One of Belfast's most striking churches has undergone a 15-month renovation, and now it is ready to show its red-brick facade to worshippers once again, writes PAUL CLEMENTS
FR MARTIN GRAHAM beams with understandable pride as he surveys the shiny new interior of St Malachy’s Church, one of Belfast’s most striking buildings. Since the beginning of last year the church, tucked away in Alfred Street, a five-minute walk from the City Hall, has been shrouded in scaffolding. Squads of builders moved in to take over the church for the biggest renovation in its 165-year history, and the parishioners moved out. The building was closed and services were held in the parish hall and nearby primary school.
This weekend the wrappers will finally come off after 15 months, and the £3.5 million (€4.4 million) renovation of one of the most impressive red-brick Tudor Revival churches in Ireland will be unveiled.
Tomorrow afternoon, the solemn reopening and dedication of the altar takes place with the Bishop of Down and Connor, Most Rev Dr Noel Treanor, and the Bishop Emeritus, Patrick Walsh, in attendance. For Fr Graham, who has been curate for four years, it’s the culmination of a hectic period of upheaval, but he feels it’s all been worthwhile as he looks around “a totally transformed building”.
“Each time I stand here admiring the altarpiece I notice something new that I hadn’t seen before. It’s an incredible feeling just taking it all in after all the hard work that has gone into it.”
Built in 1844 in the Elizabethan-Gothic style at a cost of £5,679, St Malachy’s was designed by Thomas Jackson of Waterford. It was funded largely by a generous bequest of £3,000 from its chief benefactor, Capt Thomas Griffith, whose memorial is just inside the front doors and now stands alongside a new matching one commissioned for the renovation.
The extensive overhaul included repairing and replacing brickwork, and rebuilding the stone-dressed castellated towers and the slender octagonal corner turrets. The interior walls were re-plastered and repainted, and the building rewired and re-plumbed.
Over the years many of the original fixtures had succumbed to the ravages of time. The sculpture, mosaics, painted decoration and furnishings were all cleaned. Forty-eight stained-glass windows depicting the symbols of the Crucifixion, along with motifs such as the Crossed Keys of St Peter and the Eagle of St John, were carefully removed and repaired. Other specialist work included remarbling and tiling the sanctuary steps as well as restoring the altar carved from Portuguese limestone. And, as if all that wasn’t enough, a new sacristy was also built.
ONE OF THE interior highlights is the densely patterned fan-vaulted ceiling, a delightfully swirling masterpiece of plasterwork which has been tastefully repainted two differing shades of cream. The inspiration for its design was taken from the chapel of Henry VII at Westminster Abbey. It has been compared by the architectural historian Charles Brett to “an inside-out wedding cake”. The high altarpiece featuring Pugin’s Journey to Calvary was originally carried out by the portraitist Felix Piccioni, whose family were refugees to Belfast from Austrian Italy. A local artist has now painstakingly cleaned off the grime and soot that had built up on it. The elaborate stencilling in the altarpiece has been replaced by Nathaniel Clements, who also painted the two side altars, producing a marble effect and bringing them back to their original pristine condition.
Other furnishings too have been kept in sympathy with the original design. The altar rails were restored and the statues of the Madonna and Child and St Joseph – which had been stored in the roof space – are now in the richly decorated sanctuary.
New oak pews to seat the congregation of upwards of 1,000 families were made by Irish Joinery, a firm from Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim.
Fr Graham is astonished at the level of craftsmanship that has gone into the repair. This view is echoed, he says, by the parishioners who have been astounded by the work.
“The hall and school were functional and helped us avoid all the dust and dirt, and it was great to have them available, but the church is the place,” he says. “The reason for the church is to enclose the altar and tabernacle and it is the whole thing of where heaven and earth meet. There is a tremendous buzz of anticipation and the parishioners are completely excited about it. A couple of days ago I spoke to two women who’ve worshipped here for a long time and when they saw the result of the months and months of work they were in tears.”
In the spring sunshine, Joe Brady, director of building contractor O’Neill and Brady, reflects on some of the difficulties which his team of 30 craftsmen faced.
“The bricks, mortar, plastering and joinery were the easy bits, but the hardest job was replacing the concrete window frames that were in poor condition,” he says. “The new frames are South African white oak and were extremely heavy to put in place. It was an awful job trying to get them in. We had to call on the services of a couple of amateur weightlifters from Tyrone to help us move and install each window, which weighed eight hundredweight – they were like lead.”
Brady is especially pleased with the new brickwork. The bottom half of the church has been repointed and new handmade bricks have replaced the old ones in the top half. A total of 40,000 medium multi-clamp and dark multi-clamp bricks were brought over from England.
“The new bricks these days are metric and are much smaller than these multi-clamp ones, which are an imperial size. They are more durable and are a superior brick to anything we could get here. They’re about three times the price of ordinary bricks but there are no cracks in them, they look beautiful, and the bricklayers love working with them.”
NO EXPENSE, IT seems, has been spared, although money is still being raised to pay for the renovation. Fr Graham says it will take some time to pay for it all.
“We raised a quarter of a million pounds over the past year between various fundraising schemes and other events, but the rest has still to be paid.”
Looking down the long prospect of Clarence Street, St Malachy’s stands castle-like at the end. The eye is drawn to its attractive proportions. Stand and survey St Malachy’s from a distance, with its tall cream castellated towers pricking the skyline, and you appreciate its flamboyant appearance and the subtle terracotta hue of the brickwork.
In 1868 the largest bell in Belfast was added to the church, but after complaints that its deafening noise was interfering with the maturing of whiskey in the nearby Dunville distillery, it was wrapped in felt to soften its peal and vibration.
The final lick of paint has now been applied to the altar rail, the front entrance steps made of slabs of Mourne granite have been cleaned, and builders’ debris swept away in preparation for the unveiling at 3pm tomorrow. Everything in the new-look church is dignified, clear and bright with clean lines. It smells fresh and new; soon the priests and parishioners will reclaim their beloved building.
Tomorrow, for the first time, alongside the spick-and-span cast of biblical characters, newly installed webcams will be turned on. Fr Graham says they will be of tremendous benefit, particularly to people who have emigrated and will now be able to log on for a mass or liturgy.
“People everywhere have a great affection for this church and if they’re living abroad they can join us on the web, or perhaps if they wish to hear a funeral mass then they can do so. A building can’t stand for such a long period in a local area without having special attachment for the people, not just the parishioners, but also people who came here from out of town when they were children and called into light a candle at Christmas.”
Along the south-east wall of the church, gazing out in contemplative mood with his brown eyes and torn chocolate brown coat, the delicate Statue of the Ragged Saint has also been cleaned. St Benedict Joseph Labre, the patron saint of the unemployed, once again welcomes visitors and ecclesiastical tourists from far and wide to one of Belfast’s most architecturally romantic buildings.
Paul Clements is a contributing writer to the newly published Fodor’s Ireland 2009