From ruin to jewel – Hollymount’s Old Kirk and Manse

THEY stand like solemn, stone spectres in towns and villages throughout Mayo, historical relics of a community that has dwindled from a sizeable minority to near insignificance.
Some of them were repurposed as libraries, but many more stand in total ruin.
The Presbyterian church in Hollymount is one of several Protestant churches dotted around Mayo.
Call there any day of this week and you could find a mini-bus full of tourists, partygoers or various other lodgers mingling around the petite chapel and the stunning four-bedroom house.
However, the place long-known as ‘The Old Kirk and Manse’ lay in a sorry state for many years.
Its origins date back to the 1850s, when a number of Scottish and Northumbrian Presbyterians settled locally after the Great Famine.
Numbering 30 initially, Hollymount’s Presbyterian community initially worshipped in what is now the village’s parish home before the church known as ‘the kirk’ was opened in 1856.
The church and the accompanying ‘manse’ – a term often ascribed to the residence of Scottish Presbyterian ministers – were delivered for £1,200.
By 1858, the church had a congregation of 27 families and 47 communicants.
The number of worshippers dropped in tandem with the decline of the Protestant faith in southern Ireland and by 1930 there ceased to be a congregation in Hollymount.

Curious eye
By the time local man Shane Gilligan and his wife Melissa, a native of Roscommon, cast a curious eye on the place, the roof on the church was ready to fall in.
The windows were destroyed and the floor in need of replacement.
The house, partially concealed from the road by overgrowth and saturated with the damp, would have to be completely gutted.
The world saw an eyesore, but the Gilligans saw an opportunity.
“We fell completely in love with it,” Melissa tells The Mayo News.
The year was 2017 and Shane and Melissa were due to get married. But the time was not yet right.
“We did consider it as a family home but felt that there was just something too special about it and that it was too big. And with the old Kirk there, we felt it was something that should be used more as a business for small events et cetera,” Melissa explained.
They looked again in 2021 and decided there and then to have the place ready in time for Melissa’s 40th birthday.
Family affair
The task was enormous. But when you’re an interior designer, your husband is an engineer, your father’s a builder, your brother is an electrician and your sister is an architect, it’s amazing what you can get done.
“The refurb itself took about 16 months to complete, just to modernise it somewhat. The existing fabric and structure of the building was actually in very good shape,” explains Shane.
“It just needed to be modernised with mechanical electrical plumbing systems and weathering certain elements of it. Other than that, it was actually quite a straightforward revision project.
“I suppose from my point of view the interior design part took quite a lot of work just trying to bring it back to an old worldy feel and I guess trying to make the house feel like it may have felt back in the day.”
The Presbyterians are long gone out of Hollymount, but their old house of worship was never as busy.
Since it was restored to its old glory, the kirk has hosted a book launch, a concert and all manners of dos functions – they won’t refuse a wedding or wake either.
The vicar’s old quarters now sleeps up to eight-people in a house that is warm and modern but true to its heritage.
While much of the trade comes from Airbnb lodgers, Melissa hopes that events become a more regular occurrence.
“Intimate weddings are a big one and it’s something that I would strive to get more of. I think it’s just the most perfect setting for that,” she says.
Thousands of ideas
“Certainly, the more sophisticated hen parties are something. We’d also love to go down that route and I often think it would be the most magical place for Christmas experiences, Christmas markets, indoor and outdoor, Santa visits, the list goes on. There’s thousands of ideas in my head.”
The Old Kirk and Manse went from ruin to jewel in 16 months and shines like a beacon in a village that has pushed back the tide of dereliction in recent years.
But much like many of Mayo’s Protestant churches, there are thousands more grand old buildings like this lying unloved and unsightly and derelict across the county.
“I do find it so hard to see properties derelict around the place. It’s so hard to beat the character of these old buildings,” says Melissa.
“I know that they cost so much to renovate, and you don’t even know where to start with a lot of them. But to see so many new builds when there are all these beautiful properties that already exist, it is hard.
“I would just love to have endless amounts of money to be able to take on numerous projects and to renovate them and bring them back to life. There’s such a sense of massive achievement and joy in restoring something so historic and so beautiful and such a part of a community and to open it up to a community again.”