Ballywalter Church ruins

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Partly overgrown ruins of a small medieval rubble-built church, roughly 1 mile to the W of Ballywalter, set in an old graveyard.

This church was originally cruciform in plan with the combined length of the nave and chancel roughly 30m. Substantial portions of the E and W gables and a small low section of the S wall have survived, but the rest of the structure has either been reduced to foundations or vanished completely. The surviving section of the S wall measures c.6m and c.1m thick, but it is now almost completely covered in greenery so that no features are discernible. Some openings within this wall were apparently blocked up in fairly recent times. The gable walls are c.8m wide. In the W gable there is a tall narrow opening, the top of which has disappeared and in the E gable there is a small narrow opening with chamfered (largely) sandstone dressings. There are (now overgrown) foundation ruins of the N transept (which projected c.6m), but nothing of the S transept has survived.

There is a graveyard around the church, with discernible headstones dating from 1667, but there are three thirteenth century Norman grave slabs which have been propped up against a modern extension to the NE corner of the ruin, one of which has been damaged. There are headstones in the interior of the former church and the Mulholland family (Ballywalter Park) plot is situated to the NW of the ruin.

Historical information

This church is listed in the papal taxation records of 1306 as ‘Alba Ecclesia’ (‘White Church’). The Archaeological Survey of County Down (1966) suggests that the church was built in the 1200s, but that the transepts were added in the fifteenth century. The church was in use in 1657, though with only a thatched roof, but had fallen into ‘disrepair’ in the 1680s. It was abandoned around 1704 when Ballywalter parish was combined with those of Ballyhalbert and Inishargy and new a church built at Balligan.

References- Primary Sources
1 “Ecclesiastical taxation in the Dioceses of Down, Connor and Dromore”, ed. William Reeves, in 'Ecclesiastical antiquities of Down Connor and Dromore', ed. William Reeves (Dublin, 1847) p.26 [Documents concerning the Papal Tax of 1306.]
2 Site & Monuments Record - Dow 012:006

Secondary sources
1 Montgomery MSS ‘History of the Ards’ (1683), pp. 6-7 [Original MS in the Linenhall Library, Belfast].
2 Walter Harris 'The Ancient and Present State of The County of Down' (Dublin, 1744), p. 68
3 PRONI OS/6/3/12/1 Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834
4 Rev. Charles Scott "The Vestry Book of the united parishes of Ballywalter, Ballyhalbert and Inishargy in the Ardes, County Down 1706", 'Ulster Journal of Archaeology' ['UJA'] series 2, Vol.V, pp.95-99, Feb. 1899
5 Oliver Davies, "Ballywalter White Church, Ardkeen Church, Kilnatierny Cistercian Abbey, being corrections to A preliminary survey of Ancient monuments of Northern Ireland, issued by HM Stationery Office", 'UJA' Series 3, Vol.IV, pp.139-44, July 1941
6 'Archaeological Survey of County Down' (Belfast, 1966), pp.300-1
7 J.C. Becket, Francis Jackson et al 'St. Andrew’s Inishargy Balligan' (?Belfast ?1966), pp. 5-6
8 R.S.J. Clarke (compiler) 'Gravestone Inscriptions Vol.15, County Down, Barony of Ards' (U.H.F. Belfast 1976), pp.94-177
9 A.J. Hughes and R.J. Hannan, 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland Vol. Two, County Down II- The Ards', (QUB, 1996), pp.72-3

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Partly overgrown ruins of a small 13th century rubble-built church, extended in the 15th century and abandoned in c.1704.