Additional Accommodation Church of St George and St Thomas

A vibrant inner city parish needed space for meetings, language classes, children’s play and other support accommodation as well as a clearer link between the interior of the listed church and the space outside.

The project builds itself about the entrance to the church. The form is manipulated such that the intervention recedes from those entering the church, drawing them into the plan before becoming readable as an addition. The resultant poché between this entrance sequence and the fabric of the church is hollowed out to provide the required accommodation. These rooms are insulated and lined in cork to allow for their use separate to the main body of the church. With budget at a premium the construction methodology was developed from an analysis of traditional Irish boat building techniques, which allowed the use of the solid timber to act as the primary structure with no additional material support.

Constructed in solid walnut the intervention reads with the existing brick interior and yet is clearly identifiable as a contemporary addition.

Aims / Objectives Questions

1 To accommodate new space inside an existing protected structure.
2 To form a new threshold between interior and exterior.
3 To develop an affordable means of construction that would be durable and rapid to erect.
4 To make a contemporary addition in sympathy with the qualities of the existing protect structure, in line with best conservation practice and research.
5 Traditional forms of construction as a model for contemporary technologies.


Principal Investigator: Clancy Moore Architects –Colm Moore

Co-investigator(s): Andrew Clancy, Mathew O’Malley

Funding partner/ Client: Select Vestry of St George and St Thomas

Finance. €35’000

Date (start – finished) Start June 2008 – Completed December 2008

A Damascene Conversion:Additional Accommodation Church of St George and St Thomas

Additional Accommodation Church of St George and St Thomas - Critical Appraisal ‘A Damascene Conversion’ by Shane O’Toole in The Sunday Times December 2008.

The Church of Scotland and the English apocalyptic imagination, 1630-1650

This article explores the evolution of the eschatological identity of the Church of Scotland within the framework of English puritan apocalyptic thought in the period 1630–50. From the beginnings of reformation, English protestant theologians constructed an elaborate series of readings of Biblical apocalyptic texts through which they attempted to understand contemporary events. By the 1630s, English puritan exegetes had begun to identify within the Biblical text a distinctive role for Scottish Presbyterianism. The Scottish church, which, in the opinion of many English puritans, moved towards a more rigorously reformed ecclesiology as the 1630s progressed, was identified as a harbinger of the millennial glory that English puritans would shortly share. But as the relationship between Parliament and Presbytery turned sour, English puritans increasingly identified the Scottish church as the apocalyptic menace that stood in the way of their millennial fulfilment – a feeling made vivid in the rhetoric of the Cromwellian invasion.

House at Bogwest in County Wexford, Ireland by Steve Larkin Architects

Publication associated with AR House awards 2012 by the Architectural Review. Text includes citation by Jury and based on interview / text with Steve Larkin. Drawings by Steve Larkin and photographs by Alice Clancy.

Early Medieval Settlement in North County Antrim: the significance of Doonmore and Drumadoon

The excavated north Antrim sites of Doonmore and Drumadoon are compared and attention is drawn to a group of like monuments in the same barony, here termed fortified outcrops. These are argued to be a type influenced by settlements in Argyll and introduced by the Dál Riata to Ulster through ‘counterstream migration’.

Predictors of Strength of In-Group Identity in Northern Ireland: Impact of Past Sectarian Conflict, Relative Deprivation and Church Attendance

Social identity in Northern Ireland is multifaceted, with historical, religious, political, social, economic, and psychological underpinnings. Understanding the factors that influence the strength of identity with the Protestant or Catholic community, the two predominate social groups in Northern Ireland, has implications for individual well-being as well as for the continuation of tension and violence in this setting of protracted intergroup conflict. This study examined predictors of the strength of in-group identity in 692 women (mean age 37 years) in post-accord Northern Ireland. For Catholics, strength of in-group identity was positively linked to past negative impact of sectarian conflict and more frequent current church attendance, whereas for Protestants, strength of in-group identity was related to greater status satisfaction regarding access to jobs, standard of living, and political power compared with Catholics; that is, those who felt less relative deprivation. The discussion considers the differences in the factors underlying stronger identity for Protestants and Catholics in this context. 

Spatial allocation of material flow analysis in residential developments: a case study of Kildare County, Ireland

Studies of urban metabolism provide important insights for environmental management of cities, but are not widely used in planning practice due to a mismatch of data scale and coverage. This paper introduces the Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA) model as a potential decision support tool aimed as a contribution to overcome some of these difficulties and describes its pilot use at the county level in the Republic of Ireland. The results suggest that SAMFA is capable of identifying hotspots of higher material and energy use to support targeted planning initiatives, while its ability to visualise different policy scenarios supports more effective multi-stakeholder engagement. The paper evaluates this pilot use and sets out how this model can act as an analytical platform for the industrial ecology–spatial planning nexus.