The former Quaker meeting house on High Street, Wexford, dates from 1746 and was rebuilt in 1842 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
For an interesting part of my life, Quakers were influential in shaping my spirituality and my Christian activism, especially my lifelong commitment to pacifism. In my early 20s, I divided my Sunday church-going between Saint Iberius’s Church in Wexford and Friends’ Meeting House in Enniscorthy.
While I was living on High Street, Wexford, in the 1970s, the street was ‘bookended’ by Rowe Street Church and the Methodist Church at one end, and the ruins of the mediaeval Saint Patrick’s Church at the other end. In between the two was Wexford’s former Quaker Meeting House, which had closed almost half a century earlier, and which dated back to the 1740s.
This former meeting house is an important part of the mid-19th century ecclesiastical heritage of Wexford and its composition gives the building architectural value.
There were Quakers in Wexford from about 1657, and the first Quaker meeting house in the town was built in 1746 on a site that had been donated to Friends in 1743 by John Deanes of Silverspring House.
However, the meeting was ‘laid down’ in the late 18th century. It seems the Methodists held meetings in the former meeting house for a time around 1795 without the consent of Quakers. In the decades that followed, the building fell into decay.
The meeting was revived in 1841, the old meeting house demolished, and a new meeting house was built in 1842.
This is a detached, five-bay, double-height single-cell meeting house, built on a rectangular plan. It was ‘improved’ before 1903, producing the present composition, and a block with cloakrooms and toilets was added later.
The meeting was discontinued in 1927 after the three remaining Thompson families left Wexford. Edward McQuillan of Dunluce in Westgate, one of the last prominent Quakers in Wexford in the early 20th century, later died in 1941. Meanwehile, the meeting house on High Street was sold in 1928. It passed into private ownership and is used as a rehearsal hall for a band.
The former meeting house is set back from the street with cast-iron railings at the perimeter centred and a cast-iron gate.
The building was renovated in the mid-20th century to accommodate alternative use. There is a replacement pitched fibre-cement slate roof with ridge tiles, concrete or rendered coping at the gables and rendered chimney stacks at apexes with corbelled stepped chamfered capping. There are uPVC rainwater goods on rendered eaves, and rendered, ruled and lined walls.
The segmental-headed off-central door opening has a cut-granite threshold, and concealed dressings on cut-granite padstones. These frame the replacement timber panelled double doors with an overlight.
The square-headed window openings have cut-granite sills, and concealed dressings framing the aluminium casement windows that have replaced the original two-over-two timber sash windows.
The introduction of these replacement fittings for the doors and windows does nothing the external appearance or integrity of the building. Nevertheless, this former Quaker meeting house remains an interesting historical site on High Street.
Before the meeting house on High Street was built, the Quakers of Wexford had already acquired a burial ground in the town in 1726. Elnathan Allen leased a site of four perches to Friends ‘for ever’ for 2 shillings a year. The site was then described as ‘near the town wall of Wexford.’
However, after only two burials, the meeting’s caretaker claimed squatter’s rights on the site. This site later became the site for the Church of the Assumption, or Bride Street Church, one of the ‘Twin Churches built in the 1850s. The site of the former Quaker burial ground is no longer visible.
Bride Street Church stands on the site of the former Quaker burial ground in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
05 February 2021
A Wexford family history
features on RTÉ and makes
a ‘Nationwide’ publisher
Helen Skrine’s book on the Boxwell family and the publisher Michael Freeman featured on RTÉ’s ‘Nationwide’ this week
Patrick Comerford
When I was living in High Street, Wexford, Michael Freeman regularly called round, and I remember late night discussions about John Robinson’s Honest to God and Teilhard de Chardin’s theology.
At the time, he was involved in Macra na Feirme and I was working as a journalist with the Wexford People group of newspapers. He too became a journalist, and now he is a leading Wexford publisher, based in Rosslare, Co Wexford.
It was a delight to see Michael taking part in the RTÉ news magazine, Nationwide, earlier this week (1 February 2021), when it featured The Boxwells of Butlerstown Castle, the 200-page memoir about the Boxwell by Helen Skrine, a descendant of the Boxwell family. This is one of two books that arrived in the post unexpectedly a few weeks ago from Michael Freeman.
Michael is the publisher this book, edited by Helen’s daughter, Anna Skrine Brunton, and the programme was filmed in Butlerstown House, near Tacumshane, Co Wexford.
Helen Skrine (94) was secretary and later president of the Wexford Historical Society for some years in the 1980s. She wrote this book over a 30-year period, and in descriptive, colourful, and entertaining prose she tells of her experiences, and the history of her family in the 1798 Rising, the War of Independence, and the bleak 1950s.
