Tag Archives: Old Church

A Neighbourhood Replete with History



A modest village in County Laois, Aghaboe (from the Irish Achadh Bhó, meaning ‘field of cows’), has been briefly mentioned here before (see Happily Disposed in the Most Elegant Taste « The Irish Aesthete) in relation to Heywood, some 12 miles away, where a pair of mediaeval windows have been incorporated into an 18th century folly. But Aghaboe itself deserves attention, since it was once the site of an important early Christian monastery, adjacent to which is now a restored early 18th century house along with other buildings of interest. 





The original abbey at Aghaboe was established in the 6th century by St Canice, who was interred here and around whose tomb would grow a substantial monastic settlement. In the 8th century, one of the abbots was St Fergal (otherwise Virgilius), mathematician and astronomer who would later move first to France and then to Austria where he became Abbot of St Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg. Nothing from this period in the monastery’s history survives due to repeated assaults on the place. The abbey was attacked and plundered by the Vikings in 913 before being rebuilt in 1052 with the relics of St Canice enshrined here. It was burned again in 1116 and rebuilt in 1189. In 1234 an Augustinian priory was established on the site (a Norman motte and bailey had already been constructed nearby). However, both the priory and a town which had grown up around it were burnt in 1346 by Diarmaid Mac Giollaphádraig, St Canice’s shrine being destroyed in the process.  In 1382 Finghan MacGillapatrick, Lord of Upper Ossory established a Dominican friary here and this survived until its suppression in 1540. What remains at Aghaboe are traces of the Dominican church, a long, barn-like building without aisles typical of the mendicant preaching orders, with one transept at the south-west end. There is a fine window at the east end of the nave and an ogee-headed piscina nearby on the south wall. In the transept, the east wall features a tall arched niche and there are also a couple of smaller aumbries. A watercolour by Daniel Grose dated 1792 depicts an elaborately carved doorcase on the south side but this has since disappeared. A few other traces of the church’s former decoration survive on the exterior of the Church of Ireland church lying behind the ruin: this dates from 1818 although the curious tower here – the lower portion square-shaped, the upper an awkwardly-placed octagon – may be a survivor from the Middle Ages, along with the three much-weathered heads over the west door. 





Just a few hundred yards south-east of the ruined and present churches, and overlooking both, stands Aghaboe House, a curiously double-fronted residence. The south facade, thought to date from c.1730, is of seven bays and two storeys, with a fine limestone pedimented doorcase. The north side is some 40 years later and is of five bays, centred on fan-lit doorway below a Venetian window above which a pediment breaks the shallow roofline. Internally, the house – which may incorporate elements of an older residence – is similarly divided into two parts, suggesting it was originally one room deep, with the larger rooms to the north, not least the double-height staircase hall with benefits from the Venetian window on the upper floor. Recently offered for sale, Aghaboe House was in a semi-ruinous condition when bought almost 40 years ago in 1984 by its present owner who has since gradually restored the building, along with others on the site, including another two-storey block diagonally to the immediate east. This might once have had a match on the western side; if so, it has long since disappeared. For much of the last quarter of the 18th century, Aghaboe House was home to the historian and Church of Ireland clergyman Rev Edward Ledwich (author of the text accompanying Francis Grose’s Antiquities of Ireland, published 1791-95) which suggests it could have served as a glebe house until a new one was built in 1820. The enlargement of the main house might even have been undertaken by Ledwich while he was in residence, since he and his wife had at least four daughters and four sons. Along with its neighbours, Aghaboe House contributes to an assemblage of buildings covering some 1,500 years of Irish history.



