Mass & Service Times
Sunday
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About High Street, Lurgan Methodist Church
High Street, Lurgan Methodist Church is a congregation of the Methodist Church in Ireland in Lurgan, County Armagh. It is part of the Lurgan in the North Western District.
History
Lurgan people have assembled for Christian worship on this site since 1684, when the first Presbyterians met in a building here; they built a more permanent Meeting House in 1718.
A Methodist Preaching House was first built on the site in 1802, when a linen buyer at Lurgan Market called Chapman provided the capital for a building constructed parallel to and slightly back from the road. It replaced the Methodist Preaching House in Nettleton's Court, off Queens Street, which John Wesley had opened in 1778. A larger building was erected in 1826 to replace that of 1802, at a cost of £150. Tenements in front of the older Preaching House were bought for 100 guineas and removed to enlarge the site, which was given to the church by Mr Johnstone, owner of the brewery there, who moved the brewery back into the tenements at the rear.
A hall for the teaching of children, the preaching of the gospel and outreach into the community was opened in Union Street on 25 July 1886.
The building
The church was remodelled in 1888 at a cost of £800, when the galleries were fitted, the ceiling raised by two feet and the stairs and the front added. The church's own history connects this work to growth in the congregation in the years following the 1859 revival.
The building was closed for some months in 1910 for extensive repairs, receiving a new roof and plastered exterior walls, and reopened in September of that year. It was extensively renovated in 1925, the year preceding the centenary celebrations of the 1826 building. A vestry, church parlour and basement hall were added at the rear in 1958, and the front of the building was renovated in 1976 with new windows and front doors. Further renovation and repairs followed in 1992.
New two-storey halls were built at the rear in 1991 to replace the Union Street hall, which had been sold in 1989, and the link between the halls and the church was opened on 12 March 1994. The Wesley Trust Building was opened in 2013. The refurbished church premises were reopened and rededicated on 23 April 2023, following work carried out from February 2022 to April 2023.
Clergy
- Minister Rev Andrew Gibson
