Patrick Comerford
My visit to Dublin this week was little more than 24 hours, and involved a handful of family visits, with little time to meet friends, do any Christmas shopping or visit any of my favourite churches, buildings or places.
I was staying in Rathmines, which gave me time for strolls through parts of Rathmines, Ranelagh and Rathgar, including a short visit to Kenilworth Square. But how I would have enjoyed coffee or a meal with friends or a walk on one of my favourite beaches near Dublin.
When I was visiting my brother in Rathmines yesterday afternoon, I also had the opportunity to have a short visit to the Chapel at the Mageough Home, a Victorian ‘almshouse’ or retirement home on Cowper Road, Rathmines, built as the ‘Mageough Home for Aged Females’ in the late 19th century.
The chapel was the venue for one of my pre-ordination retreats almost 25 years ago. I celebrated the Christmas Eucharist and preached there on Christmas Day 2012, and I celebrated and preached there again during Lent in 2013. So it was a personal pleasure to visit the chapel once again in the days immediately before Christmas.
The Mageough Home was built thanks to a bequest from Miss Elizabeth Mageough. When she died in 1869, she left a small fortune to fund ‘a suitable place for elderly ladies of the Protestant faith to live.’
The home was built to the designs of James Rawson Carroll on land bought from William Cowper-Temple (1811-1888), 1st Baron Mount Temple, a nephew of one Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and the stepson of another, Lord Palmerston.
When his mother died in 1869 – the same year as Elizabeth Mageough died – William Cowper inherited a number of estates under his stepfather’s will, and changed his surname to Cowper-Temple. Those properties included land in Rathmines and a 10,000-acre estate on the Mullaghmore peninsula in Co Sligo, with its unfinished Classiebawn Castle.
His family connections give many streets in Rathmines their names, including Palmerston Road and Palmerston Park, Cowper Road and Temple Road.
The site in Rathmines bought by the Mageough Trustees was known locally as ‘The Bloody Fields’. It is said to be the burial place of 2,000 Royalist and Catholic troops who were killed by Roundheads at the Battle of Rathmines in 1649 during the Irish Confederate Wars. Cowper Road is close to Palmerston Road, and the Mageough Home is beside the Cowper Luas station.
Elizabeth Mageough had lived at a house known as Richview at 1 Cowper Road in Rathmines. She died in 1869, and her will revealed the extent of her personal wealth. Her will included a number of personal bequests, but after that the residue was to go to charity.
The ‘residue’ of her estate turned out to be the equivalent of €6.25 million today. Her will stipulated that this bequest was to be spent for ‘the habitation, support and clothing of aged females of good character and sobriety.’
The initial trustees included the Revd Dr Charles Marlay Fleury, the Revd Edward Metcalf, the Revd Dr Maurice Hodson Neligan, the Revd James Hewitt, Archdeacon Latham Coddington Warren, Francis Low, John Wright Hobart Seymour and Samuel Bewley.
The Mageough trustees bought the site known as ‘The Bloody Fields’ in Rathmines from William Cowper-Temple. Through Neligan’s influence and contacts, the trustees appointed as their architect James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911), who was the personal architect to both Lord Palmerston and William Cowper-Temple, and had been commissioned by them to design the baronial Classiebawn Castle at Mullaghmore, later the home of Lord Mountbatten, who was murdered there by the IRA on 27 August 1979.
James Rawson Carroll was a younger son of Thomas Carroll, a writing and English master, of Leinster Street and Waterloo Road, Dublin, and a brother of three other architects, Thomas Henry Carroll, Howard Carroll and Charles Owens Carroll. He was born in 1830 and educated at Delamere’s school, near Delgany, Co Wicklow, and he is probably the James R Carroll who was admitted to study architecture at the Royal Dublin Society’s School of School of Drawing in 1846.
Later, Carroll was articled to George Fowler Jones (1817-1905) of York and worked with him for seven years.
Jones’s work can be seen throughout York, and he was also the architect of Castle Oliver or Cloghanadfoy Castle, Co Limerick, built in 1845-1852, for which Thomas Carroll was the contractor for stonework.
James Rawson Carroll also worked in the office of the Gothic revival architect John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon (1817-1877). Thomas Hardy, who also worked briefly for Brandon, based his description of Henry Knight’s chambers in A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) on Brandon’s office at Clement’s Inn.
Carroll had returned to Dublin by 1857 to set up his own practice at 180 Great Brunswick Street, an address he shared with his brother Charles. He exhibited at the RDS Exhibition of the Fine Arts in 1861. By the end of 1870, he had become architect to the United Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh.
