Memories of childhood days when stopping in Thurles was a treat

Hayes Hotel in Thurles retains its claim to a special place in Irish history and culture (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

During my childhood, the two main stopping places on the road between Cappoquin and Dublin were Cashel and Thurles.

It was a journey of perhaps 240 km journey, and although Cashel is only 52 km from Cappoquin and Thurles about 75 km, they seemed to mark the halfway mark. I have vivid memories of being brought through the ruins on the Rock of Cashel and picnics that seemed to mark the beginning and the end of summer.

Thurles was a very different place to break the journey. We usually stopped in the car, but I can recall occasional stops during long journeys. The treat on those days was being brought into Hayes Hotel on the main square in Thurles, and seated to lunch at an hotel table. These occasional stops were made to feel like true occasions.

I readily recall fair days in Thurles, with the cattle, the farmers, the dealers and the smells. For a boy in the 1950s and the early 1960s, a town like Thurles seemed to be nothing less than a bustling metropolis.

Walking through Liberty Square this week, it had lost none of its feelings of being a broad square surrounding by elegant Victorian and premises. The sounds and smells of market days came back to my mind, and I knew immediately where to look for Hayes Hotel – still pronounced by all as ‘Hayses Hotel’ – and the statue of Archbishop Croke and the 1798 Memorial.

But, truly, is it a change for the better that this square, planned as a broad open space, is now used as a car park that serves as a traffic island. Had I not known this town as a child, I imagine, it would have been difficult to appreciate the breadth and majesty of the hotel.

Hayes Hotel is a five-bay, three-storey hotel on the north side of the square, built around 1840. It has a pitched artificial slate roof with rendered chimneystacks, a moulded eaves course and a central pediment. There are rendered walls with quoins on the upper storeys. The ground floor had rusticated concrete block cladding and a black marble plinth, and there is a glazed cast-iron entrance canopy.

Hayes Hotel has a claim to a special place in Irish history and culture as the place where the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) was founded by Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin at a meeting on 1 November 1884.

At the time, this was known as the Commercial Hotel. It remains the single most important building in Thurles today, and remains as a popular meeting place. Although the ground floor has been extensively remodelled in recent years, the upper storey retains many of its original ornamental features.

The Archbishop Thomas Croke Memorial is the work of the sculptor Francis Doyle Jones (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

At the west end of the square, the Archbishop Croke Memorial was erected in 1922 to commemorate Thomas Croke (1824-1902), Archbishop of Cashel (1875-1902).

Croke, who was born in Co Cork and educated in Paris and Rome, and was a professor of theology in Saint Patrick’s College, Carlow, and President of Saint Colman’s College, Fermoy, before becoming Bishop of Auckland in New Zealand.

On his return to Ireland, he became Archbishop of Cashel, and became known as a strong supporter of the Land League and the Home Rule politics of Charles Stewart Parnell. He also became a leading supporter of the new GAA after it was founded in Thurles in 1884, and Croke Park in Dublin was named in his honour. In honour of Croke, his successors as Archbishop of Cashel were invited to throw in the ball at the start of All-Ireland finals.

The high-quality, larger-than-life bronze statue of Archbishop Croke was cast by the sculptor Francis William Doyle Jones (1873-1932). Doyle Jones was born in Hartlepool in 1873, the eldest son of Francis Jones (1846-1918), a stonemason and sculptor from Co Monaghan.

Doyle Jones initially worked for his father and then studied in Paris and London in the 1890s. He worked principally as a sculptor of portraits, and also made a large number of war memorials. He died in Saint Luke’s Hospital, Chelsea, in 1932.

The façade of Devlin’s Medical Hall hides the fabric of an older structure (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A few steps east of Hayes Hotel, the Rexall Pharmacy or Devlin’s Medical Hall is a landmark with its elaborate Italianate façade, including the parapet with raised lettering, the plinth, arched window openings, paired pilasters, keystones and timber-framed plate glass windows. Inside, the shop retains many of its original features.

But the façade, which is dated 1889, hides the fabric of an older structure. The ornamental colonnade and arcade may have been influenced by the then new Cathedral of the Annunciation.

An unusual building whose design displays Dutch influences (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Across from Devlin’s, on the south side of the square, First Editions at No 19 is now closed and the building is on the market. This terraced, two-bay, three-storey former house was built around 1890.

The building has a pitched slate roof with rendered chimneystacks and a distinctive curvilinear gablet with a ball finial. The shopfront has a plate glass window flanked by recessed doorways that have timber panelled doors with overlights, flanked by carved timber pilasters.

This is an unusual building in Thurles, and its design seems to have been informed by Dutch influences. The decorative gablet and the brick detailing with the oversize keystones show a high degree of craftsmanship.

The doors flanking the plate glass window are reminders of the days when shopkeepers lived over the shop – the days when I was a boy on the road between Cappoquin and Dublin, and when we stopped in Thurles to be treated to a fine lunch in Hayes Hotel.

