Category Archives: Irish Church

Unspoilt



Sitting in a graveyard on the edge of Strangford Lough, his little Roman Catholic church at Ardkeen on the Ards Peninsula, County Down dates from 1777, as legislation against dissenters from the Established Church was beginning to be revoked. It was erected by general subscription overseen by a local priest, Fr Daniel O’Dorman and initially served the entire peninsula but in the 19th century, as other churches were constructed, the building became less used and was reduced to the status of a mortuary chapel: seemingly it now hosts a service only once a year, on All Souls’ Day (November 1st). The church retains much of its original appearance, including arch-headed sash windows and a roof covered in rough-hewn ‘Tullycavey’ slates. Inside also little has changed, with the box pews still in place and on the south side of the altar a simple confessional box. In 2019 the church won one of the Ulster Architectural Heritage’s Angel Awards for Best Maintenance of a Community Building, but it now looks once more in need of  attention, as the condition of the window frames indicates.



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Uncertain Future I


Just over a week ago, the handful of Cistercian monks still living at Mount Melleray Abbey, County Waterford left the premises and moved to another part of the country. The history of the abbey dates back almost 200 years, to the aftermath of the 1830 Revolution in France when a group of some 64 Irish and English monks were obliged to leave their monastery at Melleray in Brittany. Led by Melleray’s Prior, Waterford-born Fr Vincent Ryan, they arrived in this country in December 1831 and initially rented a property in County Kerry but soon found that site unsatisfactory and were then offered an alternative by Sir Richard Keane who a few years earlier had inherited a large estate at Cappoquin, County Waterford. Keane proposed the monks rent 600 acres of mountain land at a modest rent. Assisted by local people, the furze and scrub covering the property was gradually cleared and a working farm established. Meanwhile, preparations were made for the establishment of a new monastery, the foundation stone of which was laid on 20th August 1833, the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux. Created an abbey two years later, with Fr Ryan as its first abbot, the monastery was named Mount Melleray, in memory of the French house left behind. 





For a long time, Mount Melleray thrived; at its height the monastery was home to some 150 priests and brothers. A school operated on the premises from 1843 until it closed in 1974 (see Untapped Potential « The Irish Aesthete) and in addition to the farm, there was a carpenters’ workshop, a forge and an aviary. Nothing offers better evidence of the Cistercian order’s confidence in the future than the great church, plans for which were first drawn up a century ago following the acquisition of all the cut limestone which had once been used for the exterior of Mitchelstown Castle, County Cork. That great house, which stood some 28 miles to the west west, had been burnt by anti-Treaty forces in August 1922 (see Doomed Inheritance « The Irish Aesthete) and stood empty when Mount Melleray’s Abbot Dom Marius O’Phelan proposed buying the stone. Once agreement had been reached, the material was transported by steam lorry in two consignments a day over a five-year period. Designed by the Dublin firm of Jones and Kelly which specialised in producing traditional designs for religious clients, the new abbey church’s foundation stone was laid in April 1933, shortly before the abbey celebrated the centenary of its foundation. With its great square lantern tower, the main body of work on the abbey church was completed in November 1940, although it was only somewhat later that the high altar and some 20 lesser altars, gifts of benefactors, were installed, together with stained glass, some of which was made by the Harry Clarke Studios. At the south-west corner of this building and at a right-angle to it, a smaller, ‘public’ church was also built, again to the designs of Jones and Kelly and again with stained glass from the Clarke studios. The interior here is also decorated with extensive use of mosaic on the walls. The church was originally dedicated to Saint Philomena, and was once the National Shrine of the latter saint. However, her statue was removed when, on instructions from the Holy See in 1961, Philomena’s name was removed from all liturgical calendars. 





So what will happen now to these churches and all the ancillary buildings around them, once accommodating hundreds of monks and visitors but now standing empty? The last eight monks have moved to another monastery, Mount St Joseph, County Tipperary and no decision has been taken on the future of the abbey at Mount Melleray. In Ireland of the 21st century, this is not an unusual circumstance: the numbers of people choosing to enter the religious life has dropped steeply in recent decades, and one legacy are substantial properties that are surplus to their original requirement. Finding an alternative purpose, especially for a site such as this one, which is relatively isolated, several miles from the nearest town and with no public services in the vicinity, will be challenging. And yet, again like so many others, the buildings are sturdily constructed and, in this particular instance, of architectural interest not least for the incorporation of cut stone from Mitchelstown Castle. A conundrum. 


