First Dunmurry (NS) Presbyterian Church
First Dunmurry (NS) Presbyterian Church
First Dunmurry Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church on Glebe Road, Dunmurry, County Antrim, is a Grade A Georgian ‘barn church’ of 1779, one of the finest surviving meeting-houses of its type in Ulster.
- Location
- Dunmurry, County Antrim
- Country
- Northern Ireland
- County
- County Antrim
- City / town
- Dunmurry
- Address
- Glebe Road, Dunmurry, County Antrim, BT17 0PN
- Postcode
- BT17 0PN
- Built
- 1779; congregation founded 1676; earlier meeting-house 1714
- Denomination
- Presbyterian Non-Subscribing
- Parish
- First Dunmurry
- Grade
- A
- Style
- Georgian barn church (Gibbsian)
- Materials
- Basalt rubble with sandstone Gibbs surrounds; hipped roof
- Grid reference
- J 291 689
- Opening hours
- If you would like to visit the church outside service times, please email us.
- Access
- Accessible toilets in church
Overview
The Northern Ireland Buildings Database lists First Presbyterian Church (Non-Subscribing), Glebe Road (HB19/20/005, Grade A). The congregation was founded in 1676. A second meeting-house of 1714 survives in part as the rear vestry, with a date stone inscribed “Anno Christi 1714.” The present rectangular hipped-roof building was erected in 1779; a front plaque was later mis-painted as 1719, but earlier photographs and the Ordnance Survey Memoirs record the original date as 1779. The architect is not known for certain; C. E. B. Brett and the church itself note a frequent attribution to Roger Mulholland, architect of First Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Street, Belfast (1783).
The front is approached by six long steps to two pedimented doors with Gibbs surrounds of alternating wide and narrow stones; three large round-arched Gibbsian windows stand between. Stone Database NI records basalt with Locharbriggs sandstone dressings. The interior remains largely eighteenth-century: a long-wall pulpit, box pews and side galleries. A large stained-glass window associated with the Richardson family was inserted in the 1860s. Listing URLs for Northern Ireland are not used in the Gazette list-entry field. Visits outside service times are by email arrangement.