A return visit to the chapel of the Mageough Home in Rathmines, Dublin

The Mageough Home and its chapel on Cowper Road, Rathmines, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

My visit to Dublin this week was little more than 24 hours, and involved a handful of family visits, with little time to meet friends, do any Christmas shopping or visit any of my favourite churches, buildings or places.

I was staying in Rathmines, which gave me time for strolls through parts of Rathmines, Ranelagh and Rathgar, including a short visit to Kenilworth Square. But how I would have enjoyed coffee or a meal with friends or a walk on one of my favourite beaches near Dublin.

When I was visiting my brother in Rathmines yesterday afternoon, I also had the opportunity to have a short visit to the Chapel at the Mageough Home, a Victorian ‘almshouse’ or retirement home on Cowper Road, Rathmines, built as the ‘Mageough Home for Aged Females’ in the late 19th century.

The chapel was the venue for one of my pre-ordination retreats almost 25 years ago. I celebrated the Christmas Eucharist and preached there on Christmas Day 2012, and I celebrated and preached there again during Lent in 2013. So it was a personal pleasure to visit the chapel once again in the days immediately before Christmas.

Inside the chapel of the Mageough Home, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Mageough Home was built thanks to a bequest from Miss Elizabeth Mageough. When she died in 1869, she left a small fortune to fund ‘a suitable place for elderly ladies of the Protestant faith to live.’

The home was built to the designs of James Rawson Carroll on land bought from William Cowper-Temple (1811-1888), 1st Baron Mount Temple, a nephew of one Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and the stepson of another, Lord Palmerston.

When his mother died in 1869 – the same year as Elizabeth Mageough died – William Cowper inherited a number of estates under his stepfather’s will, and changed his surname to Cowper-Temple. Those properties included land in Rathmines and a 10,000-acre estate on the Mullaghmore peninsula in Co Sligo, with its unfinished Classiebawn Castle.

His family connections give many streets in Rathmines their names, including Palmerston Road and Palmerston Park, Cowper Road and Temple Road.

Facing the liturgical west in the chapel, which is built on a north/south axis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The site in Rathmines bought by the Mageough Trustees was known locally as ‘The Bloody Fields’. It is said to be the burial place of 2,000 Royalist and Catholic troops who were killed by Roundheads at the Battle of Rathmines in 1649 during the Irish Confederate Wars. Cowper Road is close to Palmerston Road, and the Mageough Home is beside the Cowper Luas station.

Elizabeth Mageough had lived at a house known as Richview at 1 Cowper Road in Rathmines. She died in 1869, and her will revealed the extent of her personal wealth. Her will included a number of personal bequests, but after that the residue was to go to charity.

The ‘residue’ of her estate turned out to be the equivalent of €6.25 million today. Her will stipulated that this bequest was to be spent for ‘the habitation, support and clothing of aged females of good character and sobriety.’

The Advent waiting … a crib beside the altar in the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The initial trustees included the Revd Dr Charles Marlay Fleury, the Revd Edward Metcalf, the Revd Dr Maurice Hodson Neligan, the Revd James Hewitt, Archdeacon Latham Coddington Warren, Francis Low, John Wright Hobart Seymour and Samuel Bewley.

The Mageough trustees bought the site known as ‘The Bloody Fields’ in Rathmines from William Cowper-Temple. Through Neligan’s influence and contacts, the trustees appointed as their architect James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911), who was the personal architect to both Lord Palmerston and William Cowper-Temple, and had been commissioned by them to design the baronial Classiebawn Castle at Mullaghmore, later the home of Lord Mountbatten, who was murdered there by the IRA on 27 August 1979.

Christmas decorations on a window ledge in the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

James Rawson Carroll was a younger son of Thomas Carroll, a writing and English master, of Leinster Street and Waterloo Road, Dublin, and a brother of three other architects, Thomas Henry Carroll, Howard Carroll and Charles Owens Carroll. He was born in 1830 and educated at Delamere’s school, near Delgany, Co Wicklow, and he is probably the James R Carroll who was admitted to study architecture at the Royal Dublin Society’s School of School of Drawing in 1846.

Later, Carroll was articled to George Fowler Jones (1817-1905) of York and worked with him for seven years.

Jones’s work can be seen throughout York, and he was also the architect of Castle Oliver or Cloghanadfoy Castle, Co Limerick, built in 1845-1852, for which Thomas Carroll was the contractor for stonework.

The pulpit in the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

James Rawson Carroll also worked in the office of the Gothic revival architect John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon (1817-1877). Thomas Hardy, who also worked briefly for Brandon, based his description of Henry Knight’s chambers in A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) on Brandon’s office at Clement’s Inn.

Carroll had returned to Dublin by 1857 to set up his own practice at 180 Great Brunswick Street, an address he shared with his brother Charles. He exhibited at the RDS Exhibition of the Fine Arts in 1861. By the end of 1870, he had become architect to the United Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh.

The value of land was increasing as Ireland recovered from the famine years, and Carroll built up a considerable country house practice as well as designing several churches and other public buildings. He acted as assessor in selecting the design for the Church of Ireland Glebe House at Rathmines, in 1875, deciding in favour of Thomas Drew.

Carroll and Drew represented Ireland at the General Conference of Architects at the RIBA in London in June 1876, and Carol and John Lanyon represented Ireland in June 1878, when Carroll spoke on the subjects of the rusting of ironwork and the new model by-law.

The bell tower above the entrance to the Mageough Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Carroll was a member of the Architectural Association of Ireland, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI, 1863), a council member (1864-1901), and vice-president (1875); a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1876), proposed by James Joseph McCarthy, William Henry Lynn, Thomas Drew and George Fowler Jones; and an active member of the Architects’ Club in Dublin.

Carroll took his nephew and pupil John Howard Pentland into partnership in 1882. Pentland left the practice to work for the Office of Public Works at the end of 1884, and some years later, ca 1892, Carroll formed a new partnership with his chief assistant, Frederick Batchelor, which lasted until his retirement in 1905. Carroll’s other pupils and assistants included Frederick George Hicks.

