17.5 million people in the housing emergency, 17.5 million dumped gadgets, and 17.5 million blog hits

A ‘tent city’ on Euston Road, London … 17.5 million people in Britain or 1-in-3 adults are impacted by the housing emergency (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

This blog continues to reach more and more readers, and reached yet another staggering total at the weekend, with 17.5 million hits by late on Saturday night (18 October 2025). I first began blogging back in 2010, and the 17 million mark was passed three weeks ago (30 September 2025). Already, by 6 pm this evening, there have been almost 500,000 hits (491,006) so far this month (October 2025).

The latest figure of 17.5 million is all the more staggering because about half of all those hits have been within the past 12 months. The rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal throughout this year, and the daily figures have been overwhelming at times. With this latest landmark figure of 17.5 million readers this weekend, I once again found myself asking questions such as:

• What do 17.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 17.5 million people?
• What does £17.5 million, €17.5 million or $17.5 million mean?
• What would it buy, how far would it stretch?

Copies of the Quran on a bookshelf in a mosque … Saudi Arabia opened for international tourism in 2019 with about 17.5 million visitors (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It is estimated that 17.5 million people in Britain or 1-in-3 adults are impacted by the housing emergency, a term from the housing charity Shelter to describe living in substandard or hazardous housing, or housing that is unaffordable or unfit for purpose.

These 17.5 million people experience housing issues that include overcrowding, unsafe conditions, unaffordable costs, or instability. Specific groups, such as Black and Asian people, disabled people, and single mothers, face disproportionately higher housing difficulties, according to Shelter. Shelter has looked at how governments have failed to address the issue, leading to record levels of homelessness.

Black people are 70% more likely to be impacted, and Asian people are 50% more likely, compared to White people. Over half (54%) of people with a significant disability have no safe or secure home. A significant majority (65%) of single mothers do not have a secure home. Low-income households are 70% more likely to be impacted that those with higher earnings. The effects of living like this include increased long-term stress, anxiety and depression.

17.5 million metres works out at 17,500 km. A group of women in Worthing calling themselves the GoGirls from GoodOaks Homecare have taken on an epic 17.5 million metre row, or one million metres a month, in support of Saint Barnabas House hospice and Dementia UK.

The team at GoodOaks Sussex South are on a challenge to row 17.5 million metres – the equivalent distance from Worthing to Tasmania – to raise awareness and £20,000 in support of people living with dementia and their local hospice. These women are rowing every single day on Oak WaterRower machines, and the challenge is no mean feat – it could take over a year to complete. But they are determined to raise vital awareness and funds for those living with dementia and the carers who support them every day and to support their local hospice.

People in the UK dump 17.5 million gadgets each year. In the rush to get our hands on the latest technology, we throw away over 17.5 million gadgets every year, not disposing of old gadgets properly.

Old electronic equipment like mobile phones, computers and consoles are chucked in the bin and end up at landfill sites where they are buried in the ground. Harmful chemicals leak out into the soil from batteries and screens, damaging the environment. The environment charity Waste Watch advise using recycling services at phone shops, supermarkets and online services to get rid of them.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust has made the largest acquisition in its 60-year history, thanks to an anonymous £17.5 million gift. The private donation from an unnamed donor has allowed the Trust to buy the 18,824-acre Inverbroom estate near Ullapool in the North-West Highlands, which is larger in scale than the city of Dundee.

Both Bere Island at the mouth of Bantry Bay in south-west Co Cork, and the island of Aranmore off the coast of Co Donegal, have a land area of 17.5 sq km or 17.5 million sq metres.

Cambodia has a population of about 17.5 million people. Shenzhen, with 17.5 million people, is the third most populous city in China, after Shanghai and Beijing. Lagos has 17.5 million people, according to estimates by the Lagos State Government, although this number is disputed by the Nigerian Government.

