The former Fosters’ Bank on Sidney Street remains one of the most engaging buildings in Cambridge

The former Fosters’ Bank in Cambridge was designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse and built in 1890-1894 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Sidney Street in the centre of Cambridge takes its name from Sidney Sussex College, and runs from Bridge Street at its junction with Jesus Lane at the north-west end to Saint Andrew’s Street at the junction with Hobson Street at the south-east end, close to Christ’s College.

Apart from Sidney Sussex College, the notable buildings on this street include Holy Trinity Church, but the most engaging may be Lloyds Bank, built as Fosters’ Bank in 1890-1894. The bank was designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905) in the Jacobethan style, with complex decoration.

The building is now the Cambridge University Branch of Lloyds TSB. It was built on an irregular site, at the corner of Sidney Street and Hobson Street, and close to the gatehouse of Christ’s College. The original name of Fosters’ Bank still survives over the doorway, a reminder of the Foster family I referred to yesterday, including George Edward Foster (1840-1906) who laid the foundation stone of nearby Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church in 1903.

Fosters’ Bank, a striking building in a mixture of the Jacobethan and Dutch Renaissance-style styles, was designed by Alfred Waterhousem who, financially speaking, was probably the most successful of all the Victorian architects. He is associated with Gothic Revival architecture, although he worked in other styles too. He often used eclecticism in his buildings, and the styles he used occasionally included Tudor revival, Jacobethan and Italianate.

Waterhouse was born into a Quaker family, and his brothers were co-founders of the Price Waterhouse partnership that is now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. At an early stage in his career he was strongly influenced by John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1849) and AWN Pugin’s Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841).

His best-known works include Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London, the Manchester Assize buildings, and Strangeways Prison. He designed many town halls, several hospitals, churches and chapels, such as the Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead, banks, and university buildings in Cambridge, such as Girton College and the chapel in Gonville and Caius College, in Oxford, such as the Broad Street frontage and college dining hall in Balliol College, and in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.

The Congregational King’s Weigh House Chapel in Mayfair, which he designed in 1888, is now the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in London. His hospitals include being the Royal Infirmary Liverpool and University College Hospital London.

The clock tower on the right of the façade above the main entrance of the former Fosters’ Bank in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Waterhouse was commissioned to build a new bank in Cambridge by the Foster family who wanted a new location for their bank which had outgrown its original location in Trinity Street.

The builder was William Sindall; the structural steel work is by A Hanyside & Co; the stone carving, mainly around the doorway, on the clock tower and in the gables, is by Farmer & Brindley; the ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill & Co; the faience is by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring is by JF Ebner and J Rust; the decorative ironwork and light fittings are by Hart Son Peard & Co; the lighting was by Belshaw & Co; and the clock in the tower was made by John Moore & Sons of Clerkenwell.

The building exudes the grandeur and confidence of banking in the late Victorian era. It was probably designed to make patrons of the bank feel wealthy and portant there – or to attract the wealthy and important to entrust their money with the bank. Today, many tourists photograph it believing it must be part of the university

Both the exterior and interior of the bank are impressive. The exterior has a stone ground floor with decorative banded stone and red brick covering the two upper floors and the gables. There is a clock tower on the right of the façade above the main entrance, and the lettering above the door still says ‘Fosters’ Bank’.

The clock tower with an ornate clock face gives some idea of the elaborate decoration inside. The main banking hall is octagonal in shape, high and light with a magnificent domed roof. The walls and ornate columns have faience decorations, the floor is of mosaic and there are colourful, glazed, ceramic tiles. A neo-Tudor extension was added in 1935.

The lettering above the main entrance still says ‘Fosters’ Bank’ above the door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The site of Fosters’ Bank at Nos 1 to 5 Sidney Street had once been the site of the Crown and Woolpack Inn, and until 1846 it had been the premises for the Philo-Union or Cambridge Literary Society, founded in 1826 for ‘the diffusion of general knowledge and the discussion of all subjects not of a theological nature’.

Fosters’ Bank was founded in 1804 by the Foster family, Cambridge corn millers, mainly to support their local milling workers. It was also known as the Cambridge & Cambridgeshire Bank.

The bank first opened in attractive premises in Trinity Street, Cambridge, in a building that was once the Turk’s Head coffee bar. Many of the bank’s customers were drawn from the local agricultural industry, and there were branches in St Ives (1830), St Neots (1830), Royston (1834), Ely (1835), Newmarket (1844), Bishop’s Stortford (1874), Littleport (1889), Saffron Walden (1901) and Wisbech.

By the end of the 19th century, Foster’s Bank had outgrown its Trinity Street premises and commissioned Waterhouse to design a magnificent new building. Fosters’ Bank was absorbed into the Capital and Counties Bank in 1904, which later became part of Lloyds Bank.

Both Ebenezer and Richard Foster were Mayors of Cambridge, as were their descendants Charles Finch Foster and Henry S Foster. The Foster family’s milling business continued until 1915. The Foster mill near Cambridge railway station has since been converted into luxury flats. Anstey Hall in Trumpington, once the home of the Foster family, is now a wedding venue.

Richard Foster was also the major backer of the Roman Baths, which were built in Jesus Lane. However, the baths were not a success and closed after less than a year. For many years it was the premises of the Pitt Club, the Cambridge equivalent of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford. I could see the building from my rooms in Cloister Court in Sidney Sussex College when it had become Pizza Express, and it is now Kibou Japanese restaurant.

Fosters’ Bank on Sidney Street is close to both Sidney Sussex College (above) and Christ’s College (below) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Venetian-style mosaics by Antonio Salviati have survived changes at Apple’s flagship store on Regent Street in London

The Apple Store at 235 Regent Street is Apple’s flagship store in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The Apple Store at 235 Regent Street is Apple’s flagship store in London, and when the shop opened in 2004, it was Apple’s first store in Europe. It was redesigned by Foster + Partners who removed the shop’s original U-shaped mezzanine floor and glass stair, and pushed back the back of the store to create a large open space that they claim is designed to have the feeling of a town square.

