Laois retreat centre to be upgraded by nuns

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.

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