Finding another family link with Wexford town over a century ago

The Dun Mhuire Theatre, South Main Street, Wexford … now closed but once an RUC barracks and the home of my great-uncle and his family

Patrick Comerford

As I was walking around Wexford during my recent return visit two months ago (2-3 September 2020), I was very happy to have in my hands Nicky Rossiter’s book, Main Street, Heart of Wexford (Stroud: History Press, 2018).

In the early and mid-1970s, I had lived on High Street, but worked on Main Street, went to church there, spent time at back-room meetings in smoke-filled rooms in the Corish Memorial Hall, had my bank account on Main Street, and was more than familiar with the Tower Bar and the coffee shop and bars in White’s Hotel. I was also on the committee of the YMCA beside White’s, where I organised many poetry readings and folk sessions.

While I was living on High Street, I joked that I was only a stone throw from houses on John Street where members of many previous generations of the Comerford family had lived before me.

I was confident about my Comerford family links with Wexford, and – although I was born in Dublin – this was home for me, and I feel at home every time I go back.

But Nicky Rossiter’s book made me ask was there was another family connection with Wexford apart from the Comerford family links.

In Main Street, Heart of Wexford, Nicky Rossiter says on p 102: ‘Over the centuries Main Street has lost many established businesses and the families associated with them. These included: Holbrook; Lelly; Timpson; Ousalem (domestic servant); Kalisher (bazaar manager); Lively (bazaar assistant); Boleyn (housekeeper); Lynders; Mokely (domestic servant); Hummer; Cootey; Shudall and Cruise (grocer’s assistant).’

I searched, and I searched. I had found no Lynders family connection with Wexford in recent years. But the name is unusual enough, and for the past two months I was wondering what the connection.

The on-line index for the 1911 census was not helpful either: an Allen Lynders appeared, but I knew of no Allen Lynders in my grandmother’s family about a century ago.

And there it rested, or so it seemed. That was until an email conversation and exchanges earlier this week with a cousin who is the true genealogist in the Lynders family.

My grandmother, Bridget Lynders (1875-1948), was the second of five children of Patrick and Margaret (McMahon) Lynders of The Quay House, Portrane, Co Dublin, and married my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comeford (1867-1921), in Donabate on 7 February 1905.

But my conversations earlier this week led me to the story of her elder brother, John Lynders (1873-1957), my great-uncle, who was a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary in the difficult years in the first quarter of the 20th century.

John Lynders, who was two years older than my grandmother, was born in Portane on 11 January 1873. He joined the Royal Irish Constabulary (56897), became a Sergeant in the RIC and was later a Head Constable. He married Mary Ellen Reardon (1881-1963) from Fermoy, Co Cork.

John Lynders was living at the RIC Barracks, South Main Street, Wexford, when his children were born in 1908 and 1911, and at the time of the 1911 census. The name of John Lynders is given incorrectly as Allen Lynders in the online index to the 1911 census and their daughter Eileen Mary as Aileen M. But John is registered separately, a normal procedure for the police in the 1901 and 1911 census returns, and I had found it difficult to identify this Lynders family in Wexford – my grandmother’s brother and my father’s uncle, aunt and cousins.

These were difficult times for members of the RIC in those early decades of the 20th century. I have written in recent months (29 July 2020) of the scandalous events surrounding the murder in the Bullring on 7 May 1910, when 18-year-old Mary Anne Wilde was murdered by Simon Bloom – an event that is said to have influenced some of the characters created by James Joyce in Ulysses.

But 1911 was an even more harrowing year in the history of Wexford town. This was the year of the Wexford lockout, eclipsed in size only by the lockout in Dublin in 1913. Doyle’s Selskar Ironworks were the first to lock out their men on Monday 10 August 1911. A little over a fortnight later, Pierce’s locked out close to 400 men, while the Hearns, proprietors of Wexford Engineering, locked out nearly 200 men on 29 August.

The most serious incident occurred in September, when Michael O’Leary, on his way to buy groceries, got caught up in a baton charge on Bride Street between workers and the police. He received repeated blows to his head and died from his injuries five days later.

The lockout ended with a settlement in February 1912 that allowed for the formation of the Irish Foundry Workers’ Union as an associate of the ITGWU. The foundry men, skilled and unskilled, could combine and return to work – all except for Richard Corish (1886-1945), who was blacklisted by the employers. He became a full-time trade union official and was Mayor of Wexford (1920-1945) and Labour TD for Wexford (1921-1945).

The 1911 Lockout memorial in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John Lynders was a sergeant in the RIC in Wexford during those turbulent times. His wife Ellen returned to Fermoy for the birth of their two children – Eileen Margaret on 19 January 1908, and Patrick Joseph Lynders on 28 September 1911. But they continued to live in the RIC Barracks on South Main Street, Wexford.

This building was originally the Wexford townhouse of Richard Devereux, one of the great shipowners in 19th century Wexford. Richard Joseph Devereux (1829-1883) was a Liberal MP for Wexford (1865-1872) while his brother, John Thomas Devereux, was MP for Wexford (1847-1857) before him.

The Devereux brothers were merchant princes in Victorian Wexford, and Richard Devereux owned one of the largest fleets of sailing ships in Ireland, bringing the first cargo of Indian corn to Wexford during the Famine.

When Richard Devereux died in 1883, the reliquary of Saint Adjutor, which he had received as a gift from Pope Pius IX and brought to Wexford in 1856, was moved from his house to the Franciscan Friary. The waxen figure of the boy martyr is now enshrined in a glassed, enclosed reliquary at the back of the Friary Church in Wexford.

At the same time, Devereux’s townhouse became a presbytery for the Catholic priests of Wexford in 1883. When they moved to the presbytery in School Street in 1893, it became the RIC barracks.

