Second Donegore Presbyterian Church (Dunamuggy)

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A rectangular church in a plain Gothic revival style with rendered walls and slated gabled roofs. Main entrance faces east.

Roofs of Bangor blue slates in regular courses; moulded cast iron gutters and cast iron downpipes to side elevations; walls of dry dash render using white limestone chippings, with smooth rendered platbands. Windows are of decorative leaded glazing with simple Art Nouveau details to top and bottom, set in Gothic arched smooth cement rendered surrounds with projecting concrete cills and protective storm glazing.

East elevation is symmetrical with a central entrance set in a slightly projecting gabled porch, below a large 4-light window occupying the main gable of the church. Entrance bay marked by two-stage buttresses, with a single lancet to each side; smaller buttresses to the extremities of the gable.

Side elevations have 5 single Gothic lancets divided by buttresses; moulded cast iron gutters with cast iron downpipes.

West gable of church is smooth cement rendered, lined and blocked; oversailing eaves with timber barge boards; yellow brick chimney to apex of gable; short gabled projection below, of same walling and oversailing eaves, containing three lancets of small leaded panes; lean-to open shelter to right-hand corner with steps down to basement; small window and Gothic doorway to left-hand side of projection.

SETTING: The church stands on an elevated site in a very rural location, facing the main road but set well back from it at the end of a driveway terminating in a tarmac carpark. Distant views over the countryside from main front; agricultural land all around.

Immediately to the north of the church stands a small plain single storey gabled building with rendered walls, slated roofs, and sashed windows, 2 over 2 with horns, and cast iron rainwater goods; known as Dunamuggy Primary School.

Immediately to the north of the school stands a larger rendered gabled building in a very plain style, with modern rectangular timber fixed lights; reveals of recessed porch are inscribed "Original building, 1788", 'Rebuilt 1963". A later rendered gabled hall further to the west, and a modern prefabricated temporary building to the east complete the group of undistinguished buildings.

A graveyard is sited to the west; contains 19th and 20th century memorials of no special architectural interest.

Historical information

Precise date of church not known but it was built sometime after 1902, as it does not appear on the OS map of that year; erected during the ministry of Rev D.H. Craig who was here from 1891 to 1941.
The original church was built in 1788 and was repaired in 1830; it was described in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the 1830s as "a plain stone building … 56 feet long and 28 broad", and known as the Seceding Meeting House. It was replaced by the present church hall built in 1963.
The building known as Dunamuggy Primary School, standing to the north of the present church, between it and the present church hall, was built as Dunamuggy National School sometime before 1857.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1832, Co Antrim 50.
2. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 50.
3. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 29: Parishes of County Antrim XI, 1832-3, 1835-9 (Belfast, 1995), pp 108, 129, 132.
4. Inscriptions in church hall doorway.
Secondary Sources
1. Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland, A history of Congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1610-1982 (Belfast, 1982), pp 392-3.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is an early 20th century church of little special architectural or historic interest.