Qualla: Dromore Cathedral

Dromore Cathedral: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh (shifted & cropped by Rabanus Flavus), CC BY-SA 4.0. St Colman planted his church on the banks of the River Lagan in 510 AD, when most of Europe was still a long way from converting. He built it of wattle and daub - woven wooden lattice plastered with mud and dung - the cheapest, fastest, most local kind of structure a small monastic community could put up. The river ran past it then as it runs past now. Fifteen centuries later, the cathedral that stands on the spot is small and L-shaped and made of stone, with seventeenth-century walls and Victorian additions. It is one of two cathedrals serving the Diocese of Down and Dromore in the Church of Ireland, and one of the very few churches anywhere with such a long, continuous record of worship on a single site.

Read more: Dromore Cathedral on Qualla

Image: JohnArmagh (shifted & cropped by Rabanus Flavus) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dromore Cathedral: Colman by the Lagan

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The National Churches Trust, CC BY 2.0. St Colman of Dromore - one of several Colmans in the early Irish church - founded his community here in the early sixth century, in the dim transition between the time of St Patrick and the medieval Irish church. The original wattle-and-daub building would have been small, perhap...

Read more: Dromore Cathedral on Qualla

Image: The National Churches Trust | CC BY 2.0

Dromore Cathedral: James I's Letters Patent

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1609 - the same year the official Plantation of Ulster began - King James I issued letters patent giving the rebuilt Church of St Colman a new title and status: The Cathedral Church of Christ the Redeemer, Dromore. Henry II had reorganised the Irish dioceses in the twelfth cen...

Read more: Dromore Cathedral on Qualla

Image: JohnArmagh | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dromore Cathedral: Jeremy Taylor's Church

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Notafly, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1661 Jeremy Taylor, the newly-restored Bishop of Down and Connor, built a narrow stone structure on the site - 20 feet wide, 100 feet long - that forms what is today the Tower Aisle. Taylor was one of the most distinguished English theologians of the seventeenth century, a fri...

Read more: Dromore Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Notafly | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dromore Cathedral: Thomas Percy and the Ballads

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit james denham, CC BY-SA 2.0. Bishop Thomas Percy, who served as Bishop of Dromore from 1782 until his death in 1811, added the aisle that still carries his name to the cathedral in 1811. Percy is remembered today not for his episcopal career but for a book he published in 1765, when he was still a country pa...

Read more: Dromore Cathedral on Qualla

Image: james denham | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dromore Cathedral: An L-Shape and a Rectangle

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jon Sullivan, Public domain. The cathedral grew piece by piece. Bishop Percy's aisle in 1811. Drew's sanctuary, the organ aisle and the baptistry in 1870, during the ministry of Canon Beresford Knox - the additions turning the building into an L-shape. Finally, the Harding aisle was added in 1899 parallel to...

Read more: Dromore Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Jon Sullivan | Public domain

Dromore Cathedral: What Continues

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P.khiao, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk in any weekday morning and you will find the cathedral open - quiet, slightly worn, smelling of stone and old wood. The graves of Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Percy lie under the floor; the seventeenth-century walls hold the Victorian additions in a perfectly readable architectu...

Read more: Dromore Cathedral on Qualla

Image: P.khiao | CC BY-SA 4.0