Finding a Ruskin portrait with family links and vivid Victorian colours at the Ashmolean

John Ruskin (1819-1900) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) in the ‘Colour Revolution’ exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

I have tried – but failed – during recent visits to Oxford, to search in the Ashmolean Museum for a Pre-Raphaelite portrait that inspired a late Victorian photograph of my grandfather.

The formal portrait of John Ruskin (1819-1900) by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) has been held by the Ashmolean for the past ten years. But each time I went in search of it the painting was on loan to another exhibition. So, when I was in Oxford last week, I returned to the Ashmolean Museum to see this painting which is part of the current exhibition, ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design.’

Ruskin was an important figure in the Pre-Raphaelite circle in Oxford. His book The Stones of Venice was influential as I was developing my interests in architecture and later as I developed my interests in Venice. His portrait, painted by Milais 170 years ago in 1853, captures Ruskin in a style that fulfils Ruskin’s ideals.

But I also had family reasons for wanting to see this portrait. When my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921), was young and successful, he had his portrait taken in a way that presented him as a young Victorian man with confidence looking forward to the future.

I had always imagined that the photograph was taken in a Victorian photographer’s studio, but with the intent of creating the impression of an ideal rustic background, with a cascading waterfall, rocks, rich vegetation, and a clearing in a thicket. Stephen Comerford is dressed in a three-piece suit and wing-collar shirt, holding a walking cane in one hand and a hat in the other. But his shoes are well-made and highly-polished, so this is clearly a studio scene rather than a setting at the Powerscourt Waterfall near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, or at a waterfall in Killarney, Co Kerry. It is certainly not in the Scottish Highlands.

It seems like a photograph that a man confident a full and successful career lay ahead of him would like to have taken. I only have a copy of the photograph, from the house in Terenure where my grandmother lived, rather than the original. So I have no idea of the original date of the photograph, or of the name of the photographer. When it was announced in 2013 that the Ashmolean had acquired Millais’s portrait of Ruskin, I realised that my grandfather’s photograph was modelled on this celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Stephen Edward Comerford (left) like a cut-out figure at a waterfall, and John Ruskin (right) in the portrait by John Everett Millais (Photomontage: Patrick Comerford)

This is the painting that led to the breakdown of Ruskin’s marriage, and until it was acquired by the Ashmolean it was ‘one of the most important Pre-Raphaelite paintings’ that had remained in private ownership.

The Ashmolean has such a rich collection of Pre-Raphaelite works because of the many connections members of the movement had with of Oxford. A number of them – including Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, Alfred William Hunt and John Ruskin – studied at the University.

Ruskin left much of his collection, including his teaching collection, to the university. He was an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1836 to 1842, when he lived with his mother on High Street. His Modern Painters, published anonymously in 1843, was credited to him as ‘a graduate of Oxford’. His writings were highly influential and he became irrevocably associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, befriending Millais and Hunt, and then Rossetti, Siddal and Burne-Jones.

Ruskin was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 1869. He was critical of the teaching methods at the art schools of his day, and founded the School of Drawing in 1871.

When I set out in search of Ruskin’s portrait by Millais in the Ashmolean in September, I learn it has been on loan for some months to another exhibition. Instead, I spent an educational and enjoyable afternoon in Pre-Raphaelite Gallery, but shall have to return soon again to find the portrait that may have inspired the pose in that Victorian photograph of my grandfather.

‘Venice from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute (1835) by JMW Turner, lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Thankfully, I found the portrait last week when I visited ‘Colour Revolution’, the Ashmolean’s autumn exhibition which presents a dazzling version of the Victorian world, surprisingly one of the most colourful periods in history.

Ruskin was one of the most influential writers on art and architecture in 19th century Britain, and strove to restore colour to its rightful importance in art. Since the Renaissance, colour had been considered by many as secondary to composition and draftsmanship.

Ruskin argued that colour was a God-given gift and should be embraced as it had been in mediaeval art. He believed the colours of the natural world could inspire and guide artists who should replicate them as truthfully as possible. ‘You ought to love colour, and to think nothing quite beautiful or perfect without it,’ he wrote in The Elements of Drawing in 1857.

Ruskin was a passionate defender of JMW Turner, and considered him one of the greatest colourists. Both Ruskin and Turner were profoundly influenced by the colours and patterned architecture of Venice. Ruskin also taught art at Oxford. His lectures and writing helped shape debates around colour and greatly influenced the Pre-Raphaelites.

This exhibition dispels the myth that the Victorian era was a dreary landscape of ‘dark satanic mills’ and cities choked with smog. Instead, it shows how developments in art, science and technology resulted in an explosion of colour that was embraced by artists, designers and regular people in the 19th century.

The exhibition reveals a spectacular and flamboyant array of artworks, costume and design that sprung from this ‘colour revolution’. It features 140 objects from international collections ranging from Ruskin’s exquisite studies, Turner’s and Whistler’s experiments with colour harmony, and elegant designs by William Morris and his company, to fashion, jewellery and homeware that enlivened the streets and homes of Victorian Britain and Europe.

The exhibition opens with an evocative object, encapsulating our dark preconceptions of the period: Queen Victoria’s mourning dress – she spent 40 years in black following the death of Prince Albert in 1861. But examples of Victorian fashion show people of the 19th century embracing the products of the Industrial Revolution, no more so than new aniline dyes. While the coal industry blackened Britain’s landscape, aniline, a by-product of coal-tar, introduced a rainbow of possibilities to Victorian wardrobes.

The display includes a purple dress, crinoline and shoes dyed with the first aniline colour, Mauvine, all retaining their shocking brilliance. As production increased, the price of dyes reduced, making bright colours available to the masses.

Although pigments had been manufactured for thousands of years, the term ‘synthetic’ is synonymous with the 19th century because of the scale and advances of chemical technology. It was an 18-year-old chemistry student, William Henry Perkin (1838-1907) who discovered Mauvine in 1856. This encouraged chemists across Europe to find more synthetic colours.

Perkin succeeded in 1867 in making alizarin, the active colorant of madder root, a traditional vegetable dye for reds, pinks and browns. Soon new anilines were being used to print postage stamps, make inks, pigments, paints, to colour paper and even food.

The Great Bookcase (1859-1862) was designed by William Burges and painted by 13 Pre-Raphaelite artists (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Advances such as these were celebrated in the International Exhibition in 1862, an important cultural event in the 19th century. It brought together examples of British, colonial and scientific products and it was the first time synthetic anilines were shown to an international audience. Two of the most fashionable aniline colours on display, vivid pinks - Magenta and Solferino – had been named after recent French victories over Austria in the 1859 Second Italian War of Independence.

The Ashmolean’s extraordinarily colourful Great Bookcase (1859-1862) was the centrepiece of the Exhibition’s Mediaeval Court. At three meters high, the bookcase echoes the polychrome porch of a Gothic cathedral, although its style is more eclectic.

The bookcase was designed by the architect William Burges (1827-1881), and it was painted by 13 promising young Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).

Analyses show that Burges and the artists used contemporary materials including aniline green.

‘Vivien’ (1863) by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904) … Sandys uses peacock feathers to highlight her role as a sexual enticer, appropriating the colourful plumage of the male (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Revivalist and Pre-Raphaelite artists were working in the context of rapid scientific progress and the popularisation of new scientific ideas by figures like Charles Darwin (1809-1882). His concept of natural selection and the use of colour in the animal kingdom led to particularly gruesome Victorian appetites for two of nature’s most beautiful animals, beetles and hummingbirds. Unlike the feathers of a peacock, whole bird and beetle bodies were incorporated into Victorian fashion and jewellery.

