In 1887, Constance Duguid, daughter of a wealthy wine merchant based in Dover, came to Ireland to visit her sister Madeleine who lived in Myshall, County Carlow as wife of the local rector. During her visit, Constance met Rupert George Inglis Brady, heir to his family estate and then living in Myshall Lodge. The couple became engaged, but while out riding she was thrown from her horse and died. Constance was buried in the churchyard at Myshall, where her father John Duguid erected a life-size white marble statue from Dublin sculptor Thomas Farrell: it depicts a young woman in gauzy garments holding a dove. When Duguid’s wife Adelaide died in 1903, she asked to be buried beside her daughter, but by this time Farrell’s work had begun to show signs of weathering. Therefore, a decision was taken not just to move it indoors, but also to build a new church in which the sculpture would be placed.




Work on the construction of the Adelaide Memorial Church of Christ the Redeemer began in 1907, its architect being George Coppinger Ashlin, who as a young man had worked with Edward Welby Pugin, eventually marrying the latter’s sister Mary: before their partnership broke up in 1870, Pugin and Ashlin designed a number of churches in Ireland, not least the cathedral in Cobh, County Cork. Ashlin was 70 when he took on the commission in Myshall, and took his inspiration from Salisbury Cathedral, with which the new building has similarities, although contrary to popular belief, the church is not a miniature copy of the English cathedral. Thought to have cost Duguid some £50,000, it was consecrated a few months after his own death in May 1913. The Adelaide Memorial church is in the early English style, cruciform in design with an ornate tower and spire rising above the entrance porch in the south-west corner. Below a steeply pitched roof of Westmoreland slate, the extensively buttressed walls are faced in limestone resting on a five-foot base of locally quarried granite.

Inside the church, a nave without aisles leads to the chancel at the east end, with transepts on either side, that to the north serving as a mortuary chapel to the Duguids, that to the south fronted by a pulpit incorporated into an oak screen with the vestry beyond. Throughout the building, the walls and vaulted ceiling are entirely faced in pale Bath stone, with a variety of marbles, including stones from Galway and Kilkenny, used for columns and other architectural elements. The bosses at the intersection of each bay on the ceiling are either foliated or else are carved with images of the evangelists, the Duguid coat of arms, or the intertwined initials of Adelaide and John Duguid. Below the chancel’s east window is a panel in mosaic, mother of pearl and gold leaf depicting the Last Supper. Many of the church’s decorative details came from English manufacturers. The black and cream mosaic floor, for example, was provided by Oppenheimer and Co of Manchester, while James Powell & Sons was responsible for the stained glass. The clock in the tower came from Joyce of Whitchurch in Shropshire, and the bells were made by Taylors of Loughborough. The mortuary chapel in the north transept is particularly fine, its archway carved with thistles and roses (emblems of the respective countries of origin for John and Adelaide Duguid). Thought to have been inspired by a screen in St Giles’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, that in the mortuary chapel is made of wrought iron and copper, and features doves carrying olive branches, roses, fleur-de-lis and the Duguid couple’s entwined initials. Inside, the space is dominated by Farrell’s white marble statue, set on a six-foot-high pedestal of Peterhead marble which carries the following inscription: ‘Remembering the admiration with which she used to view similar monuments in Italy, this statue of Innocence fit representing her, is placed here to the memory of “Conny” Constance Louise Eugenie Duguid by her sorrowing parents, 1888.’ The remains of both her parents are interred in the same space. Still wonderfully maintained, despite the high costs involved, the Adelaide Memorial church is one of the unexpected delights of this part of the country.

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