The fading front of a once-colourful pub is a reminder of days gone by in Thurles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Newman’s visit means Thurles never became the Oxford of Ireland

Saint Patrick’s College, Thurles … established with a legacy from Archbishop Patrick Everard of Cashel, who died in 1821 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

From the steps of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Thurles, two gate piers surmounted by eagles enclose the vista along a 300-yard long avenue that leads up to Saint Patrick’s College.

The college was once proposed as the location for John Henry Newman’s Catholic University, and there were dreams of Thurles in Co Tipperary becoming the Oxford of Ireland. Today, after almost two centuries of educational excellence, the college is in a new relationship with the University of Limerick.

Saint Patrick’s College was founded by Patrick Everard, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly. When he died in 1821, he left £10,000 from his portion of the Everard family fortune to establish a college to offer a liberal education for young Catholic men preparing for the priesthood and for professional business careers.

The college was built on glebe land or church land bought from a local Church of Ireland minister, and the site is believed to have been part of the lands of the mediaeval Carmelite friary in Thurles.

The first stone was laid by Archbishop Robert Laffan of Cashel, on 6 July 1829, in the presence of Daniel O’Connell. This was the year of Catholic Emancipation, and to mark the occasion the college adopted the Latin motto Renovabitur sicut aquilae Juventus tua, ‘Your youth will be renewed like the eagle’ (Psalm 103: 5).

The architect Charles Frederick Anderson (1802-1869) won the competition to design the college, and he supervised building work between 1830 and 1831, while Denis Leahy was the engineer.

At the time, Anderson was a member of the Church of Ireland and had already worked for the Limerick-based architect brothers, James Pain and George Richard Pain, who had placed him in charge of building Saint Alibius Cathedral, the Church of Ireland Cathedral in Emly. He later became a Roman Catholic, and emigrated to the US where he died.

Saint Patrick’s College, Thurles was designed by the architect Charles Frederick Anderson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The plans were to open the college in 1834, but the project was delayed when Archbishop Everard’s legacy ran out. The building was still incomplete when the college opened its doors in September 1837.

The main building is a detached, 21-bay, three-storey former seminary, with a central three-bay pedimented breakfront and two slightly projecting three-bay terminating blocks. The breakfront blocks, recessed windows arches on the ground floor and the pediment are interesting architectural features that are representative of Georgian-style architecture.

At first, Saint Patrick’s enrolled day students and boarders, offering second-level education in the humanities, with a limited contribution from the sciences. These first students were preparing for careers in business and the professions.

A Philosophy Department opened in 1842, when some students became candidates for the priesthood for the first time. Archbishop Michael Slattery of Cashel established a foreign mission department in the college that year, and in time many graduates went to the US, Australia and New Zealand.

But poverty and the effects of the Famine set back the development of Saint Patrick’s College.

From 1849, the University of London allowed Thurles to offer degrees in arts and laws, following an similar arrangement with Saint Patrick’s College, Carlow, and Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny.

The Cathedral of the Assumption seen from Saint Patrick’s College … the Synod of Thurles met here in 1850 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

In August 1850, a synod of Roman Catholic bishops met in Thurles, the first such synod since the Synod of Cashel in 1172. It is said that the two eagles surmounting the central gate piers – which may have been inspired by the college motto – were put in place at the college entrance in 1850 to mark the Synod of Thurles.

The Synod appointed a Catholic University Committee and at the time Saint Patrick’s was considered as a site for the Catholic University proposed by Cardinal John Henry Newman. Newman paid his first visit to Ireland in October 1851, coming directly to Thurles, where he stayed in the college and where he caught a severe cold.

Although Newman reported that Saint Patrick’s was ‘a large fine building,’ he reported it was set ‘on a forlorn waste, without a tree, in a forlorn country, and a squalid town.’ Thurles is hardly a ‘squalid town,’ but the vision of Thurles as the Oxford of Ireland had come to an end.

The eagles on the gate piers commemorate the Synod of Thurles in 1850 and recall the college motto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Regardless of Newman’s dismissive opinions, the college had developed into a major seminary by the mid-1860s, with the addition of a full theology faculty.

The relationship with the University of London continued for over 20 years. In 1875, the college was linked to the Catholic University of Ireland, and then with the Royal University of Ireland in the 1900s, and later with the Pontifical University in Maynooth. Lay students continued to attend until 1907.

After a gap of 81 years, lay students were readmitted in 1988. But Saint Patrick’s ceased to function as a seminary in 2002. By then, the college had ordained over 1,500 priests.

In 2004, Saint Patrick’s started offering degrees in education through the Tipperary Institute. From 2011, the programmes at Saint Patrick’s were accredited by the University of Limerick. The college celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2012, when the first students graduated with degrees from the University of Limerick.

A new agreement was signed with Mary Immaculate College Limerick in 2016, and the college is now known as MIC Saint Patrick’s Campus, Thurles.

Today MIC Thurles offers degrees from the University of Limerick in theology, business studies, Irish, religious studies and education, as well as some certificates in pastoral care. And, despite Newman’s first impression of ‘a forlorn waste, without a tree, in a forlorn country, and a squalid town,’ there is an abundance of trees in the grounds and lining the avenue in this pretty and attractive town in Co Tpperary.

Saint Patrick’s College, Thurles … now linked with the University of Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)