Catholic Chaplaincy QUB, 28-38 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast, BT9 6AY

Catholic Chaplaincy, Queen's University Belfast, 28–38 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast

This Roman Catholic chaplaincy building was designed by Laurence McConville of the firm Rooney and McConville, then based at 81 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, and constructed between 1970 and 1972. It stands as an infill building within a gap in the historic Victorian brick terrace on the southern side of Elmwood Avenue, within the Queen's Conservation Area of south Belfast. The chaplaincy comprises a three-storey-plus-attic, six-bay main block to the front, with a single-storey chapel and cloister arranged around a courtyard to the rear.

Historical Background

Roman Catholic chaplaincy duties at Queen's University Belfast were formally established in 1909, though until the late 1940s the role was carried out on a part-time basis by a local priest who visited student lodgings. A bequest enabled the first dedicated chaplaincy centre to open at 14 Fitzwilliam Street in 1949, with Fr Michael Kelly as chaplain. In 1951, the neighbouring 16 Fitzwilliam Street was purchased and adapted to provide a small oratory, lounge and kitchen facilities. In the late 1950s, nos. 18–20 were also acquired, though neither was integrated into the existing arrangement. Fr Patrick Walsh, later Bishop of Down and Connor, was appointed chaplain in 1964, assisted by Fr Ambrose Macaulay. The site for the present building — previously occupied by a terrace of six houses built in 1880 — was purchased in 1968. Work began in mid-1970 and the chaplaincy opened in October 1972. Fr Macaulay took over as chaplain in 1970, assisted until 1975 by Fr Anthony Farquhar, later Auxiliary Bishop of Down and Connor. Fr Macaulay was succeeded in September 1984 by Fr Joseph Gunn. The present chaplain, Fr Dominic McGrattan, succeeded Fr Gerard Magee in 2018. Shortly after opening, a mass held in the chaplaincy was broadcast on BBC1 on 16 December 1972.

Design Intention and Significance

The building was designed to serve the spiritual and social needs of Catholic students at Queen's University and to embody, in architectural form, the guidance issued by the Catholic Church's own Advisory Committee on Sacred Art and Architecture, of which both Laurence McConville and the artist Ray Carroll were members. Both men also contributed to the Irish Episcopal Commission for Liturgy's Place of Worship Directory, the Church's own guidance on designing places of worship. This guidance required that space and light, materials and furnishings, suitable provision for the various liturgical activities, and overall ambience should all combine to help Christians become what they are when they worship. It also specified that all liturgical elements, images and furnishings should be designed by artists, with the work coordinated by the architect, and that architects and artists give glory to God through their work.

The building is a direct embodiment of these principles. It is described by David Evans in An Introduction to Modern Ulster Architecture (UAHS, Belfast, 1977, p.14) as demonstrating "a spirit of respect and architectural good neighbourliness... an elegant example of 'infill'." Evans continues: "The form of the Victorian canted bay window is employed but in a daring and un-Victorian manner; raised above street level and cantilevered out, these prismatic steel and glass forms march along in rhythm with their brickwork neighbours. These two-storey-height bays are raised above a flat glazed façade at street level which express the form of the large main hall within. The floor to ceiling windows establish a sense of spatial continuity between the street and the cloistered courtyard and chapel beyond the main hall. The ground floor can be perceived as a series of visually-linked spaces."

The proportions, scale and plan form of the building are considered unique to Belfast and possibly to Northern Ireland as a whole.

Front Elevation

The front elevation faces northwest onto Elmwood Avenue. The dark brown brick of the adjacent Victorian terraces is carried into and between six canted bays at first and second floor level. These bays are constructed in black steel frames with single glazing and are cantilevered out above street level, echoing the rhythm of the canted bay windows of the neighbouring 19th-century buildings while departing from them dramatically in material and method. At ground floor level, large single-glazed plate glass and steel-framed windows run the full width of the frontage, interrupted at intervals by sculpted masonry panels designed by Ray Carroll and secretly fixed to provide apparent visual support to the canted bays above. One of these panels incorporates a central circular signage panel. Originally finished in a bronze effect, the panels are now painted in a matt cream colour. The first bay from one end houses the original aluminium-framed glazed entrance doors, which give access to the ground floor entrance lobby. Six squared, heavily framed, single-glazed dormers in standing seam metal correspond with each bay at roof level. The roof itself is standing seam metal throughout.

