St Macartan’s Cathedral + Bishop’s Palace Clogher Tyrone

Whatever It Takes

Clogher may be a “tiny inconsequential place” according to Alastair Rowan (Buildings of Northwest Ulster, 1979) but it still manages to pack in a cathedral; bishop’s palace; Georgian village buildings; and a modernist ecclesiastical masterpiece. All on Main Street.

Alastair introduces St Macartan’s Church of Ireland Cathedral: “The church that stands today was built by Bishop John Stearne in 1744, apparently to the design of the architect builder James Martin. The church looks 18th century: cruciform, with pedimented gables to the transepts and chancel. The broad west front, wider than the nave, also has a pedimental gable but is topped by a solid, square belfry tower with a balustrade and obelisk finials. All the windows are round headed except the east Venetian window: Tuscan outside, Scamozzian Ionic within.”

“The Convent of the Sisters of St Louis is immediately east of the cathedral,” he comments. Quite the ecumenical neighbours at the top of the hill, top of the town, these days. “Formerly Clogher Park and before that the Protestant Bishop’s Palace. A plain ashlar block, built into the hillside, so that the entrance front is three storeys and the garden side four. Seven bay front with three bay pediment and single storey Doric porch. Six bay garden front with a high arcaded terrace across the ground floor flaked by recessed two storey wings with canted bay windows. The house overlooks a miniature park. Mrs Delany describes it in 1748 as ‘pretty with a fine large sloping green walk from the steps to a large basin on water, on which sail most gracefully fair beautiful swans. Beyond the basin of water rises a very steep hill covered with fir in the side of which Mrs Clayton is going to make a grotto. The rest of the garden is irregularly planted.’ The landscape still bears traces of Bishop Clayton’s planting, but the house is a more recent one, begun in the late 18th century by Bishop Lord John Beresford and completed by Bishop Tottenham in 1823. Square entrance hall with drawing room and dining room en suite across the garden front. Mahogany doors in fine late neoclassical architraves. There is a small Doric gatelodge.”

Among the miniature drumlins of the grassy graveyard rest stone tombstones, many of them dating from the 18th century. One tombstone, heavily carved front and back, has the inscription: “Here lyeth the body of John McGirr who departed this life January the 19th 1770 aged 23 years.”

Courthouse Clogher is managed by local couple Len and Joyce Keys. He explains, “This is not a commercial venture – the objectives are not financial. I had a career in banking but felt God very clearly guiding me to leave secular employment and undertake theological training. Through a complex web of circumstances which only God could control, by the time my course was completed, God had provided this courthouse building for Hope 4 U. This is our shared vision so as the renovation work on the building was nearing completion, Joyce left her employement as secretary of a local school. After 200 years as a ’seat of justice’, Courthouse Clogher opened as a place to share God’s peace, mercy and grace. Hope 4 U is focused on serving the whole community of the Clogher Valley.” Various community services are offered at Courthouse Clogher while on Thursdays and Fridays the courtroom is a café. The judge’s bench and the mezzanine over the door have been retained.

A sign in the entrance hall of the former Courthouse sets out: “Court Service of Northern Ireland records indicate that this building was constructed circa 1806. As a public building it had a wide diversity of usage; for example, the Board of Guardians who oversaw the operation of Clogher Union Workhouse met in this building on 27 May 1841. By 1910, Petty Sessions sat on the second Tuesday of each month at 12 noon. The Ulster Towns Directory of that year records Mr James Cull as the Clerk of Petty Sessions, Mr Arthur McCusker as Summons Server and Mr John Trimble as Courtkeeper. It was used as a courthouse throughout the 20th century, and in the latter 1990s it benefitted from a major renovation and refurbishment programme. Despite this investment, on 7 November 20023 Rosie Winterton MP announced that following a strategic review it had been decided that Clogher Courthouse should close at the end of 2002 and court business would transfer to the new Dungannon Courthouse. After the closure, the building lay derelict until it was purchased by Hope 4 U Foundation in March 2013.”

Next door to the Courthouse, Clogher Valley Rural Centre, 47 Main Street, is currently for sale for £139,950. This impressive gable ended five bay two storey over raised basement building looks like it may originally have been a stately village house. A piano nobile tripartite window and Gibbsian doorcase add grandeur to the rendered façade. In the 19th century it was an establishment called the Commercial Hotel with an off licence run by James Sheridan in the raised basement. Converted into offices, the only remaining internal period features are a white marble chimneypiece and a black cast iron chimneypiece in the main former reception rooms.

Opposite No.47 are two more public buildings. The former market house was converted into Clogher Orange and Black Hall in 1957. The two storey rendered with hipped roof T shaped block is a pleasing if severe Georgian design. The one and a half storey Cathedral Hall of 1872 carries on the neoclassical tradition established a century earlier in the village. Its symmetrical façade is an elegant composition with a gabled central projection. Both buildings are rendered with quoined corners. The Orange and Black Hall is vacant; The Cathedral Hall is well maintained.

Breaking away from the neoclassical mould of neighbouring public buildings, St Patrick’s Catholic Church was designed in a radically modernist style by Liam McCormick. The single storey building is set back from the road edge and like most of Main Street has panoramic views across the rolling countryside. Paul Larmour writes in Architects of Ulster 1920s to 1970s (2022), “St Patrick’s Church at Clogher, County Tyrone (1979), which was laid out on a circular plan with battered walls and a shallow conical roof surmounted by a thin spire, giving an almost space age profile.”

A few kilometres outside Clogher heading towards Belfast is the grandest house at any roundabout in Ireland. Ballygawley Roundabout is, as its name suggests, a functional road intersection but is much improved by the vision of architectural beauty that is Lisbeg House. Unusually, Alistair Rowan doesn’t mention it. Despite being set in a 26 hectare estate, the house sits on a gentle rise clearly visible by passing traffic. It has that Clandeboye (County Down) thing going on of having two principal fronts at right angles to one another. The two storey three bay northwest façade is balanced by a three bay southwest garden front. Round headed arched windows and a hipped roof set on deep modillion brackets lends the house a lightly Italianate look. Its most surprising aspect is the long rectangular five bay return which is about as big as the main L shaped block and also roughcast. The only stylistic deference of the return is the absence of the modillion brackets that so define the main block roof. A handsome stone farmyard extends to the rear of the return. The landed gentry family of Vesey Stewart, of part Huguenot descent, built two country houses near Ballygawley: Martray House (circa 1821) and Lisbeg House (1856).