The 7.2m-tall space allows the building’s full-height Portland stone-clad arches to form the front façade while flooding the store with natural light.

I stepped inside the building earlier this week to see the forum with seating for up to 75 people, and the ‘avenues’ along the perimeter walls that display Apple’s products. There are terrazzo floors, a grove of 12 Ficus Ali trees set in planters that double up as seating, and the walls are clad in sandblasted Italian limestone.

But none of these explain why I wanted to visit this building on Regent Street and its enduring façade and arches a few days ago.

Beautiful, colourful mosaics adorn the façade of the former studio of the business eastablisged by Antonio Salviati of Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Regent Street is named after the Prince Regent, later George IV, and was designed by John Nash ca 1813 as one of the first planned developments in London. The architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner calls it ‘quite simply the greatest piece of town planning London has ever seen.’

Regent Street was completely redeveloped in a unified style under the control of the Crown Estate in 1895-1927, and none of the original Nash buildings remain.

The central domed building at 235-241 Regent Street was designed in 1898 by the architect George Dennis Martin (1847-1915) and was built on by Sir Thomas Henry Brooke-Hitching (1858-1926) on the site of the former Hanover Chapel.

People walking along Regent Street should look up to see the façade, which is Grade II-listed. Beautiful, colourful mosaics adorn the façade, for this was originally the studio of the business esablished by the Victorian mosaicist Antonio Salviati (1816-1890) from Venice.

Antonio Salviati revived glass making on the island of Murano in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Salviati family were glass makers and makers of mosaics based on the island of Murano in Venice and in London. They worked first as Salviati and Co and later, after 1866, as the Venice and Murano Glass and Mosaic Company.

The founder of the business, Antonio Salviati, was born in Vicenza, 60 km west of Venice, on 18 March 1816. He began in life as a lawyer. However, at an early age he became interested in glasswork after taking part in restoration work by Lorenzo Radi on the mosaics in Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

When Venice was at a low point in the early 19th century, John Ruskin visited and drew attention to its plight. He published his The Stones of Venice in three volumes between 1851 and 1853, and revised it after he had witnessed the demolition of important parts of Saint Mark’s Basilica.

Ruskin warned then that Venice ‘is still left for our beholding in the final period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak – so quiet, – so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the Shadow. I would endeavour to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the Stones of Venice.’

Ruskin is credited with preventing the destruction of Venice. The momentum he created inspired the revival of several Venetian crafts, including glass and mosaics, and with the backing of British banks backing them they produced works for export to Britain.

The lion of Victoria and the lion of Venice are complementary figures on the Regent Street façade (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Against this background, Antonio Salviati founded Compagnia Venezia Murano in 1866 with the British diplomat and archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), who lived in Ca Cappello, a 16th century palazzo on the Grand Canal just behind Campo San Polo.

Murano had been a centre of fine glasswork since the Middle Ages. Murano Glass was lavish and at the time only the wealthy could afford the expensive specialty pieces. Salviati transformed the reputation of Murano glass, opening the first glass factory to employ a large number of skilled workers to mass-produce glass for export. He produced ornamental pieces that could be bought by millions, and so he re-established Murano as a centre of glass-making.

Salviati’s fame and work spread to England and France, where his work was usually in association with architectural designs. His mosaics can be seen in many European churches.

The decorative façade tells the story of Salviati’s move from Venice and Murano to London and Westminster (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

By 1867, the firm had premises on Oxford Street, and Salviati opened showrooms in other fashionable parts of London, including St James’s, Piccadilly, Regent Street and, for a time, New Bond Street. The most impressive showroom was that at 235 Regent Street, which was built in 1898.

The mosaics above the windows have been preserved, and so, like those of the Palazzo Salviati on the Grand Canal in Venice, can still be seen today. The names of the great world cities of the world, ranged above the spandrels, suggest its global standing.

Salviati produced the reredos above the high altar in Westminster Abbey, erected between 1867 and 1873 to Sir George Gilbert Scott’s designs. He produced several mosaics for the grand dome in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London. Five mosaics by Salviati are behind the altar in the east apse in the chapel in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, his iridescent mosaic glass panels in the reredos were completed in 1887 and form a striking backdrop to the High Altar.

Salviati died in Venice on 25 January 1890. His work can be seen in churches throughout England, and he also worked in Saint David’s Cathedral, Wales, Saint Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, Dundee, and Aachen Cathedral. Mosaics by Salviati and his companies are also in the Central Lobby in the Palace of Westminster, the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, the Council House and the Chamberlain Memorial Fountain in Birmingham, and the Paris Opera House.

The heraldic symbols of British royalty and London and Westminster (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Regent House on Regent Street was built in 1898, eight years after Antonio Salviati’s death. The façade displays a series of mosaics produced by the Salviati firm, with the lions of Britain and Venice, civic coats of arms and reminders of the international appeal of Salviati’s work.

On the left are the coats of arms of the City of London and the City Westminster: the red cross of Saint George, with the smaller sword of Saint Paul; and the golden portcullis. Between them stands the British lion, holding up the shield of the royal coat of arms, the initials VR of Queen Victoria, the royal motto, and the red rose of England. The starry sky comes from Saint Mark’s Basilica, Venice.


Four golden spaces once intended to bear the names of cities where Salviati’s work was sold and can be seen were never filled with the planned lettering.

