By Bill Heaney

Landmark St Patrick’s Church in Dumbarton is facing a cash crisis.
Cumulative repair bills for the church, the parish hall and presbytery are estimated at around £200,000.

Three ceilings in the chapel house crashed down, plaster cracked, walls were damaged and the church roof has been found to be defective.

Parishioners were given the bad news when hundreds turned up at Easter services over the weekend.

Parish priest Canon Gerry Conroy said: “We are facing some large bills in the near future due to long-term water penetration.”

The parishioners have known for some weeks that the church hall, a vital community asset, needs extensive work done on it.

Functions such as wedding receptions, dances, gatherings and community group meetings have had to be relocated for health and safety reasons.

Money raised for an extension to the hall to accommodate even more church and community events and functions will now have to be diverted into urgent repairs to the other buildings.

St Patrick’s Fabric and Finance Committee have been told that in addition to the other damage, the familiar four-pinnacle bell tower, and bell frame accommodated in it, is in need of attention.

Canon Conroy said: “We had already committed to this before these other issues arose and since the work is needed to protect the bell frame, it has been decided to go ahead with that work.

“The cost for that is just over £31,000 and we will have to introduce a second collection during Sunday services to pay for 
this.

“In addition, after three ceilings came down in the chapel house and different cracks appeared in the plaster work and in other ceilings and walls, essential repair work was carried out to the roof. 

“At the same time, a survey was carried out on the roof and we were informed that the lead work, gutters and down pipes, as well as the slates on the roof, being over 100 years old, have come to the end of their life.

“A new roof is needed as a matter of urgency.”

Canon Conroy added that tenders for the work are currently being sought and he invited applications from parishioners to see the tender documents.”

He revealed that the Archdiocese of Glasgow, of which Dumbarton is part, “has no money to help is out and so the parish must find the money itself”.

In order to pay for the repairs, the parish would have to “re-instate the second collection and possibly organise fund-raisers, which could prove difficult since the hall which would be the obvious venue for these is closed.

The church was built with pennies and sixpences collected from poor parishioners in the pews at a time when people had very little money.

Some of the women of the parish even gave up their wedding rings which were which were melted down to create a tabernacle and other sacred objects.

The parishioners are praying that someone well-disposed to the parish and proud of its history will step in and make a substantial donation towards the repair costs. 

This happened in the past when a parishioner, Patrick McKay, of Westonlee House in Bonhill Road, donated a magnificent marble altar and side altars and stained glass windows were installed.

There has been a St Patrick’s Church in Dumbarton since 1830 when the town was just a village with the main thoroughfare straggling along the banks of the River Leven for just a few hundred yards. The Catholic population then was in the region of 500, made up almost exclusively of Irish immigrants.

Eventually, as shipbuilding on the River Clyde expanded and more Irish people arrived in Dunbartonshire looking for work, St Patrick’s became the “mother church” to missions from Clydebank to Rosneath and Arrochar. Catholic schools sprung up around the area and on March 22, 1903, the present church, an imposing red-sandstone building in Strathleven Place, was officially opened by Archbishop Charles Eyre.