Longford County Council planners deem Ardagh community hall application invalid

A planning application to put solar panels on the building to the rear of the historic Ardagh community hall has been deemed invalid due to inconsistencies in the application.

Pat Kelleher made the application to undertake works to the protected structure by affixing solar panels to the existing rear main roof of Ardagh Community, Ardagh, Longford.

The application included an appraisal that notes that the picturesque village of Ardagh represents a rare example of an Irish estate village dating from the second half of the nineteenth century.

The streetscape is characteristic by projecting gabled entrances, dormer window openings, latticed windows with chamfered cut stone surrounds, decorative brick chimneystacks, pierced bargeboards and attractive cast-iron railings and gates. The village was improved between 1862 -3 by Sir Thomas John Fetherston (1824 – 1869) of Ardagh House, who employed the architect (and friend) James Rawson Carroll (1830 – 1911) to rebuild the village as a memorial for his late uncle Sir George Ralph Fetherston (1784 – 1853).

Rawson’s scheme involved the construction of a number of estate worker’s houses of various designs, a land agent’s house, an RIC barracks, a post office, and a courthouse, centred around a triangular village green, with an earlier Church of Ireland church enclosing the east end of the village.

The village is laid-out so that the demesne of Ardagh House forms the north end of the village and the front elevations of the vast majority of the estate buildings in the village face towards the front of the house. The impressive and richly ornamented Gothic-style clock tower to the centre of the village green forms the focal point of the entire project. An inscription to this clock tower commemorates Sir George Fetherston’s ‘life-long devotion to the moral and social improvement of his tenantry

The local authority planners deemed the application invalid as the planning application form description of development does not match the public notices, does not match the site notice and does not match the newspaper notice.