The ground floor is slightly elevated above street level, corresponding to the raised thresholds — reached by three steps — of the adjacent terraced front doors. A raised concrete platform runs the full length of the building frontage and is accessed via two concrete ramps fitted with more recent tubular steel handrails.

The northeast and southwest elevations of the main block are blank, facing toward the adjoining terraced buildings.

Rear Elevations and Courtyard

To the rear of the main block, plain flat-roofed stair towers in brown brick flank the southeast elevation. Heavy-gauge aluminium rainwater goods and overflow pipes run symmetrically down the rear façade. The depth of the main block aligns with the depth of the adjacent terraces, stepping down immediately from the rear of the main accommodation to single storey, in the same manner as its neighbours and the wider street pattern.

At second and third floor level on the southwest-facing rear elevation, alternating bands of brown brick and continuous steel-framed single-glazed screens form horizontal ribbons of material at each storey. These screens are flush with the brickwork, with high-level opening lights retaining all original ironmongery and fenestration. The concrete structural columns are visible behind the glass at each level. At ground floor level, the same ribbon arrangement is faced to cill height in patinated vertical standing seam copper panels.

The rear of the building opens onto a covered cloister, roofed in standing seam copper — though repairs using modern materials appear to be failing — which surrounds an open external courtyard. The courtyard elevations at ground floor level feature a low brick upstand with full-height single-glazed steel-framed windows faced in copper with copper cills. The courtyard is hard-landscaped in gravel and contains a small number of sculptural plants.

The Chapel

The chapel faces northwest onto the courtyard. It is a subservient, single-storey structure whose mono-pitch roof is raised by approximately half a storey at the courtyard-facing eave by means of a deep standing seam bronze fascia and clerestory glazing band. This arrangement reflects the volume of the chapel interior and follows the urban grain of the Queen's Conservation Area. The northeast face of the chapel carries this clerestory band of single glazing below the deep bronze fascia, with paired glazed ventilated slats to alternating panels at clerestory level; ventilation is controlled by levers within the chapel. The chapel roof is standing seam bronze.

To the northwest at roof level, a small brick parapet wall divides the ancillary spaces from the cloister. Three fibreglass pyramidal roof lights wash this brick wall with light on its interior face. The roof incorporates a copper-lined secret gutter. On the southwest side of the courtyard roof, a projecting needle-shaped copper hopper, supported on a slim metal pole, feeds rainwater run-off into a concrete pool containing a solid black cross — one of a number of details designed by Ray Carroll.

A small service yard to the rear of the northernmost bay is served by a single-storey block of ancillary accommodation in brown brick, with high-level single-glazed windows puncturing the brickwork at intervals, together with timber-slatted plant rooms and access doors leading to the shared rear alleyway.

Interior and Artwork

All original ornament and craftsmanship remains in situ throughout the building, from the fixed liturgical furnishings of the chapel to the artist-designed copper hopper in the courtyard. Ray Carroll, whose sculpted panels appear on the front elevation, was also responsible for the liturgical furnishings and the detailed interior design of the chapel. The building was designed on the principle that the place of the artist can never be taken by the craftsperson or by the provider of standard religious goods, and that art builds upon craft by giving to merely practical objects a quality of transcendence that links the material and the spiritual world.

Materials throughout — copper, bronze and steel — were cutting-edge for Belfast in the 1970s and were chosen deliberately to embody the Catholic Church's aim of the time to mediate presence through architecture and art combined.

Materials Summary

The roof is finished in standing seam metal — copper, bronze and lead. Rainwater goods are heavy-gauge aluminium and copper. Walls and windows combine full-height single-glazed screens with metal frames, bands of brown brick in stretcher bond, and a number of in situ concrete panels to the front elevation.

Setting

The building stands within a section of what was once a continuous Victorian terrace on Elmwood Avenue, which contains numerous historic and listed buildings and forms part of the Queen's Conservation Area. Although uncompromisingly modern, the large steel-framed glazed bays and eaves line maintain the rhythm and scale of the terrace. The use of brown brick between the canted bays, the employment of dormers, the depth of the plan, and the carefully scaled, subservient mews-form chapel and ancillary accommodation to the rear all align with the rhythm, pattern, materials and scale of the historic buildings adjacent and the wider conservation area context. The large front windows were deliberately positioned to maximise outward views along the avenue, capturing the surrounding historic streetscape in each vista.