St Mary's Dominican Convent, 2 Strand Road, Portstewart, Co. Londonderry, BT55 7PF

Dominican College (formerly Rock Castle) Strand Road, Portstewart, Co. Londonderry

Origins and Overview

Dominican College, now a Catholic Voluntary Grammar school, began its life as a private house called Rock Castle, built in 1834 for Henry O'Hara. It stands on a headland at the western end of Portstewart promenade, dramatically overlooking both the town centre and Portstewart Strand, and is a landmark building closely identified with the town. The building is a two-storey-over-basement rendered former dwelling in Tudor-Gothic style, converted to school use in 1917. Over nearly two centuries it has been extended and altered several times, producing a complex plan that charts its own history, but the floor plan of the original house remains discernible and much of the Gothic character of Rock Castle survives.

The building attracted strong opinions from the outset. The novelist Thackeray dismissed it as "a hideous new castle"; the topographer Lewis felt it had "the character of a chieftain's fortress of the feudal age"; and the architectural historian Girvan, writing in the 1970s, judged the original building "charmingly naive and toy-like". An illustration in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs dated 1835 shows a building three storeys high and four bays wide, with four corner turrets, Gothic diamond-paned windows, eight oculi at second-floor level, a battlemented roof, a small porch on the south front, and a low service wing to the east. The building appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1856 captioned "Port Stewart Castle". In the Townland Valuation of 1828–40 the castle and its offices are listed at a valuation of £16 14s.

Architectural Description

The flat roofs throughout are concealed behind crenellated parapets. External walls are painted smooth render with plain two-stage buttresses. Cast-iron hoppers and downpipes serve the rainwater goods. Windows are generally timber-framed sliding sash (some with horns) with projecting painted sills, except where otherwise noted. The stair towers have pointed-headed lattice casements, and the chapel has cusped-headed bipartite leaded lancets surmounted by hood moulds.

The original square-footprint house is now largely concealed by later extensions. The principal entrance is on the south elevation of the 1844 south extension, which is symmetrically arranged seven windows wide — with two windows to the basement at the left — and has a central breakfront three windows wide. The right bay is abutted by a modern porch insertion, accessed by stone steps to the front and a ramp running to the west.

The west and north elevations each have a centrally placed canted projection, each lit by three windows per floor, generally 6/6 sashes with some modern replacements at lower levels. On the west elevation, the south extension and the west canted projection are separated by an exposed section of the original south-west tower, which is lit by Gothic cast-iron diamond lattice windows. The north-west corner between the two canted sections, and the original north-east tower, are similarly lit at each floor. The north-east tower has multi-pane fixed lights to the lower stage, and a replacement timber door set in a projecting painted concrete surround to the east, reached by three steps. A flat-roofed extension of no architectural interest sits to the north-west.

The exposed east elevation of the original building is lit by a variety of fenestration, generally Gothic arched multi-light windows but also including bipartite 4/4 and 1/1 sashes and a small pivoting oculus.

The 1929 east wing has, on its north elevation, six regularly arranged windows at second floor and irregularly arranged openings below, with a projecting chimney flue at the right and flat-roof abutments to the left and right of centre. Its west elevation is three windows wide at upper floors, divided by lesenes. At ground floor there is a window at the right and a flat-roofed extension abutting at an angle.

The 1935 chapel is connected to the 1929 east wing by a narrow interlinking bay. Its east elevation has a central semi-engaged polygonal bay with a window to each face and a castellated parapet — taller at the left with narrow openings — surmounted by a large cross finial. To the left of the tower, twelve upper-floor windows are arranged in groups of two and divided by buttresses. To the right of the tower, the ground floor is abutted by a flat-roofed projection flush with the canted bay and seven windows wide; the first floor has seven pointed-headed windows divided by decorative gableted buttresses. The south elevation is abutted by the 1963 modern extension.

The chapel's west elevation has a breakfront to the right of centre with diagonal buttresses, carrying a painted Dominican College motif above two first-floor windows and three windows at ground floor. The chapel portion at the left is lit by seven evenly spaced plate-tracery lancets at first floor and seven 6/6 windows at ground floor, each bay divided by a buttress, with moulded shield motifs between the floors. The connecting bay between the chapel and the breakfront is slightly lower, lit by a bipartite lancet at first floor, and sits over a single-storey abutment two windows wide at ground floor. To the right of the breakfront, five evenly spaced windows on each floor are divided by buttresses. The north elevation of the chapel abuts the east wing. The chapel has a decorative castellated frieze throughout.

