Funding boost for Dromore Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer, Dromore is to share in a funding payout of £611,000 from the National Churches Trust.
A £12,760 grant will help fund urgent repairs to the walls, windows and roof of Christ the Redeemer, safeguarding the heritage of the church and enabling it to continue to serve the local community.
Funding for the grant comes from the Department for Communities Historic Environment Division’s Covid–19 Culture, Languages, Arts and Heritage Support Programme.
The project
The grant will support repointing walls, replacing cracked and crumbling sand stone detailing to window reveals, and provision of lead flashings.
The Very Revd Geoff Wilson, Rector and Dean of the Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer at Church of Christ the Redeemer said:
“We are delighted to have been awarded this significant grant from National Churches Trust, particularly in these most challenging times for many churches. The funds will enable us to preserve the integrity of our wonderful church building from rainwater ingress as a place worship, a centre of mission and a place for silent reflection and private prayer.”
A total of 67 churches and chapels in England, Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland will benefit from the latest grants from the National Churches Trust, the charity supporting church buildings of all Christian denominations across the UK.
This is the first round of grants made by the National Churches Trust in 2021. Last year the Trust has awarded, or recommended on behalf of other funders, 260 grants amounting to £1.7 million.
The church
The Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer is a 17th century church, built on a site used for Christian worship for almost 1,500 years.
St Colman of Dromore set up a small ‘daub and wattle’ church on this site in 510 AD. Probably thatched with reeds from the River Lagan, which flows beside it.
Little evidence is available for the first 700 years of St Colman’s Church. There is no indication of either its size or style.
In the 12th century, the English King Henry II revised a system of dioceses and bishops, which covered the entire island of Ireland. One of those dioceses, named Dromore, took as its base this Cathedral Church. There had been bishops and abbots before then, but from this time the history becomes more complete.
A medieval church, about which no record exists, was destroyed in the late 1500’s. It was King James I who, in 1609, issued letters Patent giving the Church of St Colman a new title and a new status: The Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer, Dromore (known as Dromore Cathedral). That building was destroyed in 1641 by Irish Insurgents. A new structure, of which small portions are still visible, was built by Bishop Jeremy Taylor some twenty years later in 1661.
A narrow structure of around twenty feet wide and one hundred feet long was first built. This forms the base of the current tower aisle. A tower was then built, but soon dismantled. The Percy aisle was added by Bishop Thomas Percy in 1811. This aisle sits at right angles to the Tower aisle, opposite the pulpit. A semi–circular Sanctuary in memory of Jeremy Taylor was designed by Thomas Drew FRSA during the ministry of Canon Beresford Knox in 1870. The Organ aisle and Baptistery were added at the same time creating an ‘L’ shaped building. Finally, the church was made rectangular with the addition of the Harding aisle parallel to the Tower aisle in 1899.