Ballinglen Presbyterian Church

Detached three-bay double-height single-cell Presbyterian church, built 1848-50; opened 1850, with single-bay single-storey gabled projecting porch to entrance (north) front. Burnt, 1864. Reopened, 1865. In use, 1943. Closed, 1959. Now in ruins. Pitched roofs now missing, cut-limestone coping to gables including creeper- or ivy-covered cut-limestone coping to gable (south) with overgrown bellcote or chimney stack to apex[?], and no rainwater goods surviving on red brick header bond stepped eaves. Part creeper- or ivy-covered coursed or snecked limestone battered walls on limestone ashlar chamfered plinth retaining sections of fine roughcast or lime rendered surface finish. Round-headed window openings with cut-limestone sills, and creeper- or ivy-covered red brick voussoirs with no fittings surviving. Bisected round-headed door opening to entrance (north) front with step threshold now missing, and red brick voussoirs with no fittings surviving. Interior in ruins. Set in unkempt grounds.

The shell of a church erected under the aegis of Reverend Michael Brannigan (1816?-74; fl. 1848-74) representing an important component of the mid nineteenth-century ecclesiastical heritage of the rural environs of Ballycastle with the architectural value of the composition suggested by such attributes as the compact rectilinear "barn" plan form; and the slender profile of the openings underpinning a streamlined Classical theme. Although reduced to an ivy-enveloped ruin following a prolonged period of neglect, the local congregation having faltered in the later nineteenth century '[as] emigration set in [and] few of the original adherents remained' (Killen 1886, 246-7), the elementary form and massing survive intact, thus upholding much of the character of a church making a picturesque, if increasingly obscure visual statement in a sylvan setting.