The Church of San Felice in Cannaregio has two façades, facing the square its gives its name to and facing the canal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
Patrick Comerford
We are in the last week of Ordinary Time, the week before Advent. Before a busy day begins, I am taking some time early this morning for prayer, reflection and reading.
Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I have been 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 on this prayer diary this week is seven more churches in Venice. Earlier in this prayer diary, I illustrated my morning reflections with images from churches in Venice and on Murano and Burano. While I was in Venice this month, I reflected on the synagogues in the Ghetto in Venice (7-13 November)
As part of my reflections and this prayer diary this week, I am looking at seven more churches I visited in Venice earlier this month. This theme continues this morning (24 November 2021) with photographs from the Church of San Felice, facing the square or camp it gives its name to.
Inside the Church of San Felice, rebuilt in the style of Mauro Codussi from 1531 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
The Church of San Felice is in the sestiere or district of Cannaregio in Venice . It faces the square or camp it gives its name to, on the other side of the Strada Nova.
The church was founded in the 10th century, although the first document mentioning it only dates from 1117. It was rebuilt in 1267 by the Patriarch of Caorle and Jesolo after it had been renovated and rebuilt.
The church was completely rebuilt in the style of Mauro Codussi, beginning in 1531.
The church is built on a square plan with two façades, the main one featuring pilasters with Corinthian capitals.
The interior is on the Greek cross plan, with four pillars at the crossing supporting the arcades of the dome.
The great works of art in the church include a painting of Saint Demetrius and the Venetian noble Zuan Pietro Ghisi, by Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594), generally known as Tintoretto (ca 1547). The crucifix is attributed to Andrea Brustolon. The organ is by Antonio et Agostino Callido.
An inscription inside the church recalls the baptism there of Carlo Rezzonico, the future Pope Clement XIII, on 29 March 1693.
Saint Demetrius and Zuan Pietro Ghisi by Tintoretto dates from 1531 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
Luke 21: 12-19 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 12 ‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance; 15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls.’
The organ in San Felice is by Antonio and Agostino Callido (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (24 November 2021) invites us to pray:
We pray for the Parish of Matero and the Diocese of Lusaka as they implement this transformative gender justice programme.
The campanile of the Church of San Felice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
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
One façade of the Church of San Felice faces onto the neighbouring canal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
24 November 2021
Can the Grand Canal in Dublin
compare with the Grand Canal
in Venice, or Rialto with Rialto?
No 7 Ontario Terrace faces the Grand Canal between Ranelagh and Rathmines … my grandmother’s brother, John Lynders, lived there until he died in 1957 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
Patrick Comerford
Can the Grand Canal in Venice compare with the Grand Canal in Dublin.
Can Rialto Bridge in Dublin compare with Rialto Bridge in Venice?
I was in Dublin last week, just a week after being Venice, where I had stayed in an hotel where I had breakfast each morning and drinks each evening on balconies looking onto the Grand Canal.
A week later, when I arrived in Dublin on the afternoon before a day-long meeting in Christ Church Cathedral, I walked for a stretch along the Grand Canal, from Charlemont Street Bridge almost as far as Sally Bridge.
It was late afternoon, and dusk was beginning to fall. Soon, south Dublin would be enfolded in the evening darkness, so I decided to limit my walk so that along the way I could take some photographs of houses that had some family connections.
My first stop was at Ontario Terrace, which fronts the Grand Canal and bridges the boundary between the suburbs of Ranelagh and Rathmines.
Ontario Terrace was built in 1840, when canals were at the cutting edge of transport, the penny black stamp become the founding mark of public postal service, and Queen Victoria (22) married Prince Albert. Ontario Province was probably given its name to mark the foundation that year of the Province of Canada.
At one time, Ontario Terrace was home to the nationalist writer, John Mitchel, who lived at No 8 while writing for The Nation newspaper. Mitchel returned to Ireland from exile in 1875 and was elected MP for Tipperary.
