The former Peel School was housed at No 17 Lichfield Street, Tamworth, in 1837-1850 … was this originally the private chapel of the Moat House? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Tenth Sunday after Trinity (13 August 2023).
Before this day begins, I am taking some time this morning for prayer, reading and reflection.
As I recently spent a number of days looking at the windows in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, I have been reflecting for the past week in these ways:
1, Looking at some other churches in Tamworth;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
Did Sir Robert Peel pay to move the private chapel of the Moat House further east along Lichfield Street? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
The supposed former chapel, The Moat House, Lichfield Street, Tamworth:
It is said locally, with humour that Tamworth once had as many churches as it had pubs. Over the past week I have been looking at a number of those churches, including Saint John’s Roman Catholic Church, the former Methodist, Congregational and Baptist churches, and the former Quaker meeting house in Tamworth.
My photographs this morning (12 August 2023) are part of my search for a family chapel in the Moat House on Lichfield Street, the Comberford family’s Tudor townhouse in Tamworth.
For many generations, my family continued to regard Comberford as our ancestral home, despite some of the complicated details in our family tree. My great-grandfather, James Comerford (1817-1902), had a very interesting visit to Comberford and Tamworth at the end of the 19th or in the early 20th century. His visits included Comberford Hall and the Comberford Chapel, Saint Editha’s Church and the Moat House.
I first visited the Moat House in 1969 or 1970 and I have often been shown the panelling that was said to have hidden more than one ‘priests’ hole’ that allowed Catholic priests to escape searches of the house in Elizabethan and early Jacobean times when the Comberford family was recalcitrant in its recusancy.
A ‘priests’ hole,’ said to have been used by the Jesuits harboured in the Moat House by Humphrey Comberford, led to the River Tame. The river may have provided safe routes down to Wednesbury Manor or north to the homes of other Catholics among the Staffordshire gentry.
Although I have often seen the location of the supposed ‘priests’ holes’ in the Moat House, I was not aware until some years ago that there may have been a private chapel in the grounds of the Moat House. Until the late 17th century, members of the Comberford family used Saint Catherine’s or the Comberford Chapel in the north aisle of Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, as the private family chapel, including for family burials and memorials. The Comberford family also had a chapel in Comberford Hall that continued in use until the mid-18th century, according to Staffordshire Church historian Michael Greenslade.
In a comment on a Tamworth Facebook page three years ago (2020), Andrew Hale suggested that the building at No 17 Lichfield Street that once served as the Peel School was originally a private chapel located in the original grounds of the Moat House.
He says the original bill for moving the building was paid not by the owners of the Moat House but by Sir Robert Peel, on condition that it was converted into a school.
Andrew Hale did his prize-winning history project on the Moat House and its history in 1978-1980 while he was at Wilnecote High School. His mother was the head chef at the Moat House for many years, and much his information came from the Peel trust and the owners of the Moat House at that time. His history project earned him the school history and research prize for 1980.
When Sir Robert Peel was moving his school from Church Street to Lichfield Street in 1837, Dr John Woody was living at the Moat House. The Woody family had been tenants of the Moat House, and they bought it in 1821 when parts of the Tamworth Castle estate were being sold off to clear the debts of the Townshend family.
If Sir Robert Peel moved the former chapel at the Moat House lock, stock and barrel to a new location a little further east along Lichfield Street for use as a school, was this the original chapel at the Moat House?
And does this explain some of its pre-Victorian details, including large the Gothic window in the gable and the lower Tudor-headed window and door?
The premises at No 17 Lichfield Street when it was a furniture shop (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Matthew 17: 14-20 (NRSVA):
14 When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, 15 and said, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.’ 17 Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.’ 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ 20 He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’
It was whispered that the oak panelling inside the Moat House hid more than one ‘priests’ hole’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayer:
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘A reflection on the Exodus narrative (Exodus 1-13).’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Archbishop Linda Nicholls, who has been the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada since 2019.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (12 August 2023, International Youth Day) invites us to pray in these words:
We thank Lord for all youth workers and ministries within the worldwide Anglican Communion and all the young people in their care.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth … did it once have a private chapel? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
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
The Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Collegiate Church, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
12 August 2023
Dublin’s first
‘stumbling stones’
recall six Irish
Holocaust victims
Dublin’s first ‘stumbling stones’, recalling six Irish Holocaust victims, outside Saint Catherine’s National School on Donore Avenue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
Throughout Europe, I regularly come across the Stolpersteine or ‘Stumbling Stones’ by the German artist Gunter Demnig. These Stolpersteine are memorials to the victims of Nazi persecution, including Jews, homosexuals, Romani and the disabled.
