Central Block Of Convent Of Notre Dame Including Chapel

The central block of the Convent of Notre Dame, including the chapel, was built in 1857. The chapel was added later, between 1865 and 1867, to designs by M.E. Hadfield and his son Charles. The building is constructed of brown brick with a hipped slate roof, and features an enriched eaves cornice. The main facade is five bays wide. The entrance bay is gabled with two-storey windows featuring plate tracery and three lancets in the gable end. Above the arched entrance is a richly ornamented blind fanlight. The remaining bays have round-headed sash windows with marginal glazing bars, and pointed relieving arches that create a blind arcade on the ground floor, and segment-headed sashes with relieving arches on the first floor. The second-floor windows have sashes with shouldered lintels.

The chapel, located on the garden side, is constructed of brown brick with blue brick strings and some ashlar dressings, and has a slate roof. It is two storeys high, with the chapel on the first floor. The chapel consists of four bays (three projecting from the rear of the main building) and a five-bay rounded apse. The design is described as tall and "gaunt". It features multi-stepped buttresses and two-light plate tracery windows in an "Early French" style. Ground-floor windows have ringed colonettes, while first-floor windows have lobed tympanums. Apse windows are lancets with polychrome voussoirs and marble colonnettes; paired cusped lancets are on the ground floor. A sculpted relief is situated in the central bay of the apse. The roof is topped by a tall hexagonal slated fleche, surmounted by a weathervane and an open lantern stage with cusped openings. A two-storey projection is on the west side of the chapel, featuring a gable roof and windows similar to those elsewhere. A sacristy projection adjoins the first bay, with a side chapel above. A later addition to the second bay has a hipped roof, stone mullioned windows, a doorway with a blind arched fanlight decorated with diapering, and a projecting return.

The interior of the chapel features quadripartite vaults supported on colonnettes springing from foliated corbels. The apse vault is painted, with wall arch colonnettes constructed of ashlar and transverse arch colonnettes of black marble. A timber-fronted gallery is present, with a 20th-century screen beneath it. The entrance door is within a deeply moulded arch with two orders of black marble colonnettes, and has an oak door with ornamental iron hinges. The chapel was damaged in 1941 and restored in 1949, including glasswork by Messrs. Early of Dublin.