Sacred Heart

Introduction

The church is designed in the Romanesque style. The church was built in 1931-32.

Architecture and furnishings

The tower roofs were re-clad in copper in 1966. The church has stained glass by Henry Clarke (Dublin). The church has an elaborate marble altar table of 1954 and a 7-bay marble reredos. The church is built of mottled buff brick with Portland stone dressings and Lakeland slate roofs.

The church has north-west and south-west towers flanking the west end of a clerestoried nave with aisles. The church has a south-west porch, chapels, baptistry, confessionals and lower chancel. The towers are 6-stage with continuous deep chamfered plinths. The towers have tall trefoil-headed recesses holding an oculus, round-headed window and slit light in the lower 3 stages.

The towers have a blind 3-bay triangular-headed arcade in the 4th stage. The towers have 3-bay round-arcaded bell openings with louvres and hoodmoulds in the 2 uppermost stages. The towers have shallow pyramidal roofs with cross finials and weather vanes. The west end of the nave has central carved panelled and part-glazed double doors in a slightly-projecting gabled doorcase with nook shafts with waterleaf capitals and bases.

The west end has a mosaic depicting Christ in the tympanum and a cross finial. The west end has flanking oculi and round-headed windows, and a central rose window with cusped plate tracery, all within a round-headed recess. The west gable has a round-headed, louvred vent and a shaped-corbelled verge with moulded copings and cross finial. A gabled porch adjoins the south-west tower, with a panelled door in a similar surround and a mosaic roundel in the tympanum.

The nave and aisles are 3-bay, with bays defined by pilaster strips in the aisles and gabled buttresses in the clerestorey, and paired round-headed windows. A projecting octagonal baptistry with oculi and pyramidal roof adjoins the west end bay of the north aisle. Low, flat-roofed confessionals project from the middle bay and from extruded one-bay hip-roofed chapels, with oculi and round-headed windows, flanking the transepts. The 2-bay transepts have 4 stepped round-headed windows, with pilaster strips flanking bays and blind triangular-headed clerestorey arcades.

The chancel is half duodecagonal with a pyramidal roof, similar windows, blind clerestorey arcade, and a bronze cross finial. The eaves generally have stepped brick corbelling and plain soffit, with hipped and gabled roofs. One-storey offices adjoin the north side of the chancel. The interior is plastered with 3-bay round arcades and similar transverse arches in lateral vaulted aisles and nave.

The interior has similar transept and chancel arches, a saucer-domed ceiling in the crossing and a half-domed chancel. The west organ gallery has an arcaded balustraded front over a glazed wood screen of 1965. The chancel has marble dado panelling.