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How the Mighty have Fallen


‘Sir Lucas Dillon, father of the first Earl of Roscommon, and son of Sir Robert Dillon, who was Attorney-General to Henry VIII, built the castle and church of Moymett, after having received the grants of the Abbey of the Virgin Mary at Trim, and the townlands of Ladyrath, Grange of Trim, Cannonstown and Rathnally, in the year 1567.’
From ‘A Continuation of Notes on Sepia Sketches of Various Antiquities presented to the Library of the Royal Irish Academy’ by George V Du Noyer, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. VII, 1862.





The tomb of Sir Lucas Dillon (c.1530-1593) and his first wife Jane Bathe in Newtown Trim, County Meath has featured here before (see Former Greatness « The Irish Aesthete). As mentioned above, he was the eldest son of Sir Robert Dillon, and member of a Norman family which had settled in Ireland in the 12th century and thereafter prospered. A Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, Sir Robert, despite being Roman Catholic, assisted in the English crown in the dissolution of monasteries in Ireland and in 1537 was granted a 21-year lease of the demesne of St Peter’s at in Newtown Trim and three years later was allowed to buy the property (in 1546 he also purchased the Carmelite monastery at Athcarne, Co. Meath). Like his father, Lucas Dillon became a lawyer and in 1565 was appointed Solicitor General for Ireland. He would later become Attorney General, a member of the Irish Parliament, Chief Baron of the Exchequer (succeeding his late father-in-law), and then a member of the Irish Privy Council. During this period, he acquired the land at Moymet, some four miles north-west of Newtown Trim which he also owned. Again like his father, he acted in the service of the English government: in Terry Clavin’s entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he notes that Dillon ‘believed that the best means of pacifying Ireland was by the extension of the common law to all corners of the island.’ He was especially close to Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1565-71 and again 1575-78 and accompanied the latter on his tours of Ireland; Sidney knighted Dillon in 1575. Inevitably as he grew older, the number of Dillon’s enemies increased – he often faced charges of corruption – but he managed to hold on to his offices until he died in 1593. His eldest son James would become first Earl of Roscommon, despite remaining Roman Catholic, although (although subsequent generations conformed to the Established Church).





In their guide to North Leinster, Professors Casey and Rowan described the buildings at Moymet as ‘a rare microcosm of late medieval life in Ireland.’ The ensemble begins with a substantial three-storey gatehouse, comprising an entrance archway, once vaulted, with a number of rooms above. On the west side, a narrow vaulted chamber has a spiral staircase in one corner giving access to the upper level. A short distance south of this lie the remains of the castle which would have served as the Dillons’ residence. Although now in poor condition, this was originally of four storeys, presumably with a typical vaulted chamber on the ground floor (none of the interior divisions survive). Several large window and chimney openings survive, as well as a garderobe in the south-east corner of the structure. There is also, seemingly a much-worn sheela-na-gig figure on the east wall, but the presence of an excessively inquisitive herd of cattle prevented the Irish Aesthete from seeing this. A long, low range to the immediate west probably acted as a service block. Meanwhile, further west of the castle stands a similarly ruined church, once dedicated to St Brigid. Like the other buildings on this site, it is thought to have been built, or perhaps rebuilt by Sir Luke Dillon since the church is in two parts, the nave wider than the chancel and lit by slender windows with trefoils carved into the spandrels, each then capped with hood moulding.  An internal staircase in the north-east corner of the nave formerly gave access to the rood-loft, where most likely a priest lived. At the east end, the chancel closes in a large rectangular window divided into three with ogee arches and, once more, a hood moulding over the whole. The church appears to have been damaged during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and then abandoned, as were the nearby castle and its associated structures, leaving the whole to fall into decay.


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Some Highly Picturesque Remains



As the year draws to a close, some pictures of what remains of Corickmore, County Tyrone, a religious house founded c.1465 for Franciscans of the Third Order. The establishment had a relatively short life, being granted in 1603 to Sir Henry Piers and thereafter being allowed to fall into ruin. In Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), we read ‘There are some highly picturesque remains of this abbey, affording an idea of the original extent and elegance of the buildings.’ Such is no longer the case, since only the east wall and window of the church survives in any substance, the rest of the building being reduced to low sections of masonry. The surrounding grounds, heavily overgrown, are filled with gravestones, some of which date back to the 17th century, not long after the site would have been relinquished by the Franciscans.