For more information about Aghaboe House and its sale, see: Aghaboe House, Aghaboe, Ballacolla, Co. Laois – Property.ie

A Monument to the Past



Few people today will be familiar with the name of William Delany, Jesuit priest and one of the great educationalists of the late 19th century. Born the son of a baker in County Carlow, in 1860 at the age of 25 he was sent to teach at St Stanislaus’s College, then a Jesuit secondary school in County Offaly. Ten years later, Delany became the college’s Rector and embarked on an expansionist policy which led to rebukes from his superiors (the school ran up substantial debts due to his building programme). What they, and everyone else, could not deny, was the quality of education received by students at St Stanislaus’s College, which led them to seek further academic qualifications. At the time, the Catholic University of Ireland, founded in 1851, could not legally confer degrees, and Cardinal Cullen had forbidden Roman Catholics from attending other third-level institutions because they were non-denominational, denouncing them as ‘godless colleges.’ From 1876 Delany overcame this problem by entering his students for the London University examinations, where they achieved one hundred percent success: in 1881 a First Place and First Exhibition were secured by boys at St Stanislaus’s College, competing against thousands of English entrants. Delany would soon leave the school, and was instead appointed the first president of the new University College Dublin (the successor to the Catholic University) where he achieved equal success. However, despite its academic achievements, in 1886 St Stanislaus’s College closed as a boys’ school. The debts caused by Delany’s building programmes, along with the shortage of Jesuit priests in Ireland, forced the order to make certain decisions, one of which was to focus attention Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, despite the fact that the latter’s record was not as good as that of the County Offaly school.  






St Stanislaus’s College, popularly known as Tullabeg, dates back to 1818. The land on which it stands had been provided a few years earlier by a local woman, Maria O’Brien, whose father, a wealthy Roman Catholic merchant from Dublin, had bought an estate in the area: Rahan Lodge, originally built c.1740 as a hunting lodge. Initially it was intended that the new college would act as a novitiate for training Jesuit priests. However, before long it began to serve as a preparatory school for boys who would then go on to Clongowes Wood College. After several decades the school began to offer second level education to students and, as already mentioned, continued to do so until 1886. Two years later, a new purpose was found for the property, when it became the novitiate for the Irish province of the Jesuits; every young man who entered the order thereafter would spend a period of time at Tullabeg. This continued to be the case until 1930 when the novitiate was transferred to Emo Court, County Laois. Next the place became a faculty of philosophy for Jesuits who had already finished their studies at university. A further change of direction occurred in 1962 when the order decided to make Tullabeg a retreat centre; this finally closed in 1991. Thereafter the property seems to have had a chequered history, at one stage being used as a nursing home while a nine-hole golf course was installed in the grounds. 






St Stanislaus’s College is a building of diverse parts and periods, the whole adding up to a very substantial complex. The earliest part dates back to the second decade of the 19th century, when a south-facing block of three storeys over basement was constructed, its architectural style very much aping that of country houses of the period, with a flight of stone steps leading up to the main entrance, the door flanked by Ionic columns and topped by a generous fanlight. Over the following years, projecting wings were added on either side of this block, and then a church built to the immediate west. Once St Stanislaus’s College began to take in secondary school students, additional space was required, so in the early 1860s a large block to the east was added. Known as the Seaver Wing (after the rector of the period), the building, which is centred on a large three-bay breakfront featuring substantial tripartite fenestration, incorporated classrooms, dormitories and a refectory. Later in the same decade, a further wing was added parallel to and north of the original house; this held a college chapel and study hall, along with further accommodation. The work of this period was designed by successful Dublin architect Charles Geoghegan. During his time as rector, William Delany commissioned further work on the premises, rebuilding the students’ chapel, converting another chapel into a study hall and remodelling the east wing; he also had part of the local river deepened and enclosed to provide decent swimming facilities. Little of substance appears to have changed thereafter until the mid-1940s when Fr Donal O’Sullivan, then rector of St Stanislaus’s, commissioned the modernist architect Michael Scott to design a new chapel in the building; this had stained glass windows by Evie Hone, a timber altar and statues by sculptor Laurence Campbell and terracotta Stations of the Cross by French sculptor Robert Villiers. When the Jesuits left Tullabeg in 1991, they removed all these fittings and installed them in some of the order’s other properties. So those items were at least saved from the vandalism and decay that awaited the rest of the place and has led to its present decay. What can be done with such a vast range of buildings? Tullabeg is in a relatively remote part of the Irish midlands, in a rural area with few facilities. No doubt this isolation was beneficial when St Stanislaus’s operated as a religious house, but is now a distinct drawback. It would appear a few commercial ventures were attempted or considered here, but not found viable. So it sits, neglected and falling into further dereliction, a monument to another, now passed, era in the country’s history. 