The Boxwells are one among the families that for hundreds of years have owned castles in Co Wexford and have influenced social, political, economic and cultural change across the world.
The Bowxwells have lived for centuries at Butlerstown House and Butlerstown Castle, just a mile or two away from two other castles linked with the Boxwell family, Bargy Castle and Lingstown Castle. This is a fascinating memoir of the Boxwell family, which came England in the 1600s and settled in Co Wexford. She tells the story that is sometimes tragic and often-times funny.
She charts the contribution of members of the Boxwell family to government, medicine, sport, community and even rebellion, through war and peace to the present day.
Butlerstown Castle, like Ballybur Castle in Co Kilkenny, had its origins as a tower house, ‘a modest affair aimed not at warmongering or at display of power and wealth, but merely at survival, for defence in a hostile and embittered environment.’
The so-called ‘English’ baronies of Forth and Bargy in Co Wexford became more thickly populated with castles than any other part of Ireland. They included Bargy Castle built by the Rossiters, Lingstown Castle built by the Lamberts, Ballycogley Castle, built by the Waddings, and Butlerstown Castle, near Tomhaggard, built for the Butlers of Mountgarret, and with views north to Forth Mountain, west to the Comeragh Mountains in Co Waterford, and south to the Saltee Islands.
Helen traces the Boxwell family back to John Boxall or Boxwell of New College, Oxford, a favourite of Queen Mary, and John Boxwell (1614-1677) of Wootton Bassett, and a third John Boxwell who moved from Wootton Bassett to Co Wexford in the late 17th century.
For many people in Co Wexford, the Boxwell family is best-known for the close family relationship that links John Boxwell, John’s brother-in-law John Colclough and John’s cousin, Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, the three key figures in the 1798 Rising in Wexford.
But she also tells the stories of colourful family members, including Susan Boxwell the artist; John Boxwell, Governor of Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh; William Boxwell, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland; and Colonel Ambrose Boxwell of the Indian army.
There are honeymoons in Rome and Athens, tennis in Assam, Bengal and Chittagong, hunting with the Killinick Harriers, polo in Malaysia and a connection with Chris de Burgh. There are stories that take the reader to South Africa and Brazil, and of coffee in White’s Hotel, the Opera Festival in Wexford, and starting an arts centre in the Old Town Hall in Cornmarket.
There are intriguing connections with the Elgee family from Wexford and Oscar Wilde; with Whitley Stokes and William Stokes, pioneers in medicine; with Percy French; and through her mother with the St Leger family of Doneraile. And there is the story a ‘visit’ to Bargy Castle by the IRA during a Christmas party at the height of the Irish Civil War.
In addition, 16 family trees help guide the reader labyrinthine details of the different branches Boxwell family tree, with the many intermarriages within the Boxwell family, the details of kinship with other kindred families, including the Harveys, the MacMurroughs Kavanaghs and the St Legers, and extensions of the family to Abbeyleix, Liverpool and Brazil.
The cover photographs are by Jim Campbell and Ger Lawlor, while many of the photographs inside this generously illustrated book are by Ger Lawlor, Helen’s son-in-law Simon de Courcy Wheeler and Pat O’Connor.
The programme this week featured Michael Freeman and Helen Skrine’s friend Maeve Davison of Bargy Castle, mother of the singer-songwriter Chris de Burgh.
Michael Freeman is from Glynn, Co Wexford. He lived in Dublin for many years, working as a freelance journalist, a press officer for Macra na Feirme and in PR and publishing. He returned to Wexford with his wife Brigid in 2005 and now lives in Rosslare.
A suggestion by the Wexford historian and author Nicky Furlong led him to set up Three Sisters Press, and the first book he published was volume five of Nicky’s Wexford in the Rare Auld Times. Other books from Three Sisters Press include Sailor, Airman, Spy, Memoir of a Cold War Veteran by Ted Hayes (2018).
Perhaps, after this week’s programme on RTÉ, he can be regarded as truly ‘Nationwide’ publisher.
Helen Skrine’s book on the Boxwell family was a recent welcome gift in the post (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
When I was living in High Street, Wexford, Michael Freeman regularly called round, and I remember late night discussions about John Robinson’s Honest to God and Teilhard de Chardin’s theology.
At the time, he was involved in Macra na Feirme and I was working as a journalist with the Wexford People group of newspapers. He too became a journalist, and now he is a leading Wexford publisher, based in Rosslare, Co Wexford.
It was a delight to see Michael taking part in the RTÉ news magazine, Nationwide, earlier this week (1 February 2021), when it featured The Boxwells of Butlerstown Castle, the 200-page memoir about the Boxwell by Helen Skrine, a descendant of the Boxwell family. This is one of two books that arrived in the post unexpectedly a few weeks ago from Michael Freeman.