The jeweller Harry Emmanuel created coveted designs including a Hummingbird necklace (1865) made of seven decapitated emerald and ruby-topaz birds. There was such a hummingbird craze that in one week alone in 1888, 400,000 ‘skins’ were auctioned, and a further 370,000 in the following week.

In 1884, the Portuguese ambassador to London presented the Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, with a piece of jewellery made of the bodies of 46 iridescent green South American weevils. Granville had these mounted on a tiara and necklace for his wife in 1885.

‘Minton Peacock’ designed by Paul Comolera for Minton & Co … majolica contained high traces of lead that poisoned many of the female workers in the Minton factory (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Colourful fashion had a human cost too: in 1862 a factory girl making artificial flowers for women’s headdresses died from poisoning. She was said to have vomited green slime and had green tinged eyeballs. The killer was the main ingredient of the new green dye – arsenic. The incident prompted a review of the use of green in fashion and homeware, and green wallpaper became known as ‘walls of death’.

Scandals such as this and the ever-growing use of colour in popular culture prompted discussions on colour theory and different colours’ moral qualities. The exhibition shows artists who had famously different attitudes. Ruskin believed artists should stick to the God-given colours of nature, while James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) disagreed entirely and followed a philosophy of ‘colour for colour’s sake’. His extravagant use of colour was made easier by the invention of collapsible metal paint tubes.

Certain ‘unnatural’ colours were embraced by the ‘Decadent’ movement – such as the dyed-green carnation sported by Oscar Wilde. Another Decadent favourite was yellow, epitomised by a series of French novels that had distinctive yellow covers. The avant-garde periodical, The Yellow Book appeared in London in 1894. Its bright yellow cover was designed by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). Uncompromisingly stylish and ready to push boundaries, The Yellow Book came to define the decade as ‘the Yellow ’90s’.

Photography and electricity also had revolutionary impacts at the time, and some of the first innovators were women. ‘Colour Revolution’ features one of the earliest colour reproduction techniques, cyanotypes, made by Anna Atkins (1799-1871), who used the process to create ethereally beautiful ‘photograms’ – made without a camera – of British algae, published between 1843 and 1853.

The exhibition is curated by Matthew Winterbottom, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Ashmolean Museum, and Professor Charlotte Ribeyrol of the Sorbonne Université, Paris.

The exhibition, ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design’ continues in the John Sainsbury Exhibition Galleries in the Ashmolean Museum until 18 February 2024. It is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm, and tickets are from £6 to £17.

Mother Mary Clare Whitty: Sign of the Cross in Korea

Lectern by Sophia Angel St John Whitty in Christchurch, Bray. Image courtesy of Christchurch, Bray

Patrick Comerford

Mother Mary Clare Whitty (1883-1950) was a tewntieth-century Anglican nun and martyr who spent her childhood in Limerick. The daughter a doctor who practised in the Crescent, she was a cousin of Catherine O’Brien, the stained-glass artist. She died during a so-called ‘Death March’ in the closing days of the Korean War, and was buried in a lonely, shallow grave by French Catholic nuns, but her story is often untold, even within Church of Ireland and Anglican circles.

Mother Mary Clare was born Clare Emma Whitty in Fenloe, near Newmarket-on-Fergus, on 30 May 1883, during one of many family holidays in Co Clare. Her sister, Sophia Angel St John Whitty (1877-1924), was born in Dublin and was a celebrated artist and woodcarver. The family claimed descent from an old Co Wexford family that once lived in Ballyteigue Castle, near Kilmore. Their father, Dr Richard Whitty (1844-1897), was from Rathvilly, Co Carlow, where at least three members of the Whitty family were Church of Ireland priests. Another branch of the family included three Rectors of Kilrush, Co Clare. Through their mother, Jane Alicia (Hickman), the Whitty sisters were cousins of Catherine O’Brien (1881-1963), the stained-glass artist of An Túr Gloine studios; the Irish nationalist historian Alice Stopford-Green (1847-1929); and the controversial hymn-writer Stopford Brooke (1832-1916), who translated Still the Night, a version of Silent Night that has lost popularity. The Whitty sisters spent their early childhood in Whitechurch, near Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, but family holidays were spent in Co Clare. When they were still children, Dr Whitty qualified as a medical doctor, the family moved to Limerick, and for many years they lived at No 11 The Crescent, on the corner of Barrington Street. Clare Emma Whitty later studied art in Paris, where she became fluent in French, and then became a teacher in Birmingham, and worked as a church worker at Saint Alban’s in Birmingham, whose vicar, the Revd Alfred (Cecil) Cooper, later became the fourth Bishop of Korea. In 1912, she joined the Anglican Community of Saint Peter, then based in Kilburn, London, taking her vows in 1915 as Sr Mary Clare. Before the outbreak of World War I, her friend Mark Trollope (1862-1930) was appointed the third Anglican Bishop of Korea. As the Vicar of Saint Augustine’s in Kilburn, Trollope had known Sr Mary Clare, and he invited her to start a society of Korean sisters.

The First World War disrupted those plans, and when she eventually reached Korea in 1923 she began Korean language studies. With the help of Bishop Trollope, she founded the Society of the Holy Cross in Seoul in 1925, and was appointed novice mistress. Back in England for a time in 1928-29, she lived at the mother house of the Community of Saint Peter in Kilburn. She then returned to Seoul to take up her role as the first Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in 1929. In Korea, she earned a reputation as a botanist and she contributed papers to the journal of the Korean branch of the Royal Asiatic Socety.

During World War II, Mother Mary Clare was repatriated in 1941. She left England in 1946, and returned through Kure in Japan to Korea, arriving back in January 1947, describing herself as a teacheron the ship’s passenger list. On the outbreak of the Korean War, she turned down an offer from the British embassy to evacuate from Seoul, deciding to stay with her congregation. When the North Koreans captured Seoul in June 1950. she took refuge with other foreign civilians in the British Embassy. But, when the North Korean forces consolidated their occupation of Seoul, she was interned.

Following the success of the United Nations forces landing at Inchon, the North Korean forces retreated from Seoul. Mother Mary Clare and other foreign civilian prisoners, including many Christian missionaries, were marched into the northern part of North Korea. The last part of their ‘death march’ began on 30 October and involved a forced march of over 150 kilometres in early winter with little food or warm clothing. Mother Mary Clare died on 6 November 1950 near Chunggangjinon. The sixty-seven-year-old nun was buried in a shallow grave near the Chosin Reservoir in the north-west part of North Korea by five French-speaking Roman Catholic sisters. They used an improvised bier to bring her to the top of a neighbouring hill, close to the camp, where they dug her grave.

Ten months after the end of the Korean War, the Church Times published a short obituary notice in April 1954 that described Mother Mary Clare as a ‘devoted and courageous English Sister.’ But she was very much an Irish nun, with strong links in Limerick and Clare, one of at least eight Irish or Irish-American missionaries – the others were members of the Columban Fathers – to have died during the conflict. Sophia Angel St John Whitty (1877-1924), Mother Mary Clare’s sister, was an artist and woodcarver and an important figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. She designed carved walnut figures for Christ Church, Bray, including two angels and St Patrick. She died in 1924 and was buried in Powerscourt. Their mother, Jane Whitty, was living at Wayside, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, when she died on 17 June 1931. Mother Mary Clare’s former community now runs Saint Columba’s House, a retreat house and conference centre in Woking, near London. There, one of the guest rooms remembers her with the name ‘Mary Clare.’