The value of land was increasing as Ireland recovered from the famine years, and Carroll built up a considerable country house practice as well as designing several churches and other public buildings. He acted as assessor in selecting the design for the Church of Ireland Glebe House at Rathmines, in 1875, deciding in favour of Thomas Drew.
Carroll and Drew represented Ireland at the General Conference of Architects at the RIBA in London in June 1876, and Carol and John Lanyon represented Ireland in June 1878, when Carroll spoke on the subjects of the rusting of ironwork and the new model by-law.
Carroll was a member of the Architectural Association of Ireland, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI, 1863), a council member (1864-1901), and vice-president (1875); a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1876), proposed by James Joseph McCarthy, William Henry Lynn, Thomas Drew and George Fowler Jones; and an active member of the Architects’ Club in Dublin.
Carroll took his nephew and pupil John Howard Pentland into partnership in 1882. Pentland left the practice to work for the Office of Public Works at the end of 1884, and some years later, ca 1892, Carroll formed a new partnership with his chief assistant, Frederick Batchelor, which lasted until his retirement in 1905. Carroll’s other pupils and assistants included Frederick George Hicks.
Carroll’s works include the Molyneux Church (later Christ Church and now a Romanian Orthodox parish church) and Asylum (1859-1862, 1871), Leeson Street, Dublin; Saint John the Baptist Church (1860), Clontarf; Saint John’s Church (1869-1870), Abington, Co Limerick; Ardagh House, the village clocktower, school and many houses and buildings in Ardagh, Co Longford; Classiebawn House (1874-1877), Mullaghmore, Co Sligo; the town hall and court house in Sligo; and the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin.
The Mageough trustees appointed Carroll as their architect in 1871. His first design was costed at £23,000. After a long argument between Carroll and the trustees, changes were made to bring the building costs within budget, a quote of £16,770 from Moyers Builders of Portobello was accepted, and the Mageough Home was built in 1875-1878 to provide ‘the habitation, support and clothing of aged females professing the Protestant faith.’
Initially, the rector of the local Church of Ireland parish, Saint Philip’s on Temple Road, Milltown, and at least one of the trustees objected to a chapel being built as an integral part of the home. But when the chapel was built, with its clock tower and foundation plaque, it became a central feature of the Mageough, built like the court or quad of a Cambridge or Oxford college.
Because of the site, the chapel was built on a north/south axis rater than the traditional east/west liturgical axis. The chapel was consecrated by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench of Dublin on the day the home opened, 28 November 1878. The first residents moved into the Mageough that month. They were required to be ‘of good character and sobriety.’ Carroll may also have designed the new infirmary at the Mageough in 1890. The chapel reopened after a complete renovation in December 1894.
Carroll was unmarried and lived at 56 Mount Street with two unmarried sisters. He died on 30 November 1911 at the age of 81 and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross. His obituary in the Irish Builder said he was a ‘kindly, upright, courteous gentleman’, whose ‘clients were in a real sense his friends, no trouble was too great for him to take; indeed, his attention to detail was extraordinary, and therein lay the secret of much of his success.’
Later alterations at the Mageough Home in 1928 were designed by the architect Richard Francis Caulfeild Orpen (1863-1938), a grandson of Bishop Charles Caulfeild of Nassau and a brother of the painter William Orpen (1878-1931). Orpen was also the architect to Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in succession to Drew.
He was also the architect to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, Trinity College Dublin and Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, a guardian of the National Gallery of Ireland, and honorary secretary of the Municipal Gallery.
The Mageough is still run today as a residential complex for older people with 36 small homes. The complex is built of red brick and slate in a Gothic Revival style. It includes 37 houses, an infirmary, a Church of Ireland chapel and towers that surround a central green, forming three sides of a square. The houses, chapel, infirmary, gate lodge, stone boundary walls, gate piers and gates are all protected structures.
The first regular Sunday service in the chapel was held on 1 December 1878. The 13 chaplains of the Mageough have included the Revd Henry Alured Alcock, the Revd Benjamin Gibson, the Revd Thomas Skipton, Canon Richard Neville Somerville, the Revd Reginald Adams Orchard, the Revd William Herbert Charles Walford Turl, Canon John Richards Goff, the Revd Matthew Tobias, Canon William Henry Coulter, Archdeacon Desmond Hilton Patton, Canon Edward Austin Carry (who played international rugby for Ireland in the 1940s), Archdeacon William Butler Heney, and the Revd Robert Kingston.
The present chaplain, the Revd Robert Kingston, is a former Rector of Tallaght and of Mallow, Co Cork. He has written a history of the Mageough Home, which is available online HERE. Services in the Chapel take place on Sundays and Wednesdays.
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