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A History of Restoration


Thought to have been born in the Donegal region of Ulster c.624, Adomnán, or Eunan as he is more widely known, was one of the many early Irish Christian monks who achieved widespread fame and ultimately canonisation.  When young, he may have spent some time at Durrow Abbey, County Offaly (see On the Plain of Oaks « The Irish Aesthete) which had been founded during the previous century by Saint Columba, to whom he was related. This would also explain why eventually he moved to the island of Iona, off the Scottish coast, where Columba had established another great monastery in 563, and where Eunan would become ninth abbot in 679. Renowned for his scholarship, between 697-700 he wrote the work for which he is best remembered, the Vita Columbae (or Life of St Columba). He died in 704.





St Eunan is believed to have been born in or close to the town of Raphoe, County Donegal where he established a monastery. Nothing of this survives, the earliest remains being two fragments of carved sculptural stonework probably once part of a door lintel. In the 12th century, Raphoe was established as a Diocesan See, and surviving evidence of the cathedral then erected can be found in the south-east section of the chancel, including a triple sedilia and a piscina bowl. However, St Eunan’s suffered greatly during the upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, and therefore underwent extensive restorations and alterations. The first of these began around 1605 when the Scottish-born clergyman George Montgomery, who had previously served as chaplain to James I, was appointed by the king not just Bishop of Raphoe, but simultaneously Bishop of Clogher and Derry (he was translated to the See of Meath alone in 1610). Montgomery’s successor Andrew Knox, another Scotsman, served as Bishop of Raphoe until his death in 1633, but also as Bishop of the Isles in his native country until 1619 (when he resigned so that his eldest son Thomas Knox could take over the diocese). On Knox’s arrival in Raphoe, the cathedral was described as ‘ruinated and decayed’ and therefore substantial restoration was undertaken during his episcopacy: a door lintel in the south porch is an inscription: AN. KNOX II EP I. CVRA. With its scrolled volutes, this porch (see final picture) is of interest because of its Italianate Baroque design, thought to date from the late 17th or very early 18th century, a rare surviving example from that period. Meanwhile, it may be that further work was undertaken on the building during the episcopacy of  yet another Scotsman, John Leslie (1633-1661), the ‘fighting bishop’ during whose time a new palace was built on an adjacent rise (see From Bishops to Bullocks « The Irish Aesthete). Nevertheless, the greater part of the cathedral as seen today dates from the 1730s, during the long episcopacy of Nicholas Forster, who served as bishop of the diocese from 1716 to 1743 and therefore had ample time to see to the building and improve its condition, helped in this enterprise thanks to funds left by one of his predecessors, John Pooley (died 1712). Visitors enter St Eunan’s through a porch below the west tower built by the bishop in 1738 but the transepts also added by Forster would be demolished in the late 19th century as part of the next restoration project. Incidentally, during his episcopacy, Forster also commissioned the handsome Volt House (now a heritage centre), which stands on Raphoe’s Diamond not far from the cathedral and was originally intended to house four widows of Church of Ireland clergymen.





Despite all the attention paid to St Eunan’s in the early 18th century, once more it suffered neglect, so much so that in 1876, the diocesan correspondent to the Ecclesiastical Gazette judged the place to be ‘the most neglected church in the diocese’. Between 1888-82 an extensive programme of restoration was undertaken by architect Sir Thomas Drew to return the cathedral’s ‘mediaeval’ character. Among other work done, the transepts, pews, and a gallery all dating from Forster’s time were removed. Much of what can be seen inside the building – the chancel arch, the east gable windows, the encaustic tiled floor, the timber panelling behind the altar and many of the present window openings all date from Drew’s intervention. Some of the stained glass windows in the chancel and nave were designed by members of  the An Túr Gloine studio. The west porch’s timber doors featuring Celtic motifs, symbols of the four evangelists and a border inscription were carved by a Mrs McQuaid, wife of a former rector, in 1907 in memory of her father Dean Joseph Potter who had died two years earlier. A few years ago, the cathedral underwent its most recent series of renovations, with €450,000 spent on a new roof and the repair of defective stonework, as well as the installation of interior lighting and a certain amount of redecoration. St Eunan’s has a long history of restoration, but, all being well, another such programme ought not to be required for a long time to come. 

