After almost a couple of years spent fixing the extensive fire damage, and renovating the building completely, St. Catherine’s Church on Meath Street is about to finally re-open it’s doors.
According to The Liberty (an excellent local newswire run by the journalism students at Dublin Institute of Technology/DIT in Aungier Street)… “Restoration and repair work is now nearly complete and architectural firm Howley Hayes are provisionally due to hand back the keys of the church on November 10th. It is anticipated that a further two weeks will be needed to decorate and furnish the interior ready for use by the congregation”.
There has been a very high quality job done, and the outcome is a slightly different interior to the pre-fire design. And there will be some minor work carrying on until mid-2014, but in general, it appears to be almost completed.
St. Catherine’s Church cost a total of €4.1m to renovate, after a homeless man admitted setting fire to the Roman Catholic church in 2012. He was subsequently committed to the Central Mental Hospital in May 2013.
Along with the fire-damage, there were other renovation costs which were not related to the fire, and the local community raised almost a quarter of a million Euro to facilitate these added outlays.
IMAGE: The exterior of St. Catherine’s Church on Meath Street – image credit: DubhEire/Wikipedia
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As a former pupil of Meath St school (1951-1954) I am overjoyed to see that the church is to reopen and although no longer resident in Dublin I do visit at least 3 times a year since 2010. I now live in Birmingham and I am 67 years old. I am due in Dublin Jan 2014 and will as usual visit the Liberties and the Church although no longer a practicing catholic. I also remember the Little Flower hall where we got our free dinners, meaty stew Mon-Thurs and cannon on a Friday. I lived at that time in Dorour Ave flats, a childs paradise albeit no money but many fond memories of the people who lived there. We lived in No 9.
Hiya Eddy
I went to the very same school from about 1956 so you would have left. I lived in Coombe Street until we moved to Drimnagh.