St Mary’s Oratory is on the main street of Newtownstewart. It has an interesting history and context which you can read about on the Ardstraw East parish website.
I entered this church on a bright sunny day. Initially the church itself was dark inside. This created a magical, quite otherworldly effect. This was dissipated a little when, automatically, electric lighting came on. However only a little! This is a good example of how the effect of stained glass is difficult to capture in photography. The current sunny weather leads to all sorts of effects both aesthetically pleasing and spiritually uplifting. These panels of strongly-coloured glass are probably not much to look at here, but are very impressive in context:
Just beside the altar there are long panels, again of strongly-coloured components:
There were also some striking effects from the glass on the outer doors, again the limits of my photographic skill is very much in evidence:
Séamus Sweeney 