Carroll’s works include the Molyneux Church (later Christ Church and now a Romanian Orthodox parish church) and Asylum (1859-1862, 1871), Leeson Street, Dublin; Saint John the Baptist Church (1860), Clontarf; Saint John’s Church (1869-1870), Abington, Co Limerick; Ardagh House, the village clocktower, school and many houses and buildings in Ardagh, Co Longford; Classiebawn House (1874-1877), Mullaghmore, Co Sligo; the town hall and court house in Sligo; and the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin.

A plaque on the chapel wall remembers the legacy of Elizabeth Mageough (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Mageough trustees appointed Carroll as their architect in 1871. His first design was costed at £23,000. After a long argument between Carroll and the trustees, changes were made to bring the building costs within budget, a quote of £16,770 from Moyers Builders of Portobello was accepted, and the Mageough Home was built in 1875-1878 to provide ‘the habitation, support and clothing of aged females professing the Protestant faith.’

Initially, the rector of the local Church of Ireland parish, Saint Philip’s on Temple Road, Milltown, and at least one of the trustees objected to a chapel being built as an integral part of the home. But when the chapel was built, with its clock tower and foundation plaque, it became a central feature of the Mageough, built like the court or quad of a Cambridge or Oxford college.

Because of the site, the chapel was built on a north/south axis rater than the traditional east/west liturgical axis. The chapel was consecrated by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench of Dublin on the day the home opened, 28 November 1878. The first residents moved into the Mageough that month. They were required to be ‘of good character and sobriety.’ Carroll may also have designed the new infirmary at the Mageough in 1890. The chapel reopened after a complete renovation in December 1894.

Carroll was unmarried and lived at 56 Mount Street with two unmarried sisters. He died on 30 November 1911 at the age of 81 and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross. His obituary in the Irish Builder said he was a ‘kindly, upright, courteous gentleman’, whose ‘clients were in a real sense his friends, no trouble was too great for him to take; indeed, his attention to detail was extraordinary, and therein lay the secret of much of his success.’

The chapel of the Mageough Home was consecrated by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench of Dublin on 28 November 1878 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Later alterations at the Mageough Home in 1928 were designed by the architect Richard Francis Caulfeild Orpen (1863-1938), a grandson of Bishop Charles Caulfeild of Nassau and a brother of the painter William Orpen (1878-1931). Orpen was also the architect to Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in succession to Drew.

He was also the architect to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, Trinity College Dublin and Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, a guardian of the National Gallery of Ireland, and honorary secretary of the Municipal Gallery.

The Mageough is still run today as a residential complex for older people with 36 small homes. The complex is built of red brick and slate in a Gothic Revival style. It includes 37 houses, an infirmary, a Church of Ireland chapel and towers that surround a central green, forming three sides of a square. The houses, chapel, infirmary, gate lodge, stone boundary walls, gate piers and gates are all protected structures.

The first regular Sunday service in the chapel was held on 1 December 1878. The 13 chaplains of the Mageough have included the Revd Henry Alured Alcock, the Revd Benjamin Gibson, the Revd Thomas Skipton, Canon Richard Neville Somerville, the Revd Reginald Adams Orchard, the Revd William Herbert Charles Walford Turl, Canon John Richards Goff, the Revd Matthew Tobias, Canon William Henry Coulter, Archdeacon Desmond Hilton Patton, Canon Edward Austin Carry (who played international rugby for Ireland in the 1940s), Archdeacon William Butler Heney, and the Revd Robert Kingston.

The present chaplain, the Revd Robert Kingston, is a former Rector of Tallaght and of Mallow, Co Cork. He has written a history of the Mageough Home, which is available online HERE. Services in the Chapel take place on Sundays and Wednesdays.

The houses, chapel and other buildings of the Mageough Home are all protected structures (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on image for full-screen viewing)

Praying at Christmas through poems and with USPG: 30 December 2022

Cloister Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the snow … Clement Paman was a student here in the 1620s and 1630s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas is not a season of 12 days, despite the popular Christmas song. Christmas is a 40-day season that lasts from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February).

Throughout the 40 days of this Christmas Season, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflecting on a seasonal or appropriate poem;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

This second last day of the year, 30 December, has no other name, number or commemoration in the calendar, apart from being the ‘sixth day of Christmas’ when my true love sent to me ‘six geese a-laying.’

But even by today, most people fail to get that far in this Christmas song, if they ever remembered that many lines.

And so, for my Christmas poem this morning I have chosen ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ a poem written around 1660 or 1661 by Clement Paman (ca 1612-1664) and was first published in Dublin in 1663. Paman and his poetry are largely forgotten today – forgotten more than today’s ‘six geese a-laying’ may be. But I have chosen him because of his links with the Caroline Divines, with the Church of Ireland and with Sidney Sussex, College, Cambridge, where I have stayed regularly over the years.

This poem is difficult, almost turgid, to read today, with a now-awkward reference to stretching tight by turning a screw, especially to increase the tension or pitch of a musical instrument by winding up the screws or keys:

Today,
Then, screw thee high,
My heart, up to
The angels’ cry;
Sing ‘glory’, do

The reference is so awkward that it needed a footnotes in the programme for the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1999. Yet this poem also contains these memorably beautiful lines:

Today,
A shed that’s thatched
(Yet straws can sing)
Holds God.

As a poet, Paman is sometimes associated with the ‘Cavalier Poets,’ who include Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick and Thomas Carew, and he has been described as ‘perhaps the most talented poet of the 17th century never to have had a poem published over his name.’

The Pamans appear to have been well-off, untitled Suffolk gentry, and Clement Paman was born in Chevington, Suffolk, in 1610 or 1611. His name is sometimes spelled Payman in Church of Ireland records. The Paman family is listed in the parish registers of Chevington, and his father, Robert Paman, probably lived at Dunstall Green in Dalham. He may have been related to the physicist, Henry Paman of Saint John’s College, who was at Cambridge at the same time.

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the snow ... here Clement Paman was a student of Samuel Ward (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Clement Paman was educated at Lavenham School and Bury School. At the age of 16, he was admitted on 16 February 1628 to Sidney Sussex College, which at first had been a Puritan foundation. Earlier students at Sidney Sussex included Oliver Cromwell, who left in 1617 without taking a degree, and Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, who graduated in 1622 and who was a key commander of the Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War.

