18 January 2019

A reminder of family roots
during a stop in Bunclody

The former Comerford family home on The Mall, Bunclody, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

On the way to Wexford yesterday, two of us stopped for a short time in Bunclody, which for generations was home to my branch of the Comerford family. Bunclody is a planned estate town, laid out as Newtownbarry in the second half of the 18th century by the Maxwell-Barry family.

The Comerford family was living in Newtownbarry or Bunclody at this time, and as stuccordores and builders they were probably involved building and decorating of many of the fine buildings that line The Mall, Bunclody’s Main Street, and the Market Square.

Many generations of the Comerford family lived in the house on The Mall that was the Post Office until it closed within the past six months, and in a house on Ryland Street. The Comerford house on The Mall later passed through marriage to the Lawler family, who once ran the Mall Hotel on these premises.

The house was built as one of a pair, and is one of the most important architectural works on The Mall.

This is a semi-detached, two-bay three-storey house, built ca1850, incorporating the fabric of a much earlier house. It was later renovated, and the opening on the ground floor was remodelled to accommodate commercial use.

The house is one of a pair. The square-headed window openings are in a tripartite arrangement with cut-stone sills, moulded rendered surrounds, six-over-six (first floor) and three-over-three (top floor) timber sash windows with two-over-two or one-over-one sidelights. There is a one-over-one timber sash window at the ground floor that has one-over-one sidelights and a square-headed opening inserted to the ground floor with a concrete sill, rendered surround, and fixed-pane fitting.

The stucco and decorative work of the Comerford family can be seen in the door and the doorcase. The house has a round-headed door opening with a rendered, diamond-pointed panelled pilaster surround that has a moulded necking supporting an archivolt voussure, bull-nose reveals, a timber diamond-pointed panelled pilaster doorcase on padstones, with acanthus-detailed fluted consoles supporting the entablature, and a timber-panelled door with an over-light.

The house faces the street and has a rendered plinth boundary wall with coping that supports iron railings incorporating arrow-head finials. The original gate is now missing.

The interesting details in the house include the windows that diminish in scale on each floor in the classical manner, producing a graduated visual effect. These windows are inspired by the work of James Wyatt. Until the Post Office closed recently, the house had been well maintained to present an early aspect with the original form and massing surviving in place together with most of the historic fabric, both outside and probably inside.

There are other buildings along The Mall and in Market Square that also display the influence of James Wyatt. How did this classical-style architect come to have such a strong influence on the domestic architecture of a small town in north Co Wexford?

Papers from the Farnham collection at Newtownbarry sold at auction in Dublin 15 years ago [2004] show the first glebe house or rectory in Newtownbarry may have been designed by the stuccodore and master builder Robert West, who submitted his proposals in 1784. The present rectory, built in 1808, has a Morrison doorcase and the openings diminish in scale on each floor in the classical manner producing a graduated visual impression, once again in a the style inspired by Wyatt.

Wyatt’s influence is seen throughout the town in other buildings, including O’Connor and O’Connor, Lennon’s, the Loftus Pharmacy and Redmond’s on The Mall, and Berkeley Mews on Market Square.

West was based in Dublin from about 1752 until he died in 1790. In 1752, he was admitted a freeman of the city as a member of the Plasterers’ Guild. His stucco work in Ireland includes the hall of the house he built as a speculation at No 20 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, the chapel in the Rotunda Hospital, Belvedere House, Great Denmark Street, and in No. 9 Cavendish Row. His best-known pupil was his friend Michael Stapleton.

The Comerford brothers Richard, Robert and James may have learned their stucco skills from craftsmen linked to Robert West. On the other hand, James Wyatt (1746-1813) is associated with few works in Ireland, and so it interesting that he had such a broad and sweeping influence on the design of houses in Newtownbarry.

I was invited by the Lichfield Civic Society last year [24 April 2018] to lecture in Lichfield on the architectural influences of the Wyatt family. James Wyatt (1746-1813) was born at Blackbrook Farmhouse near Weeford, south of Lichfield, into a long line of Staffordshire builders, decorators and architects. His first major building was the Pantheon in Oxford Street, London, which was described by Horace Walpole as ‘the most beautiful edifice in England,’ and he became the most acclaimed and influential architect of his age.

In 1792, he was appointed Surveyor General, which effectively made him England’s most prominent architect. He was also involved in works at Windsor Castle and Kew Gardens, the restoration of the House of Lords and the building of Saint Mary’s Church, Weeford.