James Joyce’s parents, John Stanislaus Joyce and May (Murray), lived briefly at No 13 Ontario Terrace after they were married in Rathmines in 1880. Their first-born, John Augustine Joyce, was born there on 23 November 1880, but survived only eight days.
In Ulysses, Joyce has Leopold and Molly Bloom living at No 1 Ontario Terrace in 1897 and 1898 with their pilfering maid, Mary Driscoll, excoriated by Molly for flirting with Leopold and stealing her potatoes and oysters. ‘That slut Mary we had in Ontario Terrace padding out her false bottom to excite him,’ she snaps. In fact, at the time, No 1 was the home a house painter named Behan.
In the early 20th century, Ontario Terrace was a middle-class enclave of the sort that both Bloom and Joyce were familiar with. But in the decades that followed, its fortunes plummeted. Fifty years on, there were plans to fill in the canal and make it into a motorway.
My grandmother’s elder brother, John Lynders (1873-1957), my great-uncle, lived at No 7 Ontario Terrace until he died in 1957, and his wife, my-great aunt Mary Ellen Lynders, was living there when she died in 1963.
John Lynders had been a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary in the difficult years in the first quarter of the 20th century. He was two years older than my grandmother, and was born in Portane on 11 January 1873. He joined the RIC, became a Sergeant in the RIC and was later a Head Constable. He married Mary Ellen Reardon (1881-1963) from Fermoy, Co Cork.
John Lynders was living at the RIC Barracks, South Main Street, Wexford, when his children were born in 1908 and 1911. The former RIC Barracks later became the Dun Mhuire Hall in Wexford.
John Lynders was a sergeant in Duncannon, Co Wexford, by 1917, and was later transferred from Wexford to Ballymahon, Co Longford (1919-1922), where he was a Head Constable. On 18 August 1920, an IRA group led by Seán Mac Eoin and Seán Connolly, attacked the RIC barracks in Ballymahon and captured rifles, revolvers, grenades and ammunition.
After the dissolution of the RIC, John Lynders returned to live in Dublin. He was living at 7 Ontario Terrace, Portobello, when he died on 13 November 1957, aged 84. His widow Mary was living at 7 Ontario Terrace when she died on 13 May 1963, aged 82.
In 1966, Ontario Terrace provided one of the locations for the RTÉ drama series Insurrection, produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916. As I stood outside his former home last week, I wondered what John Lynders would have thought of that.
Later, No 7 included the offices of Padraig Mulcahy (1920-2012), a chartered quantity surveyor and son of General Richard Mulcahy, first chief of staff of the Irish Free State army and a leader of Fine Gael, and in the 1970s he bought the neighbouring house, No 6, which was derelict. He restored and extended the property, and his family later moved in.
Today, the houses on Ontario Terrace, including No 7, are protected buildings. No 6 is on the market with an asking price of €1.395 million, while neighbouring No 10 is on the market with an asking price of €1.3 million.
No 18 Parnell Road, as No 18 Parnell Place, was a Comerford family home from 1877 until after 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
From Ontario Terrace, I continued along the south bank of the Grand Canal, passing Portobello Bridge and Harold’s Cross Bridge, and stopped at Parnell Road, where one Comerford family lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, at the same time as John Lynders was living in Wexford.
William Comerford (1842/1843-1907), an heraldic engraver, lived in 18 Parnell Place, Rathmines, now 18 Parnell Road, Harold’s Cross, from 1877 to 1907. He had married Hannah Jordan, daughter of John Jordan, in Saint Audeon’s Church (Church of Ireland), Cornmarket, Dublin, in 1862.
William Comerford died at 18 Parnell Place, Harold’s Cross, on 28 May 1907, but his family continued to live in the house until long after the 1911 census.
William’s son, Charles William Comerford (1877-1953), was living at Parnell Place, or Parnell Road, when he married Adelaide Margaret Field (1878-1953) of Leinster Square, Rathmines, in Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, in 1910.
The couple later lived at No 60 Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, and their granddaughter, Angela Marks, believes Charles Comerford was in the GPO in O’Connell Street in 1916 and says family tradition tells of him crawling out along the street and swearing to leave Ireland.
