After Monday’s account of Bessbrook, here is what might be classified as one of the casualties of the town’s success: the former St Jude’s church a couple of miles to the south-west. The building dates from 1772 and has been attributed to architect Thomas Cooley since by that date he had begun receiving commissions from Richard Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh (and who carried on employing Cooley until the latter’s early death in 1784). Whoever was responsible, the design is a standard hall of three bays with a tower and entrance at the west end, built of coursed rubble with granite used for the doorcase, windows and quoins. Although capable of accommodating a congregation of some 120 souls, St Jude’s probably never attracted that number and it was abandoned as a place of worship in the late 1860s when a new Church of Ireland church was constructed in Bessbrook.