The 300 Cork and Kerry families living in the parish of Glengarriff are helping to defray the €100,000 cost of preserving their 110-year-old Sacred Heart Church.
‘For a building of its age and its location, on the western seaboard, it is in relatively good order,’ locally-based priest Fr Niall Howard told The Southern Star.
But there are some works that need to be done if the building is to be maintained in good working order, such as treating a number of areas for the damp that is coming through the walls.
The contractor – Glenwood/Damprite, which is based in both Cork and Killarney and is owned and run by Glengarriff native Jerry Galvin – began work last week.
The first order of business is to clean the walls and prepare them to be slabbed with a cavity membrane before re-plastering.
Jerry Galvin has also been engaged to remove the floor underneath the stairway, add damp proof membrane and re-concrete, as well as replacing the defective stair ends that have, over time, been damaged by damp rot or woodworm.
The entrance porch needs a spruce up by having the plaster redone and the exposed stone work repointed to create a feature.
The entire church, Fr Howard confessed, needs painting, everything from the prep work to two coats of primer and three coats of paint. While on the outside the buttress pillars need to be repointed.
The parish is unusual in that Glengarriff is in Cork county but Bonane, a 15-minute drive away, is in the county of Kerry with the famous tunnels in between.
Fr Howard estimates that there are between 250 and 300 families living in the parish and they are helping by donating to a GoFundMe campaign.
He said they decided not to host fundraisers because, in the not-too-distant future, the local hall will need to be refurbished and the plan is to raise money for that by staging concerts.
The projected cost for restoring the Sacred Heart Church is €75,000 + 13.5% vat of €10,000, but to this they must add carpet for the sanctuary, stairs and gallery, as well as some other minor works that will bring the total to around
€100,000.
