After last Friday’s text about the Massy mausoleum in the graveyard of Ardagh, County Limerick (Blessed are the Dead « The Irish Aesthete), here is another such monument in the same site. In this instance, it commemorates William Smith O’Brien, one of the key figures in the Young Ireland movement who, following a failed armed uprising in 1848, was transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), although pardoned and permitted to return to his native country in 1856. Erected the year after O’Brien’s death in 1864, the mausoleum was designed by Limerick-born architect William Fogerty in the Hiberno-Romanesque style. It contains the remains not just of O’Brien but also his wife Lucy Caroline Gabbett, who predeceased him, and the couple’s eldest son Edward William O’Brien, described on an inscription  as “A Just Man, Lover of His People.” Above the cast-iron panelled door can be seen the O’Brien coat of arms carved in sandstone. The chevron pattern mouldings above the door are supported by Connemara marble columns, and note how the outermost limestone arch concludes in balls of shamrocks. Inside the tympanum is O’Brien’s motto,  ‘Is laidir an lamh in uachtair’ (The heavy hand is uppermost) Sandstone and limestone are also employed in alternate bands around the rest of the building, with a series of blind arches on three sides.

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