Survey Data

Reg No

15502043


Rating

National


Categories of Special Interest

Archaeological, Architectural, Historical, Social


Original Use

Church/chapel


Date

1815 - 1830


Coordinates

304639, 122142


Date Recorded

07/07/2005


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Attached six-bay double-height single-cell Board of First Fruits Church of Ireland church, built 1825-6, on a rectangular plan with single-bay full-height "narthex" (west) abutting single-bay three-stage tower house on a square plan. Dismantled, 1961. Now disused. Pitched slate roofs now missing, cut-granite chamfered coping to gables including cut-granite "slated" coping to gable (east), and no rainwater goods surviving on cut-granite chamfered eaves. Part creeper- or ivy-covered tuck pointed coursed "Old Red Sandstone" walls on cut-granite "slated" cushion course on plinth with octagonal pinnacle-topped gabled panelled piers to corners. Lancet window openings between gabled buttresses with cut-granite "slated" sill courses, and cut-granite block-and-start surrounds having chamfered reveals with hood mouldings on engaged octagonal label stops. Lancet "Trinity Window" (east) with cut-granite "slated" sill course, and cut-granite block-and-start surround having chamfered reveals with hood mouldings on engaged octagonal label stops. Lancet window openings (west), cut-granite block-and-start surrounds having chamfered reveals with hood mouldings on engaged octagonal label stops. Pointed-arch door opening ("narthex") with flagged cut-granite threshold, and cut-granite surround having chamfered rebated reveals with "slated" hood moulding. Lancet window opening (north) with cut-granite sill, and cut-granite surround having chamfered reveals with hood moulding on engaged octagonal label stops. Interior in ruins including vestibule (west); interior in ruins with cut-granite corbels originally supporting exposed timber roof construction. Set in landscaped grounds on a corner site.

Appraisal

The shell of a church erected to designs attributed to John Semple (1801-82), Joint Architect to the Province of Dublin (fl. 1823-33; Murphy 2004, 45-55), representing an important component of the early nineteenth-century ecclesiastical heritage of Wexford with the architectural value of the composition, one abutting a church 'founded by the Roches as a priory for the Augustinian Canons Regular' [SMR WX037-032009-], confirmed by such attributes as the compact rectilinear plan form, aligned along a liturgically-correct axis; the construction in a ruby-coloured "Old Red Sandstone" offset by silver-grey granite dressings not only demonstrating good quality workmanship, but also producing an eye-catching two-tone palette; the slender profile of the openings underpinning a "medieval" Gothic theme 'in the early style of English architecture' with the chancel defined by an elegant "Trinity Window" (Lewis 1837 II, 710); and the polygonal pinnacles embellishing the roofline.