But Paman was not unusual among Sidney Sussex students for his political and religious views: John Bramhall, who had been there ahead of Cromwell, became the Archbishop of Armagh at the Caroline Restoration.

At Sidney Sussex, Paman was a student of Samuel Ward (1572-1643), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Ward began life as a moderate Calvinist, but as a loyal Anglican he suffered persecution during the Civil War. When Ward died after being imprisoned in Saint John’s College, he was buried in the chapel in Sidney Sussex.

Paman obtained his BA in 1632, his MA in 1635 and later became a Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge University, and received the degree DD ad eundem at Trinity College Dublin in 1661. One of his earliest works is a tribute written after the death of a young Irish poet who was his contemporary in Cambridge: ‘Poem on the Death of Edward King.’ King, who was also the subject of John Milton’s ‘Lycidas,’ was born in Ireland in 1612, and was admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1626. Four years later, he was elected a fellow in 1632, and he intended to proceed to ordination. But his career was cut short by the tragedy that inspired Paman’s and Milton’s poems. In 1637, he set out for Ireland to visit his family, but on 10 August the ship struck a rock off the Welsh coast, and King was drowned.

Some sources say Paman first came to Ireland along with John Bramhall as the chaplain to the Lord Deputy, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford. But this detail is confusing as Strafford was Lord Deputy from 1632 to 1639, while Paman was still in Cambridge.

But Paman seems to have arrived in Ireland by 1640 at the latest, for David Crookes, in his Clergy of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh identiifes Clement Paman with Cleremont Panham, who was Rector of Saint John’s, Sligo, in 1640. However, this rectory was lost in a subsequent dispute, and he returned to England.

John Cleveland’s epitaph on the death of the Earl of Strafford, ‘Here lies Wise and Valiant Dust’ (1647), has recently been ascribed to Paman:

Here lies wise and valiant dust
Huddled up ’twixt fit and just,
Strafford, who was hurried hence
’Twixt treason and convenience.
He spent his time here in a mist,
A Papist, yet a Calvinist;
His Prince’s nearest joy and grief,
He had, yet wanted all relief;
The prop and ruin of the state;
The people’s violent love and hate;
One in extremes loved and abhorred.
Riddles lie here, or in a word –
Here lies blood; and let it lie
Speechless still and never cry.

From 1648 to 1653, Paman was Vicar of Thatcham in Berkshire, in the Diocese of Oxford. During that time, he wrote of how he was inspired by Edward Benlowes’s poetic masterpiece Theophila, or Love’s Sacrifice, a Divine Poem (1652): ‘All my pleasure is, yt I have obeyed you, & somewhat rays’d my owne heart wth these imaginations.’

In 1653, Paman’s right to his Berkshire vicarage was disputed. He lost the living, and remained without a church appointment until the end of the Cromwellian era and his return to Ireland in 1661.

Following the end of the Civil War and the Caroline Restoration, Paman was appointed Prebendary of Monmohenock in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1661, and he was Dean of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Elphin, in Co Roscommon, and Vicar of Saint John’s, Sligo, from 1661, and Vicar of Castledermot, Co Kildare, in the Diocese of Glendalough, from 1662 until his death in 1664.

During his time as Dean of Elphin, the cathedral – which had been destroyed during the rebellion of 1641 – was rebuilt by Bishop John Parker (1661-1667), and in the following century the poet Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) attended the school attached to the cathedral.

After his death, a memorial to him was erected in the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, although I have failed to find it over the years.

The chapel and Chapel Court in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the snow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Peter Davidson, in his introduction to Poetry and Revolution, describes Paman as a ‘moderate Protestant.’ However, in Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, Margo Todd calls him an ‘ultra-royalist cleric.’ She says his writings on Christian charity are liberal for their time, and cites his idea that alms should be given ‘even to the loose and impious.’

While he was Dean of Elphin, Paman published Poems by Several Hands in Dublin in 1663. However, only three of his poems were published in the 17th century and the majority of his poems remained in manuscript collections in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

His poems are mainly of a devotional nature. Perhaps the best-known is ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ a poem written ca 1660. His other poems include ‘Good Friday,’ ‘On Christmas Day 1661,’ and ‘On his death.’ He also wrote a lengthy tribute to the dramatist and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637). Peter Davidson notes that Paman’s style is complex, ‘abounding in extended metaphors’ and more ‘overly Baroque’ than some of his contemporaries, being a development of the ‘epigrammatic style of Jonson.’

King’s College, Cambridge ... ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart’ was included in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve 1999 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This morning’s poem, ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart,’ was included in the Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1940) and in Norman Ault’s collection, A Treasury of Unfamiliar Lyrics (1938). But until the 1990s, Paman remained unknown except among scholars interested in the manuscript collections of 17th century poetry.

There was a renewed interest in his work with the publication of the anthology, Poetry and Revolution: An Anthology of British and Irish Verse (1998). A year later, ‘On Christmas Day to My Heart’ was set to music by Richard Rodney Bennett for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge in 1999.

On Christmas Day to My Heart by Clement Paman

Today,/ A shed that’s thatched/ (Yet straws can sing)/ Holds God … the altarpiece by the Venetian painter Giovanni Pittoni in the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today,
Hark! Heaven sings;
Stretch, tune, my heart!
(For hearts have strings
May bear their part)
And though thy lute were bruised i’ the fall,
Bruised hearts may reach an humble pastoral.

Today,
Shepherds rejoice,
And angels do
No more: thy voice
Can reach that too:
Bring them at least thy pipe along,
And mingle consort with the angels’ song.

Today,
A shed that’s thatched
(Yet straws can sing)
Holds God; God matched
With beasts; beasts bring
Their song their way: for shame then raise
Thy notes! lambs bleat, and oxen bellow praise.

Today,
God honoured man
Not angels: yet
They sing; and can
Raised man forget?
Praise is our debt to-day, now shall
Angels (man’s not so poor) discharge it all?

Today,
Then, screw thee high,
My heart, up to
The angels’ cry;
Sing ‘glory’, do:
What if thy strings all crack and fly?
On such a ground, music ’twill be to die.