The family left Ireland ca 1922, but the memory of the family home in Rathgar was continued in the name ‘Kenilworth’ which he gave to his house on Nore Road in Portishead, near Bristol. Adelaide and Charles Comerford died within seven months of each other in 1953. As I stood outside his former home last week, I wondered what Charles Comerford would have thought of Ireland today.
No 9 Arbutus Avenue, one of the two houses I first remember being in as a small child (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
My final stopping point in my late afternoon stroll along the south bank of the Grand Canal last week was around the corner from Parnell Road, in Arbutus Avenue
The two houses I first remember being in as a small child are my grandmother’s home in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, and this house at No 9 Arbutus Avenue.
The house on Arbutus Avenue, just like the house in Cappoquin, looks so much smaller today than I remember it, and it is not as pretty either. But, in my mind’s eye, I can still walk around each room in each house, and the house near the Grand Canal is still a comforting place to see, with fading but warm memories of those early childhood days.
I was going to walk on to Rialto Bridge, but dusk and was falling, and I knew, despite any wishful thinking, any photograph I took there could not match Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Venice the previous week.
Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Venice … not quite matched by Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
Can the Grand Canal in Venice compare with the Grand Canal in Dublin.
Can Rialto Bridge in Dublin compare with Rialto Bridge in Venice?
I was in Dublin last week, just a week after being Venice, where I had stayed in an hotel where I had breakfast each morning and drinks each evening on balconies looking onto the Grand Canal.
A week later, when I arrived in Dublin on the afternoon before a day-long meeting in Christ Church Cathedral, I walked for a stretch along the Grand Canal, from Charlemont Street Bridge almost as far as Sally Bridge.
It was late afternoon, and dusk was beginning to fall. Soon, south Dublin would be enfolded in the evening darkness, so I decided to limit my walk so that along the way I could take some photographs of houses that had some family connections.
My first stop was at Ontario Terrace, which fronts the Grand Canal and bridges the boundary between the suburbs of Ranelagh and Rathmines.
Ontario Terrace was built in 1840, when canals were at the cutting edge of transport, the penny black stamp become the founding mark of public postal service, and Queen Victoria (22) married Prince Albert. Ontario Province was probably given its name to mark the foundation that year of the Province of Canada.
At one time, Ontario Terrace was home to the nationalist writer, John Mitchel, who lived at No 8 while writing for The Nation newspaper. Mitchel returned to Ireland from exile in 1875 and was elected MP for Tipperary.
James Joyce’s parents, John Stanislaus Joyce and May (Murray), lived briefly at No 13 Ontario Terrace after they were married in Rathmines in 1880. Their first-born, John Augustine Joyce, was born there on 23 November 1880, but survived only eight days.
In Ulysses, Joyce has Leopold and Molly Bloom living at No 1 Ontario Terrace in 1897 and 1898 with their pilfering maid, Mary Driscoll, excoriated by Molly for flirting with Leopold and stealing her potatoes and oysters. ‘That slut Mary we had in Ontario Terrace padding out her false bottom to excite him,’ she snaps. In fact, at the time, No 1 was the home a house painter named Behan.
In the early 20th century, Ontario Terrace was a middle-class enclave of the sort that both Bloom and Joyce were familiar with. But in the decades that followed, its fortunes plummeted. Fifty years on, there were plans to fill in the canal and make it into a motorway.
My grandmother’s elder brother, John Lynders (1873-1957), my great-uncle, lived at No 7 Ontario Terrace until he died in 1957, and his wife, my-great aunt Mary Ellen Lynders, was living there when she died in 1963.
John Lynders had been a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary in the difficult years in the first quarter of the 20th century. He was two years older than my grandmother, and was born in Portane on 11 January 1873. He joined the RIC, became a Sergeant in the RIC and was later a Head Constable. He married Mary Ellen Reardon (1881-1963) from Fermoy, Co Cork.
John Lynders was living at the RIC Barracks, South Main Street, Wexford, when his children were born in 1908 and 1911. The former RIC Barracks later became the Dun Mhuire Hall in Wexford.
