16 September 2020

Twin parish churches
sharing the one site in
Bansha, Co Tipperary

The Church of the Annunciation in Bansha, Co Tipperary, seen from the churchyard of Templeneiry Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

On the way back from Cahir to Askeaton, at the end of the summer ‘Road Trip,’ we stopped between Cahir and Tipperary to visit the village of Bansha, Co Tipperary, on the N24, 13 km north-west of Cahir and 8 km south-east of Tipperary Town.

It is always interesting when I find that two parish churches in an Irish town or village – the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic parish church – are built side-by-side on the one campus or adjoining sites.

I am aware of this since childhood with the two parish churches in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, where the two churches – Saint Anne’s and Saint Mary’s – stand on the same street corner.

Templeneiry Church in Bansha, Co Tipperary, seen from the churchyard of The Church of the Annunciation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

In Bansha, the two churches also stand side-by-side. Once again, Templeneiry Church, the Church of Ireland parish church, stands on the higher point on the site. But in Bansha, the Catholic churchyard seems to surround the Church of Ireland churchyard, as if one churchyard with its graves is embracing the other and that in death all the divisions of the past are cast aside.

Bansha is a small compact village, and historically had two streets and two lanes: Main Street and Barrack Street, with Banner’s Lane, named after the Revd Benjamin Holford Banner, a former Rector of Templeneiry, and Cooke’s Lane, named after the Cooke Family of Cordangan Manor.

Templeneiry Church stands on an ancient site … it was built in 1718, and the spire was added in 1813 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Church of Ireland Parish Church of Templeneiry dates from 1718, but is now closed; the Roman Catholic Parish Church of the Annunciation was built in 1807; both are in the Diocese of Cashel and are centrally located in the village.

Templeneiry Church stands on an ancient site, and the present church dates from 1718. The imposing spire was added to the tower in 1813.

Samuel Lewis described the church in 1837 as ‘a neat building, to which a handsome spire was added in 1813.’

Until the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, the parish was one of the parishes linked to the Precentors of Cashel. Bansha now lies within the Cashel Cathedral Group of Parishes, and Templeneiry Church serves as a community-run heritage, cultural and information centre.

The grave of William Baker of Lismacue House, murdered in 1815, and his family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The surrounding churchyard includes the graves of many old local families. The most notable grave is that of William Baker, a magistrate, of Lismacue House.

William Baker was the son of Colonel William Baker and Elizabeth (Massy) of Lismacue. In 1805, she married Elizabeth Roberts, daughter of Sir Thomas Roberts (1738-1817) and Amy Johnson, on 21 August 1805.

He built Lismacue House in 1813, which became the home of the Baker family. Two years later, however, Baker was murdered the age of 48 at Thomastown, Co Tipperary, on 27 November 1815, on his way home from Cashel Sessions. Eventually, two men were arrested, and one was convicted and hanged based on the testimony of the other.

The Church of the Annunciation in Bansha was built in 1807 and the porches and the sacristy were added in 1948 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Church of the Annunciation was built on the adjoining site in Bansha in 1807, and the porches and the sacristy were added in 1948.

This pre-Emancipation, early 19th century church is enlivened by many details, including a large, elaborate decorative west window, trefoils, and corner buttresses.

The church is set in landscaped grounds with the graveyard on the north side of the site.

Inside the Church of the Annunciation, with its scissor truss roof structure (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Inside the church, the features included three large timber galleries at the west end and in the transepts, the scissor truss roof structure, the very fine carved panelling at the back and sides of the chancel, triple-tiered ogee-headed arcades, the timber confession boxes and pews, the pointed-arch statue recesses and the carved marble Stations of the Cross.

This well-maintained church displays a great range of decoration, and various additions from the mid-20th century are in harmony with the earlier church building.

Inside the Church of the Annunciation, with the timber gallery in the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

One of Bansha’s famous residents was Lieutenant-General Sir William Francis Butler (1838-1910), a soldier, writer and adventurer, who lived in retirement at Bansha Castle from 1905 until his death on 7 June 1910.

