A Reflection on the Crises in Afghanistan following the Fall of Kabul

The Winter 2021 edition of ‘Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review’(Vol 110, No 440) , Winter 2021) included my paper, ‘A Reflection on the Crises in Afghanistan following the Fall of Kabul’ (pp 458-469)

Patrick Comerford

Introduction

The fall of Kabul in recent months and the completion of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August have created a multiplicity of crises and have had repercussions in many areas of life in Ireland. The responses in Ireland have included knee-jerk and prejudiced reactions from people who object to accepting Afghan refugees. Paradoxically they are also among the people who point vocally to the forms of Islam expounded by the Taliban, yet have exercised little or no effort to understand Afghanistan, its history, its people, and the complexity and diversity of its religious cultures.

For many too, the Taliban confirm all their fears and prejudices of an expanding, militant Islam, and they are unwilling to concede that Islam is as diverse as Christianity and other religions, if not more so. The Taliban represents an extreme expression of Islam that has arisen only comparatively recently. Indeed, the Taliban expression of Islam cannot easily be labelled ‘conservative’ – for it is not conserving anything that is traditional in many streams of Islamic culture and thinking, nor is it rooted in traditions in Afghanistan.

Fears about the rights of women, for the education of children, and for freedom of expression in Afghanistan are well-founded. But there are genuine fears too for the loss of religious and cultural diversity and pluralism in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

It is difficult too, for many of us, to understand and accept that Afghanistan is not a distant and remote part of Asia, but that for many centuries it came within the ambit of the ‘Euro-Mediterranean’ world, that it has long had close links with the classical and Hellenistic worlds, and that its history has been intimately interconnected with the history of Europe, including the history of Ireland.

Childhood reminders

As a child in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, I was regaled with stories of General Sir John Keane (1781–1844), who eventually become Baron Keane of Ghuznee and Cappoquin. Those derring-do stories of Keane’s escapades and adventures in Afghanistan were as gripping as the stories of ‘the Wolf of Kabul’, which featured in my childhood days in The Hotspur, a popular British boy’s comic in the 1960s.

Keane played the key role in the capture of Ghuznee (Ghazni) during the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, following the fall of Kabul. I was reminded of this link between Ireland and past conflicts in Afghanistan during a recent visit to Cappoquin House, when Sir Charles Keane showed me many family mementoes of Lord Keane, including a portrait, a painting of Ghunzee Fort, and a ceremonial sword.

John Keane was born in Belmont, Cappoquin, on 6 February 1781, the second son of Sir John Keane, 1st baronet. He joined the army as an ensign at the age of 11 in 1792, rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and commanded a brigade in the Peninsular War, and he was promoted to major-general when he commanded a brigade at the Battle of New Orleans. Later, he was the British commander-in-chief in the West Indies and administered the colonial government of Jamaica.

Keane was commander-in-chief of the Bombay Army in 1834–1840, and he commanded the combined British and Indian army (‘The Army of the Indus’) during the opening campaign of the First Anglo-Afghan War. He and his forces seized Karachi in February 1839. He then commanded an expeditionary force that entered Afghanistan from India to forestall an expected, imminent Russian invasion, and commanded the victorious British and Indian army at the Battle of Ghazni on 23 July 1839.

Because of severe shortages of supplies and the lack of draft horses, Keane’s forces had to leave heavy siege equipment behind them in Kandahar. The defence of the city was led by Hyder Khan, the son of Dost Muhammad, then the ruler of Afghanistan. All the gates into Ghazni were sealed with rocks and debris, with the sole exception of the Kabul Gate, which was lightly guarded and poorly defended. Keane’s forces went around the city, camped on the north side facing the Kabul gate, and attacked early on the morning of 23 July. By dawn, Keane’s force had captured the city.

The British forces suffered 200 men killed and wounded while the Afghans lost almost 500 men and 1,600 were taken prisoner. Keane left a small garrison in Ghazni and began to march his forces towards Kabul on 30 July. When Dost Muhammad heard of the fall of Ghazni, he fled Kabul towards Western Afghanistan and the Afghan army surrendered. The British then installed Shuja Shah Durrani of Kandahar as the new ruler of Afghanistan.

Keane retired without being engaged in further fighting. He was honoured with the peerage title of Baron Keane, of Ghuznee and of Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, on 23 December 1839, and received a pension of £2,000 a year for his and two successive lives.

Lord Keane died on 24 August 1844, and his title died out in 1901. But his remaining mementoes in Cappoquin House are a reminder that events in Afghanistan were never remote from the lives of people in Ireland.1

The reaches of ‘Euro-Med’ civilisation

From Keane’s adventures to recent events in Afghanistan, we are reminded throughout wars and history why Afghanistan has been known to military and diplomatic figures as the ‘graveyard of empires.’ But modern Afghanistan, as we know it, dates from 1747, when Ahmad Shah Durrani captured territory from Nader Shah’s descendants in Persia, from the Mughals, and the Uzbeks to his north. Although the name Afghanistan, meaning the land of the Afghans or Pashtuns, only came into general use during the wars of the 19th century, it can be traced to some time between the eighth and the 14th centuries.

Afghanistan is not a new country, nor is it culturally Asian. Traditionally, it has been seen as part of the ‘Euro-Med’ world. In classical times, the area was regarded as within the ambit of the Persian Empire, one of the great classical civilisations, and was known to both Greek and Roman writers as Ariana (Ἀριανή), from an Old Persian word (Ariyanem) meaning ‘the Land of the Aryans.’

In Rudyard Kipling’s short story ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ (1888), two British venturers, Peachy Carnehan and Danny Dravot, played by Michael Caine and Sean Connery in John Huston’s film of the same name (1975), set out to become kings of Kafiristan, a mountainous, isolated country beyond the Hindu Kush in north-east Afghanistan. They confide in their plans to Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer), who tells them they are mad. No man, he says, has made it to Kafiristan since Alexander the Great, to which Peachy replies, ‘If a Greek can do it, we can do it’. In north-east Afghanistan, they find the last remnants of the empire of Alexander the Great, and a local culture and religion that are part-Greek, part-Kafiri.2

The story is fiction, but aspects of its historical content are true. Alexander the Great spent most of the years 330–325 BCE campaigning in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and left behind Greek kingdoms and culture that flourished throughout the Hellenistic period and even later.3

Alexander the Great and his Macedonian forces crossed the Euphrates, marched through Mesopotamia, defeated Darius III of Persia in 331 BCE, and dismantled the Achaemenid empire. Alexander arrived in Afghanistan in 330 BCE, and the Seleucid Empire held on to the area for 15 years.

Later, there was a second Hellenistic conquest of the area by the Greco-Bactrians. Until the Taliban first took over Afghanistan, traces of these Greek kingdoms came to light continually, and the archaeological, artistic and epigraphic evidence from Afghanistan revealed a prosperous and culturally diverse kingdom.