John Lynders was a sergeant in Duncannon, Co Wexford, by 1917, and was later transferred from Wexford to Ballymahon, Co Longford (1919-1922), where he was a Head Constable. Just 100 years ago, on 18 August 1920, an IRA group led by Seán Mac Eoin and Seán Connolly, raided the RIC barracks in Ballymahon and captured 10 rifles, four revolvers, 12 grenades and ammunition.

After the dissolution of the RIC, John Lynders returned to live in Dublin. He was living at 7 Ontario Terrace, Portobello, when he died on 13 November 1957, aged 84. His widow Mary was living at 7 Ontario Terrace when she died on 13 May 1963, aged 82.

As for the RIC Barracks in Wexford, when the RIC was dissolved at the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the Garda Siochana took over. When the Gardai moved into their then new station in Roche’s Road, the building was used by the Legion of Mary and the Catholic Girls’ Club from 1938.

The Dun Mhuire Theatre was opened there by Bishop James Staunton of Ferns on Sunday 4 December 1960, followed by a concert with Veronica Dunne, Michael Murphy and the Artane Boys’ Band.

The Dun Mhuire Theatre was at the heart of cultural life and entertainment in Wexford Town for decades. The Wexford Drama Festival, established in 1963, was staged at the Dun Mhuire Theatre every year for 56 years until last year. Initially it was devised as a source of entertainment during Lent, when dances did not take place in the hall, giving the local community an outlet and keeping the Dun Mhuire in use. The festival regularly welcomed 250 theatre goers for each show, with 300 or 350 people on opening and closing nights.

The theatre was also a venue for Christmas pantomime, the Light Opera Society, and other groups. Dun Mhuire has made an important contribution to the social and artistic fabric of Wexford town. Other groups who used the theatre on a day-to-day basis included Alcoholics Anonymous, the Girl Guides, the Confraternity Band and the Legion of Mary.

The Wexford Drama Festival recently moved its home to the Jerome Hynes Theatre at the National Opera House, formerly the Theatre Royal, on High Street.

The Dun Mhuire Theatre is now closed and is said to be in a serious state of disrepair. The theatre is owned by the Parish of Wexford and in recent years there have been reports of plans to sell the theatre to Wexford County Council as part of plans for the redevelopment in the South Main Street and Crescent Quay area and the Trinity Wharf Development.

The Dun Mhuire Theatre was at the heart of cultural life and entertainment in Wexford Town for 56 years

Update 11 November 2020, to include reference to Duncannon

The Dublin-born Tory MP who was a fraudster and bought voters with drinks

Albert Grant (1831-1899) portrayed in a cartoon in ‘Vanity Fair’ … he was born Abraham Zachariah Gotheimer in extreme poverty in a laneway off Fleet Street in Dublin

Patrick Comerford

During research in recent weeks I have come across the extraordinary story of Albert Grant (1831-1899), a Conservative MP who was also a fraudster engaged in banking and business frauds in Britain and across the world throughout much of the 19th century. He liked to be known as Baron Grant, an Italian title he probably bought, and defrauded poor widows and Anglican clergy for decades.

Although the scale of his frauds was extraordinary in his day, his story may not appear unusual by the standards held or ignored by many holding public office today. Nor should we surprised by the story of a Tory MP who secured his election
What is unusual may be the fact that he was born into conditions of stark poverty, and that the respectable politician he defeated by bribery and buying votes was also born in Dublin.

Albert Grant was born Abraham Zachariah Gotheimer in Dublin on 18 November 1831. His father, Berton Gotheimer, was born in Prussia around 1798 and later moved to Liverpool, where he was living in 1829; his mother Julia was born in Portsmouth.

In Dublin, Berton Gotheimer eked out a living as a poor pedlar. When Abraham was born in a lane off Fleet Street in Dublin, the family was so poor their neighbours had to provide swaddling clothes for the baby.

The child was circumcised by Alexander Lazarus Benmohel, President of the synagogue in Saint Mary’s Abbey, Dublin.

The family later moved to London where his father became a partner in a business importing fancy goods and a commission agent.

As a child in London, Abraham Gotheimer worked for a family retailer who sold imported French musical boxes, clock parts and other pieces, although later in life he claimed he was educated in London and Paris. By 1851, he was working as a merchant’s clerk in the city of London and later became a travelling salesman of wines.

Meanwhile, he was been baptised into the Church of England and changed his name to Albert Grant before marrying Emily Isabella Robinson in 1856. She was the daughter of Skeffington Robinson from Antrim, a slave-owning sugar planter in Dominica.

As Albert Grant, he was admitted as a freeman of the city of London, and by 1858 had established himself as a banker and discount agent in Lombard Street. He set up the Mercantile Discount Company in 1859. Concerns were aired about the large salaries and beneficial financial guarantees enjoyed by Grant and his partners.

The company failed in 1861 with liabilities of £1.5 million. But Grant escaped any personal loss, and was soon financing railway schemes in Yorkshire, Essex and Wales.

He expanded his activities in 1863, establishing Crédit Foncier and Mobilier of England, one of a number of ‘rip-off finance houses’ that flourished in the sustained bull market of the period. He used Crédit Foncier and Mobilier of England to launch a number of ventures in which he found investors by using directories and targeting financially naive groups, including Anglican clergy and widows.

Meanwhile Grant built an opulent house at Cooper’s Hill near Egham, Surrey, designed in the Gothic revival style by F & H Francis in 1865. He was selected that year as the Conservative candidate in Kidderminster, standing against the sitting Liberal MP, Dublin-born Colonel Luke White (1829-1888) of Luttrellstown Castle, Dublin. White, who was a Junior Lord of the Treasury, had previously been MP for Co Clare (1859-1860) and Co Longford (1861-1862).