His project places engraved brass stones in front of the former homes of Holocaust victims who were deported and murdered by Nazi Germany. This project began in Germany and has since spread across Europe.
Demnig’s Stolpersteine are small, cobblestone-sized brass memorials set into the pavement or footpath in front of these apartments or houses, calling attention both to the individual victim and the scope of the Nazi war crimes.
To date, over 90,000 Stolpersteine have been laid in 1,000 or more cities in almost 30 countries across Europe, making this dispersed project the world’s largest memorial. The cities where I have seen them include Berlin, Bratislava, Prague, Thessaloniki, Venice and Vienna. The first stolpersteine in London was laid in Golden Square, Soho, in May 2022 to honour Ada von Dantzig.
When I was back in Dublin this week, I visited the first Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’ in the city, put in place last year outside Saint Catherine’s Church of Ireand National School on Donore Avenue, close to Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem.’
These six Stolpersteine commemorate six Irish victims of the Holocaust: Ettie Steinberg Gluck, her husband Wojteck Gluck, and their baby son Leon, along with Isaac Shishi, Ephraim Saks and his sister, Jeanne (Lena) Saks.
The six stones or plaques in Dublin and their inscriptions are:
1, Went to School here / Ettie Gluck / Born Steinberg CZ 1914 / Lived in Dublin 1925-1937 / Arrested 1942 / Toulouse / Interned Brancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 4-9-1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
2,Wojteck Gluck / Born 1912 / Arrested 1942 / Toulouse / Interned Drancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 4-9-1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
3, Leon Gluck / Born 1939 / Arrested 1942 / Toulouse / Interned Drancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 4-9-1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
4, Isaac Shishi / Born Dublin 1891 / Murdered 1941 / Vieksniai, Lithuania (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
5, Ephraim Saks / Born Dublin 1915 / Arrested 1942 / Deported / Antwerp / Interned Drancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
6, Jeanne (Lena) Saks / Born Dublin 1918 / Arrested 1942 / Antwerp / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Ettie (Steinberg) Gluck, her husband Wojteck Gluck and their son Leon died in Auschwitz; Ephrem and Lena Saks from Dublin were murdered in Auschwitz; and Isaac Shishi from Dublin and his family were murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania.
The Steinberg family moved to Ireland in the 1920s and lived at 28 Raymond Terrace, in ‘Little Jerusalem’ off the South Circular Road in Dublin. The seven Steinberg children went to school at Saint Catherine’s School, the Church of Ireland parish school on Donore Avenue.
Ettie married Vogtjeck Gluck, originally from Belgium, in the Greenville Hall Synagogue on the South Circular Road on 22 July 1937. They later moved to Antwerp. As World War II was looming, they moved to Paris, where their son Leon was born on 28 March 1939. By 1942 they were living in an hotel in Toulouse.
When the Vichy puppet regime began rounding up Jews in southern France at the behest of Nazi Germany, Ettie, Vogtjeck and Leon were arrested. Back in Ireland, her family in Dublin secured visas that would allow the Gluck family to travel to Northern Ireland. But when the visas arrived in Toulouse, it was too late. Ettie, Vogtjeck and Leon had been arrested the day before.
Ettie, her husband and their son were taken first to Drancy, a transit camp outside Paris. The Glucks were then deported from Drancy on 2 September 1942 and arrived in Auschwitz two days later, on 4 September 1942. It is assumed that they were put to death immediately.
Isaac Shishi, whose family came to Ireland from Lithuania, was born in Dublin on 29 January 1891, when his family was living at 36 St Alban’s Road, off the South Circular Road. He was murdered along with his wife Chana and their daughter Sheine were murdered by the Nazis in Vieksniai in Lithuania in 1941.
Ephraim and Lena Saks were born in Dublin on 19 April 1915 and 2 February 1918. Ephraim Sacks was murdered in Auschwitz on 24 August 1942. Lena was murdered there in 1942 or 1943.
Ettie Steinberg and Vogtjeck Gluck were married in the Greenville Hall Synagogue on the South Circular Road, Dublin, on 22 July 1937 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
When I was growing up, the area close to Donore Avenue was still Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’, although the Jewish community had moved in large numbers by then to south Dublin suburbs like Rathfarnham and Churchtown. When I was about 11 or 12 and living in Dublin, some friends introduced me to a schoolboys’ soccer club called Port Vale. The clubhouse was in the Donore Avenue area, but home games in the Dublin Schoolboy League were played in Bushy Park in Terenure.