Replete with Memories


Lisronagh, County Tipperary is today not so much a village as a hamlet, but this was not always the case. According to Samuel Lewis, in 1837 it had a population of 981, whereas in the census of 2016, the number of inhabitants had fallen to 184. The latter figure is even a fraction of what it had been in the Middle Ages: surviving documentation from 1333 show Lisronagh’s population likely exceeded 400. At that time, the land here was held by Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of a descendant of William de Burgh, the Anglo-Norman knight who in the late 12th century had acquired vast estates in this part of the country. William de Burgh is thought to have built some kind of fortified structure at Lisronagh, probably of wood, but this was probably later replaced by a stone castle. That building is not what is seen on the site today, since the earlier structure appears to have been destroyed in the 15th century by Edmond Butler, eighth Baron Dunboyne and Seneschal of Tipperary. 





Lisronagh Castle, or what remains of it, is a 16th century tower house. A document dated 1530 in the collection of the National Library of Ireland shows the grant by one Richard Howet to Piers Butler, Earl of Ossory (later eighth Earl of Ormond) ‘of the tenement of the castle of Lisronagh.’ The present building may have been built thereafter, and remained the property of the Butler family at least into the latter part of the 17th century. When and how it fell into disrepair does not appear known. A large opening close to the base of the east wall (which faces the adjacent road) suggests this was the original entrance, although that is around the corner on the north side. High above the arched doorcase are corbels that would once have supported the now-lost machiolation; also largely gone are the window stones, presumably removed at some date. Internally, the tower house follows the usual pattern with a large, vaulted chamber of the ground floor. A flight of stairs to the immediate right of the entrance leads to the floors above, one of which retains a fireplace but otherwise little of the interior decoration survives. 





Immediately north of Lisronagh Castle is an abandoned church. Dedicated to St John the Baptist, it dates from 1831 when constructed with the aid of funds from the Board of First Fruits, and on the site of a Medieval building (presumably serving the 400-plus populace recorded as having been here in the 1330s). The church very much conforms to the Board of First Fruits typology, having a three-bay nave with access at the west end beneath a two-stage bell tower. The entrance features a handsome stone carved Tudor arch but otherwise there is little decoration and certainly nothing inside, which has been given over to vegetation (as has the eastern end of the church). Services ceased here a century ago, in 1923, and the building subsequently became roofless and open to the elements. So there they now stand, side by side, two historic properties, both abandoned, both replete with memories of the past.

Prior to This



The remains of the 15th century church at Cloughprior, County Tipperary. Its name derives from the fact that in the 12th century the land on which the building stands came into the possession of the Augustinian Priory of St John the Baptist some ten miles south at Tyone, on the outskirts of Nenagh. It subsequently became a parish church but then fell into ruin, although the surrounding graveyard has consistently remained a place of burial. Of note here is a separate, walled section set aside for members of the Waller family who for some 20o years lived close by at Prior Park, a house dating from the 1770s. One of those more recently interred was 26-year old Edward de Warenne Waller, killed in a terrorist bomb attack in Bali in 2002. 



The Younger Sibling



When writing of Waterford architect John Roberts here on Monday, notice was made that his death occurred in 1796 when, at the age of 84, he fell asleep in the city’s unfinished Roman Catholic cathedral – which he had designed – and caught a chill. Four years earlier, Waterford Corporation had been presented with a petition from members of that faith requesting that a plot of land be provided so that a suitable place of worship might be built, more than three and a half decades before all Penal legislation was reformed. The site given was that already occupied by a Catholic chapel, but the new cathedral occupied much more space than had its predecessor. As mentioned, Roberts was the architect responsible, as he had been 20 years before for the Church of Ireland’s new cathedral in the same city. The two buildings share certain characteristics, borrowed from James Gibbs, such as the great line of Corinthian columns running down the nave. Also like Christ Church, it has been subject to alterations (not least the addition of a new facade in the late 19th century) and no longer looks exactly as Roberts intended, but these two cathedrals are unique in having been designed by the same architect, the father of two siblings whose common characteristics cannot be denied.


