14 October 2020

The Church of Ireland
church built in Kilmallock
after a fire in the 1930s

The Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Kilmallock, Co Limerick … designed by GF Hicks and opened in 1938 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

The main church buildings and ecclesiastical sites in Kilmallock, Co Limerick, include the ruins of the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the ruins of the Dominican Priory of Saint Saviour, the Gothic Revival 19th century Roman Catholic Parish Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, designed by JJ McCarthy, and the Church of Ireland parish church, also named Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

These two mediaeval sites were among the cluster of ruins that once made Kilmallock known as the ‘Baalbec of Ireland.’

For centuries, the choir and chancel of the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul served as the Church of Ireland parish church in Kilmallock. But, during a wave of sectarian attacks that swept across Ireland in the summer of 1935, the Church of Ireland parish church was destroyed in an arson attack on the 22 July 1935.

While I was visiting Kilmallock last weekend, I visited the new Church of Ireland parish church. It was built hill on the edge of the town, across the road from the Deebert Hotel, and was consecrated on Saint Peter’s Day, 29 June 1938. The Rector of Kilmallock at the time was Canon Sackville Eastwood Taylor.

The church was designed by the Dublin-based architect George Frederick Hicks in Romanesque Revival style, using his characteristic red brick, and the builder was John Cleary of Charleville.

The church stands on a hill on the edge of Kilmallock, across the road from the Deebert Hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The church is arranged on a traditional plan and is built using 20th century techniques and materials, particularly seen in the red brick exterior and the tower.

The church has a four-bay nave with gable-fronted transepts, a square-profile stepped two-stage tower at the west end and a canted chancel at the east end. The hipped and pitched slate roofs have a cast-iron finial and cast-iron rainwater goods. The hipped slate roof of the tower has a cast-iron weathervane.

The red brick garden bond walls have stepped consoles at the gable ends and raised panels at the tower, west, south and north sides. The round-headed openings have recessed brick surrounds, concrete sills and stained-glass windows. The round-headed opening at the south side of the tower has a raised brick surround and double-leaf timber panelled doors. The square-headed openings in the tower at the second stage have timber louvers and recessed brick surrounds.

There is another timber panelled door in the south transept.

The features that enhance the artistic design and quality of the church include the stained-glass windows. The East Window was moved here from Saint Munchin’s Church, Bruree, through the intervention of President Eamon de Valera, who was anxious to save it when the church in Bruree closed in 1969.

The church was designed by the Dublin-based architect George Frederick Hicks (1870-1965), who was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, on 16 May 1870, the fourth son of Joseph Hicks, a linen draper, and his wife Mary.

Hicks was educated at Taunton School, received his architectural training at the London Architectural Association School and Finsbury Technical College, and in 1886 became an articled pupil of John William Stevens of London.

He moved to Dublin in 1890 at the age of 20 to join the office of James Rawson Carroll, where Frederick Batchelor was then the chief assistant. He later worked in the offices of William Henry Byrne and of Thomas Drew before setting up his own practice in Dublin in 1895. He worked from 5 Saint Stephen’s Green (1898) and at 28 South Frederick Street and 35a Kildare Street (1900-1903).

Hicks formed a new partnership with Frederick Batchelor at 86 Merrion Square in 1905, and the Batchelor and Hicks partnership lasted until 1922, when Batchelor retired. Hicks continued to work from Merrion Square until he retired in 1945, when he sold the practice to his assistant, Alan Hope.

Hicks also designed Saint Thomas’s Church on Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin (1929-1932), built in the Lombardic Romanesque style to replace a church on Marlborough Street that was destroyed by fire in 1922. For this church, Hicks was awarded the first Triennial Gold Medal of the RIAI in 1932.

The church in Kilmallock was designed by Hicks in the Romanesque Revival style, using his characteristic red brick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

I find an interesting similarity between Hicks’s churches in Dublin and Kilmallock, and the Church of the Resurrection in Bucharest, designed in English redbrick by the Romanian the architect Victor Stephanescu.

Other works by Hicks include the Carnegie Library and Technical Institute in Rathmines (1905-1913), the War Memorial in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, 73 houses in East Wall (1925-1926), a housing scheme of 428 houses in Marino (1919-1925), and Mount Pleasant Buildings and Hollyfield Buildings in Rathmines (1930). For many years, he was architect to the Association for the Housing of the Very Poor and the Saint Barnabas Public Utility Society.

Hicks was a founder member of the revived Architectural Association of Ireland in 1896, honorary treasurer (1896-1899), honorary secretary (1899-1902), and president (1902-1903). He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland in 1898, and was a long-serving council member, treasurer (1907-1909), secretary (1913-1915), vice-president (1921) and president (1929-1931). He was elected a fellow of the RIBA in 1906. As president of the RIAI, he invited the RIBA to hold its annual conference in Dublin in 1931.

He was elected an associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (1930), and later a member (1944), and served as honorary treasurer (1950-1954). He exhibited frequently at the Water Colour Society of Ireland, and also exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy. Several of his sketches were published in the Irish Builder and four of his sketchbooks are in Library in Trinity College Dublin.

Hicks lived at Warren Cottage, Sutton (1898), Ceanchor Cottage, Howth (ca 1905-1907), 17 Wellington Place, Clyde Road (1908) and The Tower, Malahide (1910-1965), a Martello Tower he had converted into his home. He died at the Tower, Malahide, shortly before his 95th birthday, on 24 April 1965. He is buried in the churchyard at Saint Andrew’s Church, Malahide, with his wife, Edith (née Sykes).

