Mass & Service Times
We do not have service times for Dromore Cathedral Christ The Redeemer yet. The contact details on this page are the quickest way to check. Send them to us and we will list them.
About Dromore Cathedral Christ The Redeemer
Dromore Cathedral Christ The Redeemer is a Church of Ireland church in Dromore, County Down. It is in the Diocese of Down & Dromore.
History
The cathedral's own history records that St Colman of Dromore set up a small daub and wattle church on this site in 510, 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, and there is no indication of either its size or style. In the twelfth century Henry II revised the system of dioceses and bishops covering Ireland, and the diocese named Dromore took this church as its base; there had been bishops and abbots before that time.
A medieval church, of which no record exists, was destroyed in the late 1500s. In 1609 James I issued letters patent giving the church of St Colman a new title and status as the Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer, Dromore. That building was destroyed in 1641, and a new structure was built by Bishop Jeremy Taylor some twenty years later, in 1661. Small portions of it are still visible.
The building
The structure built in 1661 was narrow, around twenty feet wide and one hundred feet long, and forms the base of the tower aisle. A tower was then built, but was soon dismantled. The Percy aisle was added by Bishop Thomas Percy in 1811 and 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 during the ministry of Canon Beresford Knox in 1870, and the organ aisle and baptistery were added at the same time, giving the building an L-shaped plan. The addition of the Harding aisle in 1899, parallel to the tower aisle, made the building rectangular.
Clergy
- Incumbent Very Rev Geoff Wilson
- Non-Stipendiary Minister Rev Trevor McKeown