Kandahar, the second city of Afghanistan and the de facto capital of the Taliban until the fall of Kabul, dates from the conquests of Alexander the Great, who laid out the foundation of what is now Old Kandahar in 330 BCE and gave it the Greek name Ἀλεξάνδρεια Ἀραχωσίας (Alexandria of Arachosia).

Alexander the Great is also said to have founded the city of Alexandria on the Oxus, at present-day Ai-Khanoum in Takhar Province, northern Afghanistan, in 327 BCE. It had a magnificent royal palace, a large amphitheatre, several Hellenic temples, a gymnasium, stoas and mosaics. For almost two centuries, this was a focal point of Hellenism in the East, and the centre of Hellenistic culture at the doorstep of India.4

This area was the most easterly reach of Greek civilisation and the Hellenistic world, and the Greek influence survived until at least the year 10 CE. This was the access point for the Classical World to the east, and when the Silk Road opened in the first century BCE, Afghanistan flourished thanks to trade along the routes from the Greek and Roman world through Persia to China and India. Ideas as well as goods were bartered, traded and exchanged at this centre point, so that Afghanistan was at the ultimate reach of our European-Mediterranean or ‘Euro-Med’ world.

The Kalash people in the Hindu Kush mountains are unique, with a distinctive cultural and religious identity; they are light-skinned, have blonde hair and blue eyes. To this day, traditions and myths persist that they are the descendants of Alexander the Great’s army.5

But how diverse is Afghanistan and its people in terms of religious heritage and identity?

Diversity in Afghanistan

The Taliban, or ‘students’ in the Pashto language, emerged as recently as the early 1990s in northern Pakistan, following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The predominantly Pashtun movement first appeared in religious seminaries, mostly financed from Saudi Arabia, and preached an extreme form of Salafism within Sunni Islam, with their own austere version of sharia, or Islamic law.6

One of the principal objectives of the Taliban is to impose a uniform practice of Islam throughout Afghanistan that forces all Muslims to conform to their own interpretation of Salafism.

Within weeks of the fall of Kabul, Muslim minorities became the first religious groupings to feel the impact of this religious intolerance. Yet, in the past, Afghanistan was known for its diversity among Muslims, once embracing a variety of expressions of Islam, among Shia minorities and Sufi orders.

Shia Islam

Shia Muslims form Afghanistan’s largest religious minority, and they are the religious group facing immediate threats and fears today. Estimates vary, but Shia Muslims make up from 7 to 20 per cent of the population of Afghanistan. They are mainly divided into two groupings, the Twelvers, who look to Iran for spiritual leadership, and the Ismailis, most of whom recognise the leadership of the Aga Khan. Both groups are regarded as heretical by the Sunni majority, and there is no doubt that the Taliban and Isis seek to eliminate their presence in Afghanistan and throughout the Islamic world.

The association of Twelver Shia Muslims with Iran also makes them politically vulnerable under the Taliban, and Shia Muslims are additionally vulnerable because they are mainly members of ethnic and linguistic minorities, including the Hazaras, Farsiwan (who are Persian speakers), Qizilbash and Pamir people.7

Two recent attacks on mosques in Afghanistan serve to illustrate not only the diversity of Islam in Afghanistan, but that the first target of Islamists in any religious purge is the country’s Muslim minorities.

At least 65 people were killed when the Imambargah in Kandahar, the equivalent of a Shia mosque, was attacked by a suicide bomber during Friday prayers on 15 October. The attack came a week after a similar bomb attack on a Shia mosque in northern Kunduz province, in which at least 50 people were killed.

Following the fall of Kabul, the Taliban has disarmed all security guards at Shia buildings, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by the even more extreme Isis. Kandahar is in the Taliban heartland, and the attack sent the clear message that Afghanistan’s Shia minority is no longer safe in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. ‘Life is becoming difficult and risky in Afghanistan for every Afghan, especially for Shias as Isis are only targeting Shia Muslims in Afghanistan. The world communities must help Afghanistan and Afghans in this terrible time’, one social activist who asked not to be named told The Guardian.8

Rumi, poet and Sufi mystic

Perhaps the most influential Muslim figure to emerge from what is today’s Afghanistan was Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Balkhī or Mevlânâ and known more popularly and more simply as Rumi. Although this Sufi mystic was born to Persian-speaking parents in 1207 and was buried in Konya in present-day Turkey when he died in 1273, he was born, as his name indicates, in Balkh, then part of the Khwareziman Empire and now in present-day Afghanistan.

At the time, Greater Balkh was a major centre of Persian culture, and Sufism had developed there for several centuries, and Rumi’s father, Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, was a theologian, jurist and mystic from Balkh. For several generations, the family were preachers of the relatively liberal Hanafi Maturidi school. Rumi’s influence transcends national borders and ethnic and religious divisions, and he has been described as the ‘most popular poet’ and the ‘best-selling poet’ in the United States.9

Later, in the sixteenth century, Ahmad al Faruqi Kabuli, who was born near Kabul, was renowned for his teachings in India.

Three Sufi orders are prominent in Afghanistan: the Naqshbandiya, founded in Bukhara; the Qadiriya, founded in Baghdad; and the Cheshtiya, found mainly at Chesht-i-Sharif, east of Herat.

Afghan religious minorities

Buddhism first arrived in what we now know as Afghanistan with the expansion and conquests of the Maurya Empire throughout the Hindu Kush region during the reign of King Ashoka (268-232 BCE). In the following century, the Buddhist monk Lokakṣema travelled to China, and his translations of Mahayana Buddhist scriptures contributed significantly to the development of Buddhism in China.

His near contemporary, Mahadhammarakkhita, was a Greek Buddhist master in the reign of the Indo-Greek king Menander in the 2nd century BCE. His birth name Yona means ‘Ionian,’ and he travelled from ‘Alasandra’ – Alexandria of the Caucasus, about 150 km north of Kabul, or Alexandria of the Arachosians – with 30,000 monks for the dedication of the Great Stupa in Sri Lanka.10

Buddhism began to fall into decline in Afghanistan with the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, but finally came to an end under the Ghaznavid dynasty in the eleventh century.

The last great, surviving monuments to the presence of Buddhism in Afghanistan were the massive Buddha of Bamiyan, carved in the sixth and seventh centuries, and destroyed by rocket and guns in March 2001 after the Taliban decreed they were idolatrous.

The region of Arachosia, around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, was once primarily Zoroastrian and is sometimes described as the ‘second homeland of Zoroastrianism.’ Until half a century ago, 2,000 Zoroastrians or Parsees were living in Afghanistan. There may still be small pockets of Bahais, Sikhs, Jains and Hindus in the country.

