Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 94, Saint John’s Priory, Youghal

The site of the early 14th century Benedictine Priory of Saint John in Youghal, Co Cork, is now Priory Coffee Company (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Before the day gets busy, I am taking a little time this morning for prayer, reflection and reading. Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme this week is Benedictine (including Cistercian) foundations. My photographs this morning (31 August 2021) are from the former Saint John’s Priory in Youghal, Co Cork.

Portions of the Priory of Saint John still survive, including a moulded Gothic doorway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Portions of the early 14th century Benedictine Priory of Saint John can be found at 56 Main Street, in the centre of Youghal. The building is now Priory Coffee Company, an award-winning café in the town centre.

This Benedictine house in the centre of Youghal was founded ca 1350, but the Benedictine presence in Youghal dated back to 1185.

A maison dieu was founded for or by the Benedictines at Youghal in 1185, with an associated leper house on a hill outside the town. A maison dieu was often served as a hospital or hostel providing overnight accommodation for pilgrims.

The Benedictine presence in Youghal was more firmly established inside the walled town by 1306, with the foundation of a structure known as Saint John’s House on Main Street. The house appears to have been a small dependent cell of the Benedictine house at Bath Abbey and operated as a hospital-cell.

Saint John’s Priory was founded in 1350, as a subordinate of the Benedictine Priory of Saint John the Baptist in Waterford (1185) and as a ‘mortuary bequest’. Saint John’s in Waterford was a double monastery that also provided hospital care and it, in turn, was a dependency of Bath Abbey in England.

Saint John’s in Youghal served as a hospital, hostel or almshouse until the Dissolution of the Monasteries at the Tudor Reformation.

Small portions of the building still survive, including the east gable with a moulded pointed arch Gothic doorway that has a carved sandstone surround and trefoil motifs to the spandrels, roll mouldings and a timber battened door with strap hinges. Other interesting architectural details include the two-bay, two-storey, gable front, the rendered chimneystacks, and a carved sandstone lancet opening with open work tracery. The original piscina and aumbrey are said to survive inside.

The passageway leading from the doorway along the southside of the building is a later addition.

It is said Oliver Cromwell made the priory in Youghal his headquarters during the winter of 1649, and that he inspected his troops every morning from the priory.

After a period of neglect, a new gable was inserted in a central position in the structure in the late 18th or early 19th century.

An architectural and archaeological assessment of the building in 2000 identified how the building is laid out in four spaces: the main retail area fronting the street on the east, a kitchen to the west of the shop, a yard beyond, and a long, narrow corridor running along the south wall through the building from east to west, bounded by a poorly built rubble stone wall on the north.

All the spaces are confined within a single rectangular structure. The building was found to have four main phases of construction. The main core is of mediaeval date, and the lower courses of the north and west walls of the mediaeval building were found.

The Magazine was an urban tower house at the front of the property now at 54 North Main Street. It was built within the precinct of Saint John’s Priory, and archaeological studies show uncovered the foundations of an earlier tower and a late mediaeval fireplace.

This building too was supposedly occupied by Cromwell’s army during the winter of 1649-1650.

The Magazine was demolished in 1835 as part of reconstruction works and the realignment of the Main Street.

The former priory has gone through many changes over the years and is now home to the Priory Coffee Company – and, yes, Eggs Benedict are on the menu.

The Priory Coffee Company is an award-winning café in the centre of Youghal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 4: 31-37 (NRSVA):

31 He went down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching them on the sabbath. 32 They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority. 33 In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, 34 ‘Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ When the demon had thrown him down before them, he came out of him without having done him any harm. 36 They were all amazed and kept saying to one another, ‘What kind of utterance is this? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and out they come!’ 37 And a report about him began to reach every place in the region.

The Gothic doorway opens into a passageway that leads into the rest of the site (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (31 August 2021) invites us to pray:

We pray for the Lusophone Network, which represents and connects Portuguese-speaking members of the Anglican Communion. The network comprises 350,000 Portuguese-speaking Anglicans and Episcopalians across countries including Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique and Angola.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

A plque recalls the original use of the building as a Benedictine priory (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

The Magazine at 54 North Main Street was built within the precincts of Saint John’s Priory and was demolished in 1835 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Lighthouses and lace … once the lot of the nuns in Youghal

The former Presentation Convent and Chapel in Youghal, Co Cork … is this work of Ashlin architecture in danger of being lost? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

Lighthouse-keeping and lace making seem o have been the lot of nuns in Youghal, Co Cork, for centuries.

The former Presentation Convent in Youghal was known for the word-famous Youghal Lace, once sought after by popes, queens, and all who valued exquisitely crafted garments without worrying about the price.

Wedding gowns and christening robes that were made of Youghal Lace would become family heirlooms.

The Convent Lace School was opened in 1852 by Mother Mary Ann Smith of the Presentation Convent and the world-famous Youghal Lace was made here.

The production of Youghal Lace grew out of the need to create employment in the area during the potato famine in the later 1840s.

When a piece of lace of Italian origin came into the hands of Mother Mary Ann Smith of the Presentation Convent in Youghal, she carefully unravelled the piece of lace, examined how it had been made, and then mastered the stitches.