Michael is the publisher this book, edited by Helen’s daughter, Anna Skrine Brunton, and the programme was filmed in Butlerstown House, near Tacumshane, Co Wexford.
Helen Skrine (94) was secretary and later president of the Wexford Historical Society for some years in the 1980s. She wrote this book over a 30-year period, and in descriptive, colourful, and entertaining prose she tells of her experiences, and the history of her family in the 1798 Rising, the War of Independence, and the bleak 1950s.
The Boxwells are one among the families that for hundreds of years have owned castles in Co Wexford and have influenced social, political, economic and cultural change across the world.
The Bowxwells have lived for centuries at Butlerstown House and Butlerstown Castle, just a mile or two away from two other castles linked with the Boxwell family, Bargy Castle and Lingstown Castle. This is a fascinating memoir of the Boxwell family, which came England in the 1600s and settled in Co Wexford. She tells the story that is sometimes tragic and often-times funny.
She charts the contribution of members of the Boxwell family to government, medicine, sport, community and even rebellion, through war and peace to the present day.
Butlerstown Castle, like Ballybur Castle in Co Kilkenny, had its origins as a tower house, ‘a modest affair aimed not at warmongering or at display of power and wealth, but merely at survival, for defence in a hostile and embittered environment.’
The so-called ‘English’ baronies of Forth and Bargy in Co Wexford became more thickly populated with castles than any other part of Ireland. They included Bargy Castle built by the Rossiters, Lingstown Castle built by the Lamberts, Ballycogley Castle, built by the Waddings, and Butlerstown Castle, near Tomhaggard, built for the Butlers of Mountgarret, and with views north to Forth Mountain, west to the Comeragh Mountains in Co Waterford, and south to the Saltee Islands.
Helen traces the Boxwell family back to John Boxall or Boxwell of New College, Oxford, a favourite of Queen Mary, and John Boxwell (1614-1677) of Wootton Bassett, and a third John Boxwell who moved from Wootton Bassett to Co Wexford in the late 17th century.
For many people in Co Wexford, the Boxwell family is best-known for the close family relationship that links John Boxwell, John’s brother-in-law John Colclough and John’s cousin, Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, the three key figures in the 1798 Rising in Wexford.
But she also tells the stories of colourful family members, including Susan Boxwell the artist; John Boxwell, Governor of Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh; William Boxwell, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland; and Colonel Ambrose Boxwell of the Indian army.
There are honeymoons in Rome and Athens, tennis in Assam, Bengal and Chittagong, hunting with the Killinick Harriers, polo in Malaysia and a connection with Chris de Burgh. There are stories that take the reader to South Africa and Brazil, and of coffee in White’s Hotel, the Opera Festival in Wexford, and starting an arts centre in the Old Town Hall in Cornmarket.
There are intriguing connections with the Elgee family from Wexford and Oscar Wilde; with Whitley Stokes and William Stokes, pioneers in medicine; with Percy French; and through her mother with the St Leger family of Doneraile. And there is the story a ‘visit’ to Bargy Castle by the IRA during a Christmas party at the height of the Irish Civil War.
In addition, 16 family trees help guide the reader labyrinthine details of the different branches Boxwell family tree, with the many intermarriages within the Boxwell family, the details of kinship with other kindred families, including the Harveys, the MacMurroughs Kavanaghs and the St Legers, and extensions of the family to Abbeyleix, Liverpool and Brazil.
The cover photographs are by Jim Campbell and Ger Lawlor, while many of the photographs inside this generously illustrated book are by Ger Lawlor, Helen’s son-in-law Simon de Courcy Wheeler and Pat O’Connor.
The programme this week featured Michael Freeman and Helen Skrine’s friend Maeve Davison of Bargy Castle, mother of the singer-songwriter Chris de Burgh.
Michael Freeman is from Glynn, Co Wexford. He lived in Dublin for many years, working as a freelance journalist, a press officer for Macra na Feirme and in PR and publishing. He returned to Wexford with his wife Brigid in 2005 and now lives in Rosslare.
A suggestion by the Wexford historian and author Nicky Furlong led him to set up Three Sisters Press, and the first book he published was volume five of Nicky’s Wexford in the Rare Auld Times. Other books from Three Sisters Press include Sailor, Airman, Spy, Memoir of a Cold War Veteran by Ted Hayes (2018).
Perhaps, after this week’s programme on RTÉ, he can be regarded as truly ‘Nationwide’ publisher.
Helen Skrine’s book on the Boxwell family was a recent welcome gift in the post (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
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