Site of former Convent of Mercy off Barrack Street, Newtownkennedy (Road), Strabane, Co Tyrone

This site, located to the east of Barrack Street and north of Newtownkennedy Road in Strabane, formerly contained a large convent complex with chapel and primary school. The original buildings were constructed in 1868 and extended in 1870 and at various points later in the 19th century, but were demolished around 1999. The area is now occupied by a housing development and a new, considerably smaller convent.

The convent complex was established in 1868–69, opening in November 1869. Its foundation was largely the work of three prominent local businessmen: Francis O'Neill, James Kennedy and John Carlin. James Kennedy provided the land, while the others gave generous financial grants towards the building and its upkeep. The complex originally comprised three schools: one for orphan girls from Strabane, St Catherine's Industrial School, and a school for the 'more respectable' Catholic females from the town and elsewhere. By the mid-1880s the nuns were also operating a school for boys.

According to a First Survey description from 11 February 1970, the complex consisted of several buildings: a chapel built of rubble greystone with a broach spire, a two-storey rendered building with pointed brick dressings and a square tower, and brick or roughcast buildings at the rear. A two-storey corrugated-iron verandah was supported by slim cast-iron columns with acanthus caps, with the upper part glazed.

The institution underwent several phases of expansion. Building work was carried out as early as 1870 to designs by William Hart, with the chapel possibly designed by John O'Neill and added a few years later. A new wing was added in 1903, and further additions followed in 1907. In 1924 the nuns acquired a house from the Kennedy estate, 'Mount Kennedy', and converted it to a grammar school. Four years later a fee-paying preparatory school for junior pupils was established within the complex.

St Catherine's Industrial School, one of a number of government-sponsored institutions founded in response to child poverty in the 1850s and 60s, closed in 1949. The orphanage closed in 1956. In 1968 the grammar school moved to newly-built premises off Curly Hill. The school originally for 'more respectable' girls, later known as Strabane Convent Girls' Primary School, was replaced by St Anne's Primary School in 1990. The convent complex itself was abandoned in the mid-1990s and demolished around 1999. Two years before its demolition, a new much smaller convent was built to the south of the site, fronting Newtownkennedy Road, with the remainder of the ground given over to a large housing development around 2000.