Site of former Convent of Mercy off Barrack Street, Newtownkennedy (Road), Strabane, Co Tyrone

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Site, to the east of Barrack Street and north of Newtownkennedy [Road], formerly occupied by a a large convent with chapel and primary school, built in 1868 and extended in 1870 and later in that century, but demolished c.1999 with the area now occupied by a housing development and a new, much smaller convent.

The the First Survey description of 11 February 1970 reads:
‘1868. A complex of buildings consisting of a chapel built of [word unclear] rubble greystone with broach spire, a two-storey rendered building with pointed brick dressings and square tower, and a brick or roughcast buildings at rear. A two-storey corrugated-iron verandah is supported by slim cast-iron columns with acanthus caps, the upper part is glazed.’

Historical information

The convent on this site until recently was built in 1868-69, opening in November of the latter year. Its foundation was largely the work of three prominent local businessmen, Francis O’Neill, James Kennedy and John Carlin. James Kennedy made the land available and the others supplied generous financial grants towards the building and upkeep of the institution.

The complex originally included three schools, one for orphan girls from Strabane, an Industrial School -‘St. Catherine’s Industrial School’, and a school for the ‘more respectable’ Catholic females from the town and elsewhere. By the mid 1880s the nuns were also running a school for boys. All of this activity entailed extensions to the complex, with building work carried out as early as 1870, the chapel added a few years later, a new wing in 1903, and further additions in 1907. Alistair Rowan (see ref below) states that the 1870 work was carried out to designs by William Hart, with the chapel possibly by John O’Neill.

In 1924 the nuns acquired a house from the Kennedy estate, (‘Mount Kennedy’), and converted it to a grammar school, and four years later a fee-paying preparatory school for junior pupils was established within the complex.

St Catherine’s Industrial School, one of a number of government-sponsored institutions founded in response to child poverty in the 1850s and 60s, closed in 1949, with orphanage closing in 1956. In 1968, the grammar school moved to newly-built premises off Curly Hill and the school originally for the ‘more respectable’ girls –later ‘Strabane Convent Girls’ Primary School’- was replaced by a new school (St Anne’s Primary School) in 1990.

The convent complex itself was abandoned in the mid 1990s, and demolished c.1999. Two years prior to this a new much smaller convent was built to the south of the site, (fronting on to Newtownkennedy Road), with the rest of the ground giving way to a large housing development in c.2000.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31B Annual valuation revision, Strabane ED (1864-73)
2 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31C Annual valuation revision, Strabane ED (1874-81)
3 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31D Annual valuation revision, Strabane ED (1882-91)
4 PRONI OS/8/25/1/1-17 OS town plan of Strabane (1883)
5 PRONI OS/8/25/1/1-17 OS town plan of Strabane (1883)
6 PRONI VAL/12E/187/1/1-12 Valuation town plan of Strabane (1884 [-1908])
7 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31E Annual valuation revision, Strabane ED (1892-96)
8 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31F Annual valuation revision, Strabane ED (1892-96)
9 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31G Annual valuation revision, Strabane UD (1897-1910)
10 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31H Annual valuation revision, Strabane UD (1897-1910)
11 PRONI OS/8/25/2/1-3 OS town plan of Strabane (1905)
12 ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory’ (Belfast, 1905)
13 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31J Annual valuation revision, Strabane UD (1911-22)
14 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31K Annual valuation revision, Strabane UD (1911-22)
15 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31L Annual valuation revision, Strabane UD (1922-31)
16 PRONI VAL/12B/42/31M Annual valuation revision, Strabane UD (1922-31)
17 PRONI VAL/3B/7/14 First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland, Strabane UD (1935
18 PRONI VAL/3C/7/23 First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland, annual revisions, Strabane UD (1936-57)
19 PRONI VAL/3G/159/1/1-3 Valuation town plan of Strabane (1936-55)
20 PRONI VAL/3G/159/2/1-3 Valuation town plan of Strabane (1951-55) [Sheets 1 and 3 are currently missing.]
21 EHS OS map (1:10,000 scale), sheet 72 (1983)

Secondary sources
1 Rowan, Alistair, ‘The Buildings of Ireland- North West Ulster’ (London, 1979), pp.494-95
2 Harron, Michael, “The Convent of Mercy and the Industrial School” in ‘The Fair River Valley: Strabane Through the Ages’, Bradley, Jim, et al, (Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2000)
3 Kennedy, Michael, “Education in Strabane” in ‘The Fair River Valley: Strabane Through the Ages’, Bradley, Jim, et al, (Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2000)
4 Information gathered from Strabane District Council website- www.strabanedc.com/ (January 2004) [The minutes of meeting dating from September 1998 refer to the convent as still standing (although abandoned) at that point.]

Other
references
1 EHS HB10/14/013 First Survey report (11 Feb 1970)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Site, to the east of Barrack Street and north of Newtownkennedy [Road], formerly occupied by a a large convent with chapel and primary school, built in 1868 and extended in 1870 and later in that century, but demolished c.1999 with the area now occupied by a housing development and a new, much smaller convent.