I visited Saudi Arabia only very briefly in 1979, but it only opened for international tourism 40 years later, with about 17.5 million visitors in 2019. A significant portion of visitors to Saudi Arabia are were religious tourists or pilgrims, but the figure represents the total international arrival count. Since then, Saudi Arabia has become the second biggest tourist destination in the Middle East and had 116 million tourists last year (2024).

According to the Governor of Najaf in Iraq, 17.5 million pilgrims attend Arbaeen in Karbala this year (August 2025). In Shia Islam, Arbaeen commemorates the fortieth day following Ashura, the solemn anniversary of the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the third Shia Imam.

There are 17.5 million Mormons or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), according to figures world-wide released in July 2025. Of that 17.5 million, more than 6.8 million live in the US.

17.5 million minutes is approximately 33.3 years.

Once again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.

A continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics continues to be the one that shows my morning prayer diary reaches up to 80-90 people each day. It is 3½ years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 560 to 630 people a week.

Today, I am very grateful to all the 17.5 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.

The ferry to Bere Island in south-west Co Cork … Bere Island has a land area of 17.5 sq km or 17.5 million sq metres (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Castletownbere church linked with miners’ strikes and the Gaelic revival

Saint Peter’s Church, Castletownbere, Co Cork, built in the 1840s and rebuilt in the early 1860s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

During our visit to Castletownbere, Co Cork, on last month’s road trip or ‘staycation’ in West Cork and Co Kerry, two of us visited the Church of the Sacred Heart, the Roman Catholic parish church, and Saint Peter's Church, the former Church of Ireland parish church.

Saint Peter’s Church was built in 1841 to replace Killaconenagh Church, which was 2 km outside the town.

Killaconenagh Church had been built in 1812 on the site of an earlier, medieval parish church The early 19th century church was described by Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary 1837 as ‘a small neat edifice, with a low square tower, towards the erection of which the late Board of First Fruits granted a loan of £500.’

However, it was abandoned within three decades of being built and shortly after Lewis provided his description when Saint Peter’s Church was built in 1841. The new church, on a more convenient site in the centre of the new town, was consecrated in July or August 1841, and was enlarged later and substantially rebuilt ca 1860.

The 1860s Gothic Revival style church incorporates earlier fabric. This was a fine church, exhibiting the high-quality craftsmanship that marks many parish churches in the Church of Ireland built in the 19th century. The coherent Gothic Revival style decorative scheme includes finely carved limestone finials, a bellcote and the window surrounds.

Although we did not get inside the former church during our visit, I understand the timber detailing exhibits sophisticated and highly skilled carpentry.

The features I could appreciate on an all-too-brief afternoon visit include the gabled entrance porch, gabled chancel and a gabled vestry extension, a cut limestone bellcote, pointed arch windows and doors, and carved limestone finials.

The church also had leaded stained-glass windows, timber battened doors, a carved timber king-post roof, a reredos, choir, decorative floor tiles, a carved marble pulpit and a baptism font to interior.

Saint Peter’s Church is now owned by a local community development association (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

In a recent paper, Dr Miriam Moffitt told the hidden story behind the dismissal of the curate in the parish of Berehaven over 150 years ago.

Two printed addresses offering support for the Revd George Frederick Stoney (1826-1869) were published within the space of 18 months in the Church of Ireland Gazette when he left the parish in March 1868, and a third followed his death in September 1869.

Two addresses presented to George Stoney were published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette (as it was then known) on 23 April 1868, one from a local Roman Catholic curate, while the third address was published on 22 September 1869 from ‘The Loyal Orangemen of Shercock.’

George Stoney was dismissed as the curate in Berehaven in March 1868 and returned to ministry in his former parish in Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan, until his death 17 months later.

While he was in Beara, Stoney ministered at the chapel-of-ease at Allihies, where the population was mainly mining families from the nearby copper mines. Saint Peter’s Parish Church was in the town of Berehaven, now Castletownbere; Berehaven Miners’ Church, also known as Kilnamanagh Church, was about 18 km further west.