Biographical Note (p. 261):

Patrick Comerford, former adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College Dublin, is former priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale group of parishes (Church of Ireland),and former Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick.

• ‘Mother Mary Whitty: Sign of the Cross in Korea’, is published in David Bracken, ed, Of Limerick Saints and Sinners (Dublin: Veritas, 2022, ISBN: 9781800970311, 266 pp), pp 213-215. The book was launched by Dr Liam Chambers in the Limerick Diocesan Centre on Tuesday night, 22 November 2022.

A martyr nun and an artist who spent their childhood in Limerick

No 11 The Crescent, Limerick … for a few years the childhood home of the artist Sophia Angel St John Whitty and her sister the Anglican martyr and missionary nun Mother Mary Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Shortly before Christmas, while I was researching the story of the Revd Stopford Brooke, the Irish author of a much-forgotten translation of Silent Night and a controversial Anglican priest who later became a Unitarian, I came across the story of the extraordinary Whitty sisters who spent part of their childhood in Limerick.

Sophia Angel St John Whitty (1877-1924), who was born on 4 November 1877 at 69 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin, was an Irish artist and woodcarver. She was named after her maternal grandmother, a daughter of Bishop Edward Stopford of Meath.

Sophia’s sister, Clare Emma Whtity (1883-1950), was born on 30 May 1883, and later became an Anglican nun, Mother Mary Clare, who died a martyr’s death during the Korean War in 1950. She was born at her mother’s family home in Fenloe, near Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare, during one of the many family holidays spent in the Hickman family home in Co Clare.

Their father, Dr Richard Whitty (1844-1897), a medical doctor and a land agent, was born in Rathvilly, Co Carlow. His father, the Revd William Whitty (1801-1844), was the curate of Rathvilly. One source says this Whitty family was descended from Thomas Whitty, a grocer of Dublin and Exeter. Another source says they are descended from the Revd John Whitty who was the son of Sir Walter Whitty of Ballyteigue Castle, near Kilmore, Co Wexford.

This branch of the Whitty family lived for generation in Rathvilly, Co Carlow, and Dr Richard Whitty’s father, the Revd William Whitty, grandfather, the Revd John Whitty (1761-1843), and great-grandfather, Archdeacon Edward Whitty (1720-1804), were all Church of Ireland priests in the parish.

Archdeacon Edward Whitty was also Prebendary of Tomgraney in Killaloe, and three successive generations of his descendants in another line of descent were Rectors of Kilrush, Co Clare: the Revd Irvine Whitty (1754-1842), Archdeacon John Whitty (1779-1864) and Canon Henry Whitty.

It may have been these strong clerical links with Co Clare that introduced Dr Richard Whitty to his wife, Jane Alicia, who was born into the Hickman family of Fenloe, near Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co Clare. Jane’s mother, Sophia Angel (Stopford) was a daughter of Bishop Edward Stopford of Meath and a sister of Archdeacon Edward Stopford. This branch of the Stopford family included a number of bishops and a number of clerical generations, and was distantly related to the Stopford family, Earls of Courtown.

The Hickman family was descended from Gregory Hickman, an English merchant who moved to Co Clare in the first half of the 17th century. His grandson, Hugh Hickman, was the ancestor of the Hickman family of Fenloe. Fenloe House, a redbrick, two-storey 18th century house was the home of the Hickman family from the 18th century until the 20th century. Hugh Poole Hickman lived there in 1837 and Hugh Palliser Hickman of Fenloe owned over 3,000 acres in Co Clare in the 1870s.

The Whitty sisters had no other sisters and had no brothers. Through their mother, they were second cousins of Catherine Amelia O’Brien or Kitty O’Brien (1881-1963), the stained glass artist of An Túr Gloine studios; the Irish nationalist and historian Alice Stopford-Green (1847-1929); and the controversial Irish Anglican priest and hymnwriter, Stopford Brooke (1832-1916), who translated Still the Night, a version of Silent Night that has lost popularity.

With Canon Horace McKinley at Whitechurch parish church, Rathfarnham … the Whitty sisters spent part of their early childhood in Whitechurch

As young girls, the two Whitty sisters spent much of their childhood at Hillcot in Whitechurch, Co Dublin, but family holidays were spent at their mother’s family home at Fenloe, where Clare was born.

While his two daughters were still children, their father Richard Whitty qualified as a medical doctor in August 1888 and they moved to Limerick, where the family lived at No 11 The Crescent, almost opposite the Jesuit church. Their grandmother, Sophia Angel St John Hickman, died at this house on the corner of Barrington Street in June 1889.

By the 1880s, the Whitty family had moved to The Crescent, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The Whitty family had moved to England by 1891 and were living at Loughton in Essex. Dr Whitty died in London at the age of 53 on 1 November 1897. The family were living with his brother-in-law, Major-General Hugh Palliser Hickman, who was stationed at Woolwich Barracks.

Clare Emma Whitty received training in art in Paris, where she became fluent in French. She was living as a boarder in Birmingham by 1911, when she described herself as an Elementary Teacher.

A year later, in 1912, she joined the Anglican Community of Saint Peter, then based in Kilburn, London, and took her vows as a sister in 1915, taking the name Mary Clare. Before the outbreak of World War I, the Revd Mark Trollope (1862-1930), who had been vicar of Saint Augustine’s in Kilburn, was appointed the third Anglican Bishop of Korea.

He asked Sister Mary Clare to help him in founding a society of Korean sisters in Seoul. But World War I disrupted those plans, and she eventually reached Korea in 1923, and began Korean language studies.

With the help of Bishop Trollope, she founded the Society of the Holy Cross in Seoul in 1925 and was appointed novice mistress. She was back in England for a time in 1928-1929, when she lived at the mother house of the Community of Saint Peter in Kilburn. She then returned to Seoul to take up her role as the first Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. During World War II, Mother Mary Clare was repatriated to England in 1941.

She left England in 1946, and returned through Kure in Japan to Korea, arriving back in January 1947. On the ship’s passenger list, she described herself as a teacher.

On the outbreak of the Korean War, she turned down an offer from the British embassy to evacuate from Seoul, deciding to stay with her congregation. When the North Korean army in Seoul in June 1950, she took refuge with other foreign civilians in the British Embassy. But they were interned by the North Korean forces as they consolidated their occupation of the Korean capital.

On the retreat of the North Korean forces from Seoul following the success of the United Nations forces landing at Inchon, she and other foreign civilian prisoners, including a number of Christian missionaries, were forcible moved to the northern part of North Korea.

The last part of their ‘Death March,’ began on 30 October and involved a forced march of over 100 miles in early winter with little food or warm clothing. Mother Mary Clare died on 6 November 1950 near Chunggangjinon. She was buried in a shallow grave near the Chosin Reservoir in the north-west part of North Korea by five French-speaking Roman Catholic sisters. They used an improvised bier to bring her to the top of a neighbouring hill, close to the camp, where they dug her grave.

Ten months after the end of the Korean War, the Church Times published a short obituary notice in April 1954 that described her as a ‘devoted and courageous English Sister.’

