A popular retreat centre in the midlands is to be expanded and
developed by the Presentation Sisters who own it into a fully-fledged
conference centre.
The Sisters have announced that Laois County Council has granted
planning permission for the redevelopment of the Mount St Anne's Retreat
Centre near Portarlington, Co. Laois.
The nuns want to build a new
chapel, three-storey building with fourteen bedrooms and the conversion
of their existing chapel into a conference hall.
The existing dining room and first floor bedrooms are to be demolished to make way for the new centre.
Director Sr Roisín Gannon said the redeveloped project was needed, as
those involved in operating the centre were constrained in what they
could do by with the existing facilities.
"It's not only for us, but for the local community, too,” she
remarked, adding that while there was a one-month window in which
objections to the planning approval could be lodged, she hoped the
tendering process could commence soon.
The congregation hoped that the
first sod on the new development could be turned as soon as next summer.
The centre runs a wide range of public and private retreats
throughout the year as well as regular yoga, arts and crafts and pottery
workshops.
The Presentation Sisters said that they had worked with conservation
architects to meet initial reservations on the part of Laois County
Council and the Department of the Environment Heritage and Local
Government, who were concerned the redevelopment would adversely affect
the character of Mount St Anne’s, which is a protected structure.
The house at Mount St Anne’s was formerly known as Mount Henry and
was built in 1820 for Edward Randal Skeffington-Smyth, a substantial
local landowner.
Subsequent residents included Dr Oliver St. John
Gogarty and the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, who sold it to the
Presentation nuns in 1933 to be used as a novitiate.
They re-named it Mount St Anne's because they moved in on the saint’s
feast day in of St Anne.
The novitiate operated in 1973 with the
establishment of a central novitiate in Limerick and Mount St. Anne's
became a liturgy studies centre and later, a retreat centre.