Reg No
15603085
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Historical, Scientific, Social, Technical
Original Use
Church/chapel
In Use As
Church/chapel
Date
1840 - 1850
Coordinates
297294, 139746
Date Recorded
13/06/2005
Date Updated
--/--/--
Detached six-bay double-height Ecclesiastical Commissioners' Church of Ireland church, built 1843-6; consecrated 1846, on a rectangular plan comprising five-bay double-height nave opening into single-bay double-height chancel (east); single-bay three-stage tower to entrance (west) front on a square plan supporting octagonal spire. Completed, 1850. Pitched slate roofs with clay ridge tiles, cut-granite "slated" coping to gables, and cast-iron rainwater goods on cut-granite eaves retaining cast-iron downpipes. Tuck pointed coursed or snecked limestone walls on cut-granite chamfered plinth with octagonal pinnacle-topped granite ashlar piers to corners; tuck pointed coursed or snecked limestone surface finish (tower) on cut-granite chamfered plinth with octagonal pinnacle-topped granite ashlar piers to corners framing granite ashlar octagonal spire. Paired lancet window openings between granite ashlar piers with cut-granite "slated" sill course, and cut-granite block-and-start surrounds having chamfered reveals with hood mouldings on engaged octagonal label stops framing fixed-pane fittings having lattice glazing bars. Lancet "Trinity Window" (east) with cut-granite chamfered sill, and cut-granite block-and-start surround having chamfered reveals with hood moulding on engaged octagonal label stops framing storm glazing over fixed-pane fittings having leaded stained glass margins centred on leaded stained glass panels. Lancet window opening (tower) with cut-granite "slated" sill course, and cut-granite block-and-start surround having chamfered reveals with hood moulding framing fixed-pane fitting having lattice glazing bars. Lancet "arrow loop" openings (second stage) with cut-granite block-and-start surrounds having chamfered reveals framing louvered fittings. Paired lancet openings (bell stage), cut-granite block-and-start surrounds having chamfered reveals with hood mouldings on engaged octagonal label stops framing louvered fittings. Interior including vestibule (west); pointed-arch door opening into nave with chamfered reveals framing timber panelled double doors having overpanel; full-height interior open into roof with arcaded choir gallery (west) on colonette pillars, encaustic tiled central aisle between trefoil finial-topped timber pews, cut-white marble wall monuments (----) with polished brass plates (----), exposed arcaded timber roof construction on polygonal corbels with wind braced rafters to ceiling on timber cornice, Gothic-style pulpit on an octagonal plan with Gothic-style clerk's desk, and carpeted encaustic tiled stepped dais to chancel (east) with pointed-arch chancel arch framing trefoil-perforated arcaded communion railing centred on quatrefoil-detailed altar table below stained glass memorial "Trinity Window" (1927). Set in landscaped grounds on a corner site with granite ashlar piers to perimeter having cut-granite shallow pyramidal capping.
A church erected to designs signed (1843-4) by Joseph Welland (1798-1860), Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (appointed 1843), representing an important component of the mid nineteenth-century ecclesiastical heritage of County Wexford with the architectural value of the composition confirmed by such attributes as the rectilinear plan form, aligned along a liturgically-correct axis; the construction in a pale blue limestone offset by silver-grey granite dressings not only demonstrating good quality workmanship, but also producing a sober two-tone palette; the slender profile of the coupled openings underpinning a "medieval" Gothic theme with the chancel defined by an elegant "Trinity Window"; and the polygonal spire-topped tower attributed to William Deane Butler (1793/4-1857) of Saint Stephen's Green, Dublin (Lacy 1863, 478). Having been well maintained, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, both to the exterior and to the interior where contemporary joinery; war memorials commemorating 'the men from [the] parish who nobly laid down their lives for justice and right in the service of their King and Country during The Great War' and 'RALPH JASPER NEWELL FARMAR [1871-1917] of Bloomfield…killed in action in the advance on Cambrai'; encaustic tile work; and the Armstrong-Preston-Boyce Memorial "Trinity Window" supplied (1927) by William Morris and Company (established 1861) of Westminster, all highlight the considerable artistic potential of the composition: meanwhile, an exposed timber roof construction pinpoints the engineering or technical dexterity of a church making a pleasing visual statement in an urban street scene. NOTE: A reclaimed panel (1793) remembers the eighteenth-century church described (1837) as 'a plain edifice without tower or spire [from which] after the disturbances of 1798 a six-pound shot fell from one of the rafters' (Lewis 1837 I, 603).