Apart from a recent one-page article in Newslink, the Diocesan magazine in Limerick and Killaloe, by the Very Revd Paul Mooney, Dean of Ferns, Mother Mary Clare is little known or remembered in her homeland or in the Church of Ireland in which she grew up.

The rere of the Whitty family home on the corner of The Crescent and Barrington Street in Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Mother Mary Clare’s sister, Sophia St John Whitty, was a woodcarver, teacher, and a leading figure in co-operative movement, and an influential member of the Irish Celtic cultural revival and the Irish Art and Crafts movement.

Sophia attended the South Kensington School of Art, where she studied woodcarving, and returned to Dublin to continue her studies at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art.

She opened a small studio at 43 Sackville Street (O’Connell Street), Dublin, around 1902. There she gave lessons in woodcarving and other crafts, and with Kathleen Scott she taught woodcarving at the parochial hall of Christ Church, Bray, Co Wicklow. She went to Bruges in Belgium to study figure carving, and then visited art schools in Austria and Italy in the summer of 1903.

When a new technical school (later Colaiste Raithin) opened in Bray in 1904, Sophia was appointed wood carving teacher, one of the first in Ireland. With Scott, their students executed the carved walnut figures for Christ Church designed by Sophia, including two angels, representing prayer and praise, on the prayer desk, and Saint Patrick on the lectern.

Sophia’s 1904 Gothic triptych with crucifix received acclaim in 1904. A year later, she set up the Bray Art Furniture Industry, which was attached to the technical school, and where she was the manager, designer and instructor.

Sophia closed her Dublin studio in 1906, and in 1909 she moved from 70 Pembroke Road to Old Bawn, Old Connaught, Bray, where she and her mother Jane lived for the rest of their lives and hosted children’s parties each Christmas.

With the outbreak of World War I, the Bray Art Furniture Industry closed in 1914. Sophia was involved in the United Irishwomen, serving as the organising secretary in 1914, 1915 and 1921. The organisation struggled during the political troubles of the Irish War of Independence, and she resigned in 1921.

In the years after, she wrote nature articles for The Irish Times and other Dublin newspapers, and toured Co Dublin and Co Wicklow searching for material, wither alone on her bicycle or with her mother in their little Peugeot car.

Sophia Angel St John Whitty died on 26 February 1924 at Drumcondra Hospital, Dublin, after a brief illness and surgery. She was then living at Old Bawn, Bray, Co Wicklow. She was buried in Enniskerry. Following her death, a collection of her nature essays in The Irish Times and the Freeman’s Journal in the early 1920s was collected and published in a book, The Flaming Wheel, which included a biographical foreword by Kathleen Scott.

Their mother Jane Whitty was living at Wayside, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, when she died on 17 June 1931.

No 69 Upper Leeson Street, where Sophia was born, is part of a terrace of six houses dating from the early Victorian period. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was also home to PL Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, which has returned to cinema screens this month.

No 69 Upper Leeson Street, where Sophia Whitty was born in 1877 (Source: Daft)

A hidden church on Powerscourt Estate has a story that goes back for centuries

The ruins of the old church of Stagonil, hidden behind a high wall in Powerscourt Estate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

Behind a large wall on the Powercourt Estate, covered in ivy and hidden behind large trees, the ruins of Stagonil Church go unnoticed by the daily throng of visitors and tourists.

As I peered behind these walls last Saturday [22 October 2016], I could see the ruined church of Stagonil, a reminder of a church with a story that goes back long before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans for almost 1,000 years, and of a lost village that survived until the Wingfield family built Enniskerry as an estate village for their tenants and workers in the mid-19th century.

From the eighth century on, on the southerly edges of an area ruled by the family of Macgiolla Mocolmog, a Danish or Viking settlement developed where three rivers meet, the Dargle, Glencree and Annacrevy. Some say this settlement was named Stagonil or Tigh Chonaill, the House of Conall; others say its name is derived from Gunhild, a prominent Viking woman in the area.

The competing claims of a Viking and a Gaelic settlement are legacies that harken back to a time when the early priests in Stagonil were appointed by the Danish Bishops of Dublin, but the Irish Bishops of Glendalough continued to claim the church lands.

The Abbey of Saint Thomas à Becket was founded in Dublin after the arrival of the Anglo-Normans. In 1216, about 10 years after their marriage, Basilia and Richard de Cogan granted all their lands in the Bray area to the Abbey of Saint Thomas. Their lands adjoining the king’s manor of Obrun included the village of Stagonil. All traces of the village have disappeared, although the ruins of the early church dedicated to Saint Beccan are at Churchtown, above the north bank of the Dargle, near the Annacrevy gate.

As early as 1192, the first Anglo-Norman Archbishop of Dublin linked this church with Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and from 1303 until 1874 one of the prebendaries or canons of Saint Patrick’s also served as the Rector of Stagonil, and later of Powerscourt.

There was a weekly fair in Stagonil on Saturdays, and Henry III granted the profits of the fair to the Archbishop of Dublin, as well as the village, which was surrounded by the archbishop’s farmlands. The Archbishop leased a farm to the Le Poer family of Balytenyth Castle, which became their demesne lands, which eventually became known as Powerscourt, although Stagonil retained in its name.

From 1303, the parish was served by the Prebendaries of Stagonil in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, when Archbishop Richard de Feringes made Stagonil a distinct prebend, although few of the name of the prebendaries (nine in all) survive for the period leading up to the suppression of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in 1547.

The connection with Saint Patrick’s Cathedral resumed in 1555 when the cathedral received a new charter. When Sir Richard Wingfield acquired the Powerscourt estate, he rebuilt the castle as his manor house at Powerscourt, and in 1603 he built a new church for the parish of Stagonil alongside the castle.

When Lancelot Bulkeley, Archbishop of Dublin (1619-1650), held a visitation of his diocese, his returns showed that the parish of Stagonil was flourishing.

Sir Richard Wingfield, to whom Viscount Powerscourt left his property in 1634, died only four years after his succession, and was followed by his son, another Richard, then aged 17. When Elizabeth Folliot, widow of Sir Richard Wingfield, was an elderly widow, she left a graceful flagon of Irish silver to the church in 1704 for use at the Holy Communion.

The minutes of the parish vestry for the period 1695-1807 almost coincide with the time between the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. They include churchwarden’s accounts, details of parish spending, the cost of recasting the bell in 1723, and of the arrangements for policing the two Constablewicks of Powerscourt and Kilmacanogue.

An early Prebendary and Rector of Stagonil at this time was Canon Theophilus Bolton, who was incumbent in 1707-1714. But he probably spent little time in Powerscourt, paying a curate in fill his responsibilities in the parish while he benefitted from the prebendal tithes. Like many of the rectors at the time, Stagonil was a stepping stone to higher ambitions, and he later became Bishop of Clonfert and then Bishop of Elphin before becoming Archbishop of Cashel (1730-1744). He gave his name to the Bolton Library in Cashel.

Edward Synge, who was Rector in 1715-1719, was later successively Bishop of Clonfert (1730-1732), Cloyne (1732-1734), Ferns (1734-1740), and Elphin (1740-1762). Francis Corbet (1723-1727) became Dean of of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (1747-1775)

Richard Wingfield, 1st Viscount Powerscourt of the third creation, commissioned the German-born architect Richard Cassel to build Powerscourt House in 1729-1743. At the same time, Francis Corbet’s successor, Canon John Towers was the Prebendary of Stagonil (1727-1746), and he leased property at Cookstown until his death in 1751. Jonathan Swift, the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, had a summer holiday with the Towers family at Cookstown.