The copper mines at Allihies were owned by Berehaven’s leading landowner, Henry Edmund Lavallin Puxley of Dunboy Castle. The mines, in operation from 1812, attracted an influx of Cornish miners. After a miners’ strike in 1864, changes introduced by a new manager and a sharp fall in the price of copper led to drastic cuts in the workforce.

Although there was an attempt to replace some Irish workers with English workers, most of the miners were Roman Catholics from Beara. There were frequent allegations that better positions were awarded to English workers and that the Irish miners were exploited and living in squalid conditions. In a letter published in the Cork Examiner on 4 March 1868, Stoney detailed the ‘real agonising poverty of the people.’

In a letter in The Nation on 16 May 1868, Stoney was even more direct in his criticism of the mine-owner and his description of the miners’ living conditions. The Rector of Berehaven, the Revd John Halahan (1823-1920), was also Puxley’s father-in-law, and George Stoney was dismissed. Stoney’s entry in the preachers’ book reveals that he was prevented from delivering a farewell sermon.

Halahan had been the curate of Berehaven in 1846-1862, and then Rector in 1862-1918 and was also Dean of Saint Fachtna’s Cathedral, Rosscarbery (1905-1918), a total of 72 years in ministry in Berehaven. He is said to have been the inspiration for the character of Daphne du Maurier’s Hungry Hill. He died in Bantry on 28 September 1920, and was buried in Saint Finian’s Old Burial Ground, North Road, Castletownbere.

Halahan’s predecessor as Rector of Berehaven, the Revd Thomas O’Grady, was a scholarly priest and the father of Standish James O’Grady (1846-1928), author, journalist and historian. O’Grady played a formative role in the Celtic Revival, publishing the tales of Irish mythology, as the History of Ireland: Heroic Period (1878), comparing the Gaelic tradition with the tales of Homeric Greece.

He also worked as a journalist for the Daily Express of Dublin, contributed to James Larkin’s The Irish Worker, and was the editor of the Kilkenny Moderator. In Kilkenny, he was involved with Ellen Odette Cuffe (1857-1933), Countess of Desart, and her brother-in-law, Captain Otway Frederick Seymour Cuffe (1853-1912), a former Mayor of Kilkenny, in the revival of local woollen and woodworking industries.

Standish O’Grady was a paradox for his times, proud of his Gaelic heritage, a champion of aristocratic virtues and an advocate of a revitalised Irish people taking over the British Empire and renaming it the Anglo-Irish Empire.

Lady Gregory, WB Yeats and George William Russell, all associated with the Abbey Theatre, attributed their interest in the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic tradition in part to O’Grady, and this led to him being known as the ‘Father of the Celtic Revival.’

Standish O’Grady’s childhood home, the Glebe, is about 2 km west of Castletownbere near a famine mass grave. His eldest son and biographer, Hugh Art O’Grady, was the editor of the Cork Free Press and later a professor in the Transvaal University College, Pretoria, later the University of Pretoria.

There was a full-time Church of Ireland priest in Castletownbere until shortly after World War II. Saint Peter’s Church is now owned by a local community development association. The Southern Star reported in 2018 that the church had been bought after five years of negotiations.

Saint Peter’s is a listed building, and the churchyard is the only green space in the town, providing a safe place for children to play.

The churchyard is the only green space in the town, providing a safe place for children to play (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Church of the Sacred Heart is the most striking building in Castletownbere

The Church of the Sacred Heart, the most striking building in Castletownbere, Co Cork, was designed by RM Butler (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

During our visit to Castletownbere, Co Cork, on last month’s road trip or staycation in West Cork and Co Kerry, two of us visited the Church of the Sacred Heart, the Roman Catholic parish church, and Saint Peter’s Church, the former Church of Ireland parish church.