Christianity in Afghanistan

A legend in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and other traditions suggests that Saint Thomas the Apostle once preached in Bactria. By the fifth century, the Nestorian Church had a number of dioceses in Afghanistan, and there was a Christian presence in Herat until at least the early fourteenth century.

But Christianity has always had a small presence in Afghanistan. Until recently, the total number of Christians in Afghanistan was put at 10,000–12,000, almost all of them converts from Islam, although the law has not allowed Afghans to convert to Christianity, and only expatriates may be recognised as Christians.

Perhaps the best-known expatriate Christian living in Afghanistan until this year was Rula Ghani, a Maronite Christian from Lebanon, whose husband, Ashraf Ghani, was President of Afghanistan from 2014 until they fled Kabul as it fell to the Taliban earlier this year.

The only legally recognised Christian church building in Afghanistan is the Catholic chapel in the Italian embassy, which existed from the 1930s. The only Protestant church in Kabul was destroyed on 17 June 1973.

The last Jew of Kabul

Legends claim that Balkh, the home of Rumi, was also the burial place of the prophet Ezekiel and was once home to the prophet Jeremiah. There is a tradition among the Pashtuns of Afghanistan that they are descended from the exiled lost tribes of Israel. Interest in the topic was revived recently by a Jerusalem anthropologist, Professor Shalva Weil, who was quoted in the popular press as claiming the ‘Taliban may be descended from Jews’.11

Legends aside, a Jewish presence flourished in eastern Afghanistan from about the seventh century CE. An estimated 40,000 Jews once lived in the area of Herat. That number dwindled to fewer than 5,000 by the mid-twentieth century, as the community faced persecution from successive regimes that, influenced partly by Nazi propaganda and beliefs that Jews were ‘Bolshevik agents,’ restricted where they could live and work.

The Jewish presence in Afghanistan virtually disappeared from the 1950s, with emigration to Israel, India, Britain, and the US. When the Taliban first came to power in 1996, the Jewish population had dwindled to single-digit numbers.

Afghanistan’s last known surviving Jew, Zabulon Simantov (62), was finally evacuated from Kabul after spurning a number of rescue attempts in the days immediately after the city fell to the Taliban. Earlier this year, he told Arab News he would leave Afghanistan after the High Holy Days, which began on Rosh Hashanah (6 September 2021). Simantov had stayed on in Afghanistan to look after the last remaining synagogue in Kabul, through decades of violence and turmoil.

Simantov is a carpet and jewellery merchant who was born in Herat, once home to hundreds of Jews. He moved to Kabul but fled to Tajikistan in 1992, before returning to Kabul. Since then, he had lived the synagogue – which he has renovated– in the heart of Kabul’s flower district.

He became the country’s last Jew when Yitzhak Levi died in 2005. The pair famously did not get along, and in 1998 Levi wrote to the Taliban interior minister to accuse Simantov of the theft of Jewish relics. Simantov retorted by telling the Taliban that Levi ran a secret brothel where he sold alcohol. The Taliban jailed both men, but eventually released them when they continued to fight in prison.

Their story inspired Michael J Flexer’s play My Brother’s Keeper, staged by the Apikoros Theatre Company at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006. The play tells the tale of the last two remaining Jews in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. They harbour a bitter hatred for one another, born out of their enforced co-habitation in a small, dilapidated synagogue, and spend the duration of the play feuding in fiery fashion.

Flexer told interviewers at the time that he had ‘tried to infuse the play with that feisty yet phlegmatic Jewish gallows humour’, and that he wanted the play to get across the idiocy of religious intolerance: ‘The comedy comes from the fact that, in this case, there was only one religion involved!’

However, in the past few months, comedy has given way to disturbing reality, and fears grow for everyone with the return of Taliban rule. Simantov’s departure means the future of the synagogue in Kabul is perilous and brings to an end Jewish life in Afghanistan after 1,500 to 2,000 years, or more.12

Conclusions

The ‘Wolf of Kabul’ in the Hotspur was supposed to be the moniker of Second Lieutenant Bill Sampson, a British intelligence agent in the North-West Frontier, and he first appeared in the Wizard in 1922. But, apart from Keane of Cappoquin, there have been other real-life ‘wolves of Kabul’ in Irish history.

Michael Mallin (1874–1916), chief of staff of the Irish Citizen Army garrison at the Royal College of Surgeons during the 1916 Rising in Dublin, spent 14 years in the British army, mainly in Afghanistan and India. He was decorated with the India Medal of 1895, and with the Punjab Frontier and Tirah clasps in 1897-1898. But it is also said that he was radicalised during his years in Afghanistan.

Before him, Lieutenant Walter Hamilton (1856-1879) from Inistioge, Co. Kilkenny, was posthumously decorated with the Victoria Cross for his part in the second Afghan War (1878–1880). He was part of the guard on duty when British headquarters in Kabul were overwhelmed and their guns seized in 1879. Other Irish recipients of awards and decorations during that war in Afghanistan include Sir Reginald Clare Hart (1848–1931) from Scarriff, Co. Clare, but Hamilton is remembered too for his appearance in M.M. Kaye’s epic novel The Far Pavilions (1978), which later became a British television mini-series.

Rudyard Kipling made popular the label ‘The Great Game’ as a description of the wars between Britain and Russia for control of Afghanistan – although the phrase was probably first used by the explorer Arthur Conolly (1807–1842), born in London of Irish parents. Kipling was so intrigued by the story of the disappearance and possible survival after the Battle of Balaclava of an Irish heir that it provided the basis for another of his short stories, ‘The Man Who Was’.

John Charles Henry Fitzgibbon (1829–1854), Viscount Fitzgibbon of Mountshannon House in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, disappeared during the Crimean War and his body was never found. However, there were persistent rumours in his native Co. Limerick and in army lore that he had survived and escaped through Russia and Siberia to Afghanistan.

During the second Afghan War, Fitzgibbon’s regiment, the 8th Hussars, was stationed near the North-West frontier. One night, a dishevelled-looking man who spoke English was brought into the officers’ mess and was invited to stay for dinner. There he surprised all with his uncannily good knowledge of the regimental customs, indicating he was an ex-officer of the regiment. He was not asked to identify himself, but rumours developed and persisted that he was, in reality, the missing Fitzgibbon heir from Co. Limerick.

Kipling adapted the story in 1890 to tell of a man arrested for gun-stealing and who is believed to be an Afghan. He turns out to be an ex-officer, Austin Limmason – perhaps a verbal play on ‘Limerick’s son’ – who had been a Russian prisoner for many decades before making good his escape and finding his way back to his regiment in Afghanistan.

