Church, Whitegate, Co. Clare

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Church, Whitegate, Co. Clare

In the village of Whitegate on the eastern shore of Lough Derg, a 19th-century Roman Catholic church still stands with its lancet windows intact, its carved wooden gallery in place, and a belfry at one end of the roof.

The original doorway, however, is gone, widened and replaced with corrugated metal to allow furniture to be loaded in and out. It is that detail, perhaps more than any other, that captures the building's strange afterlife.

The church served its congregation until 1968, when structural concerns about the south-west wall prompted its closure. Rather than falling into ruin or being demolished, it found a second vocation on the water's edge: for a period after its deconsecration, boatbuilding took place within its walls, a trade not entirely incongruous in a village long connected to the lough. The building later passed into use as a furniture company's premises, which accounts for most of the modifications visible today. Lancet windows, the tall narrow pointed-arch style common to Gothic Revival ecclesiastical architecture of the period, remain in both the long walls, four to each side, fitted with hood mouldings that channel rainwater away from the stonework. The wooden gallery at the interior's upper level, supported by carved columns, has survived the various changes of use remarkably well, as has the roof itself, which still carries a small cross at one gable end.

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