The Finest 18th century Ecclesiastical Building in Ireland



‘The new church in this city is a very beautiful one, the body of it is in the same stile exactly as that of Belfast already described; the total length 170 feet, the breadth 58. The length of’the body of the church 92, the height 40, breadth between the pillars 26. The isle (which I do not remember at Belfast) is 58 by 45.
A room on one side the steeple space for the bishop’s court, 24 by 18; on the other side a room of the same size for the vestry, and 28 feet square left for a steeple when their funds will permit. The whole is light and beautiful, it was built by subscription and there is a fine organ bespoke at London.’
Description of Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford from Arthur Young’s A Tour in Ireland, 1776-1779.
There has been a Christian place of worship on the site of Christ Church Cathedral since the 11th century and famously in 1170 this was the venue for the marriage of Strongbow (Richard de Clare, second Earl of Pembroke) and Aoife, daughter of Dermot MacMurrough. In 1210, the original building was replaced by a new cathedral which survived until the 18th century when the city’s corporation expressed a desire to erect a modern structure. However, the bishop of the time, Richard Chevenix, was reluctant to allow the old cathedral’s destruction so, according to local legend, it was arranged that one morning, as he walked past the building, a quantity of rubble and dust would be dropped from the roof onto his path, thereby encouraging him to agree with the corporation’s proposal. The first plans for a new cathedral were drawn up in 1739 by William Halfpenny (to whom the design of the original hunting lodge at Castlecor, County Longford is also attributed, see: A Worthy Recipient « The Irish Aesthete) but these were not carried out. In 1773 Dublin architect Thornas Ivory was asked to report on the condition of the cathedral and recommended that it be rebuilt. Nevertheless, he did not get the commission, this going instead to a local man, John Roberts.





John Roberts was born in Waterford in either 1712 or 1714, son of architect and builder Thomas Roberts whose own father, also called Thomas and described as ‘a Welshman of property and beauty’ had settled in the city in 1680. It is believed that as a young man, John Roberts spent some time in London, although nothing is known of what he did there and to whom, if anyone, he was apprenticed. Returning to Waterford around 1744, he fell in love, and eloped, with Mary Susannagh Sautelle, daughter of a well-to-do Huguenot family who did not approve of the relationship; as a result, she was disinherited and the couple’s first couple of years were difficult (they were, on the other hand, very happy together and went on to have 22 children, of which eight survived to adulthood). In 1746 the aforementioned Bishop Richard Chenevix, who knew both the Roberts and Sautelle families, gave the young architect his first great opportunity, inviting him to complete the episcopal palace, originally designed by Richard Castle but left unfinished at the time of the latter’s death. Thereafter, other commissions followed, although not all of them can be confirmed. Among those outside Waterford city which have been attributed to Roberts are the great forecourt at Curraghmore (see Now Available « The Irish Aesthete) and Cappoquin (see Risen from the Ashes « The Irish Aesthete), both in County Waterford, as well as Tyrone House, County Galway (see A High House on High Ground « The Irish Aesthete) and Moore Hall, County Mayo (see When Moore is Less « The Irish Aesthete). Within and in the immediate vicinity of Waterford city, Roberts – who took a long lease on the old bishop’s palace beside the cathedral – designed several other buildings such as the Assembly Rooms and Playhouse (1783), a new Leper Hospital (1785, now an apartment complex), Newtown House (1786, now Newtown School) and a private residence for William Morris (1795, today the Chamber of Commerce). Famously, 20 years after designing Christ Church, in 1793 he was commissioned to design a second cathedral in Waterford: dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity, this was the  first Roman Catholic cathedral built in Ireland since the Reformation.  The commission also proved to be the death of Roberts. Accustomed to rising daily at 6am, one morning  he mistakenly got up at three and, going to inspect work at the cathedral, he found the place empty: sitting down, he fell asleep and as a result caught a serious chill that resulted in his demise in May 1796 at the age of 84. Popularly known as ‘Honest John Roberts’, it was later written that ‘to all in his employment he was especially kind and thoughtful, He was in the habit of paying half the wages to the wives on Saturday rnorn:ing, that they might purchase to advantage at the early market and he always gave to each the exact money and thus to some extent prevented a visit to the publichouse for change.’ He was also the founder of a remarkable dynasty, two of his sons being the artists Thomas Roberts and Thomas Sautelle Roberts, a grandson being Abraham Roberts, a general in the East India Company, and the latter’s son being Field Marshall Frederick Roberts, first Earl Roberts.





