Category Archives: Irish Church

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.


Buried but Not Forgotten



A short distance to the west of the ruins of Aghadoe Cathedral, County Kerry stands the now-disused Church of Ireland church. Work on the building, designed by an unknown architect, began in 1837, the land on which it stands being given by Charles Winn-Allanson, second Lord Headley who during the previous decade had built a new residence nearby. Lord Headley’s somewhat eccentric and spendthrift successors to the title have featured here before (see From Kerry to Mecca « The Irish Aesthete) but he seems to have been a model landlord, his death in 1840 much lamented in the area. Surviving him by more than 20 years, his widow Anne did much to relieve the suffering of local tenants during the years of the Great Famine and after. The large Headley tomb behind the church appropriately carries the words ‘Buried But Not Forgotten.’ The church ceased to be used for services in 1989 and now stands looking rather desolate in the midst of the graveyard.


Pagan Inspiration


On 6th-7th January 1839 Ireland was struck by what subsequently became known as the Night of the Big Wind. Such was the ferocity of the hurricane-force gales that many buildings throughout the country suffered damage, one of these being the Presbyterian Church in Portaferry, County Down. Originally dating from 1694 but almost entirely rebuilt in 1751, in the aftermath of the storm this structure was left in such a poor state of repair that services could no longer be held there. Accordingly the decision was taken to demolish the older church and erect a new one of the same site. The architect given the task was Belfast-born John Millar, known to have spent time in the office of Thomas Hopper in London before returning to this country. Millar’s brother was a Presbyterian minister, which explains why, between 1829 and 1839, he had been given commissions to design a number of other Presbyterian churches in Ulster. His later life seems to have been blighted by misfortune. According to an entry in the online Dictionary of Irish Architects (www.dia.ie) , after being declared bankrupt in 1854 he went to Australia, then returned home before leaving again for Australia the following year: on this second voyage, his ship was wrecked off the coast. Moving to New Zealand, he was appointed engineer to the town board of Dunedin, dismissed from the post in 1864, reinstated and then dismissed again. That same year he also lost all his possessions when his house was burned down. He died in 1876, of ‘hepatic disease, dropsy and exhaustion’. The DIA describes him as ‘a man of extravagant claims, exuberant schemes and quixotic behaviour.’  




From the start, the Portico Church won plaudits. In 1842, barely a year after it had opened for services, the local Down Recorder enthused, ‘The style of architecture which Mr Millar has adopted is that which prevailed in Greece during the architectural age of Pericles; its dimensions are sufficiently large to produce an impression of grandeur and sublimity.’ More recently, in 1970 J.S Curl commented that the building ‘would not look out of place in Helsinki or Leningrad [St Petersburg]. Indeed, this marvellous Greek temple is one of the most distinguished Neoclassical buildings in Ulster, and is in the first rank of Neoclassical designs in the whole of the British Isles.’ Various alterations have been made to the building since first constructed, not all of them necessarily beneficial; for example, at some date in the early 20th century, probably owing a problem with damp, the exterior was painted. Also in the last century, coloured glass was introduced into the windows, thereby disrupting the purity of the interior’s light. Clearly the local congregation in the 1840s must have been substantial, given the scale of the church (its predecessor seemingly had 90 seats in the aisle and another 14 in a gallery). However, in more recent decades the number attending services declined sharply and in consequence the building began to suffer from neglect. Happily in 2015 responsibility for the church was taken on by a charity, ‘Portico Ards’, which then raised £1.6 million for its complete restoration (thanks to support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and over 30 other grant raiders). While it continues to serve its original purpose on Sunday mornings, holding services for members of the Presbyterian faith, today the building also functions as an arts and heritage centre, hosting a wide variety of cultural activities.
Built at a cost of £1,999 and formally opened by Rev. Henry Cooke in September 1841, Portaferry’s Portico Church, as it’s known, is a building of very distinctive and rather unexpected character. Many of Millar’s designs for other Presbyterian communities had been classical in style, but this is something else again. The primary source of inspiration was the Temple of Nemesis, built c.460-420 BC in Rhamnous, an ancient Greek city on the north-eastern coast of Attica. The church’s north-west and south-east pedimented facades are almost identical, the former providing the main entrance to the interior via steps that lead into a porch set between the Doric columns, derived from those of the Temple of Apollo at Delos.  Six monumental columns, tapered and showing entasis, rest on top of the ground floor and rise unfluted to the entablature which encircles the structure. Clearly not based on ancient models but meeting the requirements of the congregation, the building’s glazed enclosures accommodate a vestibule for the gallery at one end and an organ chamber at the other. The church’s base takes the form of a battered podium. On the south-east side, the two outermost columns rest on battered corners bases separate from the main support; the open portion thus created by these separate bases permits access to smaller doorways into the building. Also on this side and set between the two central columns is what appears to be a miniature temple: inside this accommodates a staircase allowing the minister taking services to ascend to the pulpit. 