Kipling heads his 1891 version of this short story in his collection Life’s Handicap with a short ballad:

The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,
And left our hearts aflame.
Keep tally – on the gun-butt score
The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,
For our dead comrade’s sake.13

But the fall of Kabul and the conquest of Afghanistan cannot be regarded as part of God’s reckoning, nor can we continue to seek the ‘vengeance we must take’. In a geopolitical understanding of the present crises in Afghanistan, we are seeing yet another working out of the internal power struggles in the Islamic world between Saudi Arabia, seeking to assert its place as the major power among Sunni Muslims, and Iran, equally assertive of its place as the major power among Shia Muslims. It is a power struggle that has already had disastrous consequences for the people of Yemen and Syria, and Afghanistan serves to let the Iranians know that the Saudis have now opened another front on the eastern borders of Iran.

Western concerns for the future of Afghanistan cease being a continuing playout of ‘The Great Game’ in the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ when we begin to grasp that Afghanistan is – and has always been – an integral part of our ‘Euro-Med’ world; and condemnations of the Taliban and their expressions of Salafism can only gain legitimacy when we start to appreciate the pluralism and diversity within Islam and the religious, cultural and ethnic diversity that is part of the heritage of Afghanistan.

(Canon) Patrick Comerford is a priest in the Church of Ireland Diocese of Limerick and canon precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. He is a former adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College Dublin, a former lecturer in Church History and Liturgy in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a former foreign desk editor at The Irish Times. He has written and lectured widely on Christian-Muslim affairs, and blogs daily at www.patrickcomerford.com.

Notes

1 Glacott Symes, Sir John Keane and Cappoquin House in Time of War and Revolution (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), passim; the author’s visits to Cappoquin House, last visited 28 August 2020.
2 Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ in The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999); Rachel Meirs, The Archaeology of the Hellenistic Far East, BAR International Series 2196 (2011), 13.
3 Shane Wallace, ‘Greek Culture in Afghanistan and India: Old Evidence and New Discoveries,’ 205–226 in Greece & Rome, 63.2 (The Classical Association, 2016), p 209. Meirs (2011), 8.
4 Meirs (2011), 16. 5 Barbara A West, Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 357–358.
6 Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World (London: Penguin, 2000), 393–394; Sayed Hassan Akhlaq, ‘Taliban and Salafism: a historical and theological exploration,’ Open Democracy, 1 December 2013, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/taliban-and-salafism-historical-and-theological-exploration/, accessed 22 October 2021.
7 Ruthven, Islam in the World, 211–21.
8 ‘Dozens dead in mosque bombing as doubt cast on Taliban security’, Guardian, 16 October 2021; ‘Islamic State Bombing Kills at Least 65 people in Southern Afghanistan’, Washington Post, 16 October 2021.
9 John Baldock, The Essence of Sufism (Royston, Herts: Eagle Editions, 2004); William C Chittick, Sufism (London: Oneworld, 2013), 76. 10 Meirs (2011), 12.
11 Rory McCarthy, ‘Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel’, The Observer, 17 January 2010; Michael Freund, ‘Are the Taliban descendants of Israel?’ Jerusalem Post, 9 September 2021.
12 Josef Federman, ‘Rescuers: Last Jew of Kabul making his way to Israel, AP News, 17 October 2021, https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-middle-east-religion-israel-turkey-c701c38308bbd81c8f69b32315ee3393, accessed 22 October 2021.
13 Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Man Who Was’ in Life’s Handicap (London: Macmillan, 1891), 84.

● Patrick Comerford, ‘A Reflection on the Crises in Afghanistan following the Fall of Kabul,’ Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (Vol 110, No 440, Winter 2021, pp 458-469)

In search of more Victorian and Edwardian post boxes from pre-independence days

A Victorian post box near Creeves, Co Limerick … created a discussion about surviving pre-independence post boxes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this week, I initiated an unexpected conversation on Instagram and Facebook when I posed a photograph of a Victorian red post box near Kilbradren, close to Creeves and Rathkeale in west Co Limerick.

Some people wanted to know whether it was genuine, others suggested it was a plastic replica, while a number of people wanted to know how many Victorian post boxes have survived in Co Limerick and other parts of Ireland.

For about ten years or so, I have occasionally taken photographs of old post boxes and pillar boxes that predate the formation of the Irish Free State and a separate Irish postal service in 1922.

They are spread throughout the country, from Co Mayo to Co Wexford, and from Co Louth to Co Wexford. When I last posted about these fast-disappearing post boxes on 18 August 2017, I included a collection of photographs of 47 pre-independence post boxes in 11 counties throughout the Republic of Ireland.

I have not gone in search of them with any purpose or method, so my collection of is representative at any time only of places I have visited in recent years, and of how alert I was on any particular day.

Since that first posting, I have come across another 15 similar post boxes, spread across the island in different places.

Most of these post boxes and pillar boxes are embellished with royal monograms. The simpler boxes, inserted into walls, have plain ‘VR’ initials with crown insignias, while the stand-alone tubular pillar boxes often have a monogram with the ‘VR’ (Queen Victoria) or ‘EVIIR’ (Edward VII) initials in a cursive flourish, but despite the decorative approach have no crowns.

The initials became more elaborate in their calligraphic flourishes during the reign of Edward VII, but they returned to more simple fonts in the reign of George V, reflecting not only the harsh times of World War I and the War of Independence but also the design and development of new typefaces for typography and printing that emphasised clarity and legibility.

The green post box, in various shapes and sizes, is a familiar sight on city streets and country roads throughout Ireland. But all the post boxes illustrated in this evening’s posting and my earlier posting three years ago were originally painted in Post Office Red, and the embossed crowns were painted in gold, as may have been the lettering.

The post box was introduced over 160 years ago by the novelist, Anthony Trollope, who worked for the Post Office in Ireland for several years. He wanted to make it easier for people to post their letters and make it unnecessary for them to have to wait for a post office to open.

The first boxes appeared on the streets of cities such as Dublin, Belfast and Cork about 165 years ago and they were introduced to other towns and villages from the 19th century on. The big pillar boxes were soon joined by smaller boxes that fitted into walls and later by lamp boxes that were cheaper to make and could be attached to lamp and telegraph poles.

The first letter boxes were put in place in 1855, when five boxes were erected in Belfast, Ballymena and Dublin. The first Dublin box was rectangular in shape and is now on display in the National Museum in Kildare Street, Dublin.

Pillar boxes had been placed in many Irish cities by early 1857. The Post Office went on to put wall boxes in place throughout the island, and the cylindrical boxes were introduced in March 1879. A new design was introduced in 1887, incorporating the royal cypher on the door and the words ‘Post Office’ on the collar below the rim of the roof.

Most of the early pillar boxes were painted dark bronze green throughout the United Kingdom. But in 1874 the Post Office decided to make pillar boxes more obvious by painting them a striking royal red. All the boxes illustrated here and in my posting three years ago were originally painted in red. However, after Independence the Irish Post Office changed their colour to green.

