09 June 2024

A short visit to Dublin
and Bray brings back
good memories from
40 and 50 years ago

Time moves on at McCloskey’s in Donnybrook … memories of poetry readings, drama groups and rugby matches (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I was back in Dublin at the end of last week for a very short family visit, and we stayed for two nights in Bray, Co Wicklow, in the Martello Hotel on the Promenade, facing out onto the sea front.

Seeing the Bray People on a news stand in a nearby supermarket on Friday evening was a reminder that this was one of the titles in the Wexford People Group of Newspapers, where I had worked 50 years ago.

Until I left the Wexford People for The Irish Times in late 1974, one of my pleasant assignments each week was the design and layout of the front page of the Bray People.

Evening lights in Bray and a table at Butler and Barry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Bray has many family links and memories. Until, perhaps, the 1960s, an aunt had lived only three days away from the Martello, at Seanchara House, once known as Tullira, in Wavecrest Terrace on Strand Road. My parents first lived on Putland Road in Bray after they were married almost 80 years ago, at end of World War II in 1945.

I also remember many childhood trips to Bray, when I was able to sneak away and enjoy the thrills of the ‘Bumpers’ and the Ghost Trains or – when some of us were more adventurous – climbing Bray Head and pretending we could see across to the coast of Wales on the other side of the Irish Sea.

In more recent decades, I often enjoyed walks along the seafront in Bray or around the harbour, followed by coffee or lunch in cafés such as Carpe Diem.

Living near Milton Keynes for the last two or three years, it is difficult (though not impossible) to find the same opportunities for a walk on any beach. So, as we had dinner in Butler and Barry on one of those evenings, it was good to share the joys of looking out onto the sea below and beyond.

Friday was a packed day, with family visits in Rathmines and Knocklyon, and the Dart connections between Bray and Lansdowne Road were ideal for setting out on a walk through some of south Dublin suburbs that retain many sweet memories for me, and that allowed me to recall some key anniversaries that take place this year.

The former Bea House on Pembroke Park … memories of student days at the Irish School of Ecumenics 40 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

A short walk from the Lansdowne Road stop on the Dart line in from Bray brought me to Pembroke Park, off Herbert Park, and the house that was once known as Bea House when it was the administrative centre of the Irish School of Ecumenics.

I was burning the candle at both ends 40 years ago, when I studied post-graduate theology there in the 1980s while working at The Irish Times spending a lot of time campaigning with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

There were happy memories of Robin Boyd, who had been the director of ISE, Alan Falconer, who was my tutor and, at the time, also a neighbour, and Bill McSweeney, who supervised my dissertation, leading to my graduation through ISE from Trinity College Dublin in 1984.

Other part-time lecturers 40 years ago included Des Dinan, who was then working on his PhD and who is now a professor at Georg Mason University, while the visiting lecturers included Jürgen Moltmann, who died last week, and Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), who died two years ago.

There were happy memories too of many walks with other students from Pembroke Park through Donnybrook and along Marlborough Road to Ranelagh and lectures in Milltown Park.

I had to stop too to see McCloskey’s pub in Donnybrook, although it is now closed and has been sold. This had been a favourite ‘haunt’ in the early 1970s, when I was involved in poetry groups and poetry groups based around the corner in Muckross Park on Marlborough Road. And there was the house at 52 Marlborough Road, where I stayed those weekends I travelled up to Dublin from Wexford until 50 years ago, when I left Wexford and the Wexford People and joined The Irish Times at the end of 1974.

Street art in Rathmines last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I walked on through Ranelagh, once again sought out the house in Old Mountpleasant where my grandfather had once lived, and then found myself on Belgrave Road, where I worked 20 years ago, from 2002 until 2006, when I joined the Church of Ireland Theological College, later the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

I stopped for lunch in Rathmines, visited my brother in Rathmines and once again visited the house in Rathmines where my father was born in 1918, and the house in Terenure where he spent his childhood.

By late afternoon, I was at the house where I lived in Knocklyon from 1996 until 2017, when I moved to the Rectory in Askeaton, Co Limerick. At the polling booth in Firhouse, I bumped into an old friend and neighbour, Dr Vincent Kenny. We caught up on many shared memories in Delaney’s, also known as the Knocklyon, before I caught a bus to Blackrock Station, and the Dart to Bray.

Evening lights at Blackrock Station last week waiting for the Dart to Bray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on image for full-screen view)

I am working on a paper for Salvador Ryan’s next collection, looking at ‘Childhood and the Irish.’ Throughout the day, I found myself thinking of the various places James Joyce had lived as a child, including Brighton Square, Rathgar, and the house where he was bor, Saint Joseph’s Church in Terenure where he was baptised, the houses in Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines, and back at Martello Terrace, Bray, where he had spent parts of his childhood years, and the place in Terenure where his mother was born.