The symbols of Venice, Murano and Burano, and the names of international cities (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

On the right, the dominant figure is the winged lion of Saint Mark, the symbol of Venice. The lion rests his paw on an open book with the words: ‘Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus’ (‘Peace unto you, Mark, my Evangelist’). these words, according to a legend, were uttered by an angel who identified Saint Mark’s body when it was moved from Alexandria to Venice, and became the motto of Venice.

The starry sky behind the lion reflects, once again, Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Streamers on either side read ‘Dandolo’ and ‘Loredano’, the names of two powerful patrician families in Venice: the House of Dandolo produced four Doges of Venice, and the Palazzo Dandolo is now part of Hotel Danieli; the House of Loredan produced three doges.

On either side of the lion of Venice are two more heraldic representations of two islands in the Lagoon of Venice known for their glassmaking traditions: a black cockerel biting a snake for Murano; and a mounted white knight for Burano.

The lettering above displays the some of the cities where Salviati’s wares were found: Paris, New York, St Petersburg and Berlin. Below is the crown of the Doges of Venice.

But the façade also hides tells the tragic story of the Salviati family. In 1898, the very year the Salviati studio and shop opened on Regent Street, Salviati’s middle-aged son Guilio shot himself at his desk. According to the inquests, his death was brought about by ‘temporary insanity’. He left a suicide note claiming he had no money left and was in despair, although his lack of funds was a complete delusion. Guilio Salviati was buried in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, where his grave is marked by a decorated headstone.

The Palazzo Salviati on the Grand Canal in Venice was built as a shop and the furnace of the Salviati family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I have often admired the Palazzo Salviati on the Grand Canal, between the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff and the Palazzo Orio Semitecolo. It was built as a shop and the furnace of the Salviati family in Venice, and was designed by the architect Giacomo Dell’Olivo. The building underwent a major renovation in 1924, with the addition of an extra floor and the placement of large mosaics on the façade.

As for Salviati’s Compagnia Venezia Murano, it continued as an important producer of Venetian art glass. Today, the company is Pauly & C – Compagnia Venezia Murano, and remains an important producer of Venetian art glass.

Glassmaking remains the main industry of Murano, where the artisans continue to employ centuries-old techniques, crafting items from contemporary art glass and glass jewellery to Murano glass chandeliers and wine stoppers.

The interior of the Apple Store on Regent Street was reshaped by Foster + Partners (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Mayfair with a curious past is a reminder of continuing war and suffering in Ukraine

The Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile … once a Congregational church on Duke Street in Mayfair (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Two of us were in Mayfair the other day when we found an unexpected but timely reminder of the continuing plight of the people of war-racked Ukraine. While the war in Ukraine continues to wreak havoc, and as Trump fiddles and Putin burns away, it seems appropriate that one of the main churches in London that offers succour to Ukrainian refugees takes its name from the Holy Family in Exile.

The Ukrainian Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile stands on Duke Street in London and is the cathedral of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family. It is the seat of the Ukrainian Catholic bishop in Britain and his eparchy or jurisdiction overlaps with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster and other dioceses.

Duke Street is in Mayfair, off Oxford Street, and the cathedral is open every day. We visited on Ascension Day, and throughout the day, it seems, there was a constant flow of people through the doors, many in tears, praying silently, visibly upset and distressed.

The Ukrainian Cathedral was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and was built in 1888-1891 as the Congregational King’s Weigh House Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was first designed by the architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905) in 1888 and built in 1891 as the Congregational King’s Weigh House Chapel.

Waterhouse is associated with the Gothic Revival in architecture, but he worked in other styles too. His best-known works include Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. He designed many town halls, several hospitals, churches, chapels (such as the Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead), banks, and university buildings Cambridge (such as the chapel in Gonville and Caius College), in Oxford (such as the Broad Street frontage and college dining hall in Balliol College), Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.

He was born to Quaker parents, and at an early stage in his career he was heavily influenced by John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1849) and by AWN Pugin’s Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841).

The spectacular elliptical or horseshoe-shaped wooden gallery beneath an elliptical ceiling (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The King’s Weigh House Chapel was built as a Congregational chapel in 1888-1891, but traced its story back to a congregation formed ca 1695, when Thomas Reynolds was called as minister. The congregation built a meeting house over the King’s Weigh House in Little Eastcheap in 1697, and took its name from this building. ‘Merchant Strangers’ were required to have their goods weighed at the King’s Weigh House so that customs duties could be assessed.

The chapel’s ministers included the Revd Thomas Binney (1798-1874) from 1829-1869, popularly known as the ‘Archbishop of Nonconformity’. During Binney’s ministry, the Weigh House site was acquired for street widening at London Bridge.

William Tate designed a new chapel in Fish Street Hill seating 1,000 people In 1833-1834. Prominent members during that time included Samuel Morley (1809-1886), the radical MP, philanthropist and abolitionist, and George Williams (1821-1905), who founded the YMCA in 1844.

The chapel site was compulsorily purchased by the Metropolitan Railway in 1882. By then, the members lived in the suburbs and the chapel needed to find a new location. The Duke of Westminster offered a site in Mayfair, part of which was included a small Congregational chapel on Robert Street, now Weigh House Street. The new chapel was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, who also designed Eaton Hall for the Duke of Westminster.

The church was built on a site on the corner of Duke Street and Binney Street provivded by the Duke of Westminster and the Grosvenor estate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was built on a site on the corner of Duke Street and Binney Street in what has been described as the Carolingian Romanesque style. It is built in brick with plentiful buff terracotta dressings and tiled roofs. It has an oval nave and a tower in the south-west corner, built in a Romanesque style. The ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill and faience tiling was by Burmantofts.

Inside, the ground floor is rectangular in shape, but above it, at first floor level, is a spectacular elliptical or horseshoe-shaped wooden gallery and an elliptical ceiling. There are glazed brick walls and four structural columns faced in faience.

