Church of the Holy Redeemer, Árd Easmuinn

History

The church was built to serve a suburban area on the west side of Dundalk and was blessed on 29 June 1969. It was designed by Frank Corr and Oonagh Madden of Derry and seats 1,100.

The building

The plan of the church is elliptical. At one end of the shorter axis a smaller ellipse forms the sanctuary, which rises above the nave in a sixty-foot tower; at the opposite end of the same axis a circular area forms the entrance and baptistery, flanked by two side wings containing sacristies, confessionals and side chapels. An ambulatory unites the wings and the baptistery and follows the line of the nave.

The concrete shell is sheathed in sawn granite slabs of regular rectangular shape, broken by the large windows, which are glazed in concrete and glass, dalles-de-verre. The roofs of the tower, the nave and the shallow baptistery dome are covered in copper laid in long radial stripes. The church stands on a grassy rise with granite boundary walls constructed in Kentish Rag.

The nave is floored with rectangular pieces of South African quartzite over an electrical heating mesh. The seats are of afromosia and the ceiling is finished with broad slats of parana pine separated to reveal a black hessian backing. The sanctuary is lit by two long narrow windows which rise to the height of the tower.

Notable features

The top of the tower carries an openwork sculpture of the Crucifixion with the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John, designed and made by Oisin Kelly. The three large windows were designed by Gabriel Loire of Chartres and made in his studio, unified by blue glass in many shades, with the warmer tones concentrated in the east window and practically absent from the west.

The font is a large granite monolith sculpted by Michael Biggs, set under a shallow lantern and dome decorated with stained glass and mosaic by Gabriel Loire. The altar, tabernacle, reredos and ambo were designed and made by Ray Carroll, with the tabernacle placed in the back wall of the sanctuary directly behind the altar, its door surrounded by a band of enamel decoration in a granite setting at the centre of a carved reredos. The two main doors are covered with copper sheeting lettered by Frank Morris with translations of Early Christian prayers, one of them carrying the hymn of Paulinus of Nola.