Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 138, Saint Mary’s Church, Ennis

Saint Mary’s, the Friary Church in Ennis, Co Clare, was designed by William Reginald Carroll and incorporates an earlier church by Patrick Sexton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I returned from Lichfield late last night after a three-day break this week, staying at the Hedgehog Vintage Inn on Stafford Road, enjoying walks in the countryside, following the daily cycle of prayer in Lichfield Cathedral, meeting some old friends, and finding some ‘down time.’

I am on my way back to Askeaton, Co Limerick, later today. But, before the day begins, 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 for these few weeks is churches in the Franciscan (and Capuchin) tradition. My photographs this morning (14 October 2021) are from Saint Mary’s, the Friary Church in Ennis, Co Clare.

A plaque in the church remembers past members of the Franciscan community in Ennis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The old Franciscan Friary in Ennis, Co Clare, is now an archaeological site managed by the Office of Public Works. But the Franciscans maintain a living presence in the town in their friary just around the corner, on Francis Street.

Following a decree under the Penal Laws requiring priests who were members of religious orders to leave Ireland, at least four Franciscan friars in the Ennis area decided to register as parish clergy after 1697, and the friars continued to live among they people in Co Clare.

After living a hidden life outside the town for a time in the 17th and 18th century, the Franciscans began to return to Ennis, and they were living again as a community in Lysaght’s Lane by 1800.

The friars then moved to Bow Lane, where they opened a new chapel and friary on 12 December 1830.

The Franciscan Provincial threatened to close the friary in Ennis in 1853 unless conditions were improved. The Franciscan community in Ennis responded by buying the present site at Willow Bank House on Francis Street and in 1854 Patrick Sexton designed a new chapel.

The architect Patrick Sexton was active in Ennis from the 1850s until at least 1880. His new cruciform chapel was built by the Ennis builder William Carroll between June 1854 and December 1855.

The first Mass in the new church was celebrated on 1 January 1856, and the church was dedicated as the Church of the Immaculate Conception on 10 September 1856.

At the end of the 19th century, a new friary church, designed by William Reginald Carroll (1850-1910) and incorporating Sexton’s earlier church, was built in the Gothic Revival style in 1892.

The Ennis-born architect and civil engineer William Reginald Carroll was born in 1850, a younger son of William Carroll, who had built the earlier church in the 1850s.

Carroll designed the new friary church in Ennis in the 14th-century Gothic style, with a nave, apse, two side chapels and a tower. The altar was designed by the Dublin-based monumental sculptor, James Pearse (1839-1900), father of the 1916 leader, Padraic Pearse (1879-1916).

Pearse, who also designed the reredos in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, was born in London in 1839. He was brought to Dublin from Birmingham by Charles William Harrison around 1860 as the foreman of his monumental sculpture workshop at 178 Great Brunswick Street. Pearse, who was a Unitarian, died suddenly in 1900 in Birmingham while he was visiting his brother.

The church was built by a local builder, Dan Shanks, at a cost of £11,000, and was dedicated on 11 June 1892.

The church is a T-plan, gable-fronted church, with a polygonal apse, a tower to the west, and a connecting block that leads to the neighbouring friary.

A statue of the Virgin Mary stands in a niche on the façade and is flanked by lancet windows with stone tracery, and with a quatrefoil and hood moulding above. Paired lancet windows are set between the buttresses.

Inside, the church has an open timber roof, with tongue and groove sheeting. There are four polished granite columns with carved stylised ivy capitals that divide the nave from the transepts. The stained-glass windows are by Earley.

The foundation stone of the earlier church on the site is set in the grotto beside the church.

The architect William Reginal Carroll moved from Ennis to Ewell in Surrey around 1899 and soon after to Belgium, living first in Bruges and then in Brussels. He died at his home in Brussels on 8 April 1910.

Meanwhile, a new friary was completed in 1877, and the Franciscan house in Ennis remained the official novitiate of the Irish province until 1902.

The friary site includes the site of the birthplace of William Mulready (1786-1863), the Ennis-born artist who studied at the Royal Academy and designed the first penny postage envelope, introduced by the Royal Mail at the same time as the ‘Penny Black’ stamp in May 1840.

Inside the church designed by William Reginald Carroll in the 14th-century Gothic style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 47-54 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 47 ‘Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. 48 So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs. 49Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, “I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute”, 50 so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation. 52 Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.’

53 When he went outside, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile towards him and to cross-examine him about many things, 54 lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.