The Church of the Sacred Heart is the most striking building in the town. It was built in an imposing Gothic Revival style in 1907-1911 on the site of an earlier 19th century chapel. It stands on an elevated site set back from the Main Street and is approached by an imposing flights of steps, making it an important focal point in the town.

This imposing Gothic Revival church was designed by the Dublin-based architect Rudolf Maximilian Butler (1872-1943). The granite came from the Mountains of Mourne in Co Down and was brought by sea. Much of the funding was donated by British naval personnel based in Berehaven and by Irish emigrants in the US, and the foundation stone was laid on 22 August 1907.

The well-crafted stone workmanship, particularly the portal and rose windows, make an imposing façade. Inside, the church is a rich display of craftsmanship in stone, wood and stained glass.

Inside the Church of the Sacred Heart … funded by British naval personnel in Berehaven and Irish emigrants in the US (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Rudolf Maximilian Butler was born in Dublin on 20 September 1872. His father, John Butler, was a barrister from Carlow; his mother, Augusta Brassart, was from Schleswig-Holstein. At the time his father died, Rudolf was 10 and was on a Christmas holiday with his mother in Germany. He finished his education in Germany, and returned to Dublin at the age of 16.

After a brief spell in the wine business, he became a pupil of the architect James Joseph Farrall (1856-1911) from 1889, and then, from 1891, of Walter Glynn Doolin (1850-1902).

Butler stayed on as Doolin’s assistant from 1896 to 1899, when he became his junior partner. When Doolin died in 1902, Butler carried on the practice in partnership with James Louis Donnelly as Doolin Butler & Donnelly.

Inside the Church of the Sacred Heart facing the liturgical west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

As the architect and engineer to Rathdown Rural District Council, Butler designed 500 cottages in Co Dublin and Co Wicklow.

Butler revived the Architectural Association of Ireland in 1896, with William Richard Gleave, Alfred Ignatius McGloughlin and Harry Allberry, and was an active member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland.

Butler was brought up a Moravian, but was largely engaged in Roman Catholic church work, first through his association with Doolin.

When Butler was 23, a chance encounter with an Irish Passionist, Father McMullen, on a train in France resulted in the commission to design part of the Passionist chapel in the Avenue Hoche, Paris. This probably led to his commissions for the Passionists in Ireland, including the church and monastery at Ardoyne, Belfast (1900-1902) and a new college in Enniskillen (1917).

The altar and carved reredos in the Church of the Sacred Heart (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Butler’s other works include Saint Patrick’s Church, Newport, Co Mayo; the Carnegie Libraries in Millstreet, Co Cork, Kenmare, Listowel and Tralee, Co Kerry, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, and Cabinteely, Dundrum and Shankill, Co Dublin; Saint Colman’s Church on Inishbofin; works on the Presentation Convent in Dingle, Co Kerry; the Deluxe Cinema on Camden Street, Dublin; and the University Boat Club House, Islandbridge, Dublin.

Butler won first prize in the competition in 1912 for designing University College Dublin. He was appointed examiner in architecture of the National University of Ireland in 1923 and became the first Professor of Architecture at UCD in 1924. When the RIBA conference took place in Dublin in 1931, he received the honorary degree of Master of Architecture from the NUI.

He was involved in establishing the Georgian Society, and in 1899 he became the editor and, for a few months, co-proprietor, of the Irish Builder. The magazine was sold in 1900, but Butler remained editor until 1935.

Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid … carved details in the reredos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Butler retired as Professor of Architecture at UCD in 1942 and died on 3 February 1943.

He was a member of Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (MRIAI, 1896), and a fellow (FRIAI, 1915), a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1906), a founding member of the Architectural Association of Ireland (1896), a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA, 1919), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (FRSAI, 1920) and an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (1927).

He lived at 21 Harcourt Street, 3 Martello Terrace, Bray, 59 Harcourt Street, 11 Wellington Place, Clyde Road, 34 Upper Leeson Street, and 73 Ailesbury Road, Dublin, which he designed for himself.

