OS/6/1/9/2 – OS Map 1858
3. PRONI OS/6/1/9/3 – OS Map 1901
4. PRONI OS/6/1/9/7 – OS Map 1938
5. PRONI VAL/1B/327 – Townland Valuation 1828-1840
6. PRONI VAL/1A/3/9 – Townland Valuation Field Map 1830
7. PRONI VAL/2B/3/25B – GriffithsValuation 1856-1864
8. PRONI VAL/12B/20/11A-E – Annual Revisions 1865-1929

Reference - Secondary Source

1. Rankin, J.F. “The Heritage of Drumbo” Parish of Drumbo,1982
2. Day, A. and P. McWilliams, eds. “Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Volume Seven, Parishes of County DownII, 1832-4, 1837” Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1991
3. Kelly, J A “Lisburn’s Rich Church Heritage, Churches and Places of Worship in the Lisburn City Area” 2009
4. Wallace, Rev J.B. “Drumbo Presbyterian Church - A Short History” 1956

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

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

Evaluation

Classically inspired double-height frontispiece Presbyterian Church dated1882, built to replace an older meeting house dating from 1750. Internally the church has retained its formal layout with minor alterations to the rear. The impressive arcaded bays supported by tall slender columns with the centred round headed arched windows gives interior a sense and scale of grandness, although the detailing throughout is generally modest. Church is of social interest to the local community and is a prominent building within its rural village setting.

General comments

Drumbeg Area of Village Character