From the start, the Portico Church won plaudits. In 1842, barely a year after it had opened for services, the local Down Recorder enthused, ‘The style of architecture which Mr Millar has adopted is that which prevailed in Greece during the architectural age of Pericles; its dimensions are sufficiently large to produce an impression of grandeur and sublimity.’ More recently, in 1970 J.S Curl commented that the building ‘would not look out of place in Helsinki or Leningrad [St Petersburg]. Indeed, this marvellous Greek temple is one of the most distinguished Neoclassical buildings in Ulster, and is in the first rank of Neoclassical designs in the whole of the British Isles.’ Various alterations have been made to the building since first constructed, not all of them necessarily beneficial; for example, at some date in the early 20th century, probably owing a problem with damp, the exterior was painted. Also in the last century, coloured glass was introduced into the windows, thereby disrupting the purity of the interior’s light and the first organ installed. Clearly the local congregation in the 1840s must have been substantial, given the scale of the church (its predecessor seemingly had 90 seats in the aisle and another 14 in a gallery). However, in more recent decades the number attending services declined sharply and in consequence the building began to suffer from neglect. Happily in 2015 responsibility for the church was taken on by a charity, ‘Portico Ards’, which then raised £1.6 million for its complete restoration (thanks to support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and over 30 other grant raiders). While it continues to serve its original purpose on Sunday mornings, holding services for members of the Presbyterian faith, today the building also functions as an arts and heritage centre, hosting a wide variety of cultural activities and thereby ensuring that it has a viable future.  

Still in Use


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

A Well Selected Site


‘The Cathedral of Aghadoe  or Achadh-dá-eó’ (the Field of the Two Yews) is situated three miles west of Killarney, on high ground, 405 feet above sea level, from which, perhaps, a better general idea of the magnificence of the lake and mountain scenery of the district can be got than from any other point of vantage in the neighbourhood. The ground slopes up the whole way from the north shore of the Lower Lake to the Cathedral, a distance of about a mile. No one who has visited any considerable number of ancient ecclesiastical buildings can fail to have been struck by the care which the monks took in selecting sites where feelings of religious devotion might be intensified by the contemplation of all that is beautiful in nature. Sometimes the church stands beside a brawling stream, amidst the sylvan scenery of some secluded glen; or it is found by the banks of the broad river flowing through the rich meadows of the plain; or, as at Aghadoe, the charm lies in the extent of the landscape to be seen from an elevation, with its ever-changing effects of light and shade and variations of colour. The ecclesiastical remains at Aghadoe consist of the ruins of the Cathedral and the stump of a round tower, besides which are the mouldering remains of an old castle on the grassy hill-side sloping down towards the Lake. A church was founded here at a very early period by St Finan, the Leper, who also founded the monastery of Innisfallen, and whose festival is held on March 16th. Aghadoe afterwards became the site of a bishopric which was in later times joined to that of Ardfert…’
From ‘Notes on the Antiquities in Co Kerry’ by J. Romilly Allen, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Volume II, Fifth Series, 1892