His wife, the battle artist Elizabeth Thompson (1846-1933), Lady Butler, continued to live at Bansha Castle until 1922, when she went to live at Gormanston Castle, Co Meath, with their youngest daughter, Eileen, who married Jenico Preston (1878-1925), 15th Viscount Gormanston, in 1911.

Lady Butler’s famous paintings include The Roll Call and Balaclava, depicting scenes in the Crimean War. When she died in 1933, she was buried at Stamullen, near Gormanston, Co Meath.

The East Window in the Church of the Annunciation, Bansha (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A stained-glass window in the Church of the Annunciation, Bansha (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

What the Victorian Butlers
saw when they rebuilt
and developed Cahir

The Square in Cahir is bookended by the Cahir House Hotel and the former Market House, now the Library (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

The building and rebuilding programmes in Cahir, Co Tippeary, sponsored and financed by the Butler family of Cahir Castle, have left the town with an elegant square and streets and an architectural heritage that are symbolised in the way the square is book-ended by the Cahir House Hotel at the south end and the former Market House at the north end.

Cahir House replaced Cahir Castle in the 1770s as the principal residence of the Butlers of Cahir, who held the tiles of Baron of Cahir and Earl of Glengall.

When Pierce Butler, 8th Lord Cahir, died in Paris in 1788 without an immediate male heir, the vast Cahir estates developed first on his distant cousin, James Butler, who died within a month, and then on the impoverished 12-year-old Richard Butler (1775-1819) of Glengall, who had been whisked off to France by relatives.

The wily Arabella Jeffreyes of Blarney Castle rescued him and kept the young Lord Cahir under her care until he was 17, when he married her daughter Emily, then 16, in 1793. After a sumptuous wedding, the young couple moved into Cahir House and entertained the nobility and gentry of Co Tipperary on a regular basis.

On one occasion, it was recorded in 1793, ‘Lord Cahir gave a most flaming fete champêtre in Cahir House where the company dined under marquees on the lawn and danced all the evening. Lady Cahir danced an Irish jig in her stockings to the music of an old piper. We had a superb supper in the three largest rooms, all crowded as full as they could hold and we did not get home till eight o’clock next morning and so slept all the next day.’

Cahir House was home to Lord Cahir’s family for 60 years. In 1796, Lord Cahir took his seat in the Irish House of Lords, and in 1816 he was given the additional titles of Earl of Glengall and Viscount Cahir. His commissioned the Regency architect John Nash to design many fine buildings in Cahir, including Saint Paul’s Church, the Erasmus Smith School and the Swiss Cottage.

His son, Richard Butler (1794-1858), 2nd Earl of Glengall, was responsible for much of the development and rebuilding of Cahir in the first half of the 19th century. But he was declared bankrupt in 1853 and the Cahir estates were sold. However, 20 years later, his daughter, Lady Margaret Butler-Charteris, succeeded in buying back Cahir House and the entire Cahir estate.

Lady Margaret Butler-Charteris erected the fountain in the square in 1876 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Lady Margaret erected the fountain in the centre of the square in 1876. It consists of a heavy shaft, with a ring around it halfway up; this ring has four lions’ heads, and on the top of the shaft is a Ruskin-inspired Venetian-Gothic ‘tabernacle,’ with four square-plan piers, each with a lion’s head on the outer corner. The limestone shaft is set in a small basin.

The fountain was intended to radically improve the supply of water to the town centre, and the estate was responsible too for building the town reservoir and mains pipe. It supplied a high-pressure water supply for Cahir, piped several miles at enormous cost from the Galtee Mountains. But the fountain is also a memorial to her husband, Colonel Richard Charteris, second son of the 9th Earl of Wemyss and March.

Cahir House was later the home of Lady Margaret’s land agent. The family retained ownership until her son Richard Butler Charteris died in 1961.

Meanwhile, Nora Burke leased the premises and opened Cahir House Hotel in 1927. For over 40 years, her hotel had a reputation as a family-run, warm, welcoming and hospitable establishment. Her visitors’ books included such names as Eamon de Valera, WT Cosgrave, Mae West, Douglas Fairbanks, Walt Disney and Jackie Kennedy.

The hotel continued to prosper under the strict management of Eileen McCool, until her death in 1974, and her legacy of genuine warmth and accommodation lives on in the hotel to this day.

