Planning green light for Cootehill pastoral centre

Planning has been granted to Cootehill Pastoral Council who are looking to build a fully serviced single storey pastoral centre behind St Michael’s Church on Station Road.

The plans for the Magheranure site, and within the within the curtilage of St. Michael's Church, a protected structure, incorporates a new meeting room/hall.

It will also contain offices, a reception area and coffee dock, toilet facilities, together with connection to existing services and all ancillary site works.

The planned centre will have a gross floor area of 230sqm and an overall height of just over eight metres.

It will sit on a lower ground level more than 10 metres back from the actual church itself, however questions have been asked about how the project will fit with future planned developments in the town and existing built heritage.

To an adjoining site to the north Adli Ireland has submitted plans to build a new store, and to the south, Erne Modern Houses Limited have received planning to build 12 two storey houses.

The proposed centre design incorporates angular elements and stone cladding to blend with the church, a gothic cruciform-plan gable fronted building first built back in the late 1920’s.

A planning report submitted cites a “similar example” single storey domestic styled building in grounds of the Cootehill Presbyterian Church.

Referrals were made to An Taisce, the Heritage Council and the Development Applications Unit of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and significant further information was submitted.

Permission was granted with just two conditions attached- to include a presentation on how St Michael’s Church and the rear of the church grounds, including the new pastoral building “would relate to” a proposed new urban street development and regeneration measuring some 4.5 hectares.

The second condition asked that the applicant consider elevation changes to “fully reflect” its likely “future visibility” from all sides, and its “proximity to a building of noted architectural heritage”.