Looking into the ruins of Elphin Cathedral ruins from the ruins of the tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is the USPG Christmas Appeal: Journey to Freedom. The Journey to Freedom campaign supports the anti-human trafficking programme of the Diocese of Durgapur in North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Let us pray for those involved in rescue missions to find the missing. May they be sustained by courage and resolve to restore freedom to those captured and detained.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Bicycles in the snow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A ‘virtual tour’ of churches and a cathedral dedicated to the Immaculate Conception

George W Walsh’s circular window in Lahinch, Co Clare, depicting the Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this week, I was offering ‘virtual tours’ of cathedrals and churches dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the real ‘Santa Claus,’ whose feast day was on Tuesday (6 December).

Today (8 December) is the Feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary, known among Roman Catholics alone as the Immaculate Conception.

The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. The idea was first debated by mediaeval theologians, but was so controversial that it did not become part of official Roman Catholic teaching until 1854, when Pius IX gave it the status of dogma in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.

This evening, I invite you to join me on a ‘virtual tour’ of ten churches in Ireland that are dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, including one cathedral (Sligo) and nine other churches: three in Co Limerick, two in Co Clare, and one each in Co Kerry, Co Cork, Dublin and Wexford.

1, The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo:

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was designed by the English-born architect George Goldie (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Temple Street, Sligo, is the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin. The cathedral and its tower dominate the skyline of Sligo, and the chimes of its bells peal out over the city, with Ben Bulben in the background.

The Diocese of Elphin is said to date from the fourth century. According to tradition, Ono son of Oengus offered a house to Saint Patrick ca 450, who renamed it Ail Fionn (‘Rock of the Clear Spring’) and placed his disciple, Saint Assicus, in charge.

However, it was not until the 12th century that Elphin was established as a diocese of East Connacht. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin did not have a cathedral until the mid-19th century, but Saint John’s, a small parish church near the site of the Cheshire Home, had served as the pro-cathedral from 1827.

Bishop Laurence Gillooly (1819-1895) was appointed co-adjutor bishop in 1856 and succeeded George Browne as Bishop of Elphin in 1858. Sligo was then a growing, thriving town, and Bishop Gillooly became the inspiring figure in planning and building a new cathedral there.

A year after becoming diocesan bishop, Bishop Gillooly secured a renewable lease from Sir Gilbert King of two adjacent properties close to the Lungy, and beside Saint John’s Church which would become the Church of Ireland cathedral in 1961. One of these properties, known as the Bowling Green, became the site of the new Roman Catholic cathedral.

Inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Temple Street, Sligo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The cathedral was designed by the English-born architect George Goldie (1828-1887), who also designed Saint Saviour’s Dominican Church, Waterford (1876-1877). Goldie also remodelled the interior and exterior of Saint Saviour’s, the Dominican church in Limerick, and designed the High Altar and reredos in the Redemptorist Church at Mount Saint Alphonsus in Limerick.

Goldie was born in York, the grandson of the architect Joseph Bonomi the Elder. He was educated at Saint Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw, in Durham, and trained as an architect with John Grey Weightman and Matthew Ellison Hadfield of Sheffield, in 1845-1850, and then worked with them as a partner.

Goldie was joined in his architectural partnership in 1880 by his son Edward Goldie (1856-1921), whose work includes Hawkesyard Priory in Armitage, near Rugeley and six miles north-west of Lichfield, built for the Dominicans in 1896-1914, and which I knew in my late teens and early 20s.

The cathedral was built in a Norman style, and it is the only Romanesque Revival cathedral among the cathedrals of the 19th and 20th centuries in Ireland, built at a time when the fashion was for Gothic cathedrals and churches.

The main contractor was Joseph Clarence of Ballisodare, and Bishop Gillooly took complete charge of the building project when work began in 1869. The cathedral is built of cut limestone and is modelled on a Norman-Romano-Byzantine style.

Goldie designed this cathedral in the form of a basilica. Contemporaries called his design ‘Norman,’ but it is in a round-arched style that includes elements of English, German and Irish Romanesque.

2, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Lahinch, Co Clare:

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Lahinch, Co Clare … designed by McCormick and Corr in the 1950s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Lahinch, Co Clare, featured prominently in the recent RTÉ drama series Smother. The Church of the Immaculate Conception in the centre of Lahinch is similar in design to the Church of Our Lady and Saint Michael in neighbouring Ennistymon, and the two churches form one parish in the Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora.

An earlier church was built on this site in Lahinch by a Father Keane in the period 1830-1840. That church was extended for the parish priest, Canon McHugh, by Thomas Joseph Cullen in 1923, and a new church was planned in the 1940s, with Ralph Henry Byrne as architect.

However, it was another decade before a new church was built on the site of the original church in Lahinch.

Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Lahinch, Co Clare, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The architects of the Church of our Lady of the Immaculate Conception were the Derry-born architects, William Henry Dunlevy McCormick (1916-1996) and Francis Michael (Frank) Corr, who also designed the new church for Ennistymon in 1947.

Liam McCormick was one of the founders of modern Irish architectural movement and also one of the most important church architects in Northern Ireland. He was responsible for designing 27 church buildings and many commercial and state buildings. These include the iconic Met Éireann building in Glasnevin, Dublin, and Saint Aengus’s Church in Burt, Co Donegal, was voted Ireland’s ‘Building of the 20th century’ in 1999.

The church in Lahinch was built in 1952-1954 by Farmer Brothers of Dublin at a cost of £38,000. The cornerstone was laid in November 1952 and the church was opened in March 1954.

The church is oriented south/north rather than east/west, and faces onto to the Main Street in Lahinch.

Today, the church looks the worse for wear, and has suffered over the past half century. But inside the church has an impressive three-light stained-glass window by George W Walsh, depicting the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Presentation, in memory of the Dixon family, and a circular window by Walsh above the entrance depicting the Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception. Both windows date from 1995.

3, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Bruree, Co Limerick:

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bruree, Co Limerick, was built in 1922-1925 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bruree, Co Limerick, is best-known as the childhood home of Eamon de Valera. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1922-1925, when Father John Breen was the parish priest, and was officially opened on 26 April 1925.