‘All the interest of this building is concentrated in the west door. It is of four orders. The external order is more or less destroyed; it is now composed of three different ornaments, parts of three arches which have been stuck in when the door was repaired and patched up. I have rubbings of one…it is an uncommon variety of the incised chevron. The height of this doorway above the present level of the ground is 5ft 3in; the width at the top is 2ft 7in, and 2 ft 9in at the bottom. The bases of the jambs are square, plain and slightly projecting. The shafts have the rope pattern with beads…There is a peculiar ornament running around one of the orders. I should say the height of the jambs is 5ft 8in, not 4ft, and that one-third of their length is hidden which spoils the proportions of the door as represented. It is built of sandstone which is said to have been brought from a distance, there being none like it to be found for many miles around…’
From Notes on Irish Architecture by Edwin, third Earl of Dunraven, edited by Margaret Stokes (London, 1877)





‘The Castle or Military Tower is situated outside the churchyard, a little way down the hill to the south. It is a circular Norman keep of the thirteenth century, 21 ft diameter inside, having walls about 6ft thick, rudely built of rounded, water-worn boulders. A staircase in the thickness of the wall leads to the first floor, and there are indications of a second floor above. The doorway is on the east side on a level with the ground. The tower stands within a square intrenchment, having projecting bastions of the south side.’
From ‘Report on the Forty-Sixth Annual General Meeting at Kerry, Ireland’. Archaeologica Cambrensis, The Journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Society, Volume IX, Fifth Series, 1892)

Recalling Lost Houses


In his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland published in 1837, Samuel Lewis wrote of Kilcommon, County Mayo that the old church here, ‘was a chapel of ease, built in 1688 by Archbishop Vesey, who was buried in it, and was made the parish church on the church of Kilcommon becoming ruinous. The present church, which is also in Hollymount, was built in 1816, the late Board of First Fruits having granted a loan of £1000 ; it is a handsome building, with a cast iron spire, and is fitted up with English oak.’ The church, dedicated to King Charles the Martyr, is of cruciform shape and constructed of limestone ashlar; as Lewis noted, rather unusually, the spire is made of cast-iron. Services continued to be held here until November 1959 and the roof removed four years later. Seemingly the doorcase went to Ballintober Abbey and a wall monument remounted in St Mary’s Church, Ballinrobe, both in County Mayo, while the English oak mentioned by Lewis was repurposed in St Paul’s Church, Glenageary, County Dublin and the east window moved to St John’s Church, Lurgan, County Armagh.





In the same entry, Lewis notes that the family vaults of the Binghams, Lords Clanmorris, along with monuments of the Lindsey and Ruttledge families are to be found in the graveyard of King Charles the Martyr. The Binghams had settled in this part of the county in the mid-17th century and there built a house called Newbrook; it was accidentally destroyed in a fire in 1837 and not rebuilt. The monument, to the immediate east of the church, commemorates John Bingham who in 1800 agreed to surrender to the government the two parliamentary seats he controlled in the local borough in exchange for £8,000 and a peerage (for more on this, see Where Turkeys Voted for Christmas « The Irish Aesthete). Visitors to the graveyard note that the tomb is ‘Sacred to the memory of The Right Honorable John Charles Smith de Burgh Bingham, Lord Baron Clanmorris of Newbrook in the County of Mayo, A NOBLEMAN distinguished for the possession of those many eminent virtues which adorn life whether we consider him in the Character of a HUSBAND, FATHER, LANDLORD or FRIEND.’ Another side of the same monument observes that also interred here is Lord Clanmorris’s daughter Caroline Bingham, who died at the age of 15 in April 1821, a month before her father. The Lindsey family settled in the area in 1757 when Thomas Lindsey married Frances Vesey, a granddaughter of John Vesey who had built a house at Hollymount which she duly inherited; the family remained on the estate there until the start of the last century when it was sold to the Congested Districts’ Board. As for the Ruttledges, they lived at Bloomfield, a large house built c.1776. The tomb here commemorates Elizabeth, wife of Robert Ruttledge and daughter of Francis Knox of Rappa Castle, elsewhere in the county. According to the inscription, ‘Her engaging mildness unceasing humanity and warm affection endeared her to all her acquaintance and her uniform and unobtrusive piety together with the unremitting firmness with which she performed all her duties during a life of 56 years afforded them the consoling and confident hope that her soul fled to that place where the spirits of the just are made perfect.’