During the campaign, Grant was denounced as ‘a fraudulent adventurer,’ but Grant was elected and held the seat for three years.

Victor Emmanuel II of Italy gave Grant the hereditary title of baron in May 1868. Supposedly this was in recognition of Grant’s role in raising the finances to build the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, one of the largest and earliest fashionable shopping centres in Europe. However, even then, it was alleged that Grant had bought the title. Later, when Grant was made a Commander of the Portuguese Order of Christ, similar allegations came to the fore.

Each of the companies he set up between 1864 and 1872 collapsed in controversial circumstances amid allegations of fraud made against Grant. Crédit Foncier fell in July 1868 when Grant left the company amidst allegations that large commissions had been improperly pocketed by the directors. As the scandals gathered steam, he decided not to contest the general election at the end of 1868, and Thomas Lea regained Kidderminster for the Liberals.

Between 1871 and 1874, he floated many British and foreign companies, including the Belgian Public Works, Cadiz Waterworks, Central Uruguay Railway, Labuan Coal Company, Imperial Bank of China, Imperial Land Company of Marseilles, Lima Railways, Odessa Waterworks and Russian Copper Company.

Most of these ventures later proved to be fraudulent. In 1872, he financed the construction of the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways (Moel Tryfan Undertaking).

By then, Grant was immensely wealthy, and in 1872 he bought Horstead Hall, near Norwich. A year later, he acquired a large slum area south of Kensington Gardens and built Kensington House, a magnificent, 90-room Italianate palace, at a cost of almost £350,000.

The statue of William Shakespeare in Leicester Square … Albert Grant presented the square and statue to the people of London in 1874 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

When a general election was called in early 1874, Grant stood again as the Conservative candidate in Kidderminster, and was returned with a majority of 111.

This was the only modern British election when a party has been defeated despite receiving an absolute majority of the popular vote. The Liberals, with 1,281,159 votes, received 242 seats, while the Conservatives with 1,091,708 votes, received 350 seats. If parallels with today are being sought, the Conservatives were a minority in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but still formed a majority, mainly because so many English seats were not contested.

Grant boosted his public image later that year when he presented Leicester Square to the people of London on 3 July 1874. The square, then known as Leicester Fields, had long been in a dilapidated state, and was used as a dumping ground for dead cats and dogs. The site was owned by numerous freeholders and the city authorities found it practically impossible to improve the area.

Grant bought out the rights of all the respective owners and, after planting an ornamental garden and erecting a statue of William Shakespeare, along with busts of Isaac Newton, William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds and John Hunter, he transferred ownership of the site to the Metropolitan Board of Works at a personal cost of £28,000.

It is interesting to note than on the plinth of Shakespeare’s statue, he is described as ‘Albert Grant, Esq, MP’ and not as Baron Albert Grant.

Meanwhile, Grant and his election agents were accused of bribery and of buying votes with drinks and food. It emerged that while his declared expenses were only £300, he had spent over £1,200 during the campaign. In a ruling in July 1874, Grant was unseated and ordered to pay costs.

Grant’s speculations included buying The Echo, a London evening newspaper, in 1875, but he sold it off within 12 months.

He was constantly pursued by creditors in the courts from 1876, and was declared bankrupt in 1877. He put the company involved in the narrow-gauge railway in Wales and that he had helped finance into receivership over a loan of £7,000, although he had made a clear profit of £8,800 from the project. The company appealed in 1878, securing a ruling that it was not liable for the debt and Grant lost the £7,000.

He was also involved in an international scandal involving the fraudulent sale of shares in the exhausted Emma Silver Mine at Alta, Utah, when he made a profit of £200,000 from the flotation. He tried to regain his fortune by establishing a new bank, the General Banking Company in 1878.

He stood again in Kidderminster in 1880 but was defeated by the Liberal candidate, John Brinton. Brinton’s first wife, who died in 1863, Ann Oldham, was from Dublin; his second wife, Mary Chaytor, was from Limerick.

The large house Grant had built in Kensington was demolished in 1883, the site sold, and the marble staircase was bought by Madame Tussaud’s. His last bank failed with liabilities of £800,000 and assets of £18,000, and he was back in the bankruptcy court in 1885.

Once one of the richest men in Britain, Grant spent his last years in relative poverty, and another order was made against him a few days before he died in Bognor on 30 August 1899 at the age of 67. As his coffin was carried to his grave, a rainstorm began and up to half the mourners decided to stay inside the church. The burial rites at his graveside were very brief.

Grant was the model for the character of the corrupt financier Augustus Melmotte in Anthony Trollope’s novel, The Way We Live Now, first published serially at the height of Grant’s fame in 1874-1875.

As for Luke White, the other Dublin-born candidate in Kidderminster in 1865, he succeeded his father as the 2nd Lord Annaly in 1873. He was State Steward to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (1868-1873) and Lord-Lieutenant of Co Longford (1873-1874). He died in 1888.

Albert Grant was MP for Kidderminster in 1865-1868 and again in 1874 … but lost the seat in Westminster for bribery and buying votes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The disturbing Irish links with the war memorial at Liverpool Street station

Sir Henry Wilson’s memorial plaque, beneath the World War I memorial in Liverpool Street Station, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

On way back to Stansted Airport earlier this week, I changed trains at Liverpool Street station, and stopped for a moment to photograph once again Frank Meisler’s bronze sculpture of the Children of the Kindertransport.

It is a monument I have stopped at many times in the past, and it resonated particularly at this time as I reflect on my visit to Berlin the previous week.

