1957 – Franciscan College, Gormanston, Co. Meath

Gormanston College was founded in 1955 when the Franciscans acquired Gormanston Castle and demesne from the family of the 16th Viscount Gormanston, who died in 1940. Originally an all-male boarding school, the late 1950s complex is much aktered. Originally containing classrooms and accommodation ranges arranged around open spaces, it also had a freestanding chapel and swimming pool. The massive main block has an imposing two-storey projecting granite framed entrance. The boarding accommodation was on the top floor of the main building.

The chapel is very similar in design to the same architect’s later work at St. Senan’s, Kilkee in Co. Clare. The swimming pool has a concrete shell roof with circular rooflights along the centre line. The pool was 75 feet in length by 30 feet in width, and the building underwent extensive restoration in 2016.

Originally flat roofed, the buildings have largely been converted to a hipped roof profile. Gormanston is now a co-educational day and boarding school under the trusteeship of the Franciscan Province of Ireland