As already mentioned, the Bingham’s home, Newbrook, was destroyed by fire in 1837 and never rebuilt. Hollymount, originally built by Archbishop Vesey at the start of the 18th century but substantially altered in the 19th, was eventually inherited by Mary Lindsey who in 1885 at the age of 19 married Heremon FitzPatrick; his sister Mary FitzPatrick, better known as Patsy, was one of the great beauties of the late 19th century who at the age of 16 had an affair with the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) before being hastily married to William Cornwallis-West, with whom she had three children. Her brother Heremon, who had assumed the surname Lindsey, remained in possession of Hollymount until 1922 when it was sold; the house is now a ruin. Bloomfield, home of the Ruttledges, was similarly sold in the early 1920s, acquired by the Land Commision and subsequently damaged by fire, it is now a ruin. As for Rappa Castle, childhood home of Elizabeth Ruttledge, it too has become a roofless shell (see Crumbling is not an Instant’s Act « The Irish Aesthete). So this collection of tombs in the graveyard of a derelict church is all that remains to recall a series of once powerful families in County Mayo.

Awaiting Attention



Lucan House, County Dublin was discussed here a few weeks ago (see Addio del Passato « The Irish Aesthete). As noted then, the property, having been under the care of the Italian government for almost 80 years, has now been taken over by the local council. Included in the demesne is not only the house but a number of other significant buildings, including the remains of a mediaeval church. This is located to the immediate east and within sight of the former Italian ambassador’s residence. The church is recorded as being in existence since 1219, some 15 years after the manor of Lucan had been granted to the Norman Waris de Peche. He was probably also responsible for developing the original castle, thought to have stood in the vicinity of the present house, and close to the banks of the river Liffey.






The church of St Mary in Lucan was granted by Waris de Peche to the Augustinian Priory of St Catherine, located on the other side of the Liffey. By 1332, St. Catherine’s had passed to St Thomas’s Abbey on the outskirts of Dublin and remained under its control until the suppression of religious houses in the second quarter of the 16th century. St Mary’s church was then acquired, along with the castle, by William Sarsfield and appears to have remained in a good state of repair until at least the late 1500s. However, in 1630 the chancel was described as ruinous and has remained so ever since. Constructed of rubble limestone, the building consists of a nave and chancel, the former having lost its north wall. Inside the chancel are a number of tombs erected by later occupants of Lucan House, a particularly poignant one commemorating Nicholas Peter Conway Colthurst who died in November 1820 aged six weeks, the tomb noting ‘It pleased Almighty God to take him from his afflicted parents after four days illness.’ On the north-east corner of the building is a three-storey tower, sometimes mistakenly called Lucan Castle. Most likely this was erected in the 15th century as a residence for the clergy serving St Mary’s, during a period when civil disturbances meant some protection from attack – even for priests – was considered necessary. 






On the opposite side of the parkland around Lucan House and quite different in character can be found another building in need of attention: an eighteenth century Gothick bathhouse. Thought to date from the mid-1780s, and therefore perhaps constructed while Agmondisham Vesey was still alive, it was constructed during the period in which the local sulphurous waters made Lucan popular as a spa. However, the limestone rubble bathhouse, complete with whimsically irregular form and bellcote, was for private rather than public use. It sits at the end of a long tree-lined avenue on a site above the river, views of which were offered by a tall arched opening on the north side. This opening gives access to a vaulted antechamber, warmed by a central fireplace on the south wall, the pointed arch stone surround looking as though it may have been taken from an older building, perhaps St Mary’s church? There are arched openings on both the western (external) and eastern (internal) walls of the chamber, the latter leading to the bathhouse itself, a sunken pool with a series of shallow steps. Like other buildings in the grounds of the property, the bathhouse is now in need of restoration, along with the stableyard and a pair of charming Gothick lodges which lie immediately inside the gates. All of this now awaits the local council. One must hope that the authority appreciates the importance of the site’s architectural legacy, and affords it due respect. 


A Rare Survivor



For more than half a century, conservationists have rightly lamented how much of 18th century Dublin has either faced neglect, clumsy restoration or, at worst, demolition. During this period, vast swathes of the capital have seen the loss of their architectural heritage. However, that unhappy state of affairs has a precedent: our Georgian forebears did their best to obliterate almost every trace of the mediaeval city. Admittedly, after the turmoils of the 16th and 17th centuries, much of Dublin was in poor shape. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how few buildings dating from before 1700 survive today. One of them is the city’s only remaining mediaeval parish church: St Audoen’s. 