The small garden graveyard behind the church has a small number of graves, including one of Limerick’s best-known horsemen and bloodstock breeder, William Henry Leicester Stanhope (1922-2009), 11th Earl of Harrington, who died in Ballingarry, Co Limerick.

The story is told that when Lord Harrington was with the 15th/19th Hussars in Germany at the end of World War II, he arrested Admiral Karl Doenitz who had been made head of state after Hitler’s suicide, but the admiral had been reluctant to surrender to such a junior officer.

Kilmallock Parish was united with the Adare Group of Parishes in 1994, and the present rector is Canon Elizabeth (Liz) Beasley.

The grave of William Henry Leicester Stanhope (1922-2009), 11th Earl of Harrington, who died in Ballingarry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Dominican Priory
in Kilmallock and
its river-side ruins

The Dominican Priory, also known as Saint Saviour’s Priory, stands outside the mediaeval town walls of Kilmallock (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Two of the mediaeval church ruins that once made Kilmallaock known as the ‘Baalbec of Ireland’ are still standing in the town: the ruins of the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and the ruins of the Dominican Priory of Saint Saviour.

The Dominican Priory, also known as Saint Saviour’s Priory, stands on the north bank of the River Loobagh, just outside the mediaeval town walls of Kilmallock.

In the Middle Ages, Kilmallock was a thriving, Anglo-Norman walled borough. The priory was founded with royal consent in 1291. Although there is no clear record of who the original founder was, the friary stands on land bought by the friars from John Bluet, a burgess of the town.

Saint Saviour’s Priory was founded in 1291 on land bought from John Bluet (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The FitzGeralds, a powerful Anglo-Norman family, were important benefactors of the friary, and a key figure in the foundation of Saint Saviour’s was probably Gilbert FitzJohn FitzGerald, ancestor of the ‘White Knights.’ His descendants in the Fitzgerald and Fitzgibbon families remained the key benefactors of the priory in the centuries that followed, with Maurice Fitzgerald was the main patron.

Gilbert FitzGerald then invited the Dominicans to the monastery. The Dominican Order of friars or Order of Preachers was formed in 1216, and was present in Ireland since 1224, when the first foundation was established in Dublin.

The Bishop of Limerick, Gerald le Marshall (d. 1302), disapproved of the friars buying land within his borough without permission and had the friars expelled immediately. An inquiry was held in Cashel on 31 December 1291 by William de Vesci, the king’s chief administrator in Ireland. The inquiry ruled that the bishop should not have evicted the Dominicans as they owed no rent or service to the bishop for their site. This allowed the Dominicans to return to the priory in Kilmallock soon after.

The five-light window in the choir seen through the tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The friary was enlarged in 1320. Its community both grew and dwindled over the centuries, mainly due to changing fortunes in politics and war.

Maurice FitzThomas FitzGerald, 1st Earl of Desmond, who died in 1356, was a patron of the friars and was probably involved in enlarging the church ca 1320. The tomb-niche in the north wall of the choir, a traditional place for the burial of an important benefactor, is stylistically of a similar date.

The General Chapter of the Dominican Order in Ireland met in Kilmallock in 1340.

The tomb-niche in the north wall of the choir may belong to the FitzGerald family of Desmond (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The nave and chancel both retain details from the late 13th century. The early 14th century saw the addition of the south transept, a bell tower half-way along the length of the church, and an aisle on both the south side of the nave and the west side of the transept. The quality of architectural detail is very fine, and the five-light east window of the church is one of the finest in Ireland.

The five-light window in the south transept is one of the most exquisite in Ireland. The church contains some fine decorative stone carvings that date from the 13th and 14th centuries.

The extensive remains also include the domestic ranges and the cloister, and the restored vaulted ambulatory and arcade. Above the cloisters, the upper storey of the north range survives, a rare occurrence in remains of mediaeval friaries. Although access to the upper storey is closed, we climbed the mural stairway that leads to it.

The choir, chancel and east window in the priory church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

At the dissolution of monastic houses in 1541, the friars possessed the two-acre site on which the friary and its buildings stood, as well as 12 acres, a watermill and six cottages.

By 1548, James FitzJohn FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, owed more than £21 in arrears on his lease of the friary. The friary passed to the sovereign and commonalty of the town of Kilmallock in 1569-1570.

The town was sacked and burnt in 1571during the Desmond rebellion, and the friars were probably driven out of the friary. The friary was granted to Nicholas Miagh, the sovereign or mayor of Kilmallock, in 1594.

A list of the founders of Dominican friaries compiled in 1643 recorded that the Dominican priory in Kilmallock was ‘founded and endowed by the citizens.’

Three friars were said to have been living in Kilmallock in 1756, and one of them later became parish priest in 1767. The friars finally abandoned the friary in Kilmallock in 1790, although the last Dominican to die in Kilmallock was Father Edward MacCarthy in 1860.

The restored cloisters in Saint Saviour’s Priory, Kilmallock (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Roman Catholic parish church is dedicated to Saint Peter and Paul, the dedication of the Collegiate Church in Kilmallock. But in his design of the church, the architect JJ McCarthy, reflected the design of the priory church. The parish church is one of the fine examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Ireland. It has been described an ‘a mini-cathedral’ and opened in 1888.

A year later, a fundraising campaign was launched in 1889 to preserve the Dominican Friary in Kilmallock. It raised over £40 within a year, with a large portion of this money coming from members of the Fitzgibbon family, descended from Maurice FitzThomas Fitzgerald, 1st Earl of Desmond.

The church contains some fine decorative stone carvings that date from the 13th and 14th centuries (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2020)