While the studio maintained itself as a business, despite a subsequent fire, Lynch always felt close to her former convent school. She eventually decided to become a nun there, entering the
enclosed Dominican Order in St Mary's Convent,
Dún Laoghaire (then called Kingstown), on 5 July 1896. She took the name Sr. Mary Concepta. As Mary was a prerequisite name of all the nuns at the convent she was known as Concepta, Connie to other nuns or Con to some students. As the order was a teaching order, Lynch worked there as an educator. She taught art and illustrated the school magazine and the convent's official annals. She wrote plays for and staged
tableaux with her students on Irish cultural and religious subjects, and created elaborate cribs each Christmas. She had musical ability as well, teaching music including the kazoo and she wrote hymns. Lynch was one of the early devotees in Ireland to St
Thérèse of Lisieux. Many of the hymns Lynch wrote were to honour this saint. She also held a devotion to
Saint Columba and greatly revered the medieval Columban Irish monks who produced the masterpieces of
Insular illumination such as
The Book of Kells. The oratory was dedicated to the Sacred Heart in 1919. Beginning the next year, in 1920, Lynch first worked on the wall behind the statue, which stood above the altar, to provide it with a proper setting, in an Eastern Christian or Byzantine medieval style; and on the Gaelic script over the entrance door. After that she sought and was given permission to take on the whole interior of the oratory. The project was supported by her cousin,
Shaun Glenville, and his wife,
Dorothy Ward, who would regularly visit the convent. The couple were
music hall entertainers, famous in their role as
Pantomime dame and
Principal boy, and raised funds for the oratory through benefit concerts. The studio of Joshua Clarke & Sons, father of
Harry Clarke, created the seven stained-glass windows. and the design conceived was rigidly adhered to from the start throughout the years. Working stensils exist from 1921 to 1923 for different parts of the scheme including the ceiling, so the complete scheme was first marked on the surface in preparatory work and then Lynch built up the design to increasing states of completeness. The outline of the scheme was probably in place by the celebration of her Silver Jubilee, 11 November 1923, when family and friends came to visit her and were invited to view her work. She first elaborated the altar wall, worked up the side walls, then designs on the doors and exterior
tympanum (not yet evident in March 1927). Probably for reasons of access, work on the ceiling was less further on. For this she lay on her back on a board between two ladders, and it was the ceiling and back upper wall which remained unfinished when she was finally forced to stop. The
Lynch Method determined that one part of the whole should never be entirely finished but that the pattern was kept in a state of constant accumulation, thus while the ceiling is not in a finished state it is not painted in patches but rather worked to a uniform level giving a satisfying impression of artistic completeness. ==Criticism==