St Audoen’s derives its name from the seventh century Frankish saint Ouen (or Audoin), thereby indicating that it was established by the Normans following their arrival in the country; it has been proposed the building was first erected c.1200 during the episcopacy of John Cumin, the first Norman archbishop of Dublin. The church has a complex history, involving periods of expansion and contraction. The earliest part consisted of a nave and chancel in the section now known as St Anne’s Chapel and today housing an exhibition centre. Towards the end of the 13th or early 14th century, the north (riverside) wall of St Audoen’s was rebuilt as a four-bay arcade to create an enlarged nave: this part of the building continues to be used for services by the Church of Ireland. Meanwhile, a royal patent of 1430 granted licence for the conversion of the original, southerly nave into a chantry chapel for the Guild of St Anne, the most significant religious guild in the city. The guild supported six chantry priests who each daily celebrated mass at his assigned altar, one dedicated to the Virgin, the other five to SS.Anne, Catherine, Nicholas, Thomas and Clare. A domestic range, in which the priests lived, stood to the immediate south. Over half a century later, St Audoen’s was further enlarged when a second chantry chapel was erected to the immediate east, as wide as the existing structure and like it divided into two parts by an arcade, in this instance of three bays. The new chantry chapel, built in honour of the Virgin, was funded by Richard FitzEustace, first Baron Portlester who served as Lord Treasurer of Ireland, Keeper of the Great Seal and, on two occasions, Lord Chancellor. His tomb, and that of his wife Margaret, originally placed between the chancel and the chapel, was moved in 1860 to its present location beneath the tower at the west end of the church. By the 16th century, St Audoen’s was one of the capital’s wealthiest and finest places of worship, Richard Stanyhurst noting in 1568 that it ‘was accounted the best in Dublin for the greater number of Aldermen and Worships of the city living in the Parish.’ However, that was all about to change. 






Although chantries and guilds were officially suppressed during the Reformation, that dedicated to St Anne and associated with St Audoen’s survived until the end of the 17th century when an Act of 1695 officially dissolved all chantries in Ireland. In the interim, having been transferred to the Church of Ireland and with few parishioners to support it, the building began to suffer from neglect. Fashionable new districts were developed elsewhere and the wealthy preferred to live (and worship) there, meaning those who remained living in the area had little money to spend on the church. In 1773, the chancel and Portlester Chantry were unroofed: a drawing by George Petrie shows the latter in 1829 with lines of washing strung across the arcades. Around the same time, the main arcade was bricked up, with St Anne’s Chapel abandoned and the north nave established as a parish chapel. Such remains the case. The present tower at the west end dates from the 17th century but has been repeatedly repaired and indeed was remodelled in 1826 by architect Henry Aaron Baker. Vulnerable to collapse, it underwent remedial work in 1916 and then a major restoration some 40 years ago. More importantly, in 2000 St Anne’s Chapel was re-roofed and turned into the aforementioned visitors’ centre with the insertion of a steel gallery along the west and north walls. Beside this is the present parish church, its south wall still displays the late 13th/early 14th century arcade, with sandstone piers supporting arches; the space between them would once have been open. At the east end of the north wall are two funerary monuments dating from some time between 1600-30 and commemorating the Duffe and Sparke families. At the other end of the nave is a late 12th century font while in St Anne’s Chapel are the remains of another monument, this one Alderman John Malone (who died in 1592) and other members of his family. As mentioned, the Portlester tomb is now below the tower. It depicts the recumbent figures of a knight and his lady, together with an inscription recording the endowment of 1482. St Audoen’s is open daily (from the months of March to November) and admission is free. The former graveyard to the west end of the church has been extensively landscaped and is now a public park. 

A Dramatic Shell



On a site high above Dunlewey Lough, County Donegal, a now-roofless church dating from the mid-19th century. The building was erected at the request and expense of Jane Russell to commemorate her husband James, who died in 1848. It was consecrated eight years later, but after a century the congregation had dwindled, so the church was unroofed and has stood a dramatic shell on the site ever since.