Then I was reminded of the impressive World War I Memorial in Liverpool Street Station, and thought it was worth visiting once again as we approach the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

I pass through Liverpool Street Station regularly throughout the year, but as I stopped for a moment at this memorial, with a row of poppy wreaths at its base, I notice a smaller plaque with an image and the inscription:

To the memory of
Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson Bart
GCB DSO MP
whose death occurred on Thursday 22nd June 1922
within two hours of his unveiling
the adjoining memorial

In the immediate aftermath of World War I, war memorials were erected to employees in many public places throughout the islands, particularly in railway stations. The war memorial in Kingsbridge/Heuston station in Dublin, for example, is in particularly good condition.

As I stood silently in Liverpool Street Station on Wednesday evening, I realised, of course, that Henry Wilson was one of the leading Irish-born generals during World War I.

When he unveiled the memorial, dedicated to employees of the Great Eastern Railway Company, Wilson had recently retired from the army as chief of the imperial general staff (CIGS) and had been elected to the House of Commons as the Unionist MP for North Down.

At Liverpool Street station, he spoke of the fallen, saying that ‘in doing what they thought right, they paid the penalty.’ Within hours of unveiling the memorial, he was assassinated on his own doorstep in Eaton Square by two English-born war veterans who had fought in World War I but who had become Irish republicans.

Wilson was born in Co Longford in 1864 into an Irish landed family. The Wilson family traced its family tree back to an ancestor who landed at Carrickfergus with William III in 1690 and settled at Rashee, Co Antrim. The family fortune was made a century later by his great-grandfather, Hugh Wilson, through a shipping business in Belfast. When Hugh Wilson died, the inheritance was used to buy landed estates in Dublin, Westmeath and Longford, and Henry Wilson was born at Currygrane, near Edgeworthstown, Co Longford.

Henry Wilson was unsuccessful in trying to get into Sandhurst and Woolwich, but he finally began a military in 1882 by joining the Longford Militia and training with the 5th Munster Fusliers.

His time in the Boer War forged a life-time friendship with Field-Marshal Earl Roberts (1832-1914), whose family was from Co Waterford. Roberts became Wilson’s patron, and recommended him for the post of commandant of the staff college at Camberley in 1907.

Wilson moved to the War Office in 1910 as director of military operations (DMO), where he developed a political alliance with the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law at a time when Irish Home Rule was a major political issue in Westminster. Wilson advised Law ‘that there was much talk in the army, and that if we were ordered to coerce Ulster there would be wholesale defections.’

The Curragh mutiny in March 1914 brought Wilson to the fore politically. Brigadier-General Hubert Gough (1870-1963), who also came from a Co Waterford landed family, and the officers under his command at the Curragh Camp in Co Kildare, warned they would not obey orders they believed would coerce Ulster into a united Ireland and they threatened to resign.

Wilson was one of the first to hear the news when General John Gough (1871-1915), younger brother of Hubert Gough, called to him at the War Office. The government, anxious to quash the crisis, provided a written guarantee that it would only order troops to assist the civil power in keeping law and order. Sir John French (1852-1925), later Earl of Ypres and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and also from an Irish family, agreed that troops would not be used to force Ulster to accept the Home Rule Bill.

Asquith considered taking disciplinary action against Wilson, but Wilson was now lionised as the ‘man who saved the Empire’ and became a popular figure on the political right.

Later, Wilson showed his military skills by securing the Anglo-French alliance and in planning the British expeditionary force sent to France after the outbreak of World War I. On a visit to the Western Front in 1915, Asquith dined with the officers, and over dinner remarked to French, ‘It is a curious thing, Field-Marshal, that this war has produced no great generals.’ Wilson quickly retorted, ‘No, Prime Minister, nor has it produced a statesman.’

Wilson was turned down for several promotions until Asquith’s resignation in 1916. As Prime Minister, Lloyd George brought Wilson back into the centre of events and appointed him Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) or professional head of the army in 1918, praising him as ‘the greatest strategist we possess.’

The War Memorial at Liverpool Street Station, unveiled by Henry Wilson in 1922 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

After the war, in June 1919, Wilson accepted promotion to field marshal, after Churchill had offered him a choice of promotion or a peerage. At 55, he was the youngest non-royal field marshal since Wellington. Wilson was also given the title of baronet, with the territorial designation ‘of Currygrane in the County of Longford.’ Over the next few years, he received honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast.

Wilson remained CIGS until February 1922. As the Irish War of Independence unfolded, he disapproved of the use of the Black and Tans but advocated the declaration of martial law. But Lloyd George’s negotiations with Sinn Féin and the worsening Irish situation led to the disintegration of relations between the Prime Minister and Wilson. In Wilson’s last eight months as CIGS, the two men barely spoke. Wilson thought the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed on 6 December 1921, a ‘shameful & cowardly surrender to the pistol’ by a ‘Cabinet of Cowards.’

With his resignation, Wilson turned his attention to party politics Westminster, and in 1922 he was elected unopposed as the Unionist MP for North Down. He was then 57 and had spent 40 years in the army.

Wilson’s contributions in the House of Commons were few, but were well received, even by his opponents. Asquith noted that on his maiden speech Wilson ‘spoke very well, and shortly, which is a real merit.’

He became the chief security adviser to the new Northern Ireland government, and Irish nationalists identified him with security policies in Northern Ireland, but wrongly linked him to Protestant sectarian attacks on Catholics. Wilson was a devout member of the Church of Ireland, and on occasion attend Roman Catholic services, but disliked ritual, especially among Anglican clergy.

