Chapel, Convent of Mercy, Thornhill, Culmore Road, Londonderry, BT48 8JF

Chapel, Convent of Mercy, Thornhill, Culmore Road, Londonderry

A simple modern style rectangular chapel built with good materials, designed by M. Fitzpatrick and constructed between 1960 and 1979. Its style and form contrast sharply with the earlier Thornhill House and are not in sympathy with it.

The chapel is a long simple hall church with its main axis oriented east to west. It is joined to the main house by a wide corridor porch with a small south-west porch, partly stone built with a low pitched copper roof. The chapel is located at the southern side of Thornhill House.

The east gable is plain without fenestration, built in rock-faced snecked sandstone with quoins having a slight batter. The overhanging verge dressing is copper. The south elevation has an asymmetrical arrangement of windows. Each gable stonework is returned a short distance, and the remainder of the nave wall is rendered except for a battered stone pier defining the chancel end. A small south-west porch with low pitched copper roof and stone gable projects from the rendered wall. The door is on the east side, recessed, with a 3-light stained glass tall window in the gable. Copper is dressed over the barges and fascia with concealed copper gutters and downpipes on each side. The chancel end is emphasised by 5 square-headed lancets divided by mullions which continue from ground to underside of roof soffit. Beneath the low cill there are 5 stone panels. A continuous run of clerestory windows divided by mullions goes from the chancel to the south-west porch with emphasised head and cill. Immediately over the porch roof there is a small narrow vertical square-headed window. The welted copper roof is unadorned except for a small metal cross at the west end mounted on a boss. The copper is dressed over verges and fascias with a slightly greater overhang at gable apexes. Gutters and downpipes are in copper. There is a stone plinth at the base of the rendered wall.

The west wall is similar to the east but features a large low pointed 5-light stained glass window with projecting mullions and surround, all of which reach ground level. It has a low steeply weathered cill. Transoms are arranged on the 3 centre lights to form a cross defined by square panes.

The north elevation is cement rendered with a projecting flat roof sacristy block which stretches from the connecting porch and overlaps on the first light of the chancel windows. There are 5 chancel windows similar to the south side except that one is truncated. A matching run of clerestory windows goes over the sacristy. The sacristy has a high stone plinth at the east and a ground level change. It is lit by groups of 4, 3 and 2 square-proportioned windows. The roof is asphalted.

The connecting porch from the convent has a wooden door on the west side with a large square-headed window on either side. This was not the principal access to the chapel but provides a neat connection to the convent house, giving access to the main staircase. Gravel paths surround two sides of the chapel, while at the west end there is a sea of bitumac. The chapel occupies a prominent location at the south side with lawns sweeping away to south and east.

The original chapel occupied the former billiard room in the south-west corner of the ground floor of Thornhill House. The present chapel was dedicated in 1965 by Dr N. Farren, Bishop of Derry, to serve the spiritual needs of the convent and the boarders and day pupils of the Convent Grammar School. With the ending of the boarding school and the decrease in the community of nuns, it is larger than necessary for current circumstances. However, in 1996 a new parish of Culmore was formed and the chapel acts as a parish church pro tem.