The altar was designed by the Dublin-based monumental sculptor, James Pearse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (14 October 2021) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the Church of South India’s Focus 9/99 programme, centring children in the life of the Church.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

A rose window in a side transept (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 space in Lichfield Cathedral ‘for exploration, examination and experimentation’

‘The Laboratory’ is an installation by the artist Peter Walker in the South Transept of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

‘The Laboratory’ is a free and contemporary installation artwork by the artist Peter Walker and features sound compositions by David Harper.

This is an opportunity to explore the fascinating world around us through the eyes of a scientist.

‘The Laboratory’ is an art installation by Peter Walker, a sculptor and artist in residence at Lichfield Cathedral. It is designed to invoke the sense of a space for exploration, examination and experimentation. Rather than a direct depiction of a scientific laboratory, it has been created to specifically to be viewed inside this sacred space of the South Transept of the cathedral to allow contemplation on the relationship between science and religion.

‘Creativity in the arts and the sciences comes from many places. But it is often in the studio for the artist, or the laboratory for the scientist, that those ideas come to life,’ Peter Walker says in a panel at the exhibition.

‘We draw inspiration from our experiences, our environment and the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world and use that inspiration to direct our approaches towards depicting or dissecting, experimenting, and observing the existence of everything that surrounds us.

‘The installation is more than creating a space that reminds us of a laboratory. It is an artwork in itself that creates intrigue, bringing to together diverse elements and presenting them in a way that will make us ask questions. Having the installation in the Cathedral, brings in further depths and levels to the installation, allowing people to consider the links between science, creativity and spirituality,’ he says.

The Dean of Lichfield, the Very Revd Adrian Dorber, says: ‘In order to have a good look at things, or delve into the innermost workings of something, or see how things change or relate to other things, the place and conditions have be right. You might also need to search, aided by the right kind of apparatus and with dedicated time to observe. A laboratory is a place where all that investigation and exploring can happen. In a laboratory you learn by doing; spending time to look carefully and experimenting with different elements to see how they change or react.’

He continues: ‘Careful, disciplined observation and research, begun in laboratories, have unlocked the secrets of the natural world for us. It has led to invention, to new technologies, to medical advances and, sadly, to ways in which that knowledge can be put to destructive and malicious uses. What we discover drives us on to greater exploration: how do we live together with all forms of life, animal vegetable or mineral? How does our knowledge affect our emotional and ethical lives? Is there meaning and purpose in life?’

He concludes: ‘I like to think Cathedrals, Churches and all holy places are laboratories of the spirit. Here the conditions and routines help us uncover who we are in relation to one another and all other species; the effects our environment and history has on us. Above all standing on holy ground encourages us to bring all that we know into dialogue with human frailty, vulnerability and need, as well as those instincts for joy, delight, happiness, thanksgiving, praise, and love. The human race has been called “the world’s high priest” because we notice and can say what we experience. Think of this place as your very own Laboratory of the Spirit.’

I was amused by a quotation from Albert Einstein on one of the panels: ‘If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?’

The installation is the centrepiece for a range of free family activities that continues through the October half term and every day until 1 November. ‘The Laboratory’ is supported by Scientists In Congregations.

At the same time, Lichfield Cathedral is hosting a Retrospective exhibition of Peter Walker’s work at the cathedral. Looking back over five years of this unique and rich partnership, the exhibition revisits the extensive projects, sculptures, installations, and other artworks that have been created and reflects on the impact and legacy of his extraordinary creations.

This was also my first opportunity see Peter Walker’s new statue of Saint Chad, which was dedicated four months by Bishop Michael Ipgrave of Lichfield on 26 June.

This major new sculpture of Lichfield’s patron saint was commissioned by Lichfield Cathedral. Saint Chad now stands at the south-east corner of the cathedral, facing down Dam Street, with Stowe Pool to his left and Minster Pool to his right, his hand raised in blessing and welcoming all who visit Lichfield.

While the statue was in creation, a living artwork of flowers was created around the plinth. The Hope Garden includes 50,000 spring flowers, planted as a gift of hope for the city and for visitors to the cathedral. The flowers will bloom around Saint Chad’s Day, 2 March, each year in readiness for Easter. This date also marks the anniversary of the lockdown at the start of the pandemic.

‘Hope springs from the ground even after the harshest of winters,’ says Dean Adrian Dorber.

Peter Walker’s new statue of Saint Chad at Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)