On January 17th 1774 the committee of Christ Church Cathedral met to consider the best method of either taking down and reconstructing or repairing the building. The members agreed that ‘the plain plan omitting the rustik work laid before the committee by Mr. John Roberts for re-building the cathedral appears to be the most eligible of any as yet produced to us. Estimate 23,704- 5s-6d. The old steeple to be taken down and the bells placed in the French church.’ (Evidently Roberts’ original design suggested a degree of rustication on the exterior of the cathedral, its exclusion being most likely on the grounds of cost). Work soon began and most of it was completed by 1779 at a cost of £5,397, somewhat higher than the original estimate, and even as late as 1783 subscriptions were still being raised for the steeple. Built using as much stone as was possible from its demolished  predecessor, the new Christ Church’s design is much indebted to the churches of James Gibbs which Roberts would have seen during his time in London as a young man. Here, for example, as in the case of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the limestone spire rises at the west end of the building, directly behind the portico, graduating from a square base in three stages up to the octagonal steeple; much of the detailing here is indebted to Gibbs’s spire for St Mary le Strand. Unlike the portico of St Martin-in-the-Fields with its six great Corinthian columns, that of Christ Church has just four of the Doric order, thereby making less of an impact than might otherwise be the case, but the side elevations and arrangement of windows clearly borrows from the London church. So too does the interior, even after being considerably re-ordered in the late 19th century. Entering through the west end portico, the visitor first steps into an open ante-chapel, separated from the main body of the cathedral by a screen supporting the organ; in this space, some funerary monuments salvaged from the old cathedral were installed (including a rather fine one to the brothers Nicholas and John FitzGerald by John van Nost). Beyond the screen, the nave, 80 feet long, is separated from the aisles by a splendid line of Corinthian columns supporting the barrel-vaulted ceiling.  The checkerboard floor of white marble and black limestone is original, as is the reredos at the east end with its pedestalled Corinthian columns and pilasters on either side of a centre panel with sunburst. The reredos was once topped by a line of urns, but these have since gone, along with other elements of Roberts’s scheme. We know how the interior once looked thanks to a print published in 1806. This shows that the nave was lined on either side by galleries resting on rusticated pedestals supporting the Corinthian columns; at ground level, there were the customary box pews. The ceiling decoration was somewhat different to that seen today, owing to a fire in October 1815, ‘occasioned by the neglect of some persons who were employed to attend a stove placed in the organ loft, for the purpose of airing it.’  Not only were the organ and surrounding woodwork destroyed but the ceiling so badly damaged that it had to be redecorated, but the result is unquestionably splendid. In 1889-91, the architect Thomas Drew carried out extensive alterations to the interior, including the galleries’ removal, new choir fittings, pulpit, lectern, the addition of architraves & mullions to windows, and the closing up of lower windows (the absence of galleries rendering these redundant).  In addition, the rusticated column pedestals were taken away and replaced with others of red Cork marble and carved Caen stone. So this is what we see today: a somewhat bastardised version of John Roberts’s design but still one beautiful enough to merit Mark Girouard’s 1992 description of Christ Church Cathedral as ‘the finest 18th century ecclesiastical building in Ireland.’ 


Little Italy



As many readers will know, Charles Bianconi was an Italian-born entrepreneur who at the age of 16 came to Dublin in 1802 to work as a printer and engraver. Moving to Carrick-on-Suir a few years later, in 1815 he eventually settled in Clonmel, County Tipperary and there established a highly successful business offering passengers inexpensive and efficient travel in coaches around the country. In May 1854, his elder daughter, Catherine Henrietta Bianconi, died at the age of 25 and her father decided to build a mortuary chapel in Boherlahan, a village close to the Longfield estate which he had bought some years earlier. In November 1861, the limestone and sandstone chapel – designed by Bianconi and built at a cost of £1,000 – received the remains of Catherine Henrietta which were placed in a vault; her father would join her there following his own death in 1875. 