Mother Mary Ann Smith then taught what she had learned to children in the convent who had shown an aptitude for needlework. This lace is made entirely by the needle, and the thread used is of very fine cotton.

The Convent Lace School opened in 1852 and flourished. In 1863 A shawl of Youghal Lace was presented in 1852 to the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexander, when she married the future King Edward VII. It was the first of many presentations of Youghal Lace to the British royal family.

Youghal Lace was awarded several medals at in prestigious international exhibitions, including the Vatican Exhibition (1888), the Chicago World’s Fair (1893), the RDS, and the Exhibition of British Lace, London (1906).

The convent closed in the early 1990s, and the nuns’ coffins were reburied in the North Abbey Cemetery. A statue of the Virgin Mary once stood on a plinth on the Bell Tower overlooking the grounds and the nuns’ graveyard. The empty plinth can still be seen in the bell tower.

The building was refurbished and adapted as the Youghal International College, a Spanish second-level school, in 1992. But the building is closed and fenced off again, although it has been declared a National Monument.

Gothic decline at the former Presentation Convent in Youghal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The convent chapel designed by AWN Pugin’s son-in-law, the Cork-born architect George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921), as part of the convent complex, with the former convent to the north, sharing a decorative scheme and architectural style.

The chapel, in a mixture of Romanesque and Gothic styles, is typical of churches of its type and time, with features such as the round-headed windows, a bellcote, and steeply-pitched roofs and gables. The variety of materials used in building it add decorative emphasis to the façade and textural variety to the streetscape.

The gable-fronted chapel was built ca 1880, with slightly projecting gabled transepts, four-bay nave elevations, a gabled single-bay single-storey porch at the south side and a gabled bellcote and carved limestone pinnacles at the end.

The chapel is part of a group that forms an imposing and unusual feature on the streetscape of the town. The attached former convent, built at the same time, is a ten-bay, three-storey block with advanced end bays, a gable-fronted, single-bay, single-storey porch at the front elevation and a six-stage, square-profile tower at the north.

The other architectural features include sandstone chimneystacks, dressed limestone quoins, carved limestone bracketed eaves courses, the cross finial, and the round-headed windows.

I hope this important Ashlin chapel, now vacant on a prominent site, is not facing the same fate as the one that has befallen the former Chapel and Mercy Convent in Skibbereen in West Cork, abandoned to the elements after a fire some months ago, to fall into disrepair and decay. The convent and chapel in Skibbereen were designed in the 1860s by Pugin and Ashlin, and the neglected convent chapels in these two towns – one in East Cork, the other in West Cork – have been parts of architecturally significant ecclesiastical complexes.

The former Loreto Convent is being transformed into a modern apartment complex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Further south on the same road in Youghal, the former Loreto Convent campus has been on the market in recent years and is now being converted into apartments in a new development known as Ashton Court.

This site includes the former Loreto Convent and Secondary School, Marymount House, halls and outbuildings on about 4.2 acres of mature grounds on elevated site, with sea views over Youghal bay with its sandy beaches and panoramic views of the River Blackwater.

The former convent is an imposing, red-brick, two-storey over basement building. It was built ca 1850, and was originally known as Ashton Court. It later included a library, conservatory, and first-floor oratory. The former chapel had been converted into a community room.

The former school buildings were extended in mid-1970s, and refurbished and extended in 1991. The school closed in 2006, leaving the site to slowly fall into disrepair.

Naas-based Redbarn Construction Ltd bought the listed property as part of an immediate €6 million investment that also includes restoring a local cinema and an unfinished housing estate. The Loreto site plan envisages about 40 apartments in a gated development, some with access from Golf Links Road. The plans also envisage turning a small cottage close into a coffee shop and newsagents.

There has been a lighthouse overlooking the Blackwater estuary since the late 12th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The two former convents are immediately north of Youghal Lighthouse. It stands on the site of the first lighthouse in Youghal, built there over 800 years ago by Maurice FitzGerald (1194-1257). It is interesting, therefore, that this first lighthouse was maintained by the nuns of Saint Anne’s Convent for centuries.

That first lighthouse fell into disrepair after the nuns’ community was dissolved during the Tudor Reformation.

More than 30 ships were wrecked off the coast of Youghal in the 1820s alone. The merchants of Youghal demanded a new lighthouse be built on nearby Capel Island. But the authorities declined, and for over a decade the merchants and the local authorities fought over the ideal location for a new lighthouse.

Capel Island was then chosen, and building work started in the late 1840s. But local opinion changed, a new location was sought, and the half-built lighthouse on Capel Island was abandoned.

Finally, a new lighthouse opened in 1852 – in the same place where the nuns had run one from the 12th century. The half-built lighthouse on Capel Island can still be seen, and the entire island is now a bird sanctuary.

The last lighthouse attendant in Youghal moved out in 1996. Since then, the lighthouse has been fully automated and is now run from Dublin.

‘No Parking, Day or Night. Emergency Access Only’ … the gate in front of the former Presentation Convent Chapel in Youghal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)