But next Sunday is Bloomsday (16 June 2024), and perhaps I should tell some of those stories then and more of them in that planned book that Salvador Ryan is commissioning and editing.

Meanwhile, as I was on my own Bloom-like odyssey around Dublin 4 and Dublin 6, Charlotte was back in Bray, and decided to climb Bray Head. Sorry to say, she did not catch a glimpse of the coast of Wales either.

We had dinner in the Martello on Friday evening, and caught the plane back from Dublin to Birmingham yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, and were back in Stony Stratford by early evening.

The ‘Bray People’ … still going 50 years after I left in 1974 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024:
31, 9 June 2024, Trinity II

Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick, was built in 1831, but there has been a church on the site since the 13th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This is the Second Sunday after Trinity (Trinity II, 9 June 2024).

In the two weeks after Trinity Sunday, I illustrated my prayers and reflections with images and memories of cathedrals, churches, chapels and monasteries in Greece and England dedicated to the Holy Trinity. I am continuing this theme this week, with images and memories of churches I know in Ireland that are dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

Meanwhile, StonyLive!, a celebration of the cultural talent in and around Stony Stratford, which began last weekend, comes to an end today.

We were in Dublin and Bray over the last few days, and caught a flight back to Birmingham yesterday. I am back in Stony Stratford this morning, and later this morning I hope to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Giles Church. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

3, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The east end of Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 3: 20-35 (NRSVUE):

20 Then he went home, and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 23 And he called them to him and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin” – 30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

31 Then his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” 33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

The East Window in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, by Catherine O’Brien, depicting the Parable of the Sower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick:

For five years, I was priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes in the Diocese of Limerick, including Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick (2017-2022).

Holy Trinity Church was built at the west end of Rathkeale in 1831, but there has been a church on the site since the 13th century. Along with the hilltop pinnacle of Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, the tower of Holy Trinity forms a notable skyline in Rathkeale that is visible for many miles.

A comprehensive list of Rectors of Rathkeale survives from the mid-15th century, when Dennis O’Farrelly (Offeralye) was Rector from 1459 to 1471.

It is believed the present church was designed by the Limerick-based Pain brothers, James Pain (1779-1877), whose other works in the Rathkeale group of parishes include Castletown Church and the former Rectory in Askeaton, and George Pain (1792-1838). The church is the third to be built on the site and may incorporate parts of a church that was standing there in 1825.

The simple and regular form of the nave and the single-cell with tower design are characteristic of Board of First Fruits churches of the era. Samuel Lewis wrote in 1837: ‘The church is a very handsome edifice, in the early English style, with a lofty square tower, embattled and crowned with crocketed pinnacles: it was erected in 1831, near the site of the former church, and is built of black marble raised from a quarry on the river’s bank near the town …’

Funds were raised in 1877 for a new chancel, so the church is a composite of work carried out throughout the 19th century.

The carved stone features add artistic interest to the façade, as do the stained glass windows by Catherine O’Brien: the east window depicting the Parable of the Sower (1931) and the double lancet window in the south nave depicting Saint Paul and Saint Luke (1937). The variety of window openings includes Tudor and Gothic Revival styles.

The churchyard is the burial place for many Palatine families who moved to this area in the early 18th century. They were brought to the Rathkeale area by in 1709 by Thomas Southwell, whose family inherited some of the old Billingsley and Dowdall estate in the Rathkeale area. The names of the Palatine families buried here include Bovenizer, Teskey, Shier and Sparling.

The most imposing memorial is the Massy vault, built in 1800 by James FitzGerald Massy of Stoneville in 1800 and restored by Lucy Massy in 1907.

Beside Holy Trinity Church stands Church Street National School, formerly Rathkeale Number 2 School, built almost 200 years ago, at about the same time as Holy Trinity Church.

The window in the west tower in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 9 June 2024, Trinity II):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Estate Community Development Mission, Diocese of Colombo, Church of Ceylon.’ This theme is introduced today with a programme update:

High up in the hills and nestled between the fields of tea lies a village. Many mothers and fathers here are born into generations of tea plantation workers where work from a young age is very common. They aren’t paid a living wage even though the hours are long and exhausting. Sometimes parents don’t know if they will be able to put food on the table. Often their children drop out of school to work on the tea plantation too. “I have seen young boys and girls out plucking tea leaves for hours in the hot sun where they risk being bitten by snakes. It’s so dangerous, but they have to continue working.” explains Kavitha, a local teacher.