The vestry minutes show that the old church was rebuilt considerably after Canon Michael Sandys was appointed Rector and Prebendary of Stagonil in 1775. He remained in the parish for almost 40 years until 1814.

Henry Grattan (1746-1820), the patriot constitutional politician who lived in Tinnehinch House, Enniskerry, was a churchwarden in the parish in 1793. The vestry records for 1796-1807 also show how the residents were obliged to raise money to fund the Wicklow Militia in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1789 and the 1798 Rising in Ireland.

Sandys was succeeded by Robert Daly (1814-1842) a noted Irish scholar and later Bishop of Cashel (1843-1872). In Daly’s time, over £1,000 was spent on repairs to the old church, and the old glebe house, Annacrevy Schoolhouse and the parochial hall were also built.

The village of Enniskerry, built in the 1820s and 1830s, and the Town Clock erected in 1843 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

During Daly’s time too, Richard Wingfield, the fifth Viscount Powerscourt, welcomed King George IV to Powerscourt in 1821, and the present village of Enniskerry was built just before his death in 1823. His son erected the Town Clock in 1843 to commemorate the centenary of the third version of the Powerscourt titles given to the Wingfield family in 1743.

Until the mid-19th century, the church at Stagonil had congregations of up to 200. This probably included the Powerscourt tenants, but also tenants of the Earl of Meath, for Great and Little Kilruddery were part of the parish until Disestablishment. After the railway line between Dublin and Bray opened in 1851, new churches were needed in the neighbourhood, so Kilbride Church was consecrated in 1859 and Christ Church, Bray, was consecrated in 1863.

Meanwhile, with the building of the village of Enniskerry, many of the residents could only go to church in Stagonil in the grounds of the Powerscourt Demesne in the evening and with difficulty. In 1857 Elizabeth, Marchioness of Londonderry and widow of Richard Wingfield, the 6th Viscount Powerscourt, offered the parish the present of a new church as a parting gift as she handed the estate over to her son on his 21st birthday.

Mervyn Edward Wingfield, the 7th Viscount Powerscourt (1844-1904), laid the foundation stone of this new church with a mallet and trowel of Wicklow silver on the day he came of age in October 1857. The project for a new church coincided with an extensive renovation programme that also established the Italian gardens at Powerscourt.

The church cost £3,441 9s 2d to build, and was built to seat 350, although it was criticised for being too small. The consecration was delayed because the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were not satisfied with the slated spire. They refused to accept delivery from the architect, John Norton (1823-1904) of London, until a copper spire had been erected. This spire, in its turn, had to be renewed in 1929 at a cost of £1,300, because its wooden frame had perished.

The English architect John Norton (1823-1904) designed country houses, churches and commercial buildings. He was born in Bristol and became a pupil of Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880), a close friend of Augustus Pugin (1812-1852), who was inspired by the Gothic mediaeval styles of the pre-Reformation era.

Ferrey’s friendship with Pugin had a profound effect on Norton, who adopted Pugin’s principles in his own church designs. Pugin died in 1852 when Norton was not yet 30. He embarked on a succession of Gothic revivalist designs for parish churches.

It was said that of Norton’s work that he ‘combined the Gothic beauty of holiness with a reverence for nature. He created domestic architecture based on the recent collegiate buildings in Oxford. Suddenly, too, the tenets of Ruskin and Pugin have become transfixed in stone.’

Despite the delay in consecration, the church was opened for evening worship in 1860 at a service at which the preacher was Francis Thomas McDougall (1817-1886), Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak, an SPG (USPG) missionary. When the day came for the consecration of the church three years later, Archbishop Whately was dying, and so the church was consecrated by his friend, William Fitzgerald (1814-1883), Bishop of Killaloe, on 15 September 1863.

The Pepperpot Tower was built in the Powerscourt Estate in 1911 with stones from the old church of Stagonil (Photogtpgraph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The old church of Stagonil fell out of use after 1863, but two large vaults, one in the church and one in churchyard, were provided for Lady Verner in 1867. When the Church of Ireland was disestablished two years later in 1869, Lord Powerscourt claimed the old church and the surrounding churchyard. Since then, only families with a traditional right to be buried next to the old church within the demesne could claim burial rights there. Some of the stones from the old church were purloined by the Powerscourt family and used in 1911 to build the Pepperpot Tower nearby to commemorate a visit by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, who abdicated and became the Duke of Windsor.

The Powerscourt family memorials were moved from the old church to Saint Patrick’s Church in 1918. Saint Patrick’s Church has since remained substantially unaltered, although the organ was moved to the north transept and the chancel was altered in 1919. Mervyn Richard Wingfield, the 8th Viscount Powerscourt, gave the lectern later donated the pulpit in 1932 in memory of his parents.

The copper spire, that had delayed the consecration of the church, was in turn replaced in 1929 at a cost of £1,300, after its wooden frame had perished. In 1946 Lord Powerscourt and Colonel Riall presented the choir stalls. The prayer desks were given in 1932 by Lord Monck in memory of his grandparents. In 1957, the parish of Kilbride, Bray, was united with Powercourt.

The rectors or curates-in-charge since 1874 have been Archdeacon Henry Galbraith (1874), the Revd John Newcombe (1905), who died in office, the Revd Henry Mecredy (1907), who also died in office, Canon James Alcock (1924), the Revd Mervyn Byrn (1934), Canon John Murray (1949), Canon Ivan Kirkpatrick (1953), Canon Albert Stokes (1956), Canon Raymond Smith (1987) and Archdeacon Ricky Rountree (1997), the present rector who is also Archdeacon of Glendalough.

As for the prebendal stall with the name of Stagonil in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, this is now assigned to the Diocese of Cashel, Ferns and Ossory, and since 2013 has been held by Canon Patrick Harvey, Rector of Abbeyleix.

Saint Patrick's Church, Powerscourt, was built in 1857-1863 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

An afternoon in Powerscourt House and in one of the best gardens in the world

Powerscourt House is among the Top 10 Houses in the World, and the gardens are No 3 in the World’s Top Ten Gardens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

It was a busy weekend, including three services and two sermons in Saint Bartholomew’s, a seminar in Trinity College, Dublin. But on Saturday [22 October 2016], two of took a break in Co Wicklow and spent the afternoon at Powerscourt House and Powerscourt Estate on the edges of Enniskerry. It was a bright sunny afternoon, with clear blue skies and warm sunshine, and it felt more like the end of summer than the end of autumn.

Powerscourt is a large country estate, noted for its house and landscaped gardens and includes 19 ha (47 acres). In 2011, the Lonely Planet voted Powerscourt House in the Top 10 Houses in the World, while in 2014 National Geographic listed Powerscourt as No 3 in the World’s Top Ten Gardens.

I had been to the Powerscourt Waterfall in the past, and in Powerscourt Church on many occasions. But this was my first visit to the house and gardens. It is a popular tourist attraction, and includes an Avoca restaurant, a luxury hotel, a garden centre and a golf club.

Powerscourt House stands on the site of a 13th century castle, originally owned by the Le Poer or Power family. The castle was of strategic importance, giving control of access to the nearby Dargle, Glencree and Glencullen rivers and the valleys leading into the Wicklow Mountains.

