St Comgall’s

Located in a central Belfast neighbourhood that has experienced many troubled times, St Comgall’s exemplifies architecture in the service of a community. The project was primarily concerned with the challenging conservation of a derelict 1930s school in order to create a home for a vital and active community group. The architects have diligently re-imagined and then painstakingly remade the building, from reconstructing façades and reusing salvaged brick to upgrading its thermal performance and roofing over the courtyard. The new St Comgall’s creates a shared, flexible, light filled complex of spaces to host social, educational, economic, and cultural initiatives at varying scales. Both the conservation works and the new interventions are assured and appropriately modest, enabling the work of the Falls Community Council to take centre stage.

For over 25 years St Comgall’s, a Grade B1 listed school designed by R.S. Wilshere in the early 1930s, lay derelict and deserted on Divis Street, Belfast. Its crumbling façades, fire damaged interiors, and abandoned inner courtyard bore witness to the troubles and the neglect that had affected the heart of this neighbourhood. Although in a ruinous state, memories of it as a key community building were still vivid in the minds of local people and the architect who is a former pupil. Its survival and re-emergence at the centre of the community as a place where all can come together to support each other, work together, and attend concerts and performances is remarkable.

The original school’s quadrangle design afforded an inherently robust and flexible armature for the project to be developed around. A wide, single-sided circulation route looked onto an open courtyard with simple, generous classrooms to the outside. The main contemporary intervention was the roofing in of the original central courtyard. The resultant light filled atrium space is generous and designed to accommodate all manner of gatherings, from concerts to exhibitions to weddings and more. The atrium can operate independently or in tandem with the original school assembly space, offering the client group a flexible function suite.

The conservation approach was straightforward in conceptual terms, if incredibly challenging in practice. It involved retaining as much of the original building as possible, replicating where appropriate, while taking the opportunity in parts to reveal the textures and patina of the school’s chequered history.

The jury was impressed by the commitment of the client representing the Falls Community Council: their enthusiasm was infectious. While the building is indeed an incredible new asset, the great strength and significance of this project is in how the client group are using St Comgall’s as a unifying, positive force within the neighbourhood.

The finished building is a credit to the enormous collective effort and exemplary skill of the architect and contractors. It not only heralds a new positive chapter, but also acts as a record of the past.