Roamer column: Nun’s interior design was inspired by the Book of Kells

Most of the several thousand artworks that she described and photographed were metal or stone, sited ubiquitously (occasionally obscurely) near or beside highways or byways. One of her more recent encounters is a totally different kind of artwork.

Built to accommodate a statue commemorating local men who’d died in WWI, Ann had read about the oratory of the Sacred Heart in Dún Laoghaire.

She’d perused numerous photographs but “nothing prepared me for how utterly stunning the little building was when I finally saw it” she told me.

Inside its modern protective exterior, the oratory is a small, single-storey, 19ft x 12ft slated, pitch-roofed building that’s hailed worldwide as ‘a three dimensional Book of Kells’.

Ann shares some photos here today, and an outline history (with related notes from Roamer) of a building she terms “indescribably beautiful”.

Oratories are traditionally small sanctuaries - ‘places apart’ for prayer and quiet reflection - but this one is spectacularly unique thanks to Sister Concepta, the Dominican nun who decorated its interior.

Lily Lynch was born in 1874 in Booterstown, south of Dublin. During her childhood she learned the art of illumination and heraldry in her father Thomas’s art studio, where they were both greatly inspired by ancient Irish manuscripts like the Book of Kells.

Acknowledged in 1880 as the ‘king of Celtic art’ by the globally influential Art-Journal, Thomas employed four full-time staff. Following a fire in his studios in Dublin’s Middle Abbey Street he moved his business to Grafton Street. Thomas died there in 1887 after a debilitating battle with tuberculosis and Lily took over the business.

After a few years she closed it down and in 1896 joined the Dominican Sisters in Kingstown, now Dún Laoghaire, where she taught art in the convent’s boarding school.

In 1918 an oratory was added to house a statue of the Sacred Heart that had been sent from Flanders to Kingstown in commemoration of the 490 local men who’d fought and died in WWI.

Many of them had attended the Dominicans’ Primary School and were taught by Sister Concepta, the name Lily took as a nun. She started painting the area behind the statue - often numbed by cold in the dark, unheated building.

Her cousin Shaun Glenville and his wife Dorothy Ward visited her in 1920 and were so moved by her devotion, hard work and lack of equipment and materials, that they financed her painting project.

They could afford to, being wealthy husband-and-wife pantomime stars with a Rolls-Royce, and Shaun had just co-written a hit song - ‘If You're Irish Come Into The Parlour’!

Born John Browne in Dublin in 1884, Shaun was a celebrated ‘pantomime Dame without equal’ and Dorothy, born in Birmingham in 1890, was an early member of ENSA and an internationally acclaimed pantomime Principal Boy.

She was playing the title role in ‘Little Jack Horner’ in Newcastle in 1910 where the Dame was young Irish actor Shaun Glenville. They married in 1911.Thus bankrolled, Sister Concepta designed and painted virtually every square inch of the oratory’s walls and ceilings.

Her intricate work is described by acclaimed art historian and writer Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch as “an array of colourful motifs of dazzling hues and tones. In the main these are inspired by Irish artifacts dating from the Bronze Age through to the early Christian period.”

Described by other experts as ‘a hidden gem’ and ‘dazzling’, Ann Lane adds - “it’s really difficult to imagine that all of this artwork was done by one person in 16 years, from 1920 to 1936 - she died in 1939 aged 65.

“She could not leave the convent so she got her students to buy the paint locally - normal house paint - with instructions from the shop as to how the colours should be mixed.”

The oratory stood in the grounds of the Convent of the Dominican Sisters of St Mary’s and when it closed in 1991 the site was sold for development.

Local campaigners saved, repaired, restored and protected the oratory and it’s now maintained by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, with visitor information on their website.