The foundation stone to the left of the main door of the church was laid by Bishop Denis Hallinan of Limerick on 8 December 1922. The inscription says Samuel Francis Hynes from Cork was the architect and Jeremiah J Coffey from Midleton, Co Cork, was the builder.

The church is built in the Hiberno-Romanesque style, with limestone from nearby Tankardstown, in Kilmallock.

Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bruree, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This church is oriented on a north-south axis, instead of the traditional east-west liturgical axis. It has a fine interior with stained-glass windows, a well-carved timber roof and marble colonnades. These features add architectural significance to the church and are a testimony the skilled craftsmanship used in its construction.

This is a gable-fronted church, with a seven-bay nave and six-bay side aisles, two transepts, and gable-fronted porches that have chamfered corners, and a distinctive, square-plan three-stage tower at the front, to the right of the main door, with a battered base, a large open bell chamber and a short spire.

The snecked limestone walls have a stringcourse and an inscribed plaque at the front.

There are four, round-headed lancet windows above the double-leaf, timber battened front doors, with a stained-glass oculus above them. There are stained glass oculi in the nave too.

4, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Kanturk, Co Cork:

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Kanturk, Co Cork … designed by the Cork-based architect John Pine Hurley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The Church of the Immaculate Conception, beside the Courthouse in Kanturk, Co Cork, was built in 1867 in the transitional Gothic style, designed by John Pine Hurley, an architect who practised in Cork from the 1850s or earlier until the 1870s.

Hurley’s first major commission came in 1856 when Bishop Timothy Murphy appointed him architect for the new Saint Colman’s College in Fermoy. Two years later, he designed improvements to the chapel of Saint Mary’s Convent, Cobh, in 1858, and in 1867 he designed the new Catholic church and convent schools at Kanturk. Nothing is known of Hurley in Cork after the mid-1870s, and he may have moved to Dublin or have emigrated.

Hurley’s church in Kanturk was completed in 1867 at a cost of £11,000. It stands in an extensive church campus with a graveyard, convent and school. The convent and school on the site were built at a cost of £4,000. The builder, JE Devlin of Bantry, later went bankrupt.

Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Kanturk, Co Cork, facing west, the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

This is an imposing Gothic-style church that is oriented on a west-east axis rather than the traditional liturgical east-west axis. It has fine craft work in its exterior details, and retains many original features such as the stained-glass windows, carved limestone detailing and timber batten doors.

The gable-fronted church has a projecting entrance frontispiece, a seven-bay nave, a single-bay chancel, recessed six-bay side aisles with gabled porches at the east (liturgical west) ends, a gabled sacristy, a two-bay transept, and gabled confessional projections.

It is built with cut tooled limestone walls with a moulded plinth, and there are buttresses at the corners and between the clerestory windows.

The church has pointed arch windows, trefoil lights, stained-glass, chamfered limestone surrounds, hood-mouldings and carved tracery. The chancel has a traceried six-light window and rose window, with a trefoil at the top of the gable. There are latticed lancet windows in the porches with hood-mouldings.

The order arch style entrance doorway, with timber battened doors, has a shallow gable, a tympanum with triangular window opening, and pair of door openings divided by and flanked by engaged colonnettes with decorative capitals and surmounted by a quatrefoil panel with an inscribed date plaque. All this is flanked by paired short lancet windows with hood-mouldings.

A freestanding ashlar limestone bell tower stands to the north-west of the church.

5, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Knightstown, Valentia Island, Co Kerry:

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Knightstown, on Valentia Island, Co Kerry … designed by Ashlin and Coleman and built in 1914-1915 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Church of the Immaculate Conception on the Promenade in Knightstown was paid for by the people who worked at the Cable Station on Valentia Island and by local people.

The church was designed in the Gothic-revival style by Ashlin and Coleman, the architectural partnership of George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921) and Thomas Aloysius Coleman (1865-1950). Ashlin was noted for his work on churches and cathedrals throughout Ireland, including Saint Coleman’s Cathedral, Cobh, and was AWN Pugin’s son-in-law.

The Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1914 and dedicated on 1 August 1915. This is a cruciform-plan, double-height, Gothic Revival church. It is oriented on a west/east axis instead of the traditional east/west liturgical axis, but this gives beautiful views of the sea to people as they leave the church by the front door.

The view from the front porch of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Knightstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The church has a three-bay nave, single-bay transepts at the north and south sides, a two-bay chancel at the west gable end, a two-bay single-storey sacristy projection, an entrance bay at the east gable end, and a single-bay, two-stage corner turret at the north-east, with an octagonal plan, a limestone ashlar open belfry at the upper stage and a spirelet above.

The roofs, appropriately, are of pitched Valentia slate. There are decorative ridge tiles, cut-stone coping at the gables with finials, a coursed rubble stone chimneystack and a limestone ashlar flue.

The coursed rubble stone walls have a continuous cut-limestone sill course and cut-limestone brackets at the eaves. There is a base batter at the plinth of the turret with cut-stone coping and the cut-limestone open belfry at the upper stage.

The church has lancet arch windows with limestone sills, cut-limestone block-and-start surrounds, and metal-framed diamond-leaded windows.

The lancet arch door at the east gable end (the liturgical west end) has a cut-limestone, block-and-start, fielded doorcase with timber double doors. There are paired lancet arch window openings and a rose window over the entrance.

Inside the church, the full-height interior opens into the open scissors-truss timber roof. There are decorative tiles on the floor, timber pews, carved timber Stations of the Cross, a pointed-arch chancel arch on moulded corbels, and an organ that came from an opera house in Piccadilly, London. The sanctuary was refurbished in the 1960s to meet the needs of the liturgical reforms introduced by Vatican II.

The five-light traceried window above the altar in the west end (liturgical east) is filled with a stained-glass window made by the Earley Studios in Dublin 1916-1917. The window was donated to the church by the Galvin family of the Royal Valentia Hotel in Knightstown.

6, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Ballingarry, Co Limerick:

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Ballingarry is one of a handful of churches in Co Limerick designed by JJ McCarthy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Ballingarry is one of a handful of churches in Co Limerick designed by AWN Pugin’s Irish successor, James Joseph McCarthy (1817-1882).

