Category Archives: Irish Monument

Shabby Treatment



The O’Callaghan Mausoleum, located in the Shanrahan graveyard outside Clogheen, County Tipperary. This was erected in 1742 to commemorate Cornelius O’Callaghan, member of an ancient Irish family who had converted to the Established church and thereafter enjoyed a successful career as a lawyer and Member of Parliament for the Borough of Fethard in the same county. The barrel-vaulted interior of this rather plain gable-ended building contains a fine monument to O’Callaghan, ancestor of the Viscount Lismore who in 1810 would commission John Nash to design Shanbally Castle nearby. (Alas, the castle was shamefully demolished in the late 1950s, the remains being blown up in 1960 so that the cut stone could be used for road building). Occupying much of the end wall, this monument was carved by the Dublin sculptor David Sheehan and depicts the deceased above a Latin inscription and beneath a pediment that supports reclining putti on either side of an urn. Unfortunately the mausoleum now acts as little more than a garden shed for lawn mowers and the other equipment: hardly the most respectful way to treat this historic building, or the man it commemorates.


Monumental



Visited on a particularly soggy afternoon, this is the Knox-Gore Memorial, erected in 1872 in the grounds of Belleek Manor, County Mayo. Its architect was the ubiquitous James Franklin Fuller whose inspiration appears to have been the steeple of St Giles‘ Cathedral in Edinburgh but while the latter sits atop a very large structure, the memorial’s base is just an earthen mound, sometimes thought to be a prehistoric tumulus. In any case, the monument was commissioned by Sir Charles Knox-Gore to commemorate his father Francis, first baronet who is buried on the site, together with his wife Sarah and, seemingly, his favourite horse. Sir Charles, meanwhile, when his time came, was interred elsewhere on the estate, along with his favourite dog called Phizzie.


Still Standing


A pre-Christian monument, the Doonfeeny Standing Stone is, at 14 and a half feet, the second tallest of its kind in Ireland (the standing stone in Punchestown, County Kildare is some 22 feet tall). The precise purpose of this and similar structures is unclear but the belief is that they were associated with pagan rituals, perhaps marking places of death and burial. It is notable that a church was subsequently built close to the the example at Doonfeeny, and a graveyard developed around it, all suggesting a continuation of older practices into the Christian era: two crosses were carved into this particular stone, as though to claim it for the new faith. For rather obvious reasons, standing stones were also long associated with fertility, women who wished to become pregnant being encouraged to visit them.

To Gaiety and Innocence



A recent video about obelisks on the Irish Aesthete YouTube channel (see (2) Follies Pt 1 – YouTube) served as a reminder of a cenotaph visited last year and located in County Mayo. This commemorates Maria Browne, née O’Donel, whose father Sir Neal O’Donel lived at Newport House elsewhere in the county. In 1797 she had married as his second wife Dodwell Browne, his unusual name being the surname of his paternal grandmother, who lived at Raheens. Maria Browne only lived until 1809, dying soon after arriving in Dublin whence she had gone for treatment of her illness. Her husband duly erected this monument to her memory, a tapering column that rises some 80 feet from a base to an ornamental urn. While rubble is used for the body of the monument, all four sides have quoins of cut limestone. A large plaque on the base written in old Irish may be translated as follows: ‘This is to your memory my friend. Oh my loyal beloved, gone forever, your presence forever lost to me’. Beneath, in English are the words ‘This cenotaph was built in memory of Maria O’Donel Browne, second daughter of Sir Neal O Donel.’ Above it a second plaque is inscribed ‘À Marie Et À L’Amour Par Son Cher Époux  Dodwell, 1809”. Further up again is an oval disc containing the deceased’s profile and her name. The opposite side features another plaque, this one proclaiming ‘To Gaiety and Innocence’. A blank space above it suggests that a further tribute inserted here has since been removed. Once part of the Raheen estate demesne, today the monument stands in the middle of a field. As for the house, the supposedly-moated Elizabethan property where Dodwell and Maria Browne lived was pulled down by their son and replaced with a classical building; it has been a ruin since at least the middle of the last century.


Commemorating a Life-long Devotion



The clock tower which stands in the centre of Ardagh, County Longford. The village was part of the estate belonging to Sir Thomas John Fetherston who in the early 1860s employed James Rawson Carroll to design new houses and amenities for its residents. Built in 1863 by the architect’s brother, Thomas Henry Carroll, the clock tower stands in the centre of Ardagh’s picturesque Green and was erected in memory of Sir Thomas’ uncle, Sir George Ralph Fetherston. His widow paid for the monument which, according to an inscription at the base, commemorates her late-husband’s ‘life-long devotion to the moral and social improvement of his tenantry.’



More on Ardagh in the coming weeks. 