In the centuries that followed, the Powerscourt estate was fought over by many families, including the O’Tooles, who were the Gaelic territorial lords in Co Wicklow, and the FitzGerlads, Earls of Kildare.

In 1603, Sir Richard Wingfield was granted Powerscourt and over 40,000 acres of land as rewards for his military assistance to Queen Elizabeth I, and the Wingfield family remained at Powerscourt for over 350 years.

The title of Viscount Powerscourt has been given on three occasions to members of the Wingfield family. It was first given to the Chief Governor of Ireland, Richard Wingfield, in 1618. However, the title died out when he died in 1634. It was given a second time in 1665 to Folliott Wingfield, the great-great-grandson of George Wingfield, uncle of the first viscount.

However, when he died in 1717 this second title died with him too.

For a third occasion, in 1744, the title was given to Richard Wingfield (1697-1751), along with title of Baron Wingfield, of Wingfield in Co Wexford. He was a grandson of Lewis Wingfield, uncle of the 1665 holder of the title. Earlier, Richard Wingfield had been MP for Boyle, Co Roscommon, in the Irish House of Commons.

Before this Richard Wingfield was given the Powerscourt title, he commissioned the German-born architect Richard Cassels to alter the castle extensively. Work started in 1731 and finished in 1741.

The view of the Sugarloaf Mountain from the south terrace is one of the most photographed panoramas in Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

On a commanding hilltop position, Cassels deviated slightly from his usual sombre style, giving the house something of what John Vanbrugh called the ‘castle air.’ This is most noticeable in the Palladian façade on the north side the house, book-ended by two circular domed towers. The south side of the house faced the gardens, and at first was only two storeys in height.

Inside, the three-storey house had at least 68 rooms. The entrance hall, where family heirlooms were displayed, was 18 metres long and 12 metres wide. The main reception rooms were on the first floor rather than on the ground floor, the more typical location. A mile-long avenue of beech trees leads to the house.

This Richard Wingfield’s eldest son, Edward Wingfield (1729-1764), the 2nd Viscount Powerscourt, was MP for Stockbridge in the British House of Commons. He was succeeded by his younger brother, Richard Wingfield (1730-1788), 3rd Viscount Powerscourt, who married Lady Amelia Stratford, from the ancient Stratford family, and all the later holders of the Powerscourt title descend from them.

The third viscount’s grandson, Richard Wingfield (1790-1823), 5th Viscount Powerscourt, sat in the House of Lords as an Irish Representative Peer (1821-1823). King George IV was his guest at Powerscourt in 1821.

His son, Richard Wingfield (1815-1844), 6th Viscount Powerscourt, was once an MP for Bath. In the 1830s, the house was the venue for a series of evangelical conferences and meetings on Bible prophecies. The meetings were held at the invitation of his mother, Theodosia (Howard), Dowager Lady Powerscourt and were attended by people such as John Nelson Darby and Edward Irving, leading to the foundation of the Plymouth Brethren.

In 1844, at the age of 8, her grandson, Mervyn Wingfield (1836-1904), 7th Viscount Powerscourt, inherited the title and the Powerscourt estate, which comprised 200 sq km (49,000 acres) of land. When he was 21, he began an extensive renovation of the house and created the new gardens. He was an Irish Representative Peer (1865-1885), and was also given the title of Baron Powerscourt, of Powerscourt, Co Wicklow, which gave him a seat in the British House of Lords that his descendants held until 1999.

The main attractions on the grounds include the Tower Valley, with a stone tower, Japanese gardens, winged horse statues, Triton Lake, pet cemetery, Dolphin Pond, walled gardens, Bamberg Gate and the Italian Garden.

The terraces were designed in the 1840s by the architect Daniel Robertson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The Italian Garden, immediately below the south terrace of the house and looking out towards the Sugarloaf Mountain provides one of the best-known and most photographed scenes in Ireland. The terraces were designed in the 1840s by the architect Daniel Robertson and took 100 men over 12 years to build.

Here there are sculptures of Greek and Roman gods and myths, including statues of Apollo Belvedere and Diana, collected by the sixth and seventh viscounts during their Grand Tours of Europe, including visits to the ornamental gardens at the Palace of Versailles, the Schönbrunn Palace on near Vienna, and Schwetzingen Castle near Heidelberg.

The life-sized winged horses guarding the lake are inspired by figures on the Wingfield coat-of-arms.

Below the Italian Garden, the Triton Lake with its fountain was inspired by the Piazza Barberini in Rome. Hidden in the trees by the lake is a tiny boathouse.

The four busts in ‘Julia’s Memorial’ depict Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael and Benvenuto Celini (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The seventh viscount bought the Dolphin Pond in Paris in the late 19th century. The Dolphin Pond leads through the Bamberg Gates, bought from Bamberg Cathedral in Germany, into the Walled Garden, which includes ‘Julia’s Memorial,’ a tribute to the seventh viscount’s mother, the former Lady Julia Coke.

The four busts depict four great Italian masters: Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael and Benvenuto Celini. They are copies of the busts in the Vatican and were completed by Alexander McDonald in Rome in 1878.

When the seventh viscount died in 1904, the Powerscourt titles and estates were inherited by his son, Mervyn Richard Wingfield (1880-1947), 8th Viscount Powerscourt. He was a Lord Lieutenant of Co Wicklow and was a member of the short-lived Senate of the Irish Free State.

The Japanese Garden was laid out in 1908 on reclaimed bog land (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The eighth viscount laid out the Japanese Garden in 1908 on reclaimed bog land south of the Triton Lake.

To the north-east of the Japanese Garden, the Pepperpot Tower was designed after a favoured three-inch pepper-pot on the eighth viscount’s dinner table, and was built in 1911 to celebrate a visit to Powerscourt by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936 and became Duke of Windsor.

For children, one of the most popular attractions is the pet cemetery with its tombstones that have been described as ‘astonishingly personal.’ I wondered what the many Chinese tourists made of a gravestone to a dog named Sun Yat Sen.

In 1961, the estate was sold by Mervyn Patrick Wingfield, 9th Viscount Powerscourt, to the Slazenger family, founders and former owners of the Slazenger sporting goods business, who continue to own it to this day.

Ralph Slazenger’s daughter Wendy married Mervyn Niall Wingfield, the 10th Viscount Powerscourt, in 1962. In 2015, her son, Mervyn Anthony Wingfield, inherited the family titles as 11th Viscount Powerscourt.

Meanwhile, on the night of 4 November 1974, Powerscourt House was destroyed by a fire and was left as a shell until it was renovated 20 years ago in 1996. The house was opened to public by President Mary Robinson in 1997.

Today, only two rooms are open to the public as they once appeared when Powerscourt House was a family home. The rest of ground floor and first floor are now retail units and an Avoca restaurant, where we had a late lunch on the terrace, facing the Sugarloaf Mountain, at the end of our visit late on Saturday afternoon.

The Triton Lake with its fountain was inspired by the Piazza Barberini in Rome (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

‘For peace comes dropping slow’ ... and sometimes it seems too slow

A prayer for peace in the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

In the early 1980s, I was secretary and then chair of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND). In those years, Irish CND, the Student Christian Movement (SCM) and Dawn, a nonviolence journal, organised a number of residential weekends in the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation in the Wicklow Mountains.