The architect Sir John James Burnet (1857-1938) designed sympathetic alterations to the chancel in 1903, including the east window with glass by Anning Bell, the east screen wall and the flanking organ cases.

Sir John James Burnet designed the alterations to the chancel, including the east window with glass by Anning Bell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The symmetry of the tripartite west entrance front on Duke Street is broken by the south-west corner tower with a steeple and, to the left, a gable ventilation turret. The triple arcaded porch is approached by a flight of steps. There is centre group of tall narrow round arched lancets, a relieving arch, and an elaborated gable with arcaded machicolations.

The tower has narrow arcaded screens at the middle stage and an octagonal bell stage, square, pinnacled, corner buttresses, and coupled gabled doorways at the head of the steps on Binney Street.

When the Revd William E Orchard (1877-1955) ministered in the chapel from 1914, the style of worship became increasingly more Catholic and liturgical. He resigned in 1932 and became a Roman Catholic priest three years later.

Orchard ordained the Revd Claud Coltman and the Revd Constance (Todd) Coltman as assistant ministers on 17 October 1917. Constance had been a member of the church before training at Mansfield College, Oxford, and she was one of the first woman to be ordained in a mainstream English denomination. The couple married the day after their ordination, and they later ministered in Wolverton from 1932 to 1940.

The congregation of the King’s Weigh House Chapel closed 60 years ago in 1965 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After Orchard left, the life of the King’s Weigh House Chapel was marked by decline in the 1930s. During the Blitz in World War II, a German bomb fell on the chancel during a Communion service on 20 October 1940, killing the minister’s wife and injuring one other person. The building then became a fire watching centre and rest centre. When the war ended in 1945, 22 members tried to revive the chapel. The Revd WJE Jeffery became the minister, with assistance from Claud and Constance Coltman who returned in 1946.

After the war damage was repaired, the church was rededicated in 1953. But the attendance declined in the 1950s and the 1960s, and the small Weigh House congregation decided to merge with Whitefield Memorial Church on Tottenham Court Road 60 years ago in July 1965.

The congregation was disbanded in March 1966 and the building was bought by the Ukrainian Catholic community in 1967. The former Congregational chapel become the new centre of a Ukrainian apostolic exarchate, created by Pope Pius XII in 1957.

Internal adjustments were then made to adapt the building to the Ukrainian Catholic liturgy. New pews were provided, the old pulpit was removed and a confessional designed by JF Bentley was brought from Westminster Cathedral. The building was Grade II* listed in 1970.

The iconostasis was created by Father Juvenalij Mokrytsky, a Ukrainian monk (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The cathedral closed temporarily in 2007 when part of the ceiling collapsed, but it was soon refurbished. The iconostasis created by a Ukrainian monk, Juvenalij Mokrytsky, was not damaged by the collapse.

The Ukrainian exarchate was elevated to the status of an eparchy or full bishopric by Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, and building is now the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile. The cathedral became a rallying point for the Ukrainian community in Britain during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski invited leading political and religious figures invited to speak in the cathedral.

The cathedral clergy include Father Mykola Matwijiwskyj, Parish Priest, Father Andrii Malysh, Father Mark Woodruff, who chairs the Society of Saint John Chrysostom, Father Bohdan Bilunyk and Father Andrew B Choma. The Divine Liturgy, usually in Ukrainian, is served on Sundays at 8 am, 10 am, 12 noon and 5 pm, with celebrations throughout the week too. The cathedral also has ‘Mission Points’ in Crawley, Feltham, High Wycombe, Luton and Waltham Cross.

The Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral seen from the Italianate Brown Hart Gardens on the opposite side of Duke Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Across the street from the cathedral, on the other side of Duke Street, the Italianate Brown Hart Gardens is a 10,000 sq ft (929 sq m) public garden on top of an electricity substation. The gardens began life as the Duke Street Gardens where a communal garden was laid for the working class families then living in Brown Street and Hart Street.

The street level gardens were removed in 1902, and the Duke Street Electricity Substation was built in 1902-1905 in a Baroque style to a design by the architect Charles Stanley Peach (1858-1934). To compensate local residents for the loss of the old communal garden, the Duke of Westminster insisted that a paved Italian garden was placed on top of the substation, and this was completed in 1906.

After being closed for 20 years, the site was revamped and reopened to the public in October 2007. Further refurbishment in 2013 funded by the Grosvenor Estate includes a glass building at the west with the Garden Café run by Benugo, and more than 60 seating and planter items.

The Brown Hart Gardens and the electricity substation glimpsed from Weighbridge Street and the south side of the Ukrainian Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Kevin Roche, the Dublin-born, prize-winning international architect who designed the Convention Centre

The Convention Centre on Spencer Dock, Dublin … the Irish project of the prize-winning, Dublin-born architect Kevin Roche (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Dublin, as I travel from Dublin Airport along the quays and the banks of the River Liffey into the city centre, the Convention Centre on Spencer Dock on the north side of the river still has the same captivating, breath-taking visual impact as it had when it first opened in 2010. Back then, it immediately became a striking landmark building in Dublin.

The Convention Centre was designed as part of a Public/Private Partnership between the Office of Public Works (OPW) and Treasury Holdings, headed by Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett, and was the first state-owned, public-access building built since the foundation of the Irish State. It is also the first and only Irish project of the prize-winning, Dublin-born architect Kevin Roche (1922-2019) since he moved to the US in 1948.

The Convention Centre was designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche and is known for its many architectural innovations, including the glass frontage and numerous curved walls. The stunning glass-fronted atrium has panoramic views of the River Liffey, Dublin city centre and across to the Wicklow Mountains, and was the first carbon-neutral convention in the world.

