1881 – Unbuilt Design for St. Peter’s Church, Drogheda, Co. Louth

Unsuccessful design for church by Charles Noel Armfield of Whitby, the York Diocesan Surveyor. There were around twenty-five entrants and the competition was won by O’Neill & Byrne. Armfield provided the following description of his design reasoning to The Architect in 1881.

“The accompanying design was submitted in the late competition for the above church. The conditions of competition on some points were very definite; thus the sanctuary was “to be roomy, with good east window to hold a bold stained-glass design at some future time” this condition precluded, as I read the instructions, the treatment of the east end with an apse, the form I should have preferred for so large and lofty a church. The new church was to provide sittings for a congregation of from 1,500 to 2,000, and a church with nave, aisles, and transepts would be preferred. There was to be a tower and spire of 200 feet in height. The existing sacristies were to be retained, and the sum to be expended was £5,000. for the mere carcase of the building, for this amount was “not to include flooring, heating, altars, altar-rails, confessionals, benches, nor any coloured decorations, though any or all of these may be shown on the drawings.” The committee desired “a bold majestic front facing West Street, not overdone with ornament: provision for a few statues not unsuitable.” As West Street is 60 feet wide, and as every available foot of room was needed to provide anything like the required accommodation for sittings, I brought the front, as in many Continental churches, quite up to the line of the street frontage, and as the ground rises so rapidly that the floor of the nave must be 93 feet above the level of West Street, I provided half this rise by a flight of steps external to the doors, and the other half by two smaller flights within transeptal vestibules. Over the vestibules I have provided on the north side for the choir library; in the middle under the tower a spacious organ gallery high enough to accommodate 32-feet pedals without interfering with the window ; and on the south side a chamber for the bellows and blowing-engine. I proposed to groin the whole church with oak ribs and pitch-pine filling-in. In justice to my pupil, Mr. Charles H. Simpson, I should say that the exterior perspective is entirely his drawing, and that he raised the perspective from my plan and elevations, and completed the drawing which measures about 26 inches by 19 inches in thirty-three working hours; in my opinion by no means a despicable perform ance for a gentleman who, at the time had less than four years’ experience in an architect’s office. Charles N. Armfield” The Architect, September 8 1881