On one occasion, a residential weekend on nonviolence studied the writings and tactics of Gandhi, and was opened by the Indian Ambassadord in Ireland.

Other weekends looked at the work and thinking of Martin Luther King or provided opportunities for CND council members to get to know each other.

In the grounds in Glencree this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

It was a time long before any of us imagined mobile phones, and Glencree – without phones or television, and with its “Simple Living” style of accommodation – seemed to be a remote and distant place in the Wicklow Mountains, far from the cares and woes of city life.

But on one weekend, however, we all realised, while we had all been living a monastic-style life for a few days, discussing our next anti-war campaign, a real war had been unfolding in the real world.

Between 6 p.m. on 16 September and 8 a.m. on 18 September 1982, between 762 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Shia Lebanese civilians, were murdered in the Sabra neighbourhood and the nearby Shatila refugee camp in Beirut.

The mass murders were carried out by an Israeli proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, and other far-right paramilitary groups. Three months earlier, in June 1982, Israel had invaded Lebanon under the pretext of rooting out the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The Israeli army surrounded Sabra and Shatila and stationed troops at the exits to prevent camp residents from leaving and fired illuminating flares at night that allowed the massacres to continue even throughout the nights.

At the time, the Irish Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Seán MacBride, was President of Irish CND. He was also the assistant to UN secretary general and president of the UN General Assembly. In 1983, Seán MacBride chaired a commission that concluded Israel was responsible for the violence. The MacBride commission also concluded that the massacre was a form of genocide.

That year too, the Kahan Commission in Israel found that Israeli military personnel, aware that a massacre was in progress, had failed to take serious steps to stop it. Israel was found to be indirectly responsible, and the Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, bore personal responsibility “for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge.”

Sharon was forced to resign. But there was no shame – he was back in the cabinet the following year, and eventually he was Foreign Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet and then Prime Minister of Israel from 2001 to 2006. He died earlier this year on 11 January 2014.

The small parish church beside the Glencree Centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

I remembered the shamelessness of Ariel Sharon when I visited Glencree this afternoon, and realised that despite the reports of the MacBride and Kahan commissions, Israel and the international community have forgotten all the lessons that should have been learned after the massacres in Sabra and Shatila.

Similar massacres are taking place in the Gaza Strip today. The only differences today are that weapons are more lethal and the news is reaching us as it happens, whereas over 30 years ago it took some time for the horror of events to reach the outside world.

This time we know what is happening, yet the Republic of Ireland has abstained in the UN General Assembly vote this week on investigating Israel for war crimes.

The principles of a just war may be enshrined in international war but they seem to have been forgotten: there is no distinction between civilian and military targets, there is no proportion between the evil being committed today and the destruction that would follow had war not been waged; and there is no hope of Israel achieving its end – eventually, Israel and Hamas must talk to one another.

A tree was planted in Glencree in 2005 by the Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

I am shocked by the images of children being mowed down as they play football on a beach, I am outraged by images of children being brought into hospitals with limbs severed and heads pulped; I am heart-broken by the images of grieving parents and traumatised children. And the Irish government has the audacity in my name to say it can remain neutral in a vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations.

As I walked around the grounds in Glencree this afternoon, there were signs of hope: a tree planted by Colin and Wendy Parry in memory of their son, Tim (12), killed along with Johnathan Ball (9) by an IRA bomb in Warrington in 1993; a Japanese pole praying that peace may prevail on earth; some sculptures; and a tree planted in May 2005 by the Israeli ambassador in Ireland, Daniel Megiddo, and the Palestinian ambassador, Ali Halimeh, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the formation of VSI.

Looking across the city and Dublin Bay to Howth Head from Kilakee this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

I had spent the morning and much of the afternoon, enjoying the summer sunshine and temperatures as I caught up on some reading and research. Late in the afternoon, two us decided to head up into the mountains behind where I live, and we stopped briefly at Kilakee to enjoy the uninterrupted panorama across the city and Dublin Bay as far as Howth Head.

From there we drove across the Wicklow Mountains and down into Glencree.

By then the Armoury Café in Glencree was closed, and after saying a prayer for peace in the small church behind the centre, we drove on down into Enniskerry in search of that cup of coffee.

A prie-dieu for sale in Enniskerry ... but prayers for peace are priceless (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

It was now almlost 6, and every coffee shop but one was closed, and even there the coffee machine was not working properly. An antique shop was open, and while I was not in the mood to pay €90 for a 100-year-old prie-dieu, I thought how I’d pay anything and pray for ever if it brought peace to those traumatised children in the Gaza Strip.

Instead, we sat in the centre of the village, enjoying an ice cream in the still-warm summer sunshine. And I thought of the words of William Butler Yeats in The Lake isle of Innisfree:

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I returned to the garden for dinner with a jug of Pimm’s. And I was thankful for the peace I have in my own life. May Peace Prevail on Earth. Meanwhile, call your TD, your MP, the Department of Foreign Affairs, your Foreign Ministry, ambassadors ... anyone who should know that this violence in Gaza must not continue.

Enjoying the summer sunshine in Enniskerry this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Recalling World War I and the greatest deployment of armed forces in Irish history

The Redmond Memorial in the centre of Wexford Town ... World War I began as Ireland was divided by the Home Rule crisis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Later this month, commemorations begin to mark the centenary of World War I, which started on 28 July 1914. Over four years, more than nine million combatants were killed in the ‘Great War,’ making it one of the deadliest conflicts in history.

The commemorations are never likely to descend into a glorification of war. Instead, they are likely to focus on the horrors of war, its impact on the lives of many millions of people, and a legacy that includes major changes that reshaped the political map of Europe.

The war is often been seen as a conflict between the jealous crowned heads of Europe and it brought about the downfall of many royal houses. But its impact on the lives of ordinary people must never be forgotten: more than 70 million people were mobilised in a period that lasted long after the war ended.

The immediate trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria, who was murdered in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist. The murder set off a diplomatic crisis when Austria delivered the “July Ultimatum” to Serbia. On 28 July 1914, Austria invaded Serbia, and Germany declared war on Tsarist Russia on 1 August, invaded France on 2 August, and neutral Belgium on 3 August. On 4 August, Britain declared war on Germany. In November, the Ottoman Empire joined the war; Italy and Bulgaria went to war in 1915, Romania in 1916, and the US in 1917. The last country to enter the war was Romania – albeit for the second time – on 10 November 1918, one day before the war ended.

War and the Home Rule crisis

In a speech at Woodenbridge, Co Wicklow, John Redmond called on the Irish Volunteers to enlist in Irish regiments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ireland was involved throughout the war as part of the United Kingdom. The war began as Ireland was embroiled in a major political crisis over Home Rule, but the crisis was temporarily defused when nationalist and unionist leaders alike initially supported Britain’s war efforts.

The Unionist leader, Edward Carson, offered his immediate support. On 3 August 1914, the Wexford-born leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond (1856-1918), then MP for Waterford City, declared in the Commons that the government could withdraw every soldier from Ireland and yet be assured that the coast of Ireland would be defended by Ireland’s armed sons.

The first British engagement in Europe involved the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards when they met a German patrol near Mons on 22 August 1914, and Corporal Edward Thomas had the distinction of firing the first British shot in Europe in the War.