The building was first suggested as long back as 1987, although the proposal was not formalised until 1997. The building was completed in May 2010, four months ahead of schedule and on budget, and was opened by the then Taoiseach Brian Cowen on 7 September 2010.

The lasting influence of John Ruskin on Kevin Roche’s approach to architecture is reflected in an observation he once made: ‘Architecture is a local language and a universal language. Ultimately, a great building touches both, so that artist, and common man, understand it without being conscious of it. It is interwoven. That is great architecture.’

Kevin Roche was born in Dublin but was based in the US throughout most of his career. He is seen as one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. He was a member of an elite group of third generation modernist architects that included James Stirling, Jorn Utzon and Robert Venturi, and he is considered to be the most logical and systematic designer of the group. He and John Dinkeloo, his partner in the firm KRJDA, produced over a half-century ‘of matchless creativity.’

Roche designed more than 200 landmark and famous buildings, including museums, art centres, corporate headquarters, airport terminals and university buildings. His portfolio in the US included work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the UN Plaza in Manhattan, the Oaklands Museum in California and the Ford Foundation headquarters on East 42nd Street which, in 1968, became the first modern building to be laid out around a plant-filled atrium.

The Convention Centre Dublin … the architect Kevin Roche was born at 25 Lower Camden Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Kevin Roche was born Eamonn Kevin Roche at 25 Lower Camden Street, Dublin, above his aunt’s shop, on 14 June 1922. He was the youngest of three sons of Alice (Harding) Roche (1882-1963) from Soloheadbeg, Co Tipperary, and Eamon (Edmond) Roche (1884-1956), a creamery manager who was born in Bansha, Co Tipperary. They were married in Saint Joseph’s Church, Limerick, in 1913 and Kevin Roche was born between the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.

Eamon Roche fought on the Republican side in the Civil War, and was jailed twice. Kevin Roche told The Irish Times in an interview in 2017 that he was born while his father was serving his second jail sentence. When Eamon Roche was released from jail, he moved with his family to Mitchelstown, Co Cork, returned to work as a creamery manager. He successfully brought together the surrounding dairy co-operatives, forming the largest co-op in the south-west and setting up the Galtee Cheese Company later bought out by KerryGold.

Kevin Roche went to school in Rockwell College, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, where his interest in architecture developed after reading John Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture. He later recalled that the book ‘was not the easiest to read but was very interesting’. He then studied architecture at University College Dublin. After his first year in UCD, his father gave him his first commission –designing a piggery for Mitchelstown Creameries.

After graduating in 1945, he worked with the Dublin modernist architect Michael Scott on the designs for Busáras and Donnybrook bus garage (1945-1946). He then moved to London to work with Maxwell Fry in 1946, before moving to the US to study under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (1948).

Excited by the building of the United Nations headquarters and the ‘idea that people would stop fighting one another’, he moved to New York in 1949 and worked in the planning office on the UN headquarters project.

He then moved to Detroit to work with the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, who was then being recognised as one of the world’s leading architects. He was assigned to work on the General Motors Technical Centre, a sprawling campus of 24 modern buildings that became emblematic of corporate architecture of the early 1950s. While working for Saarinen, he met his future wife Jane Tuohy (1935-2020), from Lucas, Ohio. They were married in 1963 and became the parents five children.

When Eero Saarinen died suddenly in 1961, Kevin Roche and his colleagues John Dinkeloo and Joseph Lacy took over several unfinished projects, including the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Missouri; the TWA Flight Centre at JFK International Airport; Dulles International Airport in Washington DC; and the John Deere headquarters in Moline, Illinois. They founded Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, based in Hamden, Connecticut, in 1966.

John Dinkeloo died in 1981, and Kevin Roche then headed the office himself. A year later, in 1982, Roche became one of the first recipients of the Pritzker Prize, described as architecture’s equivalent to a Nobel Prize. At the award ceremony he said: ‘We should, all of us, bend our will to create a civilisation in which we can live at peace with nature and each other. To build well is an act of peace. Let us hope that will not be in vain.’ The €100,000 prize money was used to create a chair of architecture at Yale in memory of Eero Saarinen.

Following these awards, Roche’s practice went global, receiving commissions for buildings in Paris, Madrid, Singaporeand Tokyo. He completed his first and only Irish project, the Convention Centre Dublin, in 2010.

The Convention Centre Dublin was Kevin Roche’s first and only Irish project (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

As well as the Pritzker Prize in 1982, this awards included the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1990), the gold medal of the American Institute of Architects (1993), the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland Gandon medal for lifetime achievement, and the French Academie d’Architecture Grand Gold Medal. He was also a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a member of the National Academy of Design and the US Commission of Fine Arts.

Although he reached the top of his profession, Roche had a self-deprecating manner, little interest in celebrity and eschewed the label ‘starchitect’. His mission was to create buildings for the people who used them and for the community who would live around them. He has been credited with creating green buildings long before they became part of the public consciousness.

While he loved strong, memorable forms, he saw architecture as a matter of problem-solving as much as shape-making. Reviewers of his work say he was most comfortable when sculpting modernist shapes in glass, masonry and steel filled with light and greenery.

He had no interest in retiring and continued to work until he was 95 in the offices of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates. He died at the age of 96 at his home in Guilford, Connecticut, on 1 March 2019. He was survived by his wife Jane four adult children and 15 grandchildren.

Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates or KRJDA continues as Roche Modern, where Roche’s son, Eamon, is currently the managing director. The firm which has been described as the ‘poster child architectural firm of corporate America’.

Kevin Roche’s work has been the subject of special exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Architectural Association of Ireland in Dublin, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Yale School of Architecture, the Museum of the City of New York, the Building Museum in Washington and the University of Toronto.
Meanwhile, during the Covid 19 restrictions, the Houses of the Oireachtas moved their location temporarily from Leinster House in Kildare Street in 2020 and met in the Convention Centre in June 2020. There Micheál Martin was elected Taoiseach in the Auditorium on 27 June 2020.