McCarthy’s other churches in Co Limerick include Saint Saviour’s Dominican Church in Baker’s Place, Limerick; Saint Senanus Church, Foynes; Saint Mary’s Church, Rathkeale; and the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Kilmallock. He also remodelled and enlarged the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Newcastle West and designed Cahermoyle House for the family of William Smith O’Brien.

McCarthy completed Pugin’s work at Maynooth and Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney, and his other cathedrals and churches include Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy, Saint Macartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan, the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, Saint Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, the ‘Twin Churches’ in Wexford, Saint Catherine’s Church, Dublin, and the Passionist Church in Mount Argus.

The spire of McCarthy’s church in Ballingarry can be seen for miles around. This is a fine late 19th century church, prominently sited, and it continues to have a strong presence in the Ballingarry streetscape, providing a focus in the area.

The church was built on the site of an earlier T-plan Catholic chapel in Ballingarry, and was dedicated in 1879. The coherent decorative scheme is marked by its elaborate tower that unifies the Gothic style of the building. The rusticated masonry, which was popular in church architecture of the time, adds a textural interest, balanced by the tooled limestone dressings.

Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Ballingarry, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The interior reflects the Gothic style of the exterior and is also highly decorative, with ornate tiling on the floor and sophisticated carpentry in the roof. The mosaics on the chancel walls and the ornate corbels further enliven the interior. The arcade of finely carved marble columns adds another element of richness and colour to the interior of the church. The piers and gates at the front of the church are highly ornate and continue the Gothic Revival idiom of the site.

According to Patrick J O’Connor, in his Exploring Limerick’s Past, the first Roman Catholic Church at Ballingarry stood on the same site from the early 18th century.

When Father James Enraght was appointed parish priest of Ballingarry in 1851, he was in America raising money to build a new church in his then parish of Askeaton. He then started building a new church in Ballingarry, and the foundation stone was laid in 1872. The church was completion of the church was supervised by his successor, Father Timothy Shanahan, and the new church was consecrated on 7 September 1879.

The timber scissors truss ceiling in the church in Ballingarry, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The High Altar is the work of Edmund Sharp (1853-1930), and in 1890s Pugin’s son-in-law George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921) drafted proposals for a ‘throne’ to the High Altar. The builder was Michael Walsh of Foynes, who also worked with McCarthy on this churches in Foynes, Rathkeale and Kilmallock.

The church has an eight-bay nave, two transepts, a hexagonal turret, a gable-fronted porch, a four-stage square-plan battered tower, and a gable-fronted chancel with flanking side chapels. There is a four-bay side aisle, a single-storey over basement sacristy and a canted side chapel.

The pitched slate roof has a fish-scale pattern, cast-iron ridge crestings, limestone brackets and limestone copings with cross finials. The sacristy has a limestone chimney-stack.

The church has rusticated sandstone walls with tooled limestone quoins, buttresses, limestone plaques, trefoil-headed lancet stained-glass windows with limestone hood-mouldings, and Corinthian style columns with banded marble shafts, timber panelled doors with ornate cast-iron strap hinges, and a timber scissors truss ceiling.

The chapels and transepts have oculi, the entrance has a timber gallery, and the floors have geometric tiles. The sandstone and limestone tower has limestone turrets and a cast-iron spire.

Father Ronald Costelloe restored the church in 1991.

7, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Newcastle West, Co Limerick:

The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Newcastle West, Co Limerick, was extended in the 1860s by JJ McCarthy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, was built in 1828 on a site donated by the Earl of Devon along with a sum of £1,400, which covered half the costs of the original church.

The church was extended in the 1860s, when the Gothic style façade with its impressive rose window was erected, and a new sanctuary and Lady Chapel were also added.

The architect James J McCarthy designed the extension and façade. The bell tower was raised in height in 1885.

Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Newcastle West, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The stained glass windows depicting the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the centre lancet, and Saint Bridget and Saint Ita in the two lancets on the right, and Saint Munchin and Saint Patrick in the two lancets on the left, were put into the large Gothic window behind the High Altar in 1894 in memory of Dean O’Brien.

The interior details include diverse forms of plasterwork on the ceilings. These are of considerable artistic achievement, and are highlighted by an ornate plaster medallion and pendant.

8, The Franciscan Church of the Immaculate Conception, Merchants’ Quay, Dublin:

The Merchants’ Quay entrance to the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, better known to Dubliners as ‘Adam and Eve’s’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The Franciscan Church of the Immaculate Conception on Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, is better known to Dubliners as ‘Adam and Eve’s’ or simply as ‘Merchants’ Quay.’

The Franciscans have been in the south side of Dublin since mediaeval times. At the dissolution of monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, King Henry VIII, the Franciscan Friary at Francis Street, on the site of the current church of Saint Nicholas of Myra, Francis Street, was confiscatedca 1640, and the Franciscan community was dispersed.

A new friary was built on Cook Street in 1615, and was Ireland’s first post-Reformation seminary. A chapel on the site was destroyed in 1629, and the friars did not return to the area until 1757, when they bought a house on Merchants’ Quay. At first, the Franciscans secretly said Mass in the Adam and Eve Tavern, giving the present church its popular name. A newer church was built in 1759, and this was later replaced by the current church.

Inside the church on Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

After Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the friars set about building a new church and laid the foundation stone of the current church in 1834. The church was designed in 1852 by the architect Patrick Byrne, who planned a tower at the Merchants’ Quay entrance. However, because of financial problems, the church was built without a nave or tower.

The church was originally dedicated to Saint Francis, but was rededicated to the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady in 1889.

The church was reorganised after 1900 by moving of the altar to the left wall and the original sanctuary was changed into a transept and an entrance from Cook Street. A small nave was added to the right and a dome built over the sanctuary.

A shrine to Saint Anthony, designed by the architects Doolin, Butler and Donnelly, was built in 1912. To mark the seventh centenary of Saint Francis in 1926, the friars built a circular apse, remodelled the transepts and extended the nave with an entrance to Skipper’s Alley. This work was designed by JJ O’Hare.

The high altar was consecrated in 1928. The granite bell tower added in 1930 was probably designed by JJ Robinson and RC Keefe, and is crowned by a pedimented temple with columns.