A number of these old post boxes remain in use today and they are an elegant feature in many towns and suburbs. But many are neglected, left to rust, blocked up. In some cases the royal insignia has been wilfully razed or filed away, or an additional monogram with the initials ‘SÉ’ has been added, representing Saorstát Éireann, the Irish Free State, the official name of the state for 15 years from 6 December 1922 until 29 December 1937.

There was a genuine concern among many of the people commenting on my photograph earlier this week that post boxes with royal monograms might be targets for the vandalism of over-zealous self-proclaimed republicans or, on the other hand, of thieves targeting antiquities.

The 15 post boxes and pillar boxes in this evening’s posting date from the reigns of Queen Victoria and Edward VII, and were seen in counties Clare, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Tipperary and Wicklow, They are an important element in the street architecture of Ireland, and it would be a shame if they were lost because of neglect, wanton abandon, or vandalism.

The reign of Queen Victoria:

These ten post boxes date from 1887 to 1901:

Bray, Co Wicklow (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Buttevant, Co Cork (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Cahir, Co Tipperary (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Castleconnell, Co Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Charleville, Co Cork (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Cobh, Co Cork (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Cobh, Co Cork (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Kilmallock, Co Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Nicker, near Pallasgreen, Co Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Thurles, Co Tipperary (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The reign of Edward VII (1910-1910):

These five date from the reign of Edward VII (1910-1910):

Castleconnell, Co Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Ennis, Co Clare (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Killarney, Co Kerry (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Mallow Street, Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2017)

North Circular Road, Limerick … note the addition of the ‘SÉ’ monogram, representing Saorstát Éireann, the Irish Free State (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Five sculptures that celebrate how hurling is both a sport and an art

Sculptures and statues in Wexford, Kilkenny and Limerick celebrate the truth that hurling is both a sport and an art (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

My favourite sports are rugby and cricket – and if armchair spectators are counted in too, then soccer too. I am looking forward to a new tournament getting off to start with Ireland v Wales on Friday evening, and have been delighted with Aston Villa’s performance so far this season.

But since my childhood I have also had an enthusiasm for hurling, nurtured by kind uncles who brought me to see Waterford and Wexford playing.

I could never understand Gaelic football, but it was impossible to grow up in the south-east without being infected with the all-pervading enthusiasm for hurling.

This weekend promises to be gripping one for anyone interested in hurling, and I shall be keeping a keen eye on the performances of Wexford, Waterford, Limerick and Kilkenny.

During my ‘road trips’ in summer and autumn, I saw again a number of sculptures and statues that celebrate the truth that hurling is not only a sport but an art too.

The statue of Nicky Rackard on Selskar Square in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The statue of Nicky Rackard, Wexford’s best-known hurler, is unusual because he is on one foot only. The statue on Selskar Square shows Wexford’s most famous sporting son in a typical all-action pose, sliotar in one hand, hurley in the other.

Nicky Rackard was the hurling hero of the 1950s and one of the greatest hurlers of all time. He is the leading championship goal scorer of all time with 59, and won two all-Ireland hurling titles with Wexford.

He played both hurling and football for Wexford from 1942 to 1957. With his brothers, he helped Wexford to two All-Irelands in the 1950s. He and his team are credited with revolutionising the game of hurling as the lifted Wexford to the top of the game. He died in 1976.

Wexford Borough Council commissioned the Ludlow-based portrait sculptor Mark Richards to cast a larger than life-size statue of Rackard in his hurling prime.

Mark Richards specialises in fine figurative work. He was taught by AJ Ayres who, in turn, had worked with Eric Gill. Johannes von Stumm, Past President of the Royal Society of Sculptors, describes him as ‘one of the finest figure and portrait sculptors in Great Britain.’ The €120,000 commission was funded through the Per Cent for Art scheme.

The sculptor travelled to Wexford to meet Rackard’s children and to learn about hurling. He also met Kevin Gore, ‘who showed me how to hold a hurl and hurler maker Philip Doyle, who made me a hurl like the one that Nicky would have used in the 1950s, so as to be accurate as possible.’

The statue was unveiled in Selskar Square, just off North Main Street and close to Selskar Abbey, in March 2012 as part of the Set the Heather Blazing Festival. It has been a very popular feature in the town centre since then.

Sadly, the statue has since suffered from bouts of damage since, and it has been fenced off a number of times when his hurley was damaged and repair works were carried out.

The ‘Pride of Kilkenny’ by Barry Wrafter in Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The ‘Pride of Kilkenny’ is a sculpture by Barry Wrafter on Canal Square in Kilkenny honouring Kilkenny’s hurlers. It was more than three years in the making and was unveiled on 26 May 2016.

This work beside John’s Bridge is a four-metre high, two-tonne sculpture. It shows three hurlers, in black and amber, with hurleys and helmets, reaching for a sliotar.

The sculptor Barry Wrafter from Ennis, Co Clare, has been immersed in the stone trade since his youth. The Wrafter family has been in the trade dating since the 18th century. They were renowned sculptors and have the distinction of being mentioned in Seamus Murphy’s book Stone Mad.

Wrafter has stressed that his sculpture, the ‘Pride of Kilkenny,’ does not depict a particular player, although the player fielding the sliothar bears a striking resemblance to Tommy Walsh.

The Kilkenny hurlers have won the All-Ireland Senior Championship 36 times. This ‘testament to both hurling’ was unveiled by the Kilkenny Senior Hurling manager Brian Cody.

Mick Mackey in a characteristic solo-run pose in Castleconnell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A life-sized bronze statue of the Limerick hurler Mick Mackey (1912-1982) was unveiled by the President of the GAA, Liam O’Neill, in Castleconnell, Co Limerick, in May 2013.

The Clare-based sculptor Séamus Connolly, best known for his life-size statues of Richard Harris and John B Keane, was commissioned for the statue depicting Mackey in a characteristic solo-run pose.

Mackey is considered one of the all-time hurling greats. He was born in Castleconnell in 1912 and became known for his strength and skill on the pitch with Ahane GAA club. During his playing career over 20 years, he won three All-Ireland titles, five Munster championships, five National League titles and eight Railway Cup medals. He is also credited as the inventor of the solo-run in hurling.

He received the Texaco Hall of Fame Award in 1961 for his outstanding contribution to hurling. He was honoured again in 1980 with the inaugural All-Time All-Star Award. He died in 1982. Two years later he was named at centre-forward on the Centenary Team and in 2000 was chosen at number 11 on the team of the Millennium that also featured Christy Ring.

The Mick Mackey Stand at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick was completed in 1988. Limerick County Council also named a roundabout on the main Limerick to Dublin road after the legendary hurler.

Jackie Power (1916-1994), the ‘Prince of Hurlers,’ in Annacotty, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Jackie Power (1916-1994), known in Co Limerick as the ‘Prince of Hurlers,’ is commemorated with a statue near the mill and square in Annacotty, Co Limerick – the former Irish rugby international Peter Clohessy is also from Annacotty.