Butler and his Annie Gibbons from Co Mayo were the parents of a son and three daughters. His son John Geoffrey Butler and his daughter Eleanor Grace Butler carried on his practice after his death.

Christ the Alpha and the Omega … a carving above the main door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

I knew his daughter, Eleanor Butler (1914-1997), also known as Lady Wicklow, through her role in the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation. She was a Labour member of Dublin Corporation and was a Labour candidate for the Dáil in 1948. She was a Senator from 1948 to 1951.

Throughout her life, she maintained strong links with the trade union movement and her friendship with Denis Larkin.

Through her friendship with the poet John Betjeman she met her future husband, William Howard (1902-1978), then known as Lord Clonmore or Billy Clonmore. He had been a priest in the Church of England and was an active Anglo-Catholic slum priest in the East End of London, working with the Magdalen Mission. When he became a Roman Catholic in 1932, he was disinherited by his father. He succeeded his father as eighth Earl of Wicklow in 1946, and the couple married in Glasthule on 2 September 1959.

The chancel window by AE Child of An Túr Gloine depicts the Risen Christ, Saint John the Evangelist, left, and Saint John the Baptist, right (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Butler’s church in Castletownbere has an interesting collection of stained-glass windows from the studios of An Túr Gloine, including the chancel window (1909) by AE Childe, and windows by Catherine O’Brien and Ethel Rhind.

The stained-glass chancel window is by Alfred Ernest Child (1875-1939) of An Túr Gloine. The main image depicts the Risen Christ, with Christ’s deposition from the Cross below.

The panels to the left depict Saint John the Evangelist, holding a pen and the poisoned chalice, and below Saint John’s vision or revelation in the cave on Patmos.

The panels to the right depict Saint John the Baptist, and below the Baptism of Christ by Saint John the Baptist.

The Rose Window depicting the Adoration of the Lamb on the Throne (1910) by Catherine O’Brien of An Túr Gloine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The Rose Window at the liturgical west end of the church, above the gallery and porch, depicts the Adoration of the Lamb on the Throne (1910).

This colourful window is by Catherine O’Brien (1881-1963) of An Túr Gloine.

Two two-light windows depicting the Sacred Heart and the Annunciation (1910) are by Ethel Rhind (1878-1952) of An Túr Gloine.

The Sacred Heart window (1910) by Ethel Rhind of An Túr Gloine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

As for Saint Peter’s Church, the former Church of Ireland parish church in Castletownbere, that’s a story for another day.

Castletownbere, MacCarthy’s Bar and the Irish doctor in Nagasaki

Castletownbere … street art on a gable end in the colourful town in the Beara Peninsula (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During last month’s summer road trip or ‘staycation’ in West Cork and Co Kerry, two of us spent an afternoon in the Beara Peninsula. This is a compelling and beautiful place, with the Miskish and the Caha mountains forming the rugged spine of the peninsula that seems at times to be adrift in the Atlantic.

The Beara Peninsula, with Kenmare Bay to the north and Bantry Bay to the south, is rich with Bronze Age remains: wedge tombs, stone circles and standing stones. But it is also home to Ireland’s largest whitefish fleet, based in Castletownbere.

We set off from Glengarriff into this large and long peninsulas, stretching for almost 50 km from Glengarriff to Dursey Island and back to Kenmare, and one of the scenic routes along the Wild Atlantic Way.

The north part of the peninsula, from Kenmare to near Ardgroom, is in Co Kerry, while the rest of the peninsula in is Co Cork. The rugged mountains and craggy coastlines along the southern stretch of the Ring of Beara make this one of the best-kept secrets in West Cork, and travel writers have described it as the ‘most underrated road trip in Europe.’

