Work begins on St Dominic's Priory

In February this year the Trust was pleased to approve $95,000 to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dunedin to assist with the roof restoration of Dunedin’s Dominican Priory. For readers based within Dunedin, you may have noticed the scaffolding surrounding parts of the Priory recently.

Sean Toomey outlines that "work is now well under way". In his brief overview Sean explains that construction work finally commenced in June, albeit a small set back due to a delay in sourcing the required slate from the quarry in Wales. However, with this now resolved the contracting team have made good progress in advancing the roof restoration. The removal of old slates has commenced, neccessary repair work has been undertaken on a number of the damaged structures, installation of building paper and new battens and slates have been completed on about a quarter of the roof.

Internal work repairing and replacing damaged timber framing is nearly half completed. Sean notes that final completion is now expected to be November.  "There will be a delay once the rear half of the roof replacement is completed to allow the scaffold to be relocated to the front of the building. To keep costs down we have only scaffolded half the building at a time. Once the scaffold is relocated, work will start on those sections. While the scaffolding is in place, we have decided to treat the moss on the parapets and walls to try and improve the general appearance of the exterior".  

Trustees and staff had the privledge of visiting the Priory in early 2016 and as you can see from one of the images below the view from this magnificant historic building is something quite special.  Dunedin’s Dominican Priory is a Category 1 historic place, it was constructed in 1877.