Every year in the second half of August Ireland celebrates Heritage Week, with many events coordinated by the National Heritage Council. As this site has demonstrated since 2012, the country has a singularly rich architectural heritage, although too much of it remains insufficiently appreciated and cherished. One area of the past’s legacy that often receives too little are our religious buildings, not least the abundance of churches either constructed, restored or enlarged by the Church of Ireland in the late 18th/early 19th centuries. As has been discussed here before, many of these benefited from funds provided by the Board of First Fruits (for more on this body and its work, see Made Better By Their Presents II « The Irish Aesthete). However, declining attendance over the past 100 years means a large number of these churches are no longer in use, quite a lot of them derelict and roofless. But some remain in use and in excellent condition, a tribute to the faith of earlier generations and to the various craftsmen responsible for the buildings’ creation. To mark this year’s Heritage Week, here is one such building: Nun’s Cross Church, County Wicklow.

The predecessor of Nun’s Cross Church was the now-ruined medieval church of nearby Killiskey, the first mention of which is in a Papal document dating from 1179, by which time this part of the country formed part of the Diocese of Glendalough (later absorbed into the Diocese of Dublin). However, like so many other such buildings Killiskey church likely suffered badly during the upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, and their aftermath. Accordingly, in 1813 the Select Vestry of Wicklow Parish determined to build a new church on a fresh site, the land being provided by Charles and Frances Tottenham who lived nearby. As originally completed in 1817, Nun’s Cross was a standard barn-style church with a square tower at the west end; the north and south transepts, together with the chancel, were added in 1842. There has been some discussion about who might have been the architect responsible, not least because Francis Johnston received two substantial commissions from landowners in the immediate vicinity, the aforementioned Charles Tottenham for whom he enlarged Ballycurry, and Francis Synge (great-grandfather of John Millington Synge) for whom he transformed Glanmore, hitherto a classical house, into a battlemented castle. Johnston also designed a new Church of Ireland church in Arklow, some 15 miles to the south, which was consecrated in 1815, two years before Nun’s Cross. However, Patricia Butler in her excellent book marking the bicentenary of Nun’s Cross, also discusses that another Dublin-based architect, William Farrell, who had worked with Johnston until his dismissal in 1810, might have had a hand in the church’s design. One curious feature of the building’s interior are the male and female heads serving as corbels for the ceiling’s ribbed vaulting; these are not dissimilar to those found inside Johnston’s Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle, where work began in 1807. The carving there was undertaken by father and son Edward and John Smyth but Butler proposes that at Nun’s Cross the work was undertaken by a plasterer called Darcy who lived in nearby Ashford and who is known to have worked with Johnston on the Chapel Royal. 

As mentioned, the chancel and transepts were added in 1842 to the designs of Frederick Darley who for many years worked in the office of Francis Johnston; a Vestry Room and Coal Store were added to the building 40 years later. In 1904, to celebrate the safe return of his son from the Boer War, Charles George Tottenham paid the entire cost of covering the walls of the chancel in decorative blind arcading with red marble from County Cork and alabaster imported from Derbyshire; the scheme was designed by architect Richard Orpen (a brother of the artist William Orpen), founder and first secretary of the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland. The oak pulpit, prayer desk and pulpit, all dating from 1905, were all carved by the Flemish sculptor Pieter De Wispelaere who also produced work for Maynooth College Chapel, County Kildare and Carlow Cathedral. Much of the nave continues to be lit by clear mullioned glass set into traceried windows. The glass in the church’s great East Window dates from 1902/3 when made by Kempe & Company of London and installed by the Crofton family in memory of one of their number, Major Henry Crofton, killed in South Africa in 1902. Two other windows on the south wall of the chancel date from 1882 and 1935, the earlier one attributed to London firm of Cox, Buckley & Co, the later made by An Túr Gloine in Dublin. The stained glass windows in the south and north transepts, installed in memory of various local families and all dating from the 1860s, were made by various firms. All the glass here was restored some 15 years ago. There are also a number of memorials to the deceased inside the church, not least those on the west wall of the south transept, almost entirely covered in plaques to members of the Tottenham family. Given how many Irish of Ireland churches stand empty and neglected, it is wonderful to see this building so well maintained and still in active use