The Diocese of Colombo, Church of Ceylon seeks to bring hope for children and improve livelihoods in plantation estate communities especially through schools and education. Being at school keeps children safe from the dangers of working in the fields.

The Church of Ceylon is one of USPG’s Partners in Mission (PIM).

The USPG Prayer Diary today (9 June 2024, Trinity II) invites us to pray with these words from the Catholic Social Justice Network:

God of freedom, we pray for all your children around the world who are bound by unjust child labour. Free them from their work so they can learn and grow. Heal their physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds, and protect them from further harm and exploitation.

The Collect:

Lord, you have taught us
that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Loving Father,
we thank you for feeding us at the supper of your Son:
sustain us with your Spirit,
that we may serve you here on earth
until our joy is complete in heaven,
and we share in the eternal banquet
with Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Faithful Creator,
whose mercy never fails:
deepen our faithfulness to you
and to your living Word,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Inside Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, looking east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Leicester Baptists and
Thomas Cook’s role
in the beginnings of
mass tourism and travel

Central Baptist Church on Charles Street is the last surviving of several Baptist churches in Leicester city centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Today, Leicester is known as multifaith city, with a diverse number of religious traditions and places of worship. But, in the 19th century, Leicester was known as the ‘Metropolis of Dissent’ with a large number of non-conformist chapels and churches and a wide variety of denominations, including Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Unitarians and Baptists.

Many ‘dissenting’ chapels were built in Leicester from the 17th century on, and many more were built in the 19th century. But the Central Baptist Church Charles Street is the last surviving of several Baptist churches in Leicester City Centre.

The Central Baptist Church, also known as the Charles Street Baptist Chapel, was designed by William Flynt, a leading local architect, and was built in 1830.

In his Guide to Leicester, Thomas Cook wrote: ‘Charles Street Chapel is a neat edifice seating about 700 people. The congregation includes several very influential families and the senior Member of Parliament of the Borough (Richard Harris) is an office-bearer in the church. The Sunday school contains about 260 scholars and 26 teachers.’

Nonconformists had considerable political and economic influence in Victorian Leicester. Baptists were one of the largest nonconformist groups in Leicester and they included influential men like Thomas Cook, the great travel pioneer and anti-alcohol campaigner, prominent manufacturers and civic dignitaries.

An image of William Carey, the pioneering Baptist missionary, at Central Baptist Church in Leicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Baptist ministry in Leicester produced two outstanding figures: Robert Hall, a renowned preacher and social reformer whose statue stands in De Montfort Square at New Walk, and William Carey, a shoemaker who became a pioneer Christian missionary to India, social reformer and Bible translator. Both Carey and Hall had been ministers at the Harvey Lane Chapel, near Highcross.

The Central Baptist Church houses the William Carey Museum, dedicated to William Carey, who was instrumental in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society.

Carey left Leicester to become a missionary in India, where he translated the Bible into many Indian languages. He pioneered printing in Indian languages and was the founder of the Higher Education College in Serampore, now a major university in India.

Carey was a notable social reformer, and he contributed to framing a law prohibiting sutti, the practice of burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre.

Thomas Cook was a prominent Baptist in Leicester … his statue outside London Road Railway Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Thomas Cook, a pioneering figure in the modern travel and tourism industry, was also a leading Baptist figure in Victorian Leicester.

Cook began his international travel company in 1841, with a successful one-day rail excursion from Leicester to Loughborough on 5 July. This landmark daytrip has earned Leicester the accolade of the ‘birthplace of tourism’, and it was from these humble roots that a whole new kind of travel business developed.

Thomas Cook, originally from Derbyshire, moved to Market Harborough to work as a woodturner in 1832. There, he joined the local Baptist church and became actively involved in promoting temperance.

On 9 June 1841, Cook set out to walk the 15 miles from Market Harborough to Leicester to attend a Temperance Society meeting. On the way, an idea occurred to him. He recalled: ‘A thought flashed through my brain – what a glorious thing it would be if the newly developed powers of railways and locomotion could be made subservient to the promotion of temperance.’

He suggested hiring a train and carriages from the Midland Railway Company to take members of the Leicester Temperance Society to a temperance meeting in Loughborough the following month and the idea was received with enthusiasm.

The first railway excursion left Campbell Street Station in Leicester for Loughborough on 5 July 1841 at a cost of one shilling per passenger. The 485 passengers included Thomas Cook’s seven-year-old son John Mason Cook. The party travelled in open tub-style carriages and was accompanied by a band. After a successful day of marches, speeches, games and tea in the park, the party arrived back at Leicester station at 10:30 pm.