The ferry to Bere Island takes about 10 minutes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

We stopped and thought about taking the 10-minute ferry trip to Bere Island, 2 km off-shore, with its great forts, Martello tower, Ardnakinna Lighthouse and a number of looped walks. The island is about 11 km by 5 km – about the same size as Manhattan – and has a population of about 200.

Instead, however, we pressed on along the coast for lunch in the bustling and pretty town of Castletownbere, in O’Donoghue’s Bar, the Cornet House on the Square.

The Irish name of the town comes from a former castle built by the MacCarthy dynasty. Another castle, Dunboy Castle, 3 km west, was the seat of the O’Sullivan Beare family. During the Siege of Dunboy in 1602, Dunboy Castle was reduced by the forces of Elizabeth I. Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare then retreated with his followers to Leitrim.

Theobald Wolfe Tone sailed into Berehaven Harbour in 1796 with a French fleet that anchored off Ahabeg, 8 km east of Castletownbere. But the gales were so violent that they could not land.

Berehaven was one of the three ‘Treaty Ports’ until 1938 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

During World War I, Berehaven Harbour was a base for naval convoys escorting civilian ships across the Atlantic.

The US navy set up an air station at Berehaven on 29 April 1918, but it closed again at the end of World War I. When the Anglo Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, one of its provisions was that Britain would retain sovereignty over three strategically important ports, or ‘Treaty ports,’ including the ‘Dockyard Port at Berehaven.’ The two other ports were in Lough Swilly and at Cobh (Queenstown).

After the Irish Free State was formed in 1922, the Royal Navy continued to maintain its presence at the forts and batteries around Castletownbere and on Bere Island, together known as Berehaven. British sovereignty in Berehaven continued until 29 September 1938, when Berehaven was handed over and the last British troops left by train from Bantry to Cork.

Today, Berehaven is rated as the second safest natural harbour in the world, and Castletownbere is an important fishing port and commercial hub. The surrounding area is the setting for Daphne du Maurier’s novel Hungry Hill (1943), named after the nearby mountain of the same name.

MacCarthy’s Bar … the birthplace of Dr Aidan MacCarthy and the cover image for MacCarthy’s Bar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Perhaps the best-knwon literary association in the town is MacCarthy’s Bar on the Square. It featured on the cover and in the title of Pete McCarthy’s book, McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (1998). MacCarthy’s Bar was the birthplace of Dr Aidan MacCarthy (1913-1992) a prisoner of war in World War II, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb, and author of A Doctor’s War (1979).

Air Commodore Joseph Aidan MacCarthy was born in Castletownbere on 19 March 1913 and was educated at Clongowes Wood School and University College Cork, where he graduated in medicine in 1938.

He practised first in Wales and then in London, where he joined the Royal Air Force. He was posted to France in 1940 and was evacuated from Dunkirk where he attended wounded allied soldiers while under fire from German aircraft. He was awarded the George Medal in 1941 for his part in the rescue of the crew of a crashed and burning Wellington bomber at RAF Honington.

MacCarthy was posted to the Far East in 1941, and was captured by the Japanese in Sumatra. The prison ship taking allied prisoners to Japan was sunk by a US submarine, and MacCarthy tried bravely to rescue his patients in the South China Sea.

As a prisoner in Japan, he cared for other prisoners of war who were forced to work in horrific conditions. He received extra punishment because the Japanese assumed MacCarthy was a close relative of General Douglas MacArthur.

He was in charge of a working party in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city on 9 August 1945. A week later, he was the senior allied serviceman in Japan at the Japanese surrender.

Dr MacCarthy later practiced medicine in England, and died in Northwood, London, on 11 October 1995. His family continues to live in Castletownbere.

Before leaving Castletownbere, two of us also visited the Church of the Sacred Heart, the Roman Catholic parish church, and Saint Peter's Church, the former Church of Ireland parish church. But the stories of these two churches are for next week.

Castletownbere is an important fishing port and Berehaven is the second safest natural harbour in the world (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)