Jackie Power was born in Annacotty in 1916. He was prominent in hurling from 1933 to 1949, winning medals at club, county and province level. He also played Gaelic football. He died in 1994.

The life-size bronze statue of Jackie Power was erected in Annacotty in 1996. The inscription on the plinth of reads:

Jackie Power
The Prince of Hurlers
With Ahane, Limerick and Munster

Jackie was a hurling artist whose amazing skill technique courage dedication and sportsmanship ensured his place amongst hurling immortals.

‘Ruck and Puck’ on O’Connell Street, Limerick, celebrates Limerick’s obsession with hurling and rugby (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Ruck and Puck’ is bronze statue outside the AIB Bank at 106 O’Connell Street, Limerick, and represents Limerick’s two sporting obsessions – hurling and rugby.

The initiative for this sport monument was taken by bank manager Paddy O’Callaghan.

This bronze statue of a rugby player and a hurler is the work of the sculptor is Robin Buick from Ballymena, Co Antrim. It was unveiled by President Mary Robinson on 18 May 1992.

A T-shirt boasting of Kilkenny’s hurling skills (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

There is a well-known T-shirt in Kilkenny that reminds people that Carlsberg does not do Hurling … but if they did, Kilkenny would probably still beat them.

I have been honoured to lift the Liam McCarthy Cup with Limerick hurlers after Limerick won the All-Ireland final in 2008.

But at the weekend, I’ll be cheering for Wexford, and then for Waterford.

Wearing the Wexford colours (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A Saturday afternoon stroll through the architectural legacy of Castleconnell

A pair of semi-detached Regency houses at Brooklands … part of the architectural elegance of Castleconnell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

As I strolled along the banks of the River Shannon in Castleconnell on Saturday afternoon, at both World’s End and Fairy Woods, I also enjoyed the opportunity to take another look at some of the early 19th century houses and buildings in the town that remain an important part of the architectural heritage of Co Limerick.

At the north end of Castleconnell, on the way towards World’s End, a pair of semi-detached houses at Brooklands, one with a green door, the other with a yellow door, illustrate the Regency and late Georgian elegance that remains part of the architectural legacy of Castleconnell.

The house on the left is the most intact of the pair (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The house on the left is the most intact of the pair. These are semi-detached, five-bay, two-storey houses, built ca 1830. They have roughcast rendered walls and a rendered plinth course, timber sliding-sash windows and painted concrete sills.

Each house has timber sash windows, an ornate, cast-iron fanlight over the timber panelled doors and sidelights with cast-iron panels and timber risers that enhance their original character. There are rendered steps with cast-iron boot-scrapers at the front doors.

The two houses have façades of balanced proportions (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

These two houses, Edmonds and Dundons, have façades of balanced proportions, slate roofs, rendered chimney-stacks and share a continuous line of cast-iron ridge crestings.

The square-headed openings have six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows and painted concrete sills.

Celtic Revival themes reflected on the gates (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

In addition, the house on the left has a pair of interesting gates, decorated with Celtic revival images, including Erin with her stringless Harp and an Irish wolfhound, a Celtic harp, and a round tower beside a ruined church.

Glenbrook has overhanging eaves and a pair of bay windows (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Beside these two, Glenbrook is an attractive, well-proportioned house, also built ca 1830. Its distinctive features include the overhanging eaves that enhance the architectural value of the house.

This is a three-bay, two-storey house, with bay windows at the ground floor, and a hipped slate roof with rendered chimneystacks and overhanging eaves with timber brackets. The entrance has a spoked fanlight over double-leaf timber panelled doors, and brick steps.

The Worrall’s Inn remains a beautiful building despite being boarded up (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

On the Main Street, the Worrall’s Inn stands opposite Saint Joseph’s Church. This is an earlier building, dating from ca 1820.

This a five-bay, two-storey house is a former pub and family residence. Although it is now boarded-up, it retains many typical features of early 19th century urban architecture, including the ordered façade of balanced proportions, the regular rhythm of the windows and the decorative timber bargeboards.

The bay window, which once had one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows, is now boarded up. But it is still particularly ornate, with its dentilated cornice and flanking, timber engaged columns.

The entrance and front door are also blocked up, but this is a round-headed opening with a render surround, Doric style pilasters and a hood-moulding and it once had a glazed overlight and double-leaf timber panelled doors. The shopfront comprising has Doric-style pilasters supporting the fascia and cornice. The square-headed display openings had timber mullions.

In front of the former pub, the boundary walls have decorative wrought-iron railings and a gate, although part of the railings are now missing.

Stradbally National School was built in the Gothic Revival style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Across the street and behind the church a former Gothic-revival school has been divided and converted into two private houses, although one of these houses is now vacant and boarded up.

This former school was built to a standard simple design, but it is distinguished by its Gothic Revival features such as the lancet window, the timber front porch, the rendered chimney-stacks, the tooled limestone quoins, buttresses and a trefoil motif. The window surrounds are cut with a high degree of precision. A name plaque reads ‘Stradbally National School’ and a date plaque reads ‘1853.’

The former Irish Harp Centre stands on the site of a former church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A second former school, the former is near the river at Ferry Park. For 14 years, from 2002 to 2016, this was the Irish Harp Centre, a residential harp college and music school directed by Dr Janet Harbison and Malcolm Gullis.

It was built as a six-bay, two-storey cruciform-plan school in 1867. It has gable-fronted breakfronts at the front and rear elevations, a timber portico, a hipped slate roof and red brick chimney-stacks.

The former school retains many of its original despite the changes of use over time. It was built on the site of the former Roman Catholic church, and is an attractive feature in the landscape of Castleconnell.

Shannon View was the residence of the local land steward (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Next door, overlooking the river, Shannon View was built in the early 19th century as the residence of the local land steward.

It is a three-bay, two-storey over basement house. There is an elliptical-headed carriage arch with limestone copings.

Castleview House has impressive round-headed front door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Castleview House is a well-proportioned middle-size house in the centre of Castleconnell. It still has its original form and fabric, with a simple shopfront.

This three-bay, two-storey house was built ca 1870, and has a late 19th-century shopfront, a pitched slate roof with overhanging eaves that have timber brackets. An impressive feature is the round-headed opening with a spoked fanlight and timber-panelled door.

The house takes its name from the ruined castle that gives its name to Castleconnell. The castle ruins sit at the top of a steep rocky plateau overlooking the river at the south-west edge of Castleconnell.

This was the site of fortified structures from 1174. At times it was held by the O’Briens of Thomond and the Bourkes of West Clanwilliam. The castle was blown up in 1691 after it fell to General Ginkel and his besieging Williamite, and remains of the south-west and north-west towers can still be seen.