Two months after the first excursion to Loughborough, Cook moved to Leicester where he set up a bookselling and printing business at No 1 King Street. During the next three summers, he arranged a succession of trips between Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham on behalf of local temperance societies and Sunday schools. Although these trips helped to lay the foundations of his future business, Cook made little money from them aside from printing posters and handbills.

Cook and his family moved to 26-28 Granby Street – known as ‘Cook’s Rooms’ – in 1843. He used the building as an hotel, reading room, print works and a booking office for his excursions, and it was his home for the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, a new Baptist chapel was built in Leicester. The Belvoir Street Chapel or ‘Pork Pie Chapel’ on Belvoir Street was built in 1845 to a design by Joseph Hansom, the inventor of the horse-drawn cab.

Cook’s first commercial venture took place that summer, when he organised a trip to Liverpool. By the end of 1850, he had visited Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

In 1850, Sir Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace, and John Ellis, chair of the Midland Railway Company, persuaded Cook to devote himself to bringing workers from Yorkshire and the Midlands to London for the Great Exhibition. By the end of the season, Cook had taken 150,000 people to London, his final trains to the Exhibition carrying 3,000 children from Leicester, Nottingham and Derby.

James Butler’s statue of Thomas Cook outside London Road Railway Station in Leicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Cook’s Commercial and Family Temperance Hotel and the adjoining Temperance Hall in Granby Street opened in 1853. Their neighbours on either side were pubs, the Nag’s Head on one side and the Wagon and Horses on the other, and Cook frequently clashed with their landlords.

While he continued to expand his business in Britain, Cook was determined to venture into Europe too. He managed to negotiate a route between Harwich and Antwerp, opening up the way for a grand circular tour to include Brussels, Cologne, the Rhine, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Strasbourg and Paris, returning to London via Le Havre or Dieppe. Cook escorted his first tourists to Europe by this route in the summer of 1855.

The success of these European tours led to the development of two important travel systems: the hotel coupon of 1868, to pay for hotel accommodation and meals abroad, and the circular note of 1874, an early form of travellers’ cheque that allowed tourists to obtain local currency in exchange for a paper note issued by Cook.

Building on his successes in Europe, Cook made an exploratory trip to North America in 1865 and set up a system of tours covering 4,000 miles of railways. Four years later, in 1869, he hired two steamers for his first tour up the Nile. The first round-the-world tour took place in 1872-1873, and conducted world tours soon became annual events.

While Thomas Cook was travelling round the world, his son, John Mason Cook, was building the company back home, moving the firm to a new head office at Ludgate Circus in London. John, the more commercially minded of the two, regularly argued with his father over the direction the company should take and by 1878 their partnership had ended.

With the ending of the business partnership with his son, Thomas had more time to devote to his life in Leicester and built his retirement home ‘Thorncroft’ at 244 London Road. In 1877, he was a founder member of the Leicester Coffee and Cocoa Company Ltd, which set up 14 coffee and cocoa houses in the town to provide alternatives to pubs. Many of these buildings still survive including the Victoria Coffee House on Granby Street, East Gates Coffee and High Cross Coffee House.

Thomas Cook died in 1892 and was buried in Welford Road Cemetery with his wife and daughter. John Mason Cook continued to take the business from strength to strength, opening new offices in Leicester in 1894. The Thomas Cook Building at 5 Gallowtree Gate was intended as a celebration of the company with tiled friezes on its exterior telling the story of the first 50 years of Thomas Cook & Son.

John Mason Cook died in 1899. Many of the objects he acquired on his travels over the years were given to the Town Museum, now Leicester Museum and Art Gallery. By the beginning of the 20th century, the firm of Thomas Cook and Son dominated the world travel scene.

The congregation of the Belvoir Street Chapel united with that of Charles Street in the 1940s and it became known as the United Baptist Church. It was designated a Grade II listed building in 1973. It was named the Central Baptist Church in 1983 and is the last surviving of several Baptist churches in Leicester City Centre.

Today, a statue of Thomas Cook stands outside London Road Railway Station in Leicester in celebration of his landmark first organised return rail journey from Leicester to Loughborough. The statue is by James Butler, who is also responsible for the Seamstress Statue, outside the City Rooms, and Richard III in Castle Gardens. The statue was unveiled in 1991, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Leicester to Loughborough excursion.

Thomas Cook’s first round-the-world tour took place in 1872-1873 … a detail from his statue at London Road Railway Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)