MARKETHILL METHODIST CHURCH

Between 1762 and 1767, the renowned Methodist preacher John Wesley travelled widely throughout Co. Armagh. On one such journey, he met with Lord Gosford and discussed the possible construction of a Methodist church in the village of Markethill.

Lord Gosford granted the preacher a site in Keady Street upon which to build a simple church. The lease for the site was to be one shilling per year for a period of ninety nine years.

The present church building was constructed in 1833 but the gravestone of a Methodist minister at nearby Mullabrack Church records his death as 1819, indicating that a Methodist church probably existed on the site long before the present church was built.

As with most Methodist churches the interior is simple and totally without
ornamentation. It is a rectangular building of unhewn stone with a slate roof
measuring 49 feet long by 24 feet wide, and was built at a cost of £150.

“The Markethill Methodist chapel,
situated near the western extremity of the town on the Keady road, is a plain
rectangular building of unhewn stone, slated and in good order, built in 1833.
Length 49 feet, breadth 24 and a half feet.” (Ordnance
Survey Memoirs 1835-38)