1919 – St. Patrick’s Church, Newport, Co. Mayo

Church in an amalgam of Irish and Germanic Romanesque, built with a donation of £10,000 from Martin Carey. Started in 1910, and probably the masterpiece of its architect R.M. Butler and one of the most striking early 20th century churches in Ireland. The external austerity is relieved by the central tower on the main front with a circular staircase turret, and the Irish inspired round tower on the secondary elevation.

There are three aisles, the center one barrel vaulted and supported by columns. The large window behind the altar, which is really made up of three windows of equal size, is often called “the Three Sisters” but is more commonly known as “the Last Judgment window”. It was the last work executed by the late Harry Clarke (1889-1931). It was installed in the church at Newport in February 1931.

Described along with a rendering in The Builder: “This church is an application of the type of design characterizing the buildings of the earlier churches in Ireland— and is, for that reason, specially interesting to us. Mr. Butler has applied—we believe for the first time—the theories of Professor Goodyear in modern building. The dimensions of the bays of the nave arcade are very slightly varied in width; the floor is not quite level; and throughout the scheme small irregularities of setting out, such as Professor Goodyear claims are intentional and not accidental, have been introduced into the design. Whether the effect of these will be to give the church some of the charm which distinguishes old work, and which we have been accustomed to attribute almost, if not entirely, to the action of time, remains to be demonstrated by fact. Should this not be the case the building cannot have lost in the process, as the divergencies from symmetrical setting out are very small, and so the experiment is a perfectly safe one. We have a suspicion that the Professor has pushed his theories too far, and think that in all probability the correction of optical errors, such as is given by the entasis of a column or that of the sides of a spire, or the curvature of a flight of wide steps, is all that was usually attempted, though there is no doubt that the Greeks carried the correction of optical defects somewhat further. There is no doubt on the other hand hat our designers are too much obsessed by a desire to obtain absolute symmetry which can only be appreciated on paper.”