Tripartite


The so-called abbey in Mungret, County Limerick. There had been a monastery here, supposedly founded in the mid-sixth century by Saint Nessan, but due to frequent assault and despoliation over subsequent centuries, no trace of the original buildings survives.  Instead, what can be found here dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1179 Donal Mór O Brien, King of Leinster granted the monastery and its lands to the Bishop of Limerick, and this subsequently became a parish church for Augustinian Canons Regular. The building is divided into three sections, the oldest part at the east end being the chancel, followed by the nave and then, at the west end, a square tower added in the 15th century and incorporating living quarters for a priest. Following the 16th century Reformation, the building continued to be used by the Church of Ireland until replaced by a new church designed by the Pain brothers in 1822 and located a short distance to the west of the older structure. The Pains’ work  – which took the form of a Greek cross – did not survive long, since falling numbers of parishioners meant the new church at Mungret closed just 55 years later in 1877, before being unroofed in 1900, with much of the stone then reused to build a parochial house in nearby Raheen. 


Traces of Former Glory

As its name indicates, the County Longford village of Abbeylara (‘Mainistir Leathrátha’, meaning ‘Abbey of the half – or small – fort’) grew up around a religious house. In this instance, a monastery is supposed to have been founded here in the fifth century by St Patrick, who then appointed St Guasacht as its first abbot. Guasacht, who also acted as Bishop of the short-lived diocese of Granard, just a few miles away, was the son of Maelchu, the man under whom Patrick worked as a slave when a youth in Ireland. Following Patrick’s return to this country, it is said that Maelchu preferred to lock himself into his home and set fire to it – perishing in the flames – rather than encounter his former slave. His son Guasacht, on the other hand, did so and was duly converted to the Christian faith.





The present remains of a monastery at Abbeylara can be traced back to 1205 when the Anglo-Norman knight Richard Tuite invited a group of Cistercian monks to settle there. Tuite, who had come to Ireland as one of Richard de Clare’s supporters, was granted large swathes of land in this part of the country and in 1199 had built one of the largest motte and baileys in Ireland. A daughter house of St Mary’s Abbey in Dublin, the Abbeylara monastery was likewise dedicated to the Virgin. When Tuite, by then Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, died in 1210, he was buried here. A century later, in 1315, Edward Bruce – brother of Scotland’s Robert Bruce – who arrived in Ireland with his army earlier that year, having first burnt nearby Granard, seized control of the Abbeylara monastery and spent the winter there. The monks returned following his departure but the establishment’s decline appears to have begun soon after: in both 1410 and 1435 the Papacy permitted funds to be raised for the buildings’ repair through the sale of Indulgences.





From the start of the 15th century until its eventual closure, the monastery at Abbeylara had come under the control of a powerful local family, the O’Farrells, as testified by the fact that successive members of this family were appointed its abbot. The last of them to do so, Richard O’Farrell, surrendered the abbey with its lands and possessions to Henry VIII in 1539: in return, he was appointed Bishop of Ardagh. At the time of its dissolution, the Abbeylara house held over 5,500 acres of land but the buildings were falling into ruins. Today little remains other than the former abbey church’s great central tower, and the adjacent north and south walls: high on the latter can be seen a badly weathered figure which may be a Sheela-na-gig. A Church of Ireland church which once occupied part of the surrounding graveyard has long since been demolished. 

Plainly Ruined



The remains of a church that was once part of a Carmelite monastery in Castlelyons, County Cork. This religious house was established in 1309 by John de Barry, but much of what can be seen today dates from the following century. Although sections of the cloister also survive, the church is the most substantial extant part of the site, a long nave separated from the chancel by a semi-ruinous three-story crossing tower. The building’s best-preserved details can be found on the west front, featuring a pointed doorway with hoodmoulded surround below a twin-light, ogee-headed window.