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The Place of Pleasant Aspect



Popular belief proposes that Balleighan Abbey, County Donegal was founded close to the eastern shore of Lough Swilly by Hugh Dubh O’Donnell at the beginning of the 16th century. In fact the building is older than that and while it may have been associated with the O’Donnells, the place was a church of the Third Order of the Franciscans who had a friary directly opposite on the lough’s western side. The location’s name derives from the Irish The name is derived the Irish ‘Baile-aighidh-chaoin’, meaning the place of pleasant aspect, although this was hard to appreciate when the Irish Aesthete visited on a dank, grey afternoon. With little surviving decoration, the roofless church retains a singularly fine 15th century window with sinuous tracery, today mostly appreciated by cattle grazing in the surrounding fields. 



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Twins in Trinity



In Trinity College Dublin’s Front (otherwise known as Parliament) Square, two buildings with identical facades look across at each other. Planned in the mid-1770s by Sir William Chambers, but executed by Christopher Myers (and then completed after the latter’s death by his son Graham Myers), that to the north holds the college Chapel, that to the south the Theatre, now Examination Hall. Both are of five bays, with the three centre bays featuring a ground-floor arcade supporting Corinthian columns below a substantial pediment. While these are faced in Portland stone, the flanking single bay three storey offices are of granite ashlar. Yet, while the exteriors look the same, the interiors are very differen






Built 1777-86, and therefore preceding the nearby Chapel by a decade, Trinity College Dublin’s Theatre, now Examination Hall, is a five-bay hall with elliptical groin vaulted ceiling and plasterwork created by stuccodore Michael Stapleton. In a gallery above the facade arcade can be seen a gilded organ case was made in 1684 by Lancelot Pease, while the chandelier at the south end of the hall formerly hung in the Irish House of Commons. The walls here are hung with a series of portraits commissioned from Robert Home in1782, their frames carved by Richard Cranfield. However, much space on the west side is taken up by a monument to Dr Richard Baldwin, Provost of the college from 1717 until his death in 1758’ this superlative work, dating from 1781, was designed by Christopher Hewetson. Incorporating Italian Africano marble salvaged from an ancient Roman architectural site and a sarcophagus of Porto Venere Marble with gilt bronze feet, the white marble figures were carved in Rome and installed by Edward Smyth.






Soon after the theatre was finished, work began on the college’s chapel, completed in 1798. As with the other building, this is a five-bay hall, although somewhat longer and narrower in shape, with a bowed organ gallery at the south end (carved by Richard Cranfield) and an elliptical apse at the north end.
Between the nave’s arched openings, some glazed, some blind, paired and fluted Ionic pilasters lead the eye to the coffered ceiling with its rich plasterwork by Michael Stapleton. Additional light is provided by semi-circular clerestory windows above the cornice. As so often with churches, the building experienced alterations in the 19th century altering its hitherto pure classical character. Stained glass by Clayton & Bell was installed in 1865, depicting scenes of Moses and the Children, the Ransom of the Lord, the Sermon on the Mount, and Christ with the teachers of Law. The polychrome floor tiles were added to designs of John McCurdy, and, in 1872, stained glass windows were installed in the apse and centre, showing the Transfiguration, to designs by Mayer & Company. Nevertheless, even with these changes the chapel offers an example of decorative taste in Ireland on the eve of the Act of Union. 



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The New World in the Old



The Roman Catholic St Joseph’s church in Valleymount, County Wicklow originally dates from 1803 but its granite facade and porch were added around 1835. With pilasters rising above the level parapet to piers topped with slender decorative pinnacles, it is claimed that the porch was either designed by a local priest inspired by churches he had seen on a visit to Malta, or was constructed by parishioners who had visited New Mexico (now Texas). Only the deadening expanse of tarmacadam around the building would remind visitors that they were in Ireland. Inside, the side aisles hold a two pairs of bejewelled stained glass windows from the Harry Clarke studios, installed in the 1930s.





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In a Disused Graveyard


The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never any more the dead.




The verses in it say and say:
‘The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.’

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?




It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

In a Disused Graveyard by Robert Frost
Photographs of St Mary’s church and graveyard, Castlehill, County Down

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A Little Crazy



Hard to believe this is all that remains of Gallen Priory, County Offaly, a once-great religious house founded in 492AD by Saint Cadoc. After being badly damaged in the 9th century, the monastery here was restored by Welsh monks but several hundred years later, it came under the authority of the Augustinian order, remaining so until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1540s and thereafter falling into decay. Excavations of the site in the 1930s revealed parts of over 200 early Christian burial monuments and these have since been unsympathetically and randomly set in cement walls on the locations of what would have been the east and west gables of the church here, suggesting the inspiration was crazy paving.