The Houses of the Oireachtas sat in the Convention Centre in June 2020 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025: 6, Monday 30 December 2024

The Presentation in the Temple and the Flight into Egypt … scenes from Christ’s childhood years in windows designed by Father Vincent Chin in Saint Peter’s Church, Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

This is the sixth day of Christmas, and the Hanukkah holiday continues today.

Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The Christ Child in the Temple and the Holy Family in Nazareth … scenes from Christ’s childhood years in windows designed by Father Vincent Chin in Saint Peter’s Church, Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Luke 2: 41-52 (NRSVA):

36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him.

‘Christ in the House of His Parents’ (1850) by John Everett Millais

Today’s Reflection:

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the six geese a-laying as figurative representations of the six days of Creation (see Genesis 1).

The Gospel reading yesterday, for the First Sunday Christmas (Luke 2: 41-52), jumped from the story of Jesus’ birth in a stable in Bethlehem on Christmas Day to the story of the teenage Christ who is lost in the Temple on this first Sunday after Christmas.

It may have left some people wondering what happened to the intervening years, between the story of the stable and Jesus at the age of 12?

Saint Luke gives no account of the exile in Egypt or Herod’s slaughter of the innocent children. Instead, after the circumcision and naming of Jesus eight days after his birth and his presentation in the Temple at 40 days, we are told Mary and Joseph returned with him to Galilee and their own town of Nazareth, and that ‘the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him.’ The translation in the Authorised or King James Version says ‘the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.’

Very little is told about the childhood of Jesus, between his birth and the beginning of his public ministry, apart from the meeting in the Temple with Simeon and Anna and the 12-year-old being lost in the Temple.

Between the two Temple incidents, he spent the years of his childhood and youth growing, learning and developing. Nothing in Scripture suggests his divine nature disqualified him from the human experiences of learning and development.

The infinite, eternal God took on human flesh. This is the miracle of Christmas, the Incarnation. The Second Person of the Trinity, uncreated, without beginning and without end, at a particular time and place in history came into this world just like one of us, needing to grow, learn develop, for Jesus Christ was truly God and truly human.

As a normal child, he learned to walk and talk, probably learned several languages, including Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, and perhaps a little Latin, hung around with the local children, learned the building and carpentry trades from Joseph, and probably went fishing too, went to the synagogue on Friday nights and on Saturdays, studied Scripture, learned how to pray and celebrated high days and holy days.

The stories of Christ as an apprentice in the workshop of Joseph the carpenter are popular and pious, but are not found in any Gospel narrative (see Luke 2: 39-40). But these ‘hidden years’ inspired Pre-Raphaelite artists and stained-glass artists in the 19th century, including John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Nathaniel Westlake.

Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1869) was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which was founded at his parents’ house in London. He completed his painting ‘Christ in the House of His Parents’ (1849-1850) in 1850. It is a work in oil on canvas, measures 86.4 cm × 139.7 cm and is in the Tate Britain in London.

Millais created controversy when this painting was first exhibited in 1850. But it brought the previously obscure Pre-Raphaelites to public attention and was a major contributor to the debate about Realism in the arts.

By the late 1850s, Millais was moving away from the Pre-Raphaelite style. His later works were enormously successful, making him one of the wealthiest artists of his day. His ‘Christ in the House of His Parents’ depicts the Holy Family in Saint Joseph’s carpentry workshop. The painting was controversial when it was first exhibited, prompting many negative reviews.

The realistic depiction of a carpentry workshop, especially the dirt and detritus on the floor, down to the details of Saint Joseph’s dirty fingernails, stirred criticism. Charles Dickens accused Millais of portraying the Virgin Mary as an alcoholic who looks ‘… so hideous in her ugliness that … she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England.’

Dickens said the young Christ looks like a ‘hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired boy in a night-gown who seems to have received a poke playing in an adjacent gutter.’

Other critics also objected to the portrayal of Christ, one complaining that it was ‘painful’ to see ‘the youthful Saviour’ depicted as ‘a red-headed Jew boy.’ Others still suggested that the characters displayed signs of rickets and other disease associated with slum conditions.

Saint Joseph is making a door, which is laid on his carpentry work-table. Christ has cut his hand on an exposed nail, leading to a sign of the stigmata, prefiguring the crucifixion. As Saint Anne removes the nail with a pair of pincers, his concerned mother, the Virgin Mary, offers her cheek for a kiss while Saint Joseph examines his wounded hand.

The young Saint John the Baptist is bringing in water to wash the wound, and so prefigures his later baptism of Christ. An assistant of Saint Joseph, representing potential future Apostles, is watching all that is going on.

In the background we can see many objects that hep to further point up the theological significance of the subject. A ladder, referring to Jacob’s ladder and the ladder used to take Christ down from the cross, is leaning against the back wall. A dove, representing the Holy Spirit rests on it. Other carpentry implements refer to the Holy Trinity.

The sheep in the fold in the background represent Christ’s future followers, who know Christ as the Good Shepherd.

The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy, with a companion piece by Millais’s colleague, William Holman Hunt, ‘A Converted British Family sheltering a Christian Missionary from the persecution of the Druids.’

John Ruskin supported Millais in letter to the press and in his lecture ‘Pre-Raphaelitsm,’ although he personally disliked the painting. Its use of Symbolic Realism led to a wider movement in which typology was combined with detailed observation.

Because of the controversy, Queen Victoria asked for the painting to be taken to Buckingham Palace so that she could view it in private. We do not know whether she was amused, but Millais said he hoped the painting ‘would not have a bad effect on her mind.’

