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Newry’s Italian-style Riverside Church which has served as a popular venue for Iúr Cinn Fleadh events over eight years is better than ever since emerging from the flood waters that hit the city in October 2023.
celebration event. Photograph: Clive Price
Major repairs have given the building a new lease of life with gleaming hall, luxurious gallery and smart fitted kitchen and there has been increased attendance, too. The church are celebrating with events over this Spring Bank Holiday weekend including a gig earlier this evening by progressive bluegrass and folk band Cup O’Joe.
There was a packed church last evening 22 May for a special Thanksgiving Service. The event drew not only regular worshippers but also representatives from the business community and other local churches including St Patrick’s and St Mary’s Church Of Ireland, Newry Baptist Church and Downshire Road Presbyterian Church.
They all heard how Riverside members tried to hold back the 2023 deluge with a bank of sandbags, but waters rose so high, they reached the top of chair legs in the hall. The torrent left the building unusable for two years. RTE filmed the impact of the crisis on the church and city centre businesses (www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2023/1101/1414058-newry-flooding).
Newry and Mourne Enterprise Agency came to Riverside’s rescue. They provided the congregation with a temporary meeting place at WIN Business Park while the church’s walls and floors were stripped back and renewed by builder Douglas Hughes. Designed in 1865 along ‘Lombardo-Venetian’ lines by William J Barre, Riverside reopened for a wedding in summer 2025 and took its place again as a worship centre and important Newry landmark.
‘It’s not the same as it was it’s a wee bit nicer,’ Riverside elder Rodney Murphy said of the building at last night’s Thanksgiving Service. Guest speaker, Downshire Road minister Rev Brian Colvin, told Riverside about their restoration work, ‘You are to be commended for what you have done’.
