Congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland

Diamond Road,
Dromore

Sunday Services:
11.30 am and 6.00 pm

Minister: Rev. Keith Duddy
Tel: (028) 9269 2271
Email: kduddy@presbyterianireland.org

First Dromore

In 1660 a Presbyterian congregation was established and the Rev Henry Hunter was ordained in May of that year. Mr Hunter's ministry was shortly to be disrupted as within a year he was deprived of the parish church and tithes by Bishop Jeremy Taylor. For most of the next decade Hunter and his congregation, like most Presbyterians, had no regular Meeting House and met for worship in either private homes or in barns. In about 1670 the congregation built its first Meeting House on the Diamond Road, probably on or about the site of the present church. Alexander Colville, who was installed in July 1700, died in his pulpit on 1st December 1719 while conducting public worship. At that time the minister's son, also Alexander Colville was a student at Edinburgh University, with a view to taking up a career in medicine. The congregation wished to have him as their minister and persuaded him to take up the study of theology. Difficulties arose when a formal call was presented to Colville in 1724 because in the interval he had decided that he did not wish to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Contrary to Presbyterian discipline, Colville went to London in December 1724 and was ordained by a group of ministers in the vestry of Dr. Calamy's Meeting House, without subscription. On returning to Dromore he took up duties as minister of the congregation and applied to the Presbytery of Armagh for Installation. This was refused and at the following meeting of the General Synod Colville was censured and suspended for disorderly conduct. Once more he took matters into his own hands and requested that he and his congregation might be received into the Southern Association, which was known to hold Non-Subscribing views, and which was outside the jurisdiction of the Synod of Ulster. This was granted and Colville was formally installed in Dromore, by a commission of the Southern Association on 27th October 1725.

There then followed a split in the congregation. Colville's Call was signed by 400 persons, which implied upwards of 400 families or two thirds of the congregation. The remaining one third, or 200 families withdrew from his ministry and were established as a separate congregation. The Rev James Allen, first minister of the congregation so formed, was ordained here by the Presbytery of Armagh on 18th May 1726. At first the new congregation held services in an old kiln at the head of Rampart Street, however within a short time Colville and his congregation built a new Meeting House in Pound Street and vacated the old place of worship on the Diamond Road, which was now re-occupied by the new congregation. During the years 1815 to 1837 the church was enlarged and a manse was constructed in about 1878. A record at the Ulster Folk Museum, dated 1837, describes the building as a whitewashed, - roughcast edifice with accommodation for 1,200 and an average attendance of 700. In 1914 the old church building was demolished and the present church, with a seating capacity of 800, was completed in 1915. The old school house (erected in 1860) was demolished in about 1959 and a new church hall built on the same site, was opened in 1960 and extended in 1979.