Wyatt was also the architect involved in the restoration of Lichfield Cathedral in the 1780s. He oversaw work to remove 500 tons of stone from the nave roof, replacing it with lath and plaster, and effectively saving the cathedral from collapse.

But AWN Pugin described Wyatt as ‘the wretch himself,’ and when he first visited Lichfield in 1834, over 20 years after James Wyatt had died, Pugin was taken aback by the refurbishment of the cathedral 30 years earlier by Wyatt and declared: ‘Yes – this monster of architectural depravity, this pest of Cathedral architecture, has been here. need I say more.’

His works in Ireland included Avondale House, built near Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, for the Parnell family, and designs for the ceiling and library of Farnham House, the Co Cavan home of the Maxwell-Barry family.

If the Comerford brothers learned their skills from a pupil of Wyatt then it is interesting that they went on to work on so many Pugin churches in Ireland, and that my great-grandfather, James Comerford (1817-1902) from Bunclody, took an interest in the history of the Comberford family in the Lichfield and Tamworth area of Staffordshire until his death.

In front of the former Comerford family home, the Channel in The Mall in Bunclody was cut ca 1825, incorporating an earlier channel from 1775. It was provided by the Maxwell-Barry family to supply clean water to properties in The Mall through a system of underground ducts. The channel is a familiar landmark in the centre of Bunclody and is part of an early urban landscape initiative.

The name of the Mall House, the former Comerford family home, and later the home of the Lawler family is now used by the former barracks, formerly the King’s Arms Hotel, established in the 1700s, although the date displayed today says it was established in 1834.

Despite last year’s lecture in Lichfield, I still had to unravel the connections between the Comerford brothers and Robert West and James Wyatt.

The Channel in The Mall dates from 1775, when fresh water was diverted from the River Clody to the new houses in Newtownbarry or Bunclody (Photograph: Patrick Com,erford, 2019)

A fading reminder of
the cultural glories of
the Wexford Festival

A poster that reminds me of Wexford’s quays and key landmarks (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I have a poster from the Wexford Festival hanging in the breakfast room in the house in Knocklyon. It is 25 years old at this stage and for the last quarter century has been fading in the sunlight that streams through the south side of the house.

Perhaps I should have moved this fading poster many years ago. But it is a pretty depiction of the quays in Wexford, and I can pick out many familiar landmarks that shape the skyline of Wexford town. And it is a reminder too of happy days when I lived in Wexford until I moved to Dublin 45 years ago at the end of 1974.

Someone once told me the Irish definition of where you are from is found in the answer to who you hope, despite all the odds, is going to win the next All-Ireland. It is a particular Irish understanding of identity and a sense of place.

I lived on High Street, across from both the offices of the Wexford People and the Theatre Royal, already over a century old at that time. In those days, the Festival specialised in unfamiliar operas and, as Michael Dervan recalled in The Irish Times yesterday [16 January 2018], it was known for its ‘decisiveness and daring.’

I have memories of going to sleep in the mid-1970s listening to the sound of rehearsals across the street, and waking to the prospect of enjoying the fringe programme or a morning service in Saint Iberius’s Church with participants from the opera.

Today, the theatre is a major national cultural centre, and the Wexford Festival Opera this week announced the appointment of Rosetta Cucchi, who will succeed David Agler as artistic director. She has a long connection with Wexford that dates back to 1995 – the year after that fading poster I still treasure.

I am back in Wexford today, for a short overnight stay, with hopes to walk along the Slaney Estuary at Ferrycarrig and to meet some friends for a few drinks or for dinner.

It was a long journey by two buses from Askeaton through Limerick and Kildare, and then a journey by car through Carlow, Bunclody and along the banks of the River Slaney, crossing the the river at Enniscorthy. Once I had arrived in Bunclody this afternoon, my bearings were realigned, and old loyalties and hopes were reignited. I am staying tonight in the Ferrycarrig Hotel, in a room with a view that looks across the estuary of the River Slaney, expecting to wake tomorrow morning to the sound not of opera rehersals but of birdlife on the river.

This afternoon, in one of the corridors of the hotel, among a large collection of posters from the Wexford Festival, I was that same poster from the 1994 festival. Unlike my poster in Knocklyon, however, it is not fading.

Perhaps I may keep that poster a little longer, continuing to harbour hope against hope for an All-Ireland win for Wexford.

In the corridors of the Ferrycarrig Hotel in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)