Wilson was in full uniform when he was murdered on the steps of his home at 36 Eaton Place, London, on 22 June 1922 by two IRA members, Reginald Dunne and Joe O’Sullivan. One report says Wilson turned on his attackers with the word, ‘You cowardly swine!’ The assassination came five months after the Anglo-Irish treaty was signed, ending the War of Independence and just a few months after he was elected an MP.

Wilson’s assassination shocked the nation. It was the first assassination of an MP since the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812 and the last until Airey Neave’s assassination by the INLA in 1979.

Wilson was given a state funeral, the streets were thronged with mourners as the gun-carriage bearing his coffin body moved through the streets, and was buried in the crypt in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, beside his patron, Earl Roberts.

His murder led directly to the Civil War in Ireland, but to this day no historian has determined with satisfaction who ordered the murder.

The British government blamed the anti-treaty rebels, then occupying the Four Courts in Dublin. The British told the provisional government in Dublin to deal with the Four Court rebels or they would deal with them.

Arthur Griffith called Wilson’s shooting an ‘anarchic deed.’ The Defence Minister, Richard Mulcahy, threatened to resign. The leader of the anti-Treaty side, Eamon de Valera, said: ‘The killing of a human being is an awful act, but as awful when the victim is the humble worker or peasant, unknown outside his own immediate neighbourhood, as when the victim is placed in the seats of the mighty and his name known in every corner of the earth ... I do not know who they were who shot Sir Henry Wilson, or why they shot him ... I do not approve but I must not pretend to misunderstand.’

Under pressure from the British, Michael Collins borrowed two 18-pounder guns from the British army and shelled the Four Courts, leading to the Civil War.

Some historians have speculated that Collins ordered the assassination of Wilson before the treaty and forgot to rescind it. Some suggest it was a provocative act to give Collins the carte blanche to attack the Four Courts garrison. Scotland Yard investigations centred around the involvement of Sam Maguire, Collins’s chief intelligence officer in London.

Others suggest Dunne and O’Sullivan acted on their own, believing it would provoke a British retaliation and unite nationalists who had been bitterly divided by the treaty. Dunne had been in Dublin visiting Collins and Rory O’Connor in the Four Courts a week earlier.

Dunne and O’Sullivan were caught by an angry mob shortly after the shooting. Both were born and reared in London, and were army veterans. O’Sullivan had lost a leg at Ypres, but both men went on to join the IRA after World War I.

At their trial, the two were prevented from making a speech from the dock. They were hanged on 10 August 1922. Twelve days later, Michael Collins was killed in the Irish civil war.

The Wilson memorial in Liverpool Street, erected in 1922-1923, is the work of Charles Leonard Hartwell (1873-1951). It includes a bronze portrait mounted on marble tablet, and is signed in the bottom left corner of the relief panel, ‘C Hartwell ARA.’ Later Asquith would say Wilson was ‘not a man whom I would trust,’ while Lloyd George considered him ‘an intense and intriguing politician all the days of his life’. Wilson’s reputation was ruined in 1927 with the publication of an official biography that quoted extensively and injudiciously from his entertaining, indiscreet, and wildly opinionated diaries.

The bodies of Dunne and O’Sullivan’s were brought to Ireland in 1967, and reburied in the Republican Plot in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin. Sean Mac Stiofain, who was to become the Chief of Staff of the IRA, delivered the main oration, and an IRA firing party emerged from the crowd and fired a volley of shots over the graves.

A row of poppy wreaths beneath the War Memorial at Liverpool Street Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Ardagh: a village built as a ‘Moral and Social’ improvement for tenants

The Village Green at the centre of Ardagh … the village was planned and laid out by the Fetherston family of Ardagh House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

The present lay-out and streetscape of Ardagh, Co Longford, are due mainly to the vision of Sir Thomas John Fetherston, and his aunt, the widowed Frances (Solly), Lady Fetherston.

In 1862, aunt and nephew commissioned the Dublin-based architect James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911) Carroll was known mainly for his church designs, carried out various works at Ardagh and Ardagh House for Sir Thomas Fetherston between 1860 and 1865.

Carroll was commissioned to build much of the present village as a tribute to Sit Thomas’s uncle and Lady Fetherston’s late husband, Sir George Ralph Fetherston (1784-1853) of Ardagh House, the third baronet. The houses replaced a scattering of mud cabins and primitive houses in which the local population had lived, even after the Famine years.

Ardagh village is built mainly of cut stone houses clustered around the Village Green. The focal point of this village green is the beautiful clock tower, which was completed by Carroll in 1863 for Lady Fetherston to commemorate her late husband.

A typical cut-stone estate cottage in the centre of Ardagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The clock tower is a free-standing, limestone, four-stage clock tower, dated 1863. It has an octagonal stepped base of coursed ashlar limestone with clasping buttresses rising to crocketed pinnacles.

The second stage is on a square-plan with four gabled faces and there is an open ‘belfry’ stage on a square-plan with a spirelet over on an octagonal-plan, and a wrought-iron finial. There is a stepped plinth at the base.

The clock tower has a pointed, trifoliated wall plaque, with roll moulding that has a decorative label stop, engaged colonnettes, and date and lettering in low relief commemorating Sir George Ralph Fetherston.

There are pointed trifoliated window openings with roll mouldings that have decorative label stops and quarry glazing. The pointed arch entrance opening has a timber battened door with roll moulding. The base of the square profile gabled clock stage has quatrefoil decoration.

There is a clock face on the east elevation, and multifoil window openings with quarry glazing elsewhere. The carved decorations include colonnettes, inscribed banners, and heraldic shields. The gabled base of the spire has paired open trifoliated lancets, colonnettes and crockets.

