A dramatic and spiky gothic building which once stood to the west of the surviving Church of the Immaculate Conception creating a great composition of spires when seen from a distance. it was at once remote and removed from the town, yet an important part of it. This view is of the school's main facade with its carefully tended gardens in front. The main convent accommodation was to the right of the bell tower and the convent chapel with a separate bell tower was beside this. On the other side of the bell tower was a long perpendicular block which originally housed an orphanage and industrial school and from 1928 the Grammar School a prepatory school and accommodation for boarders. The convent opened on opened June 9th 1868 and the the church was consecrated in 1881. The school closed in 2007 and the buildings were completely demolished in 2009. The stained glass of the church was removed to St Patrick's church in Castlederg in 1995. A dramatic skyline lost.
0 Comments
Derragarra Inn, Butlersbridge, Co Cavan
A fine place to visit on a late summer's evening. Reputedly dating from 1809 and extended in recent years towards the nearby river, with fine views to the church beyond. Finnebrogue House near Downpatrick Co Down.
Reputedly the oldest undefended large house in Ireland with internal timbers dating to 1662, though there are musket loops in the projecting side wings to cover the entrance. The building is understated in its architecture, but with some very grand spaces inside. it was restored from near ruin to a high standard by the present owner from 2011 and sits in well kept parkland with an axial view to the estate church spire from the front door. An elegant well restored country house in beautiful surroundings. Dungiven Priory, accessed down a lane from the village and across a new bridge over the bypass. This place was the site of an early monastery. As with many ancient foundations it became an Augustinian Abbey following the. 12th century church reforms. The chancel was added in the 13th century and has a very fine gothic memorial inside and the remains of rib vaulting - an unusual feature in a small rural church. Traces of earlier Romanesque blind arcading remain at high level in the main body of the church. Tower house, now gone, added to the west end probably in the fifteenth century. This is likely to have been accommodation associated with the abbey and was associated with the O'Cahans at the end of the sixteenth century. In the Ulster Plantation of the early seventeenth century the site was taken over by Sir Edward Doddington who built a Manor House attached to the tower house. The drawing above shows this house, the abbey and tower and formal gardens to the west adjacent to the river at around that time. Today the tower and house are gone apart from foundations.
Heritage re-presented. Suddenly more visible due to the new Dungiven bypass, is a standing stone at the top of a field as the road rises to the Belfast side of the village. its a good symbol of the long history of this place amid the new infrastructure. According to the records, this stone stands on top of a small mound which was described as a 'tumulus' and a 'barrow' in the Ordnance Survey memoirs of the 1830's. Two depressions have been noted in the side of the mound and a small flint instrument was found in one of these. Tradition holds that the stone was erected to mark an ecclesiastical assembly that was held here in 590 AD, at which St Columbikille was present. The stone was also used as the end point in a procession at Beltaine (May Eve) up to the mid nineteenth century. The Turus (pilgrimage) started at St Patrick's Well behind the current Bleach Green housing development, then went to a stone in the river before moving to the former Dungiven Priory and then finishing here.
Situated at the foot of Slieve Gullion in Co Armagh, this small castle was created from a preceding house in 1836 by the architect George Papworth. It has a commanding view of the surrounding countryside and inside has elegant drawing rooms and a small library with bedrooms above. For many years it was almost a ruin, too small to be converted into anything other than an expensive house, but in recent years it has become the high status centrepiece of a hotel which is largely housed in an conversion and extension of the former stable block and mill. Great to see it given new lifer and restored to its former beauty.
A view down Soborna Street in central Sumy, north eastern Ukraine, past the Orthodox Transfiguration Cathedral (Spaso-Preobrjenskii Sobor). It is an elegant pedestrianised street in this city of 260,000 people. The domes of the ecclesiastical buildings associated with the cathedral complement that on the top of its highly ornate tower constructed of three stages of Corinthian columns. Built as a cathedral in 1788 on the site of an earlier church, its appearance in this sketch dates from a major rebuilding between 1882 and 1892. Founded in the 1650's by the Cossacks, the city has held out against attacking Russian troops over the last month. A tactical withdrawal of these was reported last week. It is not currently known what fate has befallen this elegant building and street.
The Palace of Industry or Derzhprom in Freedom Square, Kharkiv, was competed in 1928 and, at ten stories, was the first Soviet skyscraper. Its overlapping cubist forms are a 'constructivist' composition, with sky bridges linking the mini cityscape of rising and dropping blocks. Constructivism held that the essence of modern art was found in construction, and so all decorative form was eliminated. Goundbreaking in its time, the building was much visited. It was the result of a competition in 1925 and constructed as the parliament building for the new Soviet Republic of Ukraine (Kiev had resisted the Bolsheviks in 1918). It housed it's central committee, commissariats, planning commission, various industrial enterprises, a library and a hotel. Its architecture represented a dramatic and confident break from the past and embodied what the architects (Sergei Serafimov, Samuel Kravets and Mark Felger) thought was the spirit of the new state. However, almost as soon as it was opened 'national communists' began to be repressed and in 1932 Stalin dissolved all autonomous architectural groupings in favour of a state architecture that was much more hierarchical and classically inspired. In 1934 the capital was moved back to Kiev. The building survived several attempts to be blown up by the Nazi's in World War II and managed to avoid being refaced, like some of its neighbours in the Stalinist style in the 1950's. The radio transmitter on top of one block was added in the same decade. Apart from the removal of a statue to Lenin, the building had remained unaltered in recent decades. At present, with the city subject to significant Russian bombardment, the condition of this important and unique modernist building and of its many workers and occupants is unknown.
Set at the focus of Mariupol's Beaux Arts town plan, the theatre, like Belfast City Hall, terminates the view down a long urban boulevard. Behind is a large public park, where during winter, an ice rink is provided. The theatre opened in 1887 but was significantly enlarged in 1960. lts' pediment is unusual in that the statues are not embedded in a wall behind, but are free standing in top of the entablature below. So sad to see such a fine place being wantonly besieged and destroyed at present. This drawing is based upon a photograph taken in 2021.
Located near the village of Castlemagner in Co Cork, this ruined and overgrown structure is the place that gives the village its name. William Magner (or Magnuel) was granted this pace in 1183 following the Anglo Norman conquest. The site is elevated above a nearby river and may have been the location of a pre-existing Gaelic fort. Originally a stockade, the tower construction is understood to have commenced in the 14th century at a time when the Duke of Clarence was fortifying the edge of Norman control against the McCarthy's. In the 15th century it was extended as a tower house and the curved stair tower added. A defensive wall was added around the site at the same time. In the 17th century . Following burning in the Great Munster Rebellion of 1598 the structure was reinhabited and a two story house built alongside. Damaged again in the Comwellian period the buildings were again rebuilt, only to be destroyed in 1691 following occupation by Jacobites. the tower was deliberately blown up leaving the remnant we see today. In 1755 a new owner developed a Georgian hose on the Comwellian ruins. In the early nineteenth century the site was converted into a working farm. The house was extended westward into the former stable and this portion thatched. in 1934 the building was sold to the last resident owner. He removed the thatch following a fire in 1955 and replaced it with corrugated metal. He died in 1984 aged 95. the building has not subsequently been occupied and is now in a poor state.
|
Marks of Time
Sketches of buildings in the North West of Ireland and further afield with a little information about their history. Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|