On the Nail


Now incorporated into the wall of the graveyard surrounding St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (see the recent post, A Significant Anniversary, July 2nd 2018): a row of Tuscan columns that once formed the ground floor arcade of the city’s Exchange building. Originally built in 1673, the original building was demolished in 1702 and rebuilt, with further building taking place in 1777-78. James Pain was paid £432.17s 5d for repairs and alterations to the structure in 1815 and his younger brother George Richard £182.1s 2½ d for more of the same four years later. By 1872 the Exchange was in use as a national school before being eventually demolished. Nearby in the city museum is preserved a limestone pillar with copper plate on top, known as the nail. Given to the Exchange in 1685 by Robert Smith, Mayor of Limerick, this was used by merchants to confirm transactions between themselves. It is often proposed that the phrase ‘payment on the nail’ derives from the Limerick monument, but it is found in texts from the previous century and there were similar nails in other mercantile cities such as Bristol.

Circumstances of a Peculiarly Distressing Nature


Another funerary monument in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, this one carved by Sir Francis Chantrey in 1826. It represents the Hon William Stuart, Archbishop of Armagh who died in London in 1822 at the age of 68 owing to an unfortunate error. As recounted by The Gentleman’s Magazine at the time: ‘The death of his Grace took place under circumstances of a peculiarly distressing nature, which have excited in the breast of every human being, to whose knowledge they have come, feelings of the deepest regret and commiseration. This melancholy event was unhappily occasioned by an unfortunate mistake in administering a quantity of laudanum instead of a draught. His Lordship was attended in the morning of the 6th by Sir H. Halford, who wrote a prescription for a draught which was immediately sent to the shop of Mr Jones, the apothecary, in Mount-street, in order that it might be prepared. His Lordship having expressed some impatience that the draught had not arrived, Mrs Stuart enquired of the servants if it had come; and being answered in the affirmative, she desired that it might be brought to her immediately. The man had just before received it, together with a small phial of laudanum and camphorated spirits, which he occasionally used himself as an external embrocation. Most unluckily, in the hurry of the moment, instead of giving the draught intended for the Archbishop, he accidentally substituted the bottle which contained the embrocation. The under butler instantly carried it to Mrs Stuart without examination, and that lady not having a doubt that it was the medicine which had been recommended by Sir H. Halford, poured it into a glass and gave it to her husband!- In a few minutes, however, the dreadful mistake was discovered; upon which Mrs Stuart rushed from the presence of the Archbishop into the street, with the phial in her hand, and in a state of speechless distraction. Mr Jones the apothecary having procured the usual antidote, lost not a moment in accompanying Mrs Stuart back to Hill-street where he administered to his Lordship, now almost in a state of stupor, the strongest emetics and used every means which his skill and ingenuity could suggest, to remove the poison from his stomach, all, however, without effect.’
And the moral of this unhappy episode: always check anything brought to you by the under butler…

Above the Law

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The grand rear entrance to the King’s Inns, Dublin. This complex of buildings, designed in 1800 by James Gandon with a view towards Constitution Hill, backs onto the top of Henrietta Street and it was here that Francis Johnston, who took over the project after Gandon’s death, placed a triumphal arch in 1820 to obscure the obtuse-angled elevation beyond. Note the coat of arms surmounting the entrance: this work is usually attributed to the sculptor Edward Smyth although he died in 1812, eight years before the arch was built.

A Landlord Discharging His Duty

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A granite lion head, from the mouth of which water can be discharged into a basin immediately below. This is part of a monument in the centre of Blessington, County Wicklow erected to mark the coming of age in 1865 of Arthur Hill, later fifth Marquis of Downshire, whose family owned a large estate in the immediate area. On another side of the same memorial it is recorded that the water here was ‘supplied at the cost of a kind and generous landlord for the benefit of his attached and loyal tenants.’

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In Grateful Memory

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In the small village of Kenagh, County Longford rises this limestone gothic revival clock tower dated 1878. Designed by the English architect Sir Robert William Edis, it features a number of marble plaques including one showing the man in whose memory the monument was erected, the Hon Laurence Harman King-Harman who had died three years earlier. A younger son of General Robert Edward King, first Viscount Lorton, and a younger brother of Robert King, sixth Earl of Kingston, the Hon Laurence lived not far away at Newcastle, Ballymahon. A panel below the portrait declares that the clock tower was erected by his tenants and friends ‘in grateful memory of a good landlord and an upright man.’ Within a decade the expression of such sentiments would have begun to fall out of favour following the rise of the Land League. The cost of over £1,000 was seemingly covered by local subscription. There is another clock tower likewise erected to honour the Hon Laurence in the centre of Boyle, County Roscommon where his family had their main estates. Has there been any other person similarly commemorated in this country?

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