Mullingar Presbyterian Church to mark 200 years

By Jason McKevitt

‘The hearers conducted themselves with great seriousness and many apparently with much devotion!’

These were the words spoken by the Presbyterian Minister, Rev James Morell, when reporting to the Dublin Presbyterian Committee in January 1821. Rev Morell was referring to a Presbyterian prayer meeting that had been held the previous December by a number of inhabitants of Mullingar as they met in the Ballroom of the old Market House.

Soon after, another Presbyterian Minister, by the name of Rev James Horner, arrived in Mullingar with the aim of formally establishing a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in the town.

Presbyterians, like their Roman Catholic neighbours, had suffered the negative impact of the Penal Laws enforced by the Anglican ascendancy during the 18th century. The 1798 Rising of the United Irishmen against the Crown, had within its ranks many leading Irish Presbyterians such as Henry Joy McCracken and Thomas Addis Emmet and his brother Robert Emmet, who later led the Irish rebellion of 1803.

By the 1820s, however, those draconian, discriminatory laws were largely rescinded, and one of the last remaining penal laws was abolished with the passing of the Catholic Relief Act in 1829.

This was the background that Presbyterians in Mullingar came from as they looked forward to formally establishing their church in the town.

By March 1823, the ordination of a Presbyterian minister in Mullingar took place when Rev Alexander Gibson became its first minister. Two years later, the Presbyterian Church building or ‘Meeting House’ as it is often referred to, was constructed on a quarter-acre site leased from the then landlord of Mullingar, Lord Granard, at the junction of Castle Street and Friars Mill Road.

The Presbyterian congregation consisted of people from every walk of life, including farmers, merchants, teachers, soldiers from the army barracks and doctors from the county infirmary and local dispensary.

In 1840, Mullingar Presbyterian church joined the newly formed General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and, such was the growth of the Presbyterian community in Westmeath, that as well as Mullingar, there were congregations with church buildings in Killucan, Moyvore, Castlepollard, Tyrrellspass and Athlone, all under the governing church body known as the Athlone Presbytery.

Mullingar army barracks was a major influencing factor on the size of the congregation and it fluctuated depending on which regiment was stationed at the barracks, especially if Regiments from Scotland or the North of Ireland were present.

The church building, along with a small manse as a living quarters for the minister and his family, was to play a pivotal role in relieving distress for many of the unfortunate, starving population of Mullingar during the Great Famine from 1846 to 1852. By 1849, the local workhouse was bursting at the seams as 2,500 destitute people sought refuge within its confines, and in auxiliary buildings throughout the town.

Rev Gibson and the local Presbyterian community opened the doors of the old Manse and church building, turning it into a fever hospital, and many of those who perished the hunger were buried in the church graveyard.

In 1862, the current manse on Castle Street was constructed, along with a sexton’s house on the Friars Mill Road side of the church grounds.

The congregation was growing and new ministers took up appointment and moved in to the manse at Castle Street.

In October 1895, Rev William McCulloch was ordained in Mullingar. Rev McCulloch’s son Derek McCulloch later went on to be a broadcaster with the BBC and was the commentator on the first radio broadcast of the FA Cup Final in 1927 (when Cardiff City beat Arsenal 1-0).

Following Irish Independence in 1922, there was a decrease in the congregation of Mullingar Presbyterian Church – however, it grew again with the influx of Irish army soldiers, especially during the Emergency period of the 1940s.

On retirement, Rev James Black became the last Presbyterian minister to live in the manse at Castle Street, and the building was sold in 1960. The new minister for Mullingar would also be responsible for Kells Presbyterian Church and would reside there.

In 1971, local Mullingar businesswoman Mrs Susan Graham was ordained as an Elder with Mullingar Presbyterian Church.

The arrival of the Celtic Tiger led to a general population increase in Ireland, and in the congregation of Mullingar Presbyterian Church, and that meant a need for a minister in Mullingar.

A new manse at Brookfield, Mullingar, was purchased in November 2001 and Rev Stephen Lockington was ordained as minister for Mullingar and Corboy Presbyterian Church on January 26, 2002. Under the guidance of Rev Lockington the congregation witnessed an unprecedented increase in numbers.

By 2012, it was decided that the church building on Castle Street was too small to meet the needs of a growing congregation and land was purchased in the Rathgowan area of the town. On April 15 that year, the final church service took place at the Presbyterian Church on Castle Street, led by the Right Rev Dr Ivan Patterson, Moderator of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

Construction on the new Presbyterian church building at Rathgowan commenced in 2014 when the foundation stone was laid by church elders, Wilson and Jeanette Porter and Ruth Stafford-Flynn.

When the new Mullingar Presbyterian church building officially opened on March 7, 2015, it marked a new beginning for the Presbyterian Church in Mullingar.

On December 1, 2018, Rev Daniel Reyes-Martin was installed as the new minister in the new church building – an historic moment for Mullingar Presbyterian Church, as all previous ministers had been ordained and installed in the old church building on Castle Street.

Today Mullingar Presbyterian Church is linked with Corboy, County Longford as part of the Dublin and Munster Presbytery.

Sadly, due to Covid-19 restrictions, Mullingar Presbyterian Church could not celebrate its 200th anniversary during 2021 – however, at 3pm on Saturday October 8 next, the congregation will do so, and there is an invitation for everyone in Mullingar to attend and help to celebrate the historic occasion.

As we conclude and again ponder the words of Rev James Morell from that meeting of Mullingar Presbyterians in 1821, ‘The hearers conducted themselves with great seriousness and many apparently with much devotion!’ let us reflect on those Christian values and celebrate with a church community that has been part of Mullingar life for more than 200 years.