Chapel of St. Mary the Immaculate Mother of God, St Colman’s College, Violet Hill, 46 Armagh Road, Newry, Co Down, BT35 6PP

Chapel of St. Mary the Immaculate Mother of God, St Colman's College

An attractive 20th-century chapel built in 1938 to designs by Dublin-based architect John J. Robinson, who also designed the nearby Bishop's House (1932) and Galway Cathedral. The building exemplifies a distinctive blend of Romanesque Revival style with Art Deco detailing reminiscent of Dutch modernists such as Dudoc. The composition is given particular distinction by a striking bell tower that lifts the overall school composition from plain severity to a commanding architectural statement. The windows by Clarke in this building are among the most beautiful he ever made, and the quality of the interior makes the chapel worthy of special protection.

The chapel is aligned north-south and consists of a nave of five and a half bays with a lower sacristy attached. The building is joined at right angles to the left-hand gable of the main school building, projecting forward by three bays of the nave. A bell tower rises from the ecclesiastical east end against the ecclesiastical north aisle, flanking the sanctuary.

The structure employs load-bearing masonry construction throughout. A stepped plinth of three courses of reconstituted stone supports walls of rusticated red facing brick, with three different brick types used randomly in English Garden wall bond. Openings, quoins, copings, parapets and other embellishments are dressed in precast reconstituted stone. The pitched natural slate nave roof is flanked by flat asphalt roofs to the lower aisles. Cast iron rainwater goods feature hoppers with floral designs on the faces.

The south side of the sanctuary opens onto the sacristy of three bays; the centre bay has a pitched roof while the flanking bays are roofed as the aisles. The aisles and sacristy have brick parapets coped in reconstituted stone, except over the north aisle where the parapet is formed by a pierced balustrade of reconstituted stone. This forms a balcony accessible from the school library and the chapel gallery.

The three north aisle windows have semicircular heads dressed with reconstituted stone, as do the three similar clerestory windows. A semicircular headed window appears in the end of the north aisle. The ecclesiastical east gable of the nave and rear wall of the sanctuary are coped in reconstituted stone with a finial cross, with a second larger cross of the same material built into the brickwork below.

The lower sacristy abuts at ground floor level, with the central bay advanced and gabled. Within the apex of the gable is a figure of Christ holding a bunch of lilies. Each bay contains a single semicircular headed window. In the ecclesiastical east wall of the ecclesiastical south aisle, above the sacristy roof, is a semicircular headed window containing a pair of semicircular headed lights. The ecclesiastical west wall features finial and gable crosses as on the ecclesiastical east, and below these a rose window in reconstituted stone arranged in two radiating stages—the inner in four segments and the outer in eight.

The bell tower is the most striking architectural element, rising against the ecclesiastical north wall of the gable in three distinct stages. The first stage has a single tall lancet window on both the ecclesiastical east and north faces, glazed with two vertical rows of leaded quarries. Shouldered buttresses strengthen the corners of this stage to two-thirds of its height. The second stage has a triple bell vent on each face, each with a semicircular head, all dressed in reconstituted stone as are the base, quoins and coping. The third stage is octagonal, reduced on plan, and entirely in reconstituted stone. It is crowned by a two-stage octagonal lantern surmounted by a finial cross, all in reconstituted stone.

The ecclesiastical south aisle is detailed as the north aisle and contains a semicircular headed window in its ecclesiastical east end.