The ruins of the castle that gives Castleconnell its name (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Lady Louisa’s family links Mounshannon with a hastily boiled egg in ‘The Irish Times’

Lady Louisa Fitzgibbon continued to use her family name after she was twice widowed … but what happened to her descendants? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

When Lady Louisa Isabella Georgina FitzGibbon (1826-1898) was forced to sell off the Mountshannon Estate near Castleconnell, Co Limerick, in 1890s, and eventually died a lonely death in seclusion in a convent on the Isle of Wight in 1898, many people thought that the FitzGibbons of Mountshannon had come to an end.

This notion is reinforced in many of the accounts of the family history, and these perceptions are reinforced by the inscription on the roadside monument at Lisnary, near Castleconnell, to her eldest son, Charles Richard George Dillon (1849-1870), who died of blood poisoning at the age of 20.

However, Lady Louisa has a large number of living descendants, some of whom believed they were entitled to claim the Fitzgibbon title of Earl of Clare. As I researched the family story following my visit to Castleconnell at the weekend, I came across some interesting links between the Fitzgibbon family and The Irish Times, with an earlier family of Earls of Lichfield, and with a prominent family of Roman Catholics in Staffordshire.

Mountshannon House was burned down in 1920s, but the Fitzgibbon family still has descendants … an image beside the Fitzgibbon memorial at Lisnagry near Castleconnell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Lady Louisa was born in 1826. When her father, Richard Hobart FitzGibbon (1793-1864), 3rd Earl of Clare, died in 1864, there was no surviving son or male heir to inherit the family titles and estates, and Lady Louisa inherited Mountshannon. By then, she had been married to the Hon Gerald Normanby FitzGibbon, youngest son of Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee, 13th Viscount Dillon, since 1847.

The Dillons were an old Irish family who managed to hold onto their family titles and estates despite having supported James II and despite many family members joining the Irish Jacobites in exile in France, and when they returned to Ireland many were MPs for Co Mayo.

The Dillon name was joined to the Lee name when Henry Dillon (1705-1787) married Lady Charlotte Lee, the niece and heiress of Robert Lee (1706-1766) at a time when the Lee line linked with Lichfield was about to die out.

The title of Earl of Lichfield title had come into the Lee family in 1674 when Edward Henry Lee (1663-1719) was merely an 11-year-old: he was promised to marriage to Lady Charlotte Fitzroy, one of the many illegitimate children of Charles II and his mistress Barbara Villiers: the two children were married to each other in 1674.

At times, family members used the name Lee-Dillon, at other times they called themselves Dillon-Lee, and the constant changes have confused genealogists throughout the generations.

The Dillons also intermarried with the Jerningham-Stafford family, and Lady Louisa’s husband, Gerald Lee-Dillon, was a second cousin of Sir Henry Valentine Jerningham-Stafford, 9th Lord Stafford, and of Edward Jerningham-Stafford, who married Marianne Smythe, the adopted daughter of Mrs Fitzherbert who had married George IV in an illicit marriage.

Although Gerald Lee-Dillon was the fifth son and ninth child of the 13th Viscount Dillon, it was not beyond possibility that he or his sons might eventually inherit the Dillon family: three of his brothers were successively the 14th, 15th and 16th viscounts. Nevertheless, at Christmas 1873, 26 years after their marriage and nine years after the death of Lady Louisa’s father, Gerald changed his name legally to Fitzgibbon, and over the next few generations their children, grandchildren and great-children moved between both sets of surnames.

Gerald died in 1880, and two years later Louisa married General Carmelo Ascene Spadafora, Marchese della Rochella, in 1882. But she continued to call herself Lady Louisa Fitzgibbon, even when she was widowed a second time, when she was forced to sell off Mountshannon, and until she died a lonely, isolated death in a convent in 1898.

The quartered Dillon and Fitzgibbon coat of arms on the Fitzgibbon Memorial at Lisnagry, near Castleconnell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The constant name changes continued to confuse successive generations of her descendants. Their youngest son, Louis Theobald Fitzgibbon (1859-1913), was the father of Robert Francis Lee-Dillon (1884-1954), who was born with the Fitzgibbon name but changed his name to Lee-Dillon in 1924.

One of his sons was Robert Louis Lee-Dillon Fitzgibbon, better known as the writer Constantine Fitzgibbon (1919-1983). Although born in the US, he has also been regarded as British and Irish, and spent his final days in Dalkey, Co Dublin. He was the author of When the Kissing Had to Stop, a controversial 1960 novel written to undermine the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

Constantine Fitzgibbon’s half-brother, Louis Theobald Dillon Fitzgibbon (1925-2003), was born Louis Theobald Dillon Lee-Dillon, and added to the genealogical confusion when he changed his surname by deed poll in 1962.

The brothers compounded the confusion by claiming they were heirs to the title of Earl of Clare as descendants of Lady Louisa’s brother, John Charles Henry Fitzgibbon (1829-1854), Viscount Fitzgibbon, who was killed at the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava.

For 15 years, Constantine Fitzgibbon was married to the food writer Theodora Fitzgibbon (1916-1990), who continued to write under the name Theodora Fitzgibbon after they divorced and she married the photographer George Morrison. I worked with both Theodora Fitzgibbon and Maeve Binchy at The Irish Times.

Maeve Binchy was once the Women’s Editor in The Irish Times, which in hindsight she regarded as ‘an unusual choice: I knew nothing at all about cookery or fashion.’ She first asked Theodora Fitzgibbon to write about cookery and food for The Irish Times.

Theodora once sent a recipe for veal dishes and Maeve thought searched her files for a photograph of a casserole dish with many knives and forks sticking out of it. She typed a caption, ‘Tasty Veal Casserole, excellent for a winter evening.’ She sent the page to print and went home.

‘That evening, watching the television news, I saw an item about Dr Christiaan Barnard, and my blood ran cold. I knew now where I had seen that picture before. It was not a casserole. It was open heart surgery. What I had thought was a knife and fork was in fact a clamp and forceps.

‘My father was a lawyer. “Admit nothing,” he advised But I had to admit something. I phoned the Editor and asked him to hold the Cookery Page.’

Douglas Gageby ‘was low browed with anger,’ she recalled, ‘breathless, in the newspaper office to help sort it out.’

‘We’ll be the first newspaper to be prosecuted for cannibalism,’ he told Maeve.

‘We were down to minutes now,’ Maeve’s recollections continue. ‘I had to find a picture of the same size and shape and write a caption. I found a picture of a china egg-cup and egg. ‘Why be content with a boiled egg on a winter’s evening,’ she typed, ‘when you could have a Veal Casserole?.’

‘Theodora telephoned the next morning. “You didn’t actually kill yourself, darling,” she said. She agreed later that I almost had killed myself – and dined out often on the tale.’

