Carnmoney The Holy Evangelist

History

Three small churches are reputed to have been founded on the streams of south-east Antrim in the time of St Patrick, at Shankill, Ballynamanagh (Monkstown) and Coole, the last of these being Carnmoney. Shankill and Monkstown were destroyed in the sixteenth century and never restored. The parish claims its site as the only one between the Lagan and the Sixmilewater where divine service has been celebrated continuously since the early days of Christianity. The parish is a union of seven medieval parishes, to which a portion of the parish of Shankill was added in the seventeenth century.

An earlier church, a plain post-Reformation building, stood to the east of the present one and was demolished in 1856. The Ordnance Survey memoirs of 1838 described it as a portion of the ancient church of Coole, measuring 64 feet by 25 feet 10 inches externally with walls 3 feet thick, and with a lofty but plain steeple at the west end carrying a bell said to be of great age.

The present church, the latest of a succession of buildings near the north bank of the stream known as the Glas-na-Bradden, was consecrated on 23 December 1856 by Robert Knox, then Lord Bishop of the diocese, and named the Church of the Four Evangelists after its east window. It was built largely through the efforts and financial support of George Chichester Smythe, born at Coole Glebe in 1826, who became curate of the parish in 1843 and served as curate-in-charge and vicar until his death in 1903.

Notable features

The east window, which gave the church its name, was probably a gift of the Smythe family. An ancient well at the rear of the church is known as St Brigid's Well, and the name of the adjoining stream, the Glas-na-Bradden, has been translated as Little St Brigid's River. The parish takes both as pointing to St Brigid, a disciple of St Patrick, as a possible founder saint.