The clock tower stands in landscaped surrounds with wrought-iron railings and a gate set in gabled ashlar limestone piers and a low boundary wall with a coursed limestone plinth.

The clock tower in the centre of Ardagh village (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This is a complex and richly decorated Gothic style memorial clock tower and a symbol of mortality. The stone masonry and craftsmanship are of the very highest quality. It is the focal point in Ardagh, adding a high level of artistic heritage in the centre of the village. Its Gothic style is ecclesiastical in character, an appropriate architecture for a symbol of mortality.

An inscription dedicates the village of Ardagh to the memory of Sir George Fetherston and commemorates his ‘life-long devotion to the moral and social improvement of his tenantry.’

The stone carving is said to be the work of a Carroll family from Co Wicklow, who had a limestone monument business.

The boundary walls, piers and the highly ornate wrought-iron work are also noteworthy features that further elevate the importance of this fine composition.

The main inscription on the clock tower reads:

1863

In Remembrance of Sir George Ralph Fetherston Baronet and of his Life Long Devotion to the Moral and Social Improvement of his Tenantry this Clock Tower and the Surrounding Buildings were Erected and the Site Wheron they Stand Purchased by Frances Elizabeth his Widow.

Melrose, the former steward’s or agent’s house in Ardagh is a detached, three-bay, two-storey house built on an L-shaped plan in 1863 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A ‘Travellers’ Rest’ seat was also built into the churchyard wall for use by passing travellers, and a village pump stands in the centre of the village green stands.

On the road leading from the village green stands three impressive houses served as the village courthouse and RIC barracks, the rent office and agent’s house, and the post office.

Other buildings include the Demesne National School, built in 1892, which is now the local Community Centre, and the early 19th century, three-storey rectory, built in 1823 at a cost of £1,300.

Ardagh is one of only a few remaining model estate villages in Ireland. Due to its distinctive architecture as a planned estate village and because it is so well preserved, it has been designated as a Heritage Village.

The Demesne National School, built in 1892, is now the local Community Centre in Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Ardagh House has survived rebuilding, fires and neglect over three centuries

Ardagh House, built in 1730 and rebuilt in the 19th century, is at the heart of Ardagh in Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

While I was visiting the church sites in Ardagh last week – including the site of old Saint Mel’s Cathedral, the ruins of a mediaeval church, and the 200-year old Saint Patrick’s Church – I was constantly aware of the presence of neighbouring Ardagh House.

The arrival of the Fetherston family in Ardagh in the early 18th century had a major influence on the life and character of this Co Longford village for the next two centuries.

The Fetherston family built Ardagh House as its residence, laid out Ardagh as a planned village, built many of the houses and cottages for their estate workers, helped to rebuild the parish churches, and also supplied the clock tower, one of the most visible landmarks in the village.

The first members of the Fetherston family moved to Ireland by 1651. Thomas Fetherston bought a house in Ardagh and 235 acres of land, from the Farrell family around 1703.

Around 1730, he built Ardagh House, which is now an eight-bay, two-storey – but originally three-storey – over-basement house. The house was standing in 1744-1745, when Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) visited Ardagh on his way between Ballymahon and Edgeworthstown. Ardagh House was so magnificent that the young Goldsmith mistook it for an inn. The Featherston family played along with his mistake and pretended to be the servant girls.

Goldsmith’s adventure at Ardagh House inspired the plot of his most successful play, She Stoops to Conquer, although Samuel Lewis states in 1837 that the play in question is Mistakes of a Night.

Thomas Fetherson died in 1749. His eldest son, the Very Revd John Fetherson, was Dean of Raphoe, while his youngest son, Sir Ralph Fetherston (1731-1780), who was MP for Co Longford (1765-1766), inherited Ardagh House and received the hereditary title of baronet in 1776.

Ardagh House and the title passed in 1780 to Sir Ralph’s son, Sir Thomas Fetherston (1759-1819), the third baronet. His son, Sir George Ralph Fetherston (1784-1853), then became the third baronet. He was educated at Trinity College Cambridge and was MP for Co Longford (1783-1800) and High Sheriff of Co Longford (1834). Sir George and his wife, the former Frances Solly, were mainly responsible for rebuilding Ardagh House, and laying out Ardagh as a planned, estate village.

Ardagh House, built in 1730, was altered in 1826 and again in 1863 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

John Hargrave (1788-1833) carried out ‘trifling alterations for Sir George Fetherston’ at Ardagh House in 1826, and the house would be altered again in 1863.

Ardagh House is set in landscaped surroundings to the north of Ardagh, and beside the ecclesiastical sites associated with Saint Patrick, Saint Mel and Saint Brigid.

Although Ardagh House was first built in the early 18th century, the house now has a predominantly early-to-mid 19th century appearance. The elegant porch and conservatory, and the former ballroom block to the east, were also added at this time.

The house has a single-bay porch with a tetrastyle porch to the centre of the front façade on the south side, adjoined to the east by a four-bay, single-storey conservatory to the east.

The house also has a three-bay, two-storey block, formerly a ballroom, that is attached as the south-east end, and there are multiple extensions to the east and the north-east of the house. There are gates and gate lodges to the west and the south-east, and the adjoining complex of outbuildings includes a stable block.

The estate walls surrounding Ardagh House were built mostly during the famine in the 1840s, when they provided relief work for the local population. Two road entrances from the village led into the grounds of Ardagh House. These entrances are beautifully built of cut stone with wrought iron railings and each with a gate lodge.

When Sir George died in 1853, he was succeeded briefly by his youngest brother, the Revd Sir Thomas Francis Fetherston (1800-1853), as fourth baronet, but he died six weeks later.