In recent years, the Franciscans of Merchants’ Quay have been closely identified with the work of the Simon Community and addiction and counselling services.

9, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Ennis, Co Clare:

Saint Mary’s or the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the Friary Church in Ennis, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The old Franciscan Friary in Ennis, Co Clare, is now an archaeological site managed by the Office of Public Works. But the Franciscans maintain a living presence in the town in their friary on Francis Street.

The Franciscans began to return to Ennis in the 18th century, and they were living again as a community in Lysaght’s Lane by 1800. They then moved to Bow Lane, where they opened a new chapel in 1830.

The Franciscan Provincial threatened to close the friary in Ennis in 1853 unless conditions were improved. The Franciscan community in Ennis responded by buying the present site at Willow Bank House on Francis Street and in 1854 Patrick Sexton designed a new, cruciform chapel built by the Ennis builder William Carroll in 1854-1855.

The first Mass in the new church was celebrated on 1 January 1856, and the church was dedicated as the Church of the Immaculate Conception on 10 September 1856.

Inside the church in Ennis designed by William Reginald Carroll in the 14th-century Gothic style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the end of the 19th century, a new friary church, designed by William Reginald Carroll (1850-1910) and incorporating Sexton’s earlier church, was built in the Gothic Revival style in 1892. Carroll designed the new friary church in Ennis in the 14th-century Gothic style, with a nave, apse, two side chapels and a tower. The altar was designed by the Dublin-based monumental sculptor, James Pearse (1839-1900), father of the 1916 leader, Padraic Pearse (1879-1916).

The church was built by a local builder, Dan Shanks, at a cost of £11,000, and was dedicated on 11 June 1892.

The church is a T-plan, gable-fronted church, with a polygonal apse, a tower to the west, and a connecting block that leads to the neighbouring friary.

A statue of the Virgin Mary stands in a niche on the façade and is flanked by lancet windows with stone tracery, and with a quatrefoil and hood moulding above. Paired lancet windows are set between the buttresses.

Inside, the church has an open timber roof, with tongue and groove sheeting. There are four polished granite columns with carved stylised ivy capitals that divide the nave from the transepts. The stained-glass windows are by Earley.

The foundation stone of the earlier church on the site is set in the grotto beside the church.

The friary site includes the site of the birthplace of William Mulready (1786-1863), the Ennis-born artist who studied at the Royal Academy and designed the first penny postage envelope, introduced by the Royal Mail at the same time as the ‘Penny Black’ stamp in May 1840.

10, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Rowe Street, Wexford:

The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Rowe Street, Wexford … one of the town’s ‘Twin Churches’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When I was living on School Street and then on High Street in Wexford 50 years ago, I was living within sound of the chimes of Rowe Street church. Until the Theatre Royal on High Street was rebuilt as the National Opera House, the skyline of Wexford was dominated by the town’s great Gothic Revival churches known as the ‘Twin Churches’: the Church of the Immaculate Conception or Rowe Street Church, on the corner of Upper Rowe Street and Lower John Street; and the Church of the Assumption or Bride Street Church, on the corner of Bride Street and Joseph Street.

The twin churches are architectural masterpieces by Wexford’s own Gothic Revival architect, Richard Pierce (1801-1854) from Kilmore. Pierce’s earliest churches include Saint Mary Magdalene’s Catholic Church, Bunclody (Newtownbarry), which was built in 1825-1826 and demolished in 1970, Saint Mary’s Church, Kilmyshall (1831), outside Bunclody, and All Saints’ Church, Castledockrell (1840). By the 1830s and 1840s, he was working closely with AWN Pugin (1812-1852) on his churches throughout Co Wexford, and during that time he developed his own interpretation of Gothic Revival.

Pierce designed the collegiate wing of Saint Peter’s College on Summerhill Road, Wexford, in 1832-1837. While he was completing this collegiate wing, Pugin was invited to Wexford to attend the blessing of the foundation stone of the chapel. Pugin had come to Wexford through the Talbot and Redmond family connections with the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury, who were his patrons in Staffordshire. Pugin appointed Pierce as his clerk-of-works to oversee the work on his chapel (1838-1841), which is Pugin’s earliest urban church in Ireland.

From then until 1850, Pierce was Pugin’s clerk-of-works in Ireland, overseeing the construction of all his projects in Ireland in that period, including Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy (1843-1850).

Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Rowe Street, Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity’

The house at 10 Ashfield Terrace (now 418 Harold’s Cross Road), Dublin, where WB Yeats lived during some of his schooldays (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing a week ago about my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921), and how he died a lonely death in hospital 100 years ago, on 21 January 1921, after his harrowing experiences during World War I in the Dardanelles and Thessaloniki.

Some years after my grandfather’s death, my widowed grandmother, Bridget (Lynders) Comerford, moved to 5 Ashdale Park, Terenure, close to the junction of Terenure Road North, Brighton Square (which, to be honest, is a triangle) and Harold’s Cross Road.

Although my grandmother’s family, like their neighbours, always considered Ashdale Park a part of Terenure, it was still listed as part of Rathmines District for many years. It was an area with interesting literary associations: James Joyce was born at No 41 Brighton Square in 1882, and William Butler Yeats lived part of his childhood, from 1883, at 10 Ashfield Terrace, now 418 Harold’s Cross Road.

But Yeats seems to have been ashamed of his family’s home between Terenure and Harold’s Cross, describing it in 1914 as ‘a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar with streaks of grey slate.’ Perhaps this explains why he fostered the myth that he was from Sligo and not from Dublin – or from London.

Today marks the anniversary of the death of the poet William Butler Yeats, who was born in Sandymount Avenue, Co Dublin, on 13 June 1865 and died near Cannes on 28 January 1939.

He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre, and in 1923 he was the first Irish writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature: he was followed by George Bernard Shaw in 1925; Samuel Beckett in 1969; and Seamus Heaney in 1995.

Once again, much is being written, said and performed to mark the Yeats anniversary this year. It is interesting that a Dublin-born poet is so often presented as a son of Sligo. His mother was from Sligo, but the myth that he was from Sligo was boosted in recent years by the visit of Prince Charles to the grave of Yeats in Drumcliffe churchyard.

