Praying in Lent and Easter 2021: 78, the Ascension and Saint George, Panormos

The Church of the Ascension and Saint George in Panormos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During the Season of Easter this year, I am continuing my theme from Lent, taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship that has been significant in my spiritual life;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

Sunday (2 May 2021) was Easter Day in the Calendar of the Orthodox Church, and this week is Easter Week. I miss the opportunity of being in Greece at this special time of year, so my photographs this week are from churches in Crete.

Until the pandemic lockdown, I have been visiting Rethymnon almost every year since the 1980s. My photographs this morning (5 May 2021) are from the Church of the Ascension and Saint George in Panormos, east of Rethymnon.

For some years, it has been something of a tradition during holidays in Rethymnon to spend lazy, sunny Sunday afternoons in the small coastal village of Panormos, visiting the church dedicated to the Ascension and Saint George, and enjoying lingering lunches in the restaurants, including the Agkyra, Porto Parasiris and Captain’s House.

These lunches often become hours of uninterrupted bliss, sipping coffee, reading books and watching life in the small harbour and beaches below.

The recently built church in Panormos is dedicated to the Ascension (Analipsi) and Saint George (Agios Georgios) and it has a splendid dome with a modern, majestic fresco of Christ the Pantocrator.

Behind the village are the remains of the Agia Sophia Basilica, once one of the largest basilicas in Crete. The site is fenced off and there are few signs indicating its importance. The basilica was built in the fifth and sixth centuries. According to archaeologists, this was the seat of the Diocese of Eleftherna, which transferred there after the destruction of the ancient city of Panormos. In time, the name Agia Sophia was given to the entire area around the basilica.

The Basilica of Agia Sofia was uncovered following research by the theologian Konstantinos Kalokiris, and the site was excavated in 1948-1955 by the archaeologist Professor N. Platonas.

Christ Pantocrator in the dome of the Church of Aghios Georgios in Panormos on Easter afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 15: 1-8 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 15 ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.’

Inside Saint George’s Church in Panormos, between Rethymnon and Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (5 May 2021, International Midwives Day) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for new life, and those who work to ensure its protection. We pray for nurses and midwives across the world.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The site of the Basilica of Aghia Sofia is a five-minute walk from the village of Panormos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

A hush descends on the cobbled streets of Panormos on Easter afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The barracks in Ahane: built for a colonial governor who later said ‘no thanks’

The former barracks in Ahane, Co Limerick, looks like a market house on first appearance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

On the way to the Clare Glens on the borders of Co Limerick and Co Tipperary, I stopped briefly in the small east Co Limerick of Ahane to see both the former barracks and the interesting parish church.

The former barracks fronts onto the road directly, and at first sight it looked like an abandoned former market house. It is a challenging sight, because I wondered why such a small village could have once needed a market house.

Instead, this former barracks, built in the early 19th century, has been a barracks, a dispensary, a Famine soup kitchen, a school, political meeting tooms, and, more recently, apartments.

The barracks was first built in 1825 to protect Sir Richard Bourke (1777-1855) from ‘the so-called Republican elements of Irish society,’ according to the Ordnance Survey Field Name Book. However, Bourke is reported to have expressed ‘no need for protection from his own people.’

General Sir Richard Bourke was born in Dublin and was a cousin of Edmund Burke. A year after the barracks was built, Bourke became acting Governor of the Cape Colony (1826-1828) before becoming Governor of New South Wales (1831-1837).

As a lifelong Whig, he encouraged the emancipation of convicts and helped to put an end to penal transportation to Australia. He also gave Melbourne its name in 1837, in honour of the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.

Bourke returned to live at Thornfield House, Ahane, on the other side of the road from the barracks. He died while he was at church on Sunday 12 August 1855. He is buried in All Saints’ Church, Stradbally, near Castleconnell, Co Limerick, where his burial vault was designed by the Limerick-based architect James Pain (1779-1877).

When Bourkee returned to Ahane, the barracks became ‘a dispensary connected with that of Castleconnell’ in 1837. Within a decade, it housed as a soup kitchen at the height of the Great Famine (1845-1849). Later, in the 1880s, it was a woodcarving school producing fine examples of work, including the staircase at Glenstal Castle, now Glenstal Abbey.

After the War of Independence, the former barracks served for some time as a meeting room for the Ahane Cumann of Fianna Fáil. It then became apartments for two local men, Henry ‘Harry’ Pond and James ‘Jimmy’ Spuddle, who were veterans of World War I (1914-1919) and the War of Independence (1919-1921).

Although the barracks has had a number of additions over the years, the main building is now vacant and has an abandoned look about it.

The arcade makes the former barracks in Ahane look like a market house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

It is built on a compact rectilinear plan form. The arcade makes the building look like a market house, and good quality workmanship can be seen in the deep grey limestone. The openings on each floor diminish in scale, producing a graduated, tiered visual effect.

This is a detached, two-bay or five-bay two-storey barrack, built on a rectangular plan, with single-bay, two-storey side elevations.

The building has a replacement hipped artificial slate roof with ridge tiles, and paired cement rendered central chimney stacks that have concrete capping supporting terracotta pots.

The rubble stone walls are part-covered in creepers and ivy, but originally they were rendered, with hammered limestone flush quoins at the corners.

The arcade is composed of a series of five elliptical-headed openings on tooled hammered or rough-hewn limestone piers. These have benchmark-inscribed tooled cut-limestone plinths with lichen-spotted tooled limestone ashlar voussoirs.

There is a square-headed central door opening in a camber-headed recess with lime-washed red brick voussoirs framing a timber boarded door.

The square-headed window openings in the camber-headed recesses on the first floor have shallow sills, and hammered limestone voussoirs frame the replacement timber casement windows.

Although this was only a barracks for about a decade, it is an important part of the early 19th-century architectural heritage of Co Limerick and its restoration would acknowledge the political and social history of Ahane and this small part of east Co Limerick.

The restoration of the barracks would acknowledge the political and social history of Ahane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)