I must have been no good, because I only remember playing with Port Vale for a few weeks. But the good players I remember who were of my age included Alan Shatter, then living in Crannagh Park and later Minister for Justice in a coalition government. His memories of Port Vale, Donore Avenue, Bushy Park and Rathfarnham, recalled in his book Life is a Funny Business: A Very Personal Story, have many resoances with my memories.
Later, at the age of 16, during the school summer holidays, I had a placement on Donore Avenue, working as a copyholder or proof-reader’s assitant at Irish Printers. Dolphin’s Barn Synagogue was around the corner on the South Circular Road, but it finally closed its doors in 1984.
Some years ago, I was chilled when I realised that a direct descendant of the Comerford family of Cork, and through that line a descendant of the Comerfords of Co Wexford, suffered horribly with her husband after the German invasion of France and that both died in the Holocaust – one in Ravensbrück and the other in Dachau.
Hedwige Marie Renée Lannes de Montebello (1881-1944) and her husband, Louis d’Ax de Vaudricourt (1879-1945) of Château Vaudricourt, were French aristocrats and did not bear the Comerford family name. Nevertheless, they are part of my own family tree, no matter how distant a branch. Their fate brought home to me how even today we are all close to the evils of racism and its destructive force across Europe and in North America, and we must never forget that.
Saint Catherine’s Church of Ireand National School on Donore Avenue, close to Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
El Malei Rachamim (‘God full of compassion’) is a prayer for the departed that asks for comfort and everlasting care of the deceased. It is said at Jewish funeral services, but different versions exist for different moments.
The version for the Shoah (Holocaust) is found in the Reform prayer book, Mishkan T’filah:
Fully compassionate God on high:
To our six million brothers and sisters
murdered because they were Jews,
grant clear and certain rest with You
in the lofty heights of the sacred and pure
whose brightness shines like the very glow of heaven.
Source of mercy:
Forever enfold them in the embrace of Your wings;
secure their souls in eternity.
Adonai: they are Yours.
They will rest in peace. Amen.
May their memories be a blessing, זצ״ל
Shabbat Shalom
Stars of David still visibe in the windows of the former Synagogue on the former Dolphin’s Barn Synagogue on the South Circular Road, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
Throughout Europe, I regularly come across the Stolpersteine or ‘Stumbling Stones’ by the German artist Gunter Demnig. These Stolpersteine are memorials to the victims of Nazi persecution, including Jews, homosexuals, Romani and the disabled.
His project places engraved brass stones in front of the former homes of Holocaust victims who were deported and murdered by Nazi Germany. This project began in Germany and has since spread across Europe.
Demnig’s Stolpersteine are small, cobblestone-sized brass memorials set into the pavement or footpath in front of these apartments or houses, calling attention both to the individual victim and the scope of the Nazi war crimes.
To date, over 90,000 Stolpersteine have been laid in 1,000 or more cities in almost 30 countries across Europe, making this dispersed project the world’s largest memorial. The cities where I have seen them include Berlin, Bratislava, Prague, Thessaloniki, Venice and Vienna. The first stolpersteine in London was laid in Golden Square, Soho, in May 2022 to honour Ada von Dantzig.
When I was back in Dublin this week, I visited the first Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’ in the city, put in place last year outside Saint Catherine’s Church of Ireand National School on Donore Avenue, close to Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem.’
These six Stolpersteine commemorate six Irish victims of the Holocaust: Ettie Steinberg Gluck, her husband Wojteck Gluck, and their baby son Leon, along with Isaac Shishi, Ephraim Saks and his sister, Jeanne (Lena) Saks.
The six stones or plaques in Dublin and their inscriptions are:
1, Went to School here / Ettie Gluck / Born Steinberg CZ 1914 / Lived in Dublin 1925-1937 / Arrested 1942 / Toulouse / Interned Brancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 4-9-1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
2,Wojteck Gluck / Born 1912 / Arrested 1942 / Toulouse / Interned Drancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 4-9-1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
3, Leon Gluck / Born 1939 / Arrested 1942 / Toulouse / Interned Drancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 4-9-1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
4, Isaac Shishi / Born Dublin 1891 / Murdered 1941 / Vieksniai, Lithuania (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
5, Ephraim Saks / Born Dublin 1915 / Arrested 1942 / Deported / Antwerp / Interned Drancy / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
6, Jeanne (Lena) Saks / Born Dublin 1918 / Arrested 1942 / Antwerp / Deported / Auschwitz / Murdered 1942 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Ettie (Steinberg) Gluck, her husband Wojteck Gluck and their son Leon died in Auschwitz; Ephrem and Lena Saks from Dublin were murdered in Auschwitz; and Isaac Shishi from Dublin and his family were murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania.