It is still possible to see how this hotel was once an impressive five-bay, three-storey over basement townhouse, built in the late 18th century. Although it has undergone many alterations and a change of use, it retains much character and interesting fabric, such as the stone to the window and door dressings.

The Library on the north side of the Square was built in the 18th century as the Market House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Facing Cahir House Hotel, on the north side of the Square, the Library or former Market House is another significant building. It was built in the 18th century as the Market House.

Sadly, it underwent an unsympathetic ‘renovation’ in the 1980s, when original arched openings were replaced with over-sized plate-glass windows, destroying the integrity of the design.

Mona Croome Carroll’s sculpture of the blind piper Edmund Keating Hyland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

In front of the library, facing the Square a life-like statue commemorates the blind piper, Edmund Keating Hyland (1780-1845), one of Cahir’s most famous musical sons. The sculpture is the work of Mona Croome Carroll (1999).

Despite being blinded by smallpox at the age of 15, Hyland became a gifted piper and composer, and was known as the ‘Prince of Pipers.’

He played his best-known composition, the ‘Fox Chase,’ for King George IV in Dublin in 1821.

Cahir Railway Station on Church Street was designed in the Gothic Revival style by William George Murray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Cahir Railway Station on Church Street, near Saint Paul’s Church, was designed in the Gothic Revival style by William George Murray (1822-1871) in 1851, while he was working for William Dargan, and opened on 1 May 1852.

The station has a two-storey façade, with a single-storey to the elevated platform at the rear. The main elevation has an interesting play of surface texture between the cut stone and the quarry glazed windows, while the profile of the rear is dominated by the complex roof forms and tall, stout chimneystacks.

The station is on the Limerick Junction to Waterford line, but today only four trains – two going each way – stop each weekday in Cahir.

Cahir Post Office was designed in the Arts and Crafts style by George William Crowe in 1902 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Later, attractive buildings in Cahir include the Post Office on Church Street, designed in the Arts and Crafts style for the Office of Public Works by George William Crowe in 1902. He also designed post offices in Bray, Co Wicklow (1904), Boyle, Co Roscommon (1907-1908) and Clones, Co Monaghan (1917).

The diversity of surface texture seen in the use of brick, cut limestone and moulded render makes this a delightful building.

This two-storey with attic building has a three-bay entrance gable-front, multiple-bay side elevations and a single-storey sorting office at the side. The windows are typical of the era and enhance the building.

Other features worth noting include the pitched slate roof, the rendered and red brick chimneystacks, the painted brick in English Bond on the ground floor, the moulded frieze with the incised lettering ‘Cahir Post Office,’ the moulded pediment on the gable-front, the keystones, the timber sliding sash windows, the glazed timber front door with is overlight and sidelights, and the clock.

John Chaytor’s early Victorian dovecote (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Behind the AIB bank on Castle Street, an early Victorian dovecote was designed and built by William Tinsley as part of the residence of John Chaytor, the Quaker land agent of Lord Glengall.

The dovecote is located on an axis that visually lines up the pathway in the Dowager’s Wood, the Dovecote, the terraced gardens and the centre of the two bays of Chaytor’s house. It appears to have added to the limestone boundary wall in in sandstone as a further contrast and also served as an exclusive gatehouse for Chaytor into Lord Glengall’s private demesne and pleasure grounds.

Chaytor kept pigeons in the upper storey for either food, a source of guano, communication, or simply as a hobby.

The former Quaker meetinghouse on Abbey Street was designed by an unknown architect and built of sandstone in 1834. At the time, about 80 Quakers lived in Cahir, and many Quaker families were involved in running the large mills on the banks of the River Suir, including the Manor Mills on the Bridge of Cahir, the Suir Mills or Cahir Bakery, and the Cahir Abbey Mills.

However, the Quaker community in Cahir eventually went into decline at the end of the 19th century. The meeting house was first leased in 1884 and then sold to the Presbyterian Church in 1897. It continues to be used for services under the name of Cahir Christian Centre, and remains an example of Cahir’s diverse heritage.

The former Quaker meetinghouse on Abbey Street was built in 1834 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)