A roadside monument is a reminder of the great house at Mountshannon

The Fitzgibbon Memorial and fountain, erected by Lady Louisa Fitzgibbon at Lisnagry, near Castleconnell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Two of us went to Castleconnell for an hour or two this afternoon, to walk along the banks of the River Shannon, to enjoy the unexpected sunshine, to walk through the woods and to cross the bridge that spans the river between Co Limerick and Co Clare.

On the way, we stopped at Lisnagry, to see the Fitzgibbon Fountain, a Victorian memorial that is reminder of the Fitzgibbon family and their Mountshannon estate.

Mountshannon House was once the largest and most impressive house in the Castleconnell area, standing on a 13,000-acre estate, including 900 acres of parkland, about 3 km from Castleconnell, on the road to Limerick. The Mountshannon estate was bounded on the west by the River Shannon and on the south by the River Mulcair, and extended from Newgarden to Annacotty.

Mountshannon House had a seven-bay, two-storey portico with four large Ionic columns. It is said that the house had 365 windows, one for each day of the year, and that the entrance hall was so wide that a coach and four could easily be driven through it. The gardens and parklands were laid out and landscaped by John Sutherland.

Mountshannon House was built by Silver Oliver of Kilfinane in 1750. Soon after, the White family bought the estate and it came into the Fitzgibbon family around 1765 when it was bought by John Fitzgibbon (1708-1780). When he died in 1780, Mountshannon was inherited by his son John Fitzgibbon (1748-1802), known as ‘Black Jack.’

This John Fitzgibbon entered politics in 1780, soon became Attorney General, was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1789, and became the first Earl of Clare. He opposed to Catholic Emancipation, was involved in putting down the 1798 Rising, and supported the Act of Union.

He once fought a duel with John Philpot Curran, when Fitzgibbon, but, although he was a crack shot, he fired wide to spare his opponent’s life, and it is said he was instrumental in saving the lives of many United Irishmen after 1798.

Fitzgibbon retired to Mountshannon, and there are many tales of his cruel treatment of the workers and tenants.

Lord Clare was badly injured when he fell from his horse at Mountshannon at Christmas 1801. He died in Dublin on 28 January 1802 and was buried at Saint Peter’s Church. Clare Street in Limerick and Clare Street, Fitzgibbon Street and Mountshannon Road in Dublin recall his name.

Black Jack’s son, also John Fitzgibbon (1792-1851), succeeded as the 2nd Earl of Clare and to Mountshannon estate at the age of 10. The poet Lord Byron had a schoolboy crush on him, and later declared he could never hear the name ‘Clare’ without ‘a murmur of the heart.’ Byron wrote of him:

Friend of my youth! When young we rov’d,
Like striplings, much belov’d,
With Friendship’s purest glow;
The bliss, which wing’d those rosy hours,
Was such as Pleasure seldom showers
On mortals here below.

The Bishop of Limerick once commented that this Lord Clare had not ‘a particle of the fiery enterprising genius of his father.’

Mountshannon House was remodelled by the English architect Lewis Wyatt … an image beside the Fitzgibbon memorial (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

During his life, Mountshannon House was remodelled by the English architect Lewis Wyatt, who added the imposing two-storey portico. The second earl later became Governor of Bombay. When he died, the titles and estate passed to his youngest brother, Richard Hobart Fitzgibbon (1763-1864), 3rd Earl of Clare. He also contributed handsomely on several occasions to the building of the Saint Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Castleconnell.

His son, John Charles Henry Fitzgibbon (1829-1854), Viscount Fitzgibbon, died at Ballaclava in 1854 while leading the Royal Irish Hussars in the charge of the Light Brigade. A statue to his memory was erected on the Wellesley Bridge (now Sarsfield Bridge) in Limerick city but was destroyed in an explosion in 1930. The monument was replaced by the 1916 Memorial.

Lady Louisa Isabella Georgina Fitzgibbon (1826-1898), a daughter of the 3rd Lord Clare, inherited Mountshannon when her father died. She was an extravagant and generous woman who gave lavish banquets and balls at the house, but she frittered away the Fitzgibbon fortune and ran up huge debts to maintain her lifestyle.

Her first husband, the Hon Gerald Normanby Dillon (1823-1880), was the sixth son of Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee, 13th Viscount Dillon, and changed his name to Fitzgibbon when they married.

Following his death in 1880, Lady Louisa became engaged to a Sicilian noble, General Carmelo Ascene Spadafora, Marchese della Rochella, son of the Duke of Santa Rosalia, thinking his wealth would rescue her from financial ruin, only to discover that he too was almost penniless and was marrying her for the same reason.

At the party in Mountshannon to announce their engagement, the Italian marquis discovered that Lady Louisa was a near bankrupt. But, in the spirit of noblesse oblige, he went ahead with the marriage in 1882.

It is said the Irish climate ruined his health and he died a few years later, still pining for sunny Sicily. Lady Louisa was forced to sell much of the contents of the house, including the books in the library. Her former friends left her to the mercy of her creditors and she was forced to sell the house and the estate.

Lady Louisa left Mountshannon in 1887 and went to live in the Isle of Wight at Saint Dominic’s Convent, where she spent the rest of her life. When she died some years later, she was buried in the convent grounds.

A public water fountain at Lisnagry was erected by Lady Louisa Fitzgibbon and her first husband, Gerald Dillon, in 1875 in memory of their eldest son, Charles Richard George Dillon (1849-1870), who died of blood poisoning at the age of 20. It originally stood by a water pump, erected by her uncle, the second earl.

The memorial is a gabled, gothic arch of dressed limestone. Above the white marble memorial stone is the quartered Dillon and Fitzgibbon coat of arms and the motto Nil Admirari, ‘To be astonished at nothing.’ The arch was once surrounded by railings, and was a well-known landmark on the Limerick-Nenagh road.

The marble memorial stone is inscribed: ‘The pump placed on this spot by John, Earl of Clare, KP, was renovated in 1875 & this memorial erected by his niece, Lady Louisa Fitz-Gibbon, of Mountshannon, and by her husband, the Honble Gerald N Fitzgibbon, in memory of their eldest son, Charles Richard George, who died on the 30th of July 1870, in his 21st year. ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; as it has pleased the Lord so it is done, blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Job 1. 21 v. Requiescat in Pace.’

Lord Clare’s pump continued in use until the 1960s. Limerick County Council dismantled the memorial in 2001 to make way for the Limerick South Ring road. It was restored in 2011 and re-erected in Richhill after the construction of the M7.

As for Mountshannon, it was bought by Thomas Nevins, and then by Dermot O’Hannigan, who was the last owner of Mountshannon. The house was destroyed by fire in 1921 during the War of Independence, the estate was divided up and sold off by the Land Commission and little remains of Mountshannon House apart from the ivy-clad shell.

The quartered Dillon and Fitzgibbon coat of arms on the Fitzgibbon Memorial at Lisnagry, near Castleconnell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)