Development and Historical Context

After Henry O'Hara died in 1844, the castle was extended by its next owner, William Wilson Campbell — a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and a Justice of the Peace — who added a new seven-bay façade on the south front to provide extra bedrooms and constructed pentagonal extensions to the northern and western façades, which somewhat subsumed the original form of the building. Girvan notes that the new ground-floor rooms had "good black and white marble fireplaces and moulded ceiling cornices". A rubble basalt wall was built along the cliff edge at this time, possibly as famine relief.

Campbell died at the house on 20 January 1858, after which his widow Susanna continued to live there and is listed as the occupier in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, with the house and outbuildings valued at £45. This valuation remained unchanged while the castle was a private house, suggesting no further major alterations. After Susanna Campbell's death in 1864, the outdoor effects were sold — including a carriage, barouche, phaeton and jaunting-car, three carriage horses, three dairy cows and a pig — followed by the sale of an extensive collection of "Objects of Ancient and Modern Art" including paintings attributed to the Old Masters, a library of 2,000 volumes, French and Turkish carpets, and "Ancient War Implements most interesting to Archaeologists". The castle and estate were sold in 1871 by the Landed Estates Court to a Mr Cromie for £950, described at the time as "beautifully situated" and containing "Six reception-rooms, Fourteen Bed-rooms with numerous Servants' apartments", with grounds that were walled-in and on which "large sums of money have been expended on the Buildings and Out-offices".

The castle was let to the Reverend James O'Hara — probably a relative of the original builder — in 1877 and remained the O'Hara family home until his death in 1893. His son, the Reverend Henry O'Hara, was largely responsible for bringing to fruition the plans for St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast in 1899. The next occupier was Emily Cromie, a 68-year-old widow of the Church of England, who lived in the 34-room first-class house with her granddaughter Mary Emily Montagu, a Catholic child of 8, and an adopted daughter of 17 named Violet Leigh. A French governess, also Catholic, was employed for Mary Emily, and the remaining household staff totalled five: a housekeeper, housemaid, parlour-maid, lady's maid and kitchen maid. After Emily Cromie's death, the castle passed to the Montagu family, who sold it in 1917 to the Dominican Sisters.

Use as a School

The Dominican Sisters had originated from a community on the Falls Road in Belfast and had been accustomed to spending summers in Portstewart, where they noted the lack of provision for the secondary education of Catholic children in the growing town. The school opened on 3 September 1917 with 16 boarders and five day pupils.

Valuer's notes from around 1920 record the accommodation as follows: basement — dining hall, storeroom, kitchen, scullery, pantry, washhouse, ironing room, cloakroom, coal and wine cellars; ground floor — two reception rooms, two schoolrooms, oratory, sitting room and pantry; first floor — schoolroom, four dormitories, hot press, bedrooms, bathroom, boxroom and WC; second floor — three bedrooms and WC. Photographs of the interior surviving from this period show some of the lavish furnishings of the time.

In 1929 a new wing was added containing a drill hall, study hall, new dormitory and classrooms. This was extended in 1935 when the architect Padraig Gregory designed the Gothic chapel. The chapel was redesigned in the 1970s in what Girvan described as a "chaste modern style". Between 1963 and 1965 the architect Brian Gregory made further considerable additions — described by Girvan as "sympathetic in scale and design" — comprising an assembly hall, two laboratories, five classrooms, a library and 56 study bedrooms for boarders. The school became co-educational in 1968 when a need was identified for boys' secondary education in the area, and the building was listed in 1977.

In 1980 a further new wing was opened, providing a biology laboratory, drama and English rooms, and PE changing facilities and cloakrooms. During the 1990s the Dominican Order began transferring the running of the school to lay staff, and the Sisters left in 1999. The Girls' Boarding Department closed in 1995 and the dormitories were converted into an ICT suite. A new science block and technology suite opened in 1996, and in 2001 P and B Gregory made a further addition to the teaching accommodation. Astroturf tennis courts and pitches — laid on the convent's former vegetable garden — were opened in 1998.

Setting

The building is situated on a promontory dominating the north side of Portstewart and is accessed from the south by a long tarmacadamed avenue. The site has been re-landscaped to accommodate its use as a modern school, with an astroturf pitch and tennis courts to the south. The original rubble stone boundary walls to the west and north have been retained — that to the north has castellated tops — and contribute to the historic integrity and interest of the site. A public pathway runs along the other side of the boundary wall. A modern stone wall runs the full length of Strand Road to the south, with modern steel entrance gates.