World War I remembered in Enniskillen Cathedral ... this was the greatest deployment of armed manpower in Irish history (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The first major battle was the Battle of Mons. On 27 August, the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers formed the rearguard to cover the retreat of British forces and made an epic stand. The Irish Guards also suffered heavily at Mons, and the experience of the Munsters and the Irish Guards was typical of the first campaigns in France and Belgium.

Home Rule passed into law on 17 September, and in a speech at Woodenbridge, Co Wicklow, on 20 September, John Redmond called on the Irish Volunteers to enlist in Irish regiments. He believed Imperial Germany threatened the freedom of Europe and that it was Ireland’s duty, having achieved future self-government, “to the best of her ability to go where ever the firing line extends, in defence of right, of freedom and of religion in this war. It would be a disgrace forever to our country otherwise.”

Irish enlistment

Major William Redmond’s memorial in Wexford ... he was one of five Irish MPs who enlisted in the British army (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Redmond’s son, William Redmond, then MP for East Tyrone, enlisted, as did his brother, Major Willie Redmond, then MP for Clare East and a former MP for Wexford Borough. Four other Irish MPs enlisted: Sir John Esmonde, MP for North Tipperary; Stephen Gwynn, MP for Galway and son of the Revd John Gwynn, Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College Dublin; and Daniel Desmond Sheehan, MP for mid-Cork. In addition, Tom Kettle, former MP for East Tyrone, enlisted, and Redmond’s call was supported by many parliamentary leaders, including William O’Brien, Thomas O’Donnell and Joseph Devlin.

A large majority of the Irish Volunteers followed Redmond’s call. In all, 206,000 Irishmen fought in the British forces during World War I. Of these, 58,000 had already enlisted in the army or navy before the war broke out. Half of the Irishmen who enlisted in the first year were from what is now the Republic of Ireland; the other half from what is now Northern Ireland. It was the greatest deployment of armed manpower in Irish military history.

The dead of World War I remembered in panels on the south porch in Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Some of Redmond’s Volunteers enlisted in regiments in the 10th and 16th Divisions, while many members of the Ulster Volunteer Force joined regiments in the 36th (Ulster) Division. However, most Irish recruits lacked military training to become officers, and with the exception of Major-General Sir William Bernard Hickie, from Terryglass, Co Tipperary, the 16th was led by English officers.

The 10th Division was the first Irish Division to take part in the war, under the command of General Sir Bryan Mahon, from Belleville, Co Galway. This division was sent to Gallipoli and took part on 7 August 1915 in the disastrous landing at Cape Helles and the August offensive. Irish battalions suffered extremely heavy losses among the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. From Suvla, the division was moved in September to Thessaloniki, where it remained for two years.

The Royal Irish Regiment recalled in a plaque in Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In September 1917, the 10th moved to Egypt and fought in the Third Battle of Gaza, which broke Turkish resistance in southern Palestine. In 1918, the division was split between the Middle East and the Western Front.

The 16th Division spent most of World War I on the Western Front. At the 2nd Battle of Ypres in May 1915, the 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers were nearly wiped out as a result of a German-initiated poison gas attack. Until March 1916, the 16th was commanded by Henry Wilson, who had called them “Johnnie Redmond’s pets.” Hickie, who replaced Wilson, called them as “riff-raff Redmondites,” but was more diplomatic and tactful and later spoke with pride of his command.

In July 1916, the 16th suffered heavy casualties at the Somme. The battle began early on 1 July 1916 and the day ended with a total of 60,000 allied casualties, of whom 20,000 were killed in action. The 36th (Ulster) Division suffered 5,500 casualties and 2,000 of these were killed in action. The 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers fought next to the 36th and counted 147 casualties – 22 killed and 64 missing in action. The 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers lost 14 of their 23 officers, and 311 out 480 in other ranks.

The battle continued until the following November. The former MP Tom Kettle, a barrister and Professor of Economics at UCD, was among those killed at the Somme. Irish soldiers also fought at the Somme in the Royal Irish Rifles, Royal Irish Fusiliers, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, Royal Irish Regiment, and four battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers.

The pulpit in Saint Iberius’s Church, Wexford, serves as a World War I memorial (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In 1917, the 16th fought at the Battle of Messines alongside the 36th (Ulster) Division, and at Passchendaele and Ypres. Messines saw the largest-ever concentration of Irish soldiers on a battlefield. Among those killed in the advance was John Redmond’s 56-year-old brother, Major Willie Redmond. By mid-August, the 16th counted over 4,200 casualties and the 36th had almost 3,600 casualties, or more than 50 per cent of its numbers. The losses were so heavy that when the 16th was reconstituted in England the only original battalion left was the 5th Royal Irish Fusiliers.

The 36th included three existing Irish regiments: the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The division fought on the Western Front throughout the war, and included men from all nine counties of Ulster. Apart from the Somme, the division’s other battles included Cambrai, Messines and two at Ypres (1917), Ypres (1918).

Irish regiments and VCs

Some of the names of the war dead on a memorial cross in Bray, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Irish regiments in the British army also included the Connaught Rangers, the Leinster Regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Royal Irish Rifles and the Royal Munster Fusiliers. In addition, there were Irish regiments based outside Ireland, including the Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, the King’s Royal Irish Hussars, the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars, the Irish Guards, the Liverpool Irish, the London Irish Rifles, the Royal Irish Artillery, the Royal Irish Lancers, the Royal Irish Rangers, the Tyneside Irish Brigade, the Royal Irish Regiment and the London Irish.

The war memorial in the churchyard at Saint John the Baptist in Clontarf, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In all, there were 37 Irish VCs in World War I. Lieutenant Maurice Dease from Coole, Co Westmeath, was the first British soldier to be awarded the VC on 23 August 1914, the first day of engagement by the British army. He was killed as he continued to operate a machine gun despite being shot four times at the Battle of Mons.

One of the last Irish VCs was Sergeant-Major Martin Doyle from New Ross, Co Wexford. He was awarded a VC in September 1918, but later he fought in the War of Independence.

A World War I memorial near the centre of Drogheda (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

By the end of the war, the attitude at home towards Irish soldiers in the British army had changed completely in the aftermath of the Easter Rising in 1916. The poet Francis Ledwidge, who died at Ypres in 1917, wrote after the Easter Rising: “If someone were to tell me now that the Germans were coming in over our back wall, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them. They could come!”

The war memorial in the centre of Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Armistice on 11 November 1918 brought an end to World War I. But the war also brought about the fall of the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and the map of Europe was redrawn.

When the Irish divisions were demobilised, about 100,000 veterans returned to Ireland. But another 70,000-80,000 never returned home. There was high unemployment in Ireland, and the rising militant nationalism was hostile to the men who had served in the British forces.

Counting the dead

All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michan’s Church, Church Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Powerscourt Parish Church, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The number of Irish deaths is officially recorded as 27,405. However, the numbers may be higher, and the National War Memorial at Islandbridge in Dublin is dedicated “to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914-1918.”

In 1927, the Irish government donated £50,000 in 1927 towards a Great War Memorial. But it was located in Islandbridge, outside the city centre, rather than in Merrion Square. It was not until 2006, on the 90th anniversary of the Somme, that the Irish state held an official commemoration for the Irish dead of World War I.

The Cenotaph in Whitehall is in the heart of London ... (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

... but the Irish National War Memorial at Islandbridge was erected miles from the city centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essays and these photographs were first published in July 2014 in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).