John Lynders was a sergeant in Duncannon, Co Wexford, by 1917, and was later transferred from Wexford to Ballymahon, Co Longford (1919-1922), where he was a Head Constable. On 18 August 1920, an IRA group led by Seán Mac Eoin and Seán Connolly, attacked the RIC barracks in Ballymahon and captured rifles, revolvers, grenades and ammunition.
After the dissolution of the RIC, John Lynders returned to live in Dublin. He was living at 7 Ontario Terrace, Portobello, when he died on 13 November 1957, aged 84. His widow Mary was living at 7 Ontario Terrace when she died on 13 May 1963, aged 82.
In 1966, Ontario Terrace provided one of the locations for the RTÉ drama series Insurrection, produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916. As I stood outside his former home last week, I wondered what John Lynders would have thought of that.
Later, No 7 included the offices of Padraig Mulcahy (1920-2012), a chartered quantity surveyor and son of General Richard Mulcahy, first chief of staff of the Irish Free State army and a leader of Fine Gael, and in the 1970s he bought the neighbouring house, No 6, which was derelict. He restored and extended the property, and his family later moved in.
Today, the houses on Ontario Terrace, including No 7, are protected buildings. No 6 is on the market with an asking price of €1.395 million, while neighbouring No 10 is on the market with an asking price of €1.3 million.
No 18 Parnell Road, as No 18 Parnell Place, was a Comerford family home from 1877 until after 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
From Ontario Terrace, I continued along the south bank of the Grand Canal, passing Portobello Bridge and Harold’s Cross Bridge, and stopped at Parnell Road, where one Comerford family lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, at the same time as John Lynders was living in Wexford.
William Comerford (1842/1843-1907), an heraldic engraver, lived in 18 Parnell Place, Rathmines, now 18 Parnell Road, Harold’s Cross, from 1877 to 1907. He had married Hannah Jordan, daughter of John Jordan, in Saint Audeon’s Church (Church of Ireland), Cornmarket, Dublin, in 1862.
William Comerford died at 18 Parnell Place, Harold’s Cross, on 28 May 1907, but his family continued to live in the house until long after the 1911 census.
William’s son, Charles William Comerford (1877-1953), was living at Parnell Place, or Parnell Road, when he married Adelaide Margaret Field (1878-1953) of Leinster Square, Rathmines, in Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, in 1910.
The couple later lived at No 60 Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, and their granddaughter, Angela Marks, believes Charles Comerford was in the GPO in O’Connell Street in 1916 and says family tradition tells of him crawling out along the street and swearing to leave Ireland.
The family left Ireland ca 1922, but the memory of the family home in Rathgar was continued in the name ‘Kenilworth’ which he gave to his house on Nore Road in Portishead, near Bristol. Adelaide and Charles Comerford died within seven months of each other in 1953. As I stood outside his former home last week, I wondered what Charles Comerford would have thought of Ireland today.
No 9 Arbutus Avenue, one of the two houses I first remember being in as a small child (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
My final stopping point in my late afternoon stroll along the south bank of the Grand Canal last week was around the corner from Parnell Road, in Arbutus Avenue
The two houses I first remember being in as a small child are my grandmother’s home in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, and this house at No 9 Arbutus Avenue.
The house on Arbutus Avenue, just like the house in Cappoquin, looks so much smaller today than I remember it, and it is not as pretty either. But, in my mind’s eye, I can still walk around each room in each house, and the house near the Grand Canal is still a comforting place to see, with fading but warm memories of those early childhood days.
I was going to walk on to Rialto Bridge, but dusk and was falling, and I knew, despite any wishful thinking, any photograph I took there could not match Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Venice the previous week.
Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Venice … not quite matched by Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Labels:
Dublin Streets,
Family History,
Genealogy,
Harold's Cross,
Italy,
Italy 2021,
James Joyce,
Kenilworth Square,
Portobello,
Ranelagh,
Rathmines,
Talking about 1916,
Ulysses,
Venice,
Venice 2021,
Wexford
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