The critical reception of the painting brought prompt attention to the Pre-Raphaelite movement and stimulated a debate about the relationship between modernity, realism and mediaevalism in the arts.

William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was another founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. His ‘The Shadow of Death’ is painted in oil on canvas, measures 214.2 cm × 168.2 cm, and is in the Manchester City Art Gallery.

Holman Hunt was born in Cheapside, London, on 2 April 1827, and died in Kensington on 7 September 1910. He concentrated on history and religious painting, and his best-known works include ‘The Light of the World,’ ‘The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple,’ ‘The Shadow of Death,’ and ‘The Scapegoat.’

He worked on ‘The Shadow of Death’ from 1870 to 1873, during his second visit to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. He painted it as he sat on the roof of his house in Jerusalem, and the work was completed it in 1873.

The artist shows Christ as a young man working as a carpenter in Saint Joseph’s workshop in Nazareth. The youthful Christ is stretching his arms after sawing wood. The shadow of his outstretched arms falls on a wooden spar on which carpentry tools hang, creating a shadow of death that prefigures the crucifixion. His mother, the Virgin Mary, looks up at the cross-shaped shadow, having been searching in a box where she keeps the gifts from the Magi.

Hunt’s depiction of Christ as a muscular hard-working craftsman was also probably influenced by Thomas Carlyle, who emphasised the spiritual value of honest labour and who earlier criticised Holman Hunt’s earlier depiction of Christ in ‘The Light of the World’ as ‘papistical’ because it showed Christ in regal clothing.

The portrayal of the Virgin Mary, who has carefully saved the Magi’s gifts, depicts the working class values of thrift, financial responsibility and honesty.

The first painting went on display in 1874, the year after its completion. It went on show in Dublin and Belfast in 1875. It was a popular success, especially among the working class, and was widely reproduced as an engraving. The profits from the prints paid for its donation to the city of Manchester in 1883, and it is now held by Manchester City Art Gallery.

Hunt also painted a smaller version in 1873. It was sold for £1.8 million in 1994, which at the time was the highest price paid for a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Jesus as an apprentice in Joseph the Carpenter’s workshop … a window by NHJ Westlake in the south wall in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 30 December 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘We Believe, We Belong: Nicene Creed’. This theme was introduced yesterday by Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 30 December 2024) invites us to pray:

We pray for a Church that embraces diversity in all its forms. Help us recognise the beauty in differing expressions of faith and remain united in Christ without suppressing the unique voices within your Church.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘The Shadow of Death’ (1870-1873) by William Holman Hunt

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Saint Patrick’s Church on Donegall Street is at the centre of cultural life in the heart of Belfast

Saint Patrick’s Church on Donegall Road, Belfast, was built in the 1870s, replacing a church built in 1815 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

During our short visit to Belfast last weekend, I visited or revisited a number of places of interest in the city, including Saint George’s Church on High Street and both Saint Anne’s Church of Ireland Cathedral and Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church on Donegall Street.

Saint Patrick’s Church on Donegall Street is a Victorian gem and an oasis of peace in the heart of the city and it is part of community life in the city centre.

The church serves a large local resident community, a thriving population in the Cathedral Quarter, the city’s cultural and social heartland, and the students and staff in the neighbouring Belfast campus of Ulster University, as well as a busy hospital, a large primary school, and a number of residential and care homes.

The statue of Saint Patrick by James Pearse in the tympanum above the main doors of Saint Patrick’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The first church was built on the site in 1815, the year of the Battle of Waterloo, and it was the second Catholic church built in Belfast since the Reformation.

The first Roman Catholic church in Belfast was Saint Mary’s, Chapel Lane, which opened in May 1784. But with the growth of the Catholic population in Belfast in the early 19th century, Bishop William Crolly, then a priest in residence in the small town, decided to build a new church on Donegall Street.

This church, dedicated to Saint Patrick, opened in 1815. Its construction was made possible – in part – by the contribution of Belfast’s educated Protestants and civic elite. The presbytery was built as residence for the Catholic bishop and his clergy, and is Belfast’s oldest, continuously-inhabited house.

The society painter Sir John Lavery was baptised in the earlier Saint Patrick’s Church on 26 March 1856.

Inside Saint Patrick’s Church, facing the sanctuary and the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

In the post-famine era Belfast’s Catholic population had swollen considerably and, while other churches and new parishes were developed, it was clear by the early 1870s that Saint Patrick’s needed a new, larger church.

The present Saint Patrick’s Church, the second on the site, was designed in the Gothic Revival style by Timothy Hevey (1846-1878) and Mortimer Thomspon. It is said the church was built ‘by the pennies of the poor’.

Timothy Hevey was a son of Timothy Hevey, a Belfast builder, and Martha Alexandra Hevey (née McNeice). He was educated at Saint Malachy’s College, Belfast, and became an apprentice in the firm of Boyd and Batt. He moved to Dublin in 1865 and became an assistant in the office of Pugin and Ashlin. There he was involved in draughting the plans for the Church of Saint Augustine and Saint John, known popularly as John’s Lane Church, the Augustinian church on Thomas Street, Dublin. John Ruskin (1818-1900), the writer, critic, artist and philosopher who is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival movement on these islands, called the church ‘a poem in stone.

Hevey married Florence Eugenie Geret in Saint Peter’s Church (Church of Ireland), Aungier Street, Dublin, on 7 March 1868. He returned to Belfast in April 1869, and worked as a builder and architect in partnership first with James Mackinnon and later with Mortimer H Thomson. He became the city’s leading Catholic architect, enjoying the patronage of Patrick Dorrian, Bishop of Down and Connor, and James McDevitt, Bishop of Raphoe, in Co Donegal.

Hevey’s career was cut short abruptly the following year when he died at the age of 33 on 29 December 1878 following a severe cold caught on a business trip to Newry.

