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Civil parish

Drumbeg

An Droim Beag

Saint Patrick’s retains an eighteenth-century tower, a nineteenth-century spire and a memorial gateway on its approach from the road.

Watercolour and fine ink illustration of The memorial lychgate at Saint Patrick's Church, Drumbeg, as photographed in June 2008.
Illustration, The memorial lychgate at Saint Patrick's Church, Drumbeg, as photographed in June 2008
Recorded locationDrumbeg54.49866° N · 5.99317° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
Approximate recorded location · Logainm.ie

The name

A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.

Recorded forms

  • An Droim Beag · Irish · main form
  • Drumbeg · English · main form

Place & story

A tower carried into the new church

Saint Patrick’s at Drumbeg was rebuilt to Thomas Drew’s design and consecrated on 20 December 1870. Its older tower was retained. An inscription records that the earlier church was built in 1798, its wooden spire fell in 1831, and John Charley of Finaghy paid for the replacement stone spire in 1833. The building therefore combines several campaigns, rather than dating wholly from the Victorian rebuilding. [2]

A memorial on the approach

The lych gate at the churchyard entrance was erected in 1878. Its inscription names Ellen Caldwell as the donor and commemorates her brother John Ferguson Montgomery of Ballydrain, who died in 1876. Thomas Montgomery presented the yew trees lining the uphill approach in 1885. These gifts created a sequence of gateway, planted path and church, connecting family commemoration with the congregation’s route into worship. [2]

Geographic information

Place type
Civil parish
County
Down
Coordinates
54.49866, -5.99317 (approximate)
Logainm ID
65706 ↗

Sources & further reading

  1. Logainm.ie — Drumbeg. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
  2. Saint Patrick’s Church, Drumbeg, HB19/23/001A, survey17June2010 · Historic Environment Division, Department for Communities
  3. The memorial lychgate at Saint Patrick's Church, Drumbeg, as photographed in June 2008 illustration: based on a Lychgate, St Patrick's Church of Ireland, Drumbeg by Rossographer. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2019-10-08. How this page was prepared.