Episode Information Ireland: The Converted Church

Date Published:

13/06/2008

A chance encounter, childhood memories and a desire to split their time between Dublin and County Mayo was all the inspiration Andrew and Jackie Lohan required to go about buying and restoring a derelict church.

Built in 1835 and abandoned for 101 years, since it was struck by lightening and burned to the ground in 1902, the church was in a dreadful state of disrepair when the Lohans and their two children stumbled across it on a family holiday to the area in the west of Ireland in 1998.

Rather than being put off by the church's poor condition and the amount of work ahead, architect Andrew and boutique owner Jackie were motivated by the challenge to faithfully restore the building to its former glory, while at the same time creating a modern, comfortable home that would be uplifting with a sense of drama.

Setting a six-month timeline to complete the work, Andrew himself drew up the plans and was to project manage the job, driving the eight-hour round trip from Dublin to County Mayo every second weekend, working with local builder Padraig O'Malley and stonemason Cathal Cregg.

By its very nature, being tall, narrow and not overly long at seven metres, the church posed unique problems to be overcome: how to insert a modern interior, comprising a kitchen, living room and bedrooms, within a vast, open shell and not have it feel chopped up and lose its sense of drama.

The solution, lighted upon by Andrew, was to build a lightweight self-supporting timber structure that would form the individual rooms and allow them to build upwards into the cavernous roof area. The second floor would feature a gallery leading to two bedrooms and two bathrooms, while below, accessed by a lobby leading from the front door, a full-height sitting room, kitchen/diner, underneath the vast altar window, and two further bedrooms and bathroom are on the ground floor.

The plans drawn, and with only slight reservations expressed by Jackie regarding the potentially too small kitchen, the work began. The first job was for the stonemason, Cathal, to restore the lightening damaged and century-long neglected tower - it was to prove such a tall order that in his 25 years' experience Cathal had never seen a structure whose brickwork was in a worse condition.

Waiting in the wings while Cathal and his team finished a job that was ultimately to take several weeks longer than scheduled, the builder, Padraig, who having lived in the area all his life had long hoped for the challenge of working on the church, planned his approach to a restoration job that for him would become a labour of love.

In consultation with Andrew, Padraig laid a concrete floor (the original floor was timber laid over earth) to provide the necessary support for the internal wooden structure that, in turn, would double up as the scaffolding to enable the builders to reach and prepare the brickwork with a consolidating ring of concrete to take the considerable weight of the roof.

While the use of concrete on top of brick is not in itself good conservation practice, the decision to utilise yellow-coloured brickwork around the concrete ring is as it draws attention to rather than attempting to hide the changes made. Such a strong conscious decision to restore the church sympathetically is central to Andrew's architectural philosophy and is reflected elsewhere in the painstaking attention to detail demonstrated.

Externally, the brickwork has been repointed using traditional lime mortar; internally the bricks around each window have been repaired using hand-cut fillets of yellow brick. Elsewhere, in the building, over 300 original holes in the brickwork have been filled manually - all jobs undertaken almost single-handedly by Padraig.

Andrew and Jackie are quick to praise Padraig's skill and devotion to duty that saw him work seven days a week for several weeks in his quest to complete the job well and without too much of an over-run. Padraig, himself, was only too happy to work on a job that many other craftsmen no longer have the time for and one that he feels has helped breathe new life into a local landmark.