Chapel of the Annunciation, St Brigid's Convent, Convent Road, Cookstown, Co Tyrone, BT80 8QA

Chapel of the Annunciation, St Brigid's Convent

This is a post-Second World War building designed in thoroughly modern style, representing one of the most architecturally radical churches built in Ireland at the time. Designed in 1963 by Laurence McConville of Rooney & McConville, architects of Belfast, and completed in 1965, it was opened on 26 March 1965. The chapel was added to an existing convent of 1891 to provide nine new cells for nuns on the ground floor and a chapel for thirty on the first floor.

The building comprises a large upper storey of concrete construction clad in decoratively treated pre-cast concrete blocks, oversailing a ground storey of rubble sandstone cross-wall construction. It is of square plan, set at 45 degrees to the line of the front façade of the convent, and attached by one corner to the convent at its former main entrance. The roof appears to be flat, with a shallow pyramidal rooflight or lantern positioned over the altar, located at the eastern end of the east-west access on the first floor.

The main elevation is formed by the salient angle between the north-east and south-east walls and faces east toward the main street. The main entrance, located in a ground floor recess, faces north. The exterior walls of the first floor chapel are of pre-cast patterned concrete blocks decorated with a series of repetitive raised cross motifs, except for smooth borders to the top of the walls and along the salient angle facing east. The walls to the north-east and south-east are blind but mounted with projecting beaten enamelled metal sculptures, representing the four evangelists on the south-east wall and the 'Father', 'Son', and 'Holy Spirit' on the north-east wall. The walls to the north-west and south-west each contain a tall and wide rectangular stained glass aluminium-framed window to the eastern end, and a tall but narrow plain glass aluminium-framed window to the western end where the first floor chapel joins the earlier convent; above and below the windows are panels of green slate.

The exterior walls of the ground floor are of squared sandstone random rubble, running north-south as short cross-walls in chevron formation, with recessed window panels facing north-south between them, and a rectangular bay window with projecting vertical mullion-like fins attached, facing east, all recessed below the oversailing upper storey.

The chapel stands as one of the first entirely modern churches in layout and design built in Ireland, and was one of the first demonstrations of renewed interest in the patronage of Irish artists by the church. The beaten metal sculptures on the exterior and the similar crucifix and tabernacle in the interior were designed and made by Patrick McElroy. The stained glass windows were by Patrick Pye; the sculpted stone altar was by Michael Biggs; and enamelled copper stations of the cross were by Brother Benedict Tutty. The successful integration of contemporary Irish ecclesiastical artists' work into a unified expression both inside and outside made this chapel particularly significant. The juxtaposition of its modernity with the conventionality of treatment of the convent to which it is attached illustrates an important moment in architectural development.

Sometime prior to 1993 the bottom two courses of pre-cast panels on the first floor were replaced in the original style. The building has been vacant since 2001.

The chapel is located on the east side of the main convent block entirely within the grounds of the convent. The grounds to the south side open onto the grounds of Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, built in 1855-60 to the designs of J.J. McCarthy.