Thomas Francis McNamara

Who was Thomas Francis McNamara?

Thomas Francis McNamara, RIAI, RIBA, was an Irish Roman Catholic ecclesiastical architect active throughout the late-nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth-century Ireland who designed many hospitals and Roman Catholic churches. He was a pupil and later managing assistant of William Hague Jr., partner of the architectural firms Hague and McNamara and later T.F. McNamara. He was father of architects N.P. McNamara and Charles G. McNamara, who were partners in his firm from the 1920s, the latter absorbed his practice into his own.

At the office of William Hague, an architect who designed many Roman Catholic churches generally in the French Gothic style, McNamara rose from being a pupil to managing assistant. Hague died 1899, the year Omagh’s Sacred Heart was dedicated and consequently it was “a culmination of [Hague's] amazing catalogue of completed ecclesiastical designs and his continuous championship of the Gothic Revival style,” according to Richard Oram in Expressions of Faith-Ulster’s Church Heritage. Following his death, his partner T. F. McNamara took over most of his commissions.