The Steinberg family moved to Ireland in the 1920s and lived at 28 Raymond Terrace, in ‘Little Jerusalem’ off the South Circular Road in Dublin. The seven Steinberg children went to school at Saint Catherine’s School, the Church of Ireland parish school on Donore Avenue.
Ettie married Vogtjeck Gluck, originally from Belgium, in the Greenville Hall Synagogue on the South Circular Road on 22 July 1937. They later moved to Antwerp. As World War II was looming, they moved to Paris, where their son Leon was born on 28 March 1939. By 1942 they were living in an hotel in Toulouse.
When the Vichy puppet regime began rounding up Jews in southern France at the behest of Nazi Germany, Ettie, Vogtjeck and Leon were arrested. Back in Ireland, her family in Dublin secured visas that would allow the Gluck family to travel to Northern Ireland. But when the visas arrived in Toulouse, it was too late. Ettie, Vogtjeck and Leon had been arrested the day before.
Ettie, her husband and their son were taken first to Drancy, a transit camp outside Paris. The Glucks were then deported from Drancy on 2 September 1942 and arrived in Auschwitz two days later, on 4 September 1942. It is assumed that they were put to death immediately.
Isaac Shishi, whose family came to Ireland from Lithuania, was born in Dublin on 29 January 1891, when his family was living at 36 St Alban’s Road, off the South Circular Road. He was murdered along with his wife Chana and their daughter Sheine were murdered by the Nazis in Vieksniai in Lithuania in 1941.
Ephraim and Lena Saks were born in Dublin on 19 April 1915 and 2 February 1918. Ephraim Sacks was murdered in Auschwitz on 24 August 1942. Lena was murdered there in 1942 or 1943.
Ettie Steinberg and Vogtjeck Gluck were married in the Greenville Hall Synagogue on the South Circular Road, Dublin, on 22 July 1937 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
When I was growing up, the area close to Donore Avenue was still Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’, although the Jewish community had moved in large numbers by then to south Dublin suburbs like Rathfarnham and Churchtown. When I was about 11 or 12 and living in Dublin, some friends introduced me to a schoolboys’ soccer club called Port Vale. The clubhouse was in the Donore Avenue area, but home games in the Dublin Schoolboy League were played in Bushy Park in Terenure.
I must have been no good, because I only remember playing with Port Vale for a few weeks. But the good players I remember who were of my age included Alan Shatter, then living in Crannagh Park and later Minister for Justice in a coalition government. His memories of Port Vale, Donore Avenue, Bushy Park and Rathfarnham, recalled in his book Life is a Funny Business: A Very Personal Story, have many resoances with my memories.
Later, at the age of 16, during the school summer holidays, I had a placement on Donore Avenue, working as a copyholder or proof-reader’s assitant at Irish Printers. Dolphin’s Barn Synagogue was around the corner on the South Circular Road, but it finally closed its doors in 1984.
Some years ago, I was chilled when I realised that a direct descendant of the Comerford family of Cork, and through that line a descendant of the Comerfords of Co Wexford, suffered horribly with her husband after the German invasion of France and that both died in the Holocaust – one in Ravensbrück and the other in Dachau.
Hedwige Marie Renée Lannes de Montebello (1881-1944) and her husband, Louis d’Ax de Vaudricourt (1879-1945) of Château Vaudricourt, were French aristocrats and did not bear the Comerford family name. Nevertheless, they are part of my own family tree, no matter how distant a branch. Their fate brought home to me how even today we are all close to the evils of racism and its destructive force across Europe and in North America, and we must never forget that.
Saint Catherine’s Church of Ireand National School on Donore Avenue, close to Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
El Malei Rachamim (‘God full of compassion’) is a prayer for the departed that asks for comfort and everlasting care of the deceased. It is said at Jewish funeral services, but different versions exist for different moments.
The version for the Shoah (Holocaust) is found in the Reform prayer book, Mishkan T’filah:
Fully compassionate God on high:
To our six million brothers and sisters
murdered because they were Jews,
grant clear and certain rest with You
in the lofty heights of the sacred and pure
whose brightness shines like the very glow of heaven.
Source of mercy:
Forever enfold them in the embrace of Your wings;
secure their souls in eternity.
Adonai: they are Yours.
They will rest in peace. Amen.
May their memories be a blessing, זצ״ל
Shabbat Shalom
Stars of David still visibe in the windows of the former Synagogue on the former Dolphin’s Barn Synagogue on the South Circular Road, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
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