1956 – St. Gabriel’s Church, Clontarf, Dublin

Peppard & Duffy produced a couple of churches for the Dublin archdiocese in the 1950s. As with other churches being built in the city, they were large, designed to hold a growing population in the new suburbs. This substantial church was built, at a cost of £57,000, on ground which had belonged to the convent of the Daughters of Charity, and was opened by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in 1956. What made Peppard & Duffy’s work different, was the use of iconography from the abbeys and churches of a past Ireland. Here, the main front is a stripped modernist, almost verging on an Art Deco form. But it features simple round-headed windows and a modern interpretation of a Hiberno Romanesque doorway, as does the baptistry to one side. It’s almost Sullivanesque in scale with the oversized door panels set within the carved granite surround. The exterior is largely rendered with some planes finished with granite.

The interior was completed before the reforms of Vatican II and had a traditional layout including altar railings (now removed) and a modernist interpretation of a pulpit. The sanctuary walls are finished with concrete and granite. Stained glass windows and interior marble furnishings add artistic interest, as does the elaborate carved granite detailing to the external doorways. The columns that support the vast roof over the nave are polygonal rather than cylindrical.