METHODIST CHURCH

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single-cell Greek revival Methodist Church in temple style, dated 1844, located to the west of The Entry. The church is rectangular on plan with an attached two-storey modern hall to the south.

Roof is pitched and slated with cement ridge tiles. Walls are roughcast over a smooth rendered plinth, with exception of principal elevation which is ruled and lined. Round arch headed stained glass windows with rendered surrounds and masonry cills.

Principal elevation faces east, is gable-ended and comprises pedimented portico supported on cast-iron Tuscan columns in antis. To the edges antae are rusticated, columns have panelled pedestals. Central round-arch-headed entrance opening with moulded architrave and vermiculated keystone; replacement square-headed double-leaf door with raised-and-fielded panels, surmounted by fanlight with margin lights. Datestone reads ‘Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Holiness becometh thine house O Lord forever, 1844’.

The south elevation is abutted by a modern church hall, of no interest.

The west elevation is gable-ended. It has two central windows.

The north elevation has three windows to the right and rusticated quoins to the left.

The church is bounded to The Entry to the east by rendered walling with coping, which supports modern steel pedestrian gate to front of church and double gates to the car-park to the south. There is a pathway to the north and west of the church, with hedging to the site boundary.

Roof: Natural slate
Walling: Roughcast, rendered to main elevation
Windows: Round-arched-headed stained glass
RWG: Cast-iron half-round

Historical information

Doagh Methodist Church has a datestone of 1844 and first appears on the OS map of 1857. The 1833 OS map shows a building slightly to the west of the current church, though it is not recorded in the Townland Valuation of 1836. Griffith’s Valuation of 1859 records a ‘Methodist Chapel and yard’, which is valued at £12. The church is not captioned on the 1857 OS map but is shown with small garden plots to the south.

A published history of the Parish of Kilbride (Cox, 1959) suggests that the present structure was rebuilt over an earlier meeting house, as does the ‘visit Newtownabbey’ website. Cox claims that the Methodist Conference gave permission in 1800 for the erection of a little meeting house, sixteen feet square, on the site of the present church. It may be that the building shown on the first OS map is this earlier structure, although no evidence exists to support this.

According to Cox the church housed the first Sunday School in Ireland. Rev. R. R. Cox records the widespread opinion on the subject but doubts it can be proven:

“The facts are as follows: William Galt, who lived in Doagh towards the end of the 18th century, was a man of literary tastes. During his early life he was a teacher, and being anxious to pass on to others something of the blessings arising from the possession of knowledge, he established in 1768 a library, known as Doagh Book Club [burned c.1798]. Shortly after this club was opened, he began to instruct the youth of the village and district. The subjects taught were reading, writing, and arithmetic, after referred to as the 'bread and butter' subjects. Since Sunday afforded the best opportunity for his work, that day was set apart for the undertaking. Such were the beginnings, according to the inscription on Mr. Galt’s gravestone in Kilbride Churchyard, of “the first Sunday School.” (Cox 53)

He describes how the Methodist Movement began in Ireland in the middle of the eighteenth century, its first conference was held in Limerick in 1752 under the Presidency of the Rev. John Wesley. In Co. Antrim, the first Methodist Society, as it was called, was held in Carrickfergus in the same year, when a number of men of the 42nds Highlanders, quartered in the Castle, invited a few of the local residents to unite with them in what they called a “Class Meeting.” The exact date when the first Class Meeting was held in Doagh is not known, but it was earlier than in Ballyclare. In 1778 there was a Methodist Society in Doagh and it is almost certain that the Rev. John Wesley himself paid it a visit. Cox quotes a contemporary source detailing a visit by the Rev. Mr Wesley to the area in June 1778;

‘…[first he was] in Ballymena. He left there the following Tuesday morning to ride to Carrickfergus. In His journal he says, ‘We rode through a small village wherein was a little Society. One desiring me to step into a house there, it was filled presently, and the poor people were all ears while I gave a short exhortation and spent a few minutes in prayer.” There is no definite evidence that this incident occurred in Doagh, but as the village was the only one Mr. Wesley was likely to pass through on is journey, and as we know there was a small Methodist Society here at the time, we have good grounds for believe that the local Methodists had the privilege of seeing and hearing the great founder of that Society.” (Cox, p95)

Cox claims that the current Methodist church owes much to the funding of Mr. J. Hunter and family, who in 1892 during a general Methodist Conference in Belfast, ‘walked up [to] the president of the Methodist Conference...and handed him £1000 as a gift to Irish Methodism on condition that services would always be continued in Doagh’ (Cox 95-96). He writes detailing current renovations to the Church which was re-opened for public worship on Sunday 26th June 1959 and it was first registered for marriage on 26th August 1941 (Cox 96).

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/1/45/1 - First edition OS Map (1832)
2. PRONI OS/6/1/45/2 - Second edition OS Map (1857)
3. PRONI VAL/1/A/1/51 -Townland Valuation Map (1836)
4. PRONI VAL/1/B/1/17A -Townland Valuation Fieldbook (1836)
5. PRONI VAL/2/A/1/51A -Griffiths Valuation Map (1859)
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/1/7A -Griffiths Valuation Fieldbook (1859)
7. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of County Antrim XI, Vol 29 (1838)

Secondary

1. Cox, Robert Roland. History of the Parish of Kilbride (Doagh, Co. Antrim: Self-published, 1959)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A single-cell Methodist Church in the rural village of Doagh much altered and extended. The church is of Greek temple style and is plainly detailed, with large portico to main elevation. It has been renovated in recent years and retains some original character only in the exterior. The interior is virtually modern, with a loss of plan form and of detailing. The modern hall has compromised the importance of the original church by changing the main access. As a result, the church no longer meets the statutory and policy tests as a building of special architectural or historic interest.