The myth was also recycled by Leonard Cohen at a concert in Lissadell House in 2010. It was a night of poetry and music beneath the slops of Ben Bulben and Cohen was visiting the house where Yeats stayed when he visited the Gore-Booth sisters, the young Eva and the future Countess Constance Markievicz.

To applause, he quoted those lines from Yeats about the sisters:

The light of evening, Lissadell
Great windows open to the south
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle …

Perhaps Yeats would have enjoyed this too as someone who worked and reworked Irish myths and legends in his poetry.

In the grounds of Lissadell House at the Leonard Cohen concert ten years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When the future poet was only a child of two, the Yeats family moved to England in 1867, and in 1877 he was sent to the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, where he spent almost four years.

Although family holidays were spent at his mother’s family home in Sligo, he was born in Dublin and spent most of his childhood years in London.

When the family returned to Dublin in 1880, they lived in Howth, first at Balscadden Cottage and then at Island View, before moving in 1883 to 10 Ashfield Terrace, now 418 Harold’s Cross Road.

Later, my father grew up around the corner in Ashdale Park. But Yeats was ashamed of his family’s home between Terenure and Harold’s Cross, describing it in 1914 as ‘a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar with streaks of grey slate.’ Perhaps this explains why he fostered the myth that he was from Sligo and not from Dublin – or from London.

In Dublin, Yeats was sent to the High School, then on Harcourt Street. Despite some misconceptions, he was never a student at Trinity College Dublin – from 1884 to 1886, he was a student at the Metropolitan School of Art, now the National College of Art and Design (NCAD).

After seven years, the family returned to London in 1887. Two years later, in 1889, he met Maud Gonne, who was English-born without any Irish ancestry. He visited Maud Gonne in Ireland in 1891, when she rejected his first proposal of marriage. He would propose to her three more times – in 1899, 1900 and 1901, but she rejected him each time in 1903 married Major John MacBride.

The rise of violent nationalism caused Yeats to reassess his own nationalism, and in Easter, 1916 he wrote:

All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born

John MacBride had been executed for his role in the Easter Rising, and Yeats made one last proposal to Maud Gonne in mid-1916. Then in 1917, he proposed to her 21-year-old daughter, Iseult Gonne. Later that year, he proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees, and they were married on 20 October 1917.

The world was so changed and transformed WB Yeats could open his poem The Second Coming with these lines about Europe in the aftermath of World War I:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The same could have been said about American politics in recent years, or about British politics throughout the Brexit and post-Brexit debates.

At first, TS Eliot expressed distaste for Yeats, and even mocked Yeats’s membership of the Theosophical Society. Later, following his attendance at the first performance of Yeats’s one-act play, At the Hawk’s Well, and after the publication of ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in 1919, Eliot softened his opinion of Yeats’s poetry.

No 5 Woburn Walk … the Bloomsbury home of WB Yeats in London from 1895 to 1919 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yeats returned to live in Ireland in 1919, but distanced himself from the passionate intensity of Irish politics until 1922, when he was appointed a Senator in the new parliament of the Irish Free State, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925.

Meanwhile, in December 1923, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In one speech in the Senate, referring to the Church of Ireland, he said: ‘It is one of the glories of the Church in which I was born that we have put our Bishops in their place in discussions requiring legislation.’

When the Irish Free State was poised to outlaw divorce in 1925, Yeats delivered his famous speech in the new Senate:

I think it is tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence we should be discussing a measure which a minority of this nation considers to be grossly oppressive. I am proud to consider myself a typical man of that minority. We against whom you have done this thing, are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created the most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence. Yet I do not altogether regret what has happened. I shall be able to find out, if not I, my children will be able to find out whether we have lost our stamina or not. You have defined our position and have given us a popular following. If we have not lost our stamina then your victory will be brief, and your defeat final, and when it comes this nation may be transformed.

It was not until 1935, in the Criterion, that TS Eliot publicly praised Yeats, when he called him ‘the greatest poet of his time.’ Eliot continued to praise Yeats, although in a lecture in Dublin in 1936 he regretted that Yeats ‘came to poetry from a Protestant background.’

But there was a nasty streak in Yeats too, and it should not be forgotten. His friendship with Ezra Pound introduced him to Benito Mussolini, whom he admired, and at one time he wrote three marching songs for Eoin O’Duffy’s fascist Blueshirts.

Yeats died in France at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, on this day 82 years ago, 28 January 1939, and was buried in the hilltop cemetery at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. After the death of Yeats, Eliot was invited to give the first annual Yeats lecture to the Friends of the Irish Academy in 1940.

Yeats had frequently spoken about his death with his wife George, who said he told her: ‘If I die bury me up there and then in a year’s time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo.’

In 1948, what was said to be the body of Yeats was moved in a coffin to Ireland on the naval corvette LÉ Macha. The operation was overseen by Maud Gonne’s son, Sean MacBride, who was then the Minister of External Affairs.

The coffin laid in state in Sligo Town Hall before it was given a full state funeral in Saint Columba’s Churchyard in Drumcliffe on 17 September 1948. The scene at Drumcliffe was set by Yeats himself. In his last poem, published in The Irish Times, he wrote:

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliffe Churchyard Yeats is laid …

The committal service was taken by the Bishop of Kilmore, the Right Revd Albert Edward Hughes, who had been the chaplain to the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. As the words ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ were said, a handful of soil was thrown on the coffin. The epitaph on the grave quotes the last lines of Under Ben Bulben:

Cast a cold Eye On Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by!

But the bones moved from Roquebrune were never identified with certainty – his body had been exhumed and transferred to a communal ossuary sometime between 1939 and 1948, before the 10-year-lease on the grave had expired, and bones from other graves were mixed together.

Some writers have identified the actual remains with those of a man Alfred George Hollis who died on the same day and was buried in the same graveyard at the same time.

But then, as Yeats himself once wrote:

Though grave-diggers’ toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

Perhaps my favourite poem by Yeats is ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

WB Yeats was born at No 5 Sandymount Avenue, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Healy 2010/South Dublin County Libraries)