Inside Saint Patrick’s Church, looking west from the altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The foundation stone of the new church was laid by Bishop Patrick Dorrian on 18 April 1875. He had spent his early priestly ministry in the parish, and while he was Bishop of Down and Connor (1865-1885), 26 new churches were built in the diocese.

Saint Patrick’s Church was built in different coloured sandstone by Collen Brothers of Portadown and Dublin who built the new church around the old one which was then demolished.

The old church was then demolished in August 1876 and the entire fabric of the new church was speedily completed for blessing on 12 August 1877 by Archbishop Daniel McGettigan of Armagh.

Bishop Dorrian was later buried beneath the sanctuary and behind the priest’s chair. In the left transept, adjacent to Saint Joseph’s Columbarium, is his memorial, rendered in sandstone and alabaster, and it bears the arms of the Diocese of Down and Connor.

The new Saint Patrick’s Church was designed to seat 2,000 people. Both the 7 ft Portland stone statue of Saint Patrick in the tympanum above the main doors and the high altar were carved by the English-born James Pearse, father of the 1916 leader Padraig Pearse.

A two-ton bell, cast by Thomas Sheridan of Dublin, was placed in the spire, which rises to a height of 54 metres (180 ft).

The baptistry and the font with seven of the eight sides commemorating the grace given in the seven sacraments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Inside the church, 10 beautiful arches of red sandstone, supported by slender rose and grey Dumfries granite pillars separate the nave from each aisle. Three further arches separate the sanctuary from the nave. As the eye traces the orbit of the 15 metre (50 ft) high centre arch, it comes to rest on the pitch pine ceiling.

To the left of the sanctuary is the shrine of Our Lady of Comfort, designed and cast in bronze by the sculptor Chris Ryan of Howth in 1997.

On the right is the baptistry where seven of the eight sides of the font commemorate the grace given in the seven sacraments. An aumbry beside the font holds the holy oils used in administering the sacraments.

Two of the six windows in the south transept illustrating the life and mission of Saint Patrick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The stained glass windows in the church were added over time. High in the apse, seven windows depict Christ with the saints in glory; a rose window in the Shrine of Mary represents the Magi visiting Bethlehem; the rose window in the baptistry portrays Christ revealing the love of the Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque.

Four windows in the left transept, reinstalled from Saint Kevin’s Church in North Queen Street before its demolition, represent the Trinity.

The original windows in the right transept were destroyed by an explosion during the ‘Troubles’, but six newly-installed windows illustrate the life and mission of Saint Patrick.

A shrine in the nave is dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua. There is a first class relic of the saint in the reliquary on the left side of the statue.

The altar facing the people was installed in Saint Patrick’s Church in 1997 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The altar facing the people (versus populum) is made of Portland stone and was installed in 1997. It stands in front of the original high altar with its reredos of Caen stone and Cork red and Galway green marble columns.

The reredos and its sculptures are the work of O’Neill and Pearse of Dublin.

After a catastrophic fire on 12 October 1995, the church was restored under the then Administrator, the Very Rev David White, and the project manager, Oliver Magill. After a lengthy restoration project, the church was reopened by Bishop Patrick Walsh on 5 October 1997.

Sir John Lavery's triptych, ‘The Madonna Of The Lakes’, was given to Saint Patrick’s Church in 1919

The church has a triptych by Sir John Lavery, who was baptised in the older, smaller church. He painted ‘The Madonna Of The Lakes’ with his second wife, Hazel Trudeau, as the model for the Virgin Mary and his daughter Eileen and step-daughter Helen as models for Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid.

Lavery contacted the then Administrator of Saint Patrick’s, Father John O’Neill, in 1917 offering to donate a work of art to the church. The triptych was unveiled in April 1919.

The triptych originally stood on an altar designed by Edwin Lutyens, a friend of Lavery, and was illuminated by two candlesticks by Lutyens. Both the altar and the candlesticks were lost during reordering works out in the 1960s and 1970s, and the frame around the triptych, decorated with Celtic knotwork, remains the only Lutyens-designed artefact in Northern Ireland.

A statue of Saint Patrick in Saint Patrick’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church has a large collection of relics of saints, including two relics of Saint Patrick. The silver reliquary that holds the arm relic of Saint Patrick was made in the 14th century and is on loan to the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

The silver reliquary made in 1645, with the jawbone of Saint Patrick, taken from the burial site of Saint Patrick in Downpatrick in 1194, is now on loan to the Down County Museum in Downpatrick.

The church also holds a small relic of Saint Anthony of Padua.

Because of its splendour and scale, the church has been the venue for the episcopal consecrations of Bishop Henry Henry (who invited the Redemptorists to found Clonard Monastery) in 1895, his successor Bishop John Tohill in 1908 and later Bishop Daniel Mageean in 1929.

Saint Patrick’s Church celebrated its bicentenary in 2015. During the celebrations, Prince Charles, now King Charles, and his wife Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall, visited the church in May 2015, and after a short prayer service they viewed Lavery’s work.

Saint Patrick’s School beside the church on Donegall Street was built in 1828 by the Belfast builder Timothy Hevey, father of the architect who designed the church. It was the first Catholic school built in Belfast and was built on land donated by Belfast’s principle landlord, George Chichester, 2nd Marquess of Donegall. For much of its history the school was run by the Christian Brothers and continued as a primary school until it closed in 1982.

• The Very Reverend Eugene O’Neill has been the Parish Priest of Saint Patrick’s since 2022, and previously was Administrator of Saint Patrick’s from 2016. Sunday Masses begin on Saturday with a 6 pm Vigil Mass, with Sunday Masses at 9 am, 11 am and 6 pm.

Saint Patrick’s Church was designed by the architect Timothy Hevey and was built ‘by the pennies of the poor’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)