His eldest son, Sir Thomas John Fetherston (1824-1869) then succeeded to the estate and title. He carried out major work in extending the original house and in re-designing Ardagh village as a tribute to his late uncle Sir George. This work involved moving the main street away from the front of the house to its present location, the creation of the village green and building of most of the present houses. Much of this work was carried out with his widowed aunt, Frances Elizabeth, Lady Fetherston, who built the Clock Tower beside the Village Green in memory of her husband.

The Fetherston family developed much the village of Ardagh, mainly in the 1860s, and this work continue after Sir Thomas died on 21 September 1869.

During this period, the Dublin-born architect James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911) carried out extensive ‘alterations, repairs and additions’ for Sir Thomas Fetherston in 1860-1864.

Carroll was articled to George Fowler Jones, the architect of Cloghanadfoy Castle, Co Limerick. Carroll set up his own practice at 180 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, in 1857. By the end of 1870 he had been appointed architect to the United Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh.

Carroll had a considerable country house practice as well as designing several churches and other public buildings. In 1882, he took his nephew and pupil John Howard Pentland into partnership.

The last of the Fetherston baronets was Sir Thomas’s only son, the Revd Sir George Ralph Fetherston (1852-1923), who was still in his teens when he inherited the title and estates. He was in his mid-20s when he entered Salisbury Theological College to prepare for ordination in the Church of England. He served as a curate in Tenby and Worcester, and for six years was the Vicar of Pydeltrenthide in Dorset.

During World War I, he was an honorary chaplain to Millbank Military Hospital in London. He was one of the first two Anglican priests to serve as sheriff in his county, which was not permitted before the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. As High Sheriff of Co Longford in 1897, he received the Diamond Jubilee Medal and preached the Jubilee Sermon marking Queen Victoria’s jubilee in Saint Patrick’s Church, Ardagh.

His interests and hobbies included music, travel, cycling, fishing, photography, collecting ancient china and stamps, bird-watching and the study of insects. He travelled widely in Europe, Africa, North and South America, and was a Fellow and Vice-President of the Guild of Church Musicians and of the Victoria College of Music. He composition 150 alternative tunes for Hymns Ancient & Modern, and various chants, songs and other music.

The Fetherston estate extended to about 11,000 acres by 1900. But Sir George took little interest in the Ardagh estate, which was administered by trustees. For example, the plasterwork at Ardagh House was carried out in 1877 on behalf of the Fetherston trustees.

In 1903, Sir George entered into agreements with over 300 tenants to sell to them the freehold of their farms under the Irish Land Act 1903.

The Ardagh estate was not acquired by the Irish Land Commission, but instead it advanced the money needed by the tenants and others, and the holdings were vested in them by the Commission in 1922-1923. An area of 427 acres of bog land was vested in trustees for the use of buying new freeholders.

Sir George continued to own Ardagh House and some of the original demesne land. An attempt to destroy Ardagh House by fire in 1922 during the Irish Civil War may have been a local expression of dissatisfaction with the allocation of estate land or an effort to hasten the sale of the last remnants of the estate. Manuscripts written in Irish were salvaged from the flames of Ardagh House.

Sir George died in a nursing home in Worcester in 1923. He was buried in Tenby, the South Wales where he had been a curate. He had never married, and when he died the title of baronet died with him.

Ardagh House was bought by the Sisters of Mercy in the early 20th century, and from 1927 they used it as a training college. But a fire in 1948 resulted in the house being reduced to two storeys in height.

Nevertheless, Ardagh House remains a substantial former country house and retains much of its early character. Despite the fire, and apparent neglect in recent years, the surviving fabric includes some timber sliding sash windows, console brackets to the porch, plasterwork and fireplaces. Ardagh House continues to form the centrepiece of a large group of related sites and is an important element of the social history of Ardagh and Co Longford.

Ardagh House has survived changes of ownership and fires and is still standing after almost 300 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, is one of Hague’s finest churches in Ireland

Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford, seen from the north-east … designed by William Hague and one of the finest Gothic Revival churches in Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Close to the ruins of Saint Mel’s Cathedral in Ardagh and Saint Patrick’s Church, the 200-year-old Church of Ireland parish church, Saint Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church is a magnificent church that dominates the east approach into Ardagh.

Built in 1878-1881, it was design in the Gothic revival style by William Hague, a protégé of AWN Pugin. This spectacular church has an important place in the architectural heritage of Co Longford and is one of the finest Gothic revival churches in Ireland.

Saint Brigid’s Church was commissioned by Archdeacon James Reynolds and was completed under Monsignor James O’Farrell. It replaced an earlier ‘T-plan’ chapel at Ardagh, which stood to the east of the present site in the townland of Cross. The church was consecrated in 1905.

The church was designed by the architect William Hague (1836-1899), an eminent church architect of the day, and his church in Ardagh is considered to be one his best works.

The north side of Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

William Hague was born in Cavan in early 1836, the eldest of five sons of the builder William Hague and his wife, Catherine. As a pupil of the architect Charles Barry (1795-1860), best known for his role in rebuilding the palace of Westminster, Hague spent four years in Barry’s office.

After practising briefly as an architect in Cavan, Hague opened an office at 175 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, in 1861. He established a flourishing practice, particularly as the designer of Roman Catholic churches, designing or altering 40 to 50 churches throughout Ireland, including Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh. He was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI, 1863) and a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI).

Hague’s other works include Carlow Town Hall, Sligo Town Hall, Saint Eunan’s Cathedral, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, Saint Martin’s Church, Culmullin, Co Meath, the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Monasterevan, Co Kildare, and Saint John’s Church (RC), Kilkenny, and he completed many of the works at Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and the Church of Saint Augustine and Saint John (John’s Lane), Dublin.

Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, is well composed and well massed, and it is richly ornamented throughout with cut stone carving of the very highest quality. The contrast between the yellow sandstone masonry and the grey limestone detailing creates a highly picturesque composition. The quality of the design, building materials and finishes are immediately apparent outside the church. Inside, the beauty of Hague’s design and work is overwhelming.

The church is built on a cruciform plan, with side aisles, a three-bay clerestory level, single-bay transepts on the north and the south, a chancel, a sacristy attached to the north-east corner of chancel, and a three-bay narthex at the entrance gable on the west side, which has an advanced central gabled entrance porch.

The church has rock-faced snecked sandstone walls with buttresses, an advanced plinth course, dressed limestone quoins and extensive cut limestone dressings.

The pointed arch window openings have dressed and rock-faced limestone block-and-start surrounds. The roll mouldings have label stops including cast heads.

The west front of Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

At the west front, the pointed arch entrance, which is approached by stone steps, has a dressed and rock-faced limestone block-and-start surround, ordered roll mouldings with a trifoliated inner order, and a pair of label stops in the form of cast heads of Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid.

The timber battened double leaf door have elaborate wrought-iron strap hinges. Above is a carved stone figure of Saint Brigid and carved limestone plaque with the date ‘AD 1881’.

The church has a four-stage bell tower that was finished in 1903. A niche with a carved stone figure of Saint Patrick can be seen on the east side of the bell tower. This tower was designed on a square-plan with a spire above at the angle of the chancel and the north transept, with a stair tower on square-plan attached to the north face of the tower, and a conical roof over. The spire has with cut stone waterspouts in the form of the four evangelists.

The tower and spire were completed around 1903 by the Dublin-born Thomas Francis McNamara (1867-1947), a partner of Hague and an accomplished and prolific architect whose pupils once included the stained-glass artist Harry Clarke.

The church has pitched and lean-to natural slate roofs, with terracotta ridge cresting, dressed limestone coping on the gable ends, and cut stone kneeler stones with gabled stops.

There are carved limestone cross finials, a dressed limestone eaves course and corbels. The church has cast-iron rainwater goods with moulded hoppers, square-profile downpipes and fleur-de-lis wall brackets. There is a pair of coursed dressed limestone chimneystacks above the sacristy.

Inside Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Inside, there is an arch braced timber boarded ceiling, and the wall mosaics are worth noting, not only because they are attractive and complex, but also because they are relatively rare in Ireland.

The wall mosaics in the side chapels, chancel, and south transept depict the Annunciation and Saint Brigid.

There is a marble reredos and altar rail with beautiful work in Irish and Italian marble. The high altar and altar rail were designed by Hague and carved by James Pearse (1839-1900), father of the sculptor Willie Pearse and the Patrick Pearse (1879-1916), one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. James Pearse’s other works include the reredos in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick.

The five-light East Window in Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The five-light East Window, depicting the Nativity, which was added in 1919, is stained-glass by Mayer and Co of Munich, who worked on many windows for churches in Ireland. The four-light west window is also by Mayer and Co of Munich, but its date is uncertain.

Other stained-glass windows in the church are by J Watson and Co of Youghal, Co Cork. The lancet windows in the side aisles have 20th century stained and painted glass.

The four-light West Window in Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The three-bay arcade in the nave has alternating clustered polished granite and painted concrete columns, with cast heads to springing, carved stone shaft rings, and dressed limestone bases. Inside, there are stucco mouldings, capitals, corbels and polished granite colonnettes throughout the church too.

The carved stone Baptismal font has an elaborate gold painted metal cover on a pulley and chain system.

The graves of Archdeacon James Reynolds and Monsignor James O’Farrell are placed at the base of the side aisles on the inside.

The Parochial House beside Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford, was designed by Thomas Francis McNamara (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The neighbouring Parochial House or parish priest’s house was built in 1905 under the direction of Monsignor James O’Farrell. It was designed by Hague’s partner, the Dublin-born architect Thomas McNamara (1867-1947) of Hague and McNamara architects.

This is a detached, three-bay, two-storey house, with an advanced gabled bay to the south end of the front (east) elevation and a full-height canted bay window to the north end of the front elevation. Here too the contrast between the rock-faced yellow sandstone and the grey limestone creates an interesting tonal and textural variation to the façades.

There is an advanced bay with a single-storey canted bay window at the south elevation. There is a late 20th century single-storey extension behind the house.

This parochial house displays high quality craftsmanship throughout, and its deliberate asymmetry is typical of many substantial late Victorian and Edwardian buildings of this type. It is unusually grand and large for a parochial house in a small village, suggesting, and the intention may have been to highlight the place of Ardagh as the former seat of the Diocese of Ardagh.

The Annunciation depicted in a mosaic in Saint Brigid’s Church, Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Three churches on the site of Saint Mel’s Cathedral in Ardagh

The ruins of Saint Mel’s Cathedral in Ardagh stand on a site said to date back to the fifth century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

On the way back from Wineport Lodge near Athlone, Co Westmeath, last week, I visited the village of Ardagh, Co Longford, just off the N4 Dublin-Sligo road, 10 km from Longford town and 5 km from Edgeworthstown.

The Irish name Árd Archadh means the ‘high field.’ The village is set on high ground with good agricultural lands. About a mile from the village, a hill called Brí Leith is known locally as Ardagh Mountain, and is said to have been a centre of pre-Christian religious worship.

The ruins of Saint Mel’s Cathedral in the centre of Ardagh mark one of the most important ecclesiastical sites in Co Longford. These ruins are to the south-east of Saint Patrick’s, the Church of Ireland parish church, in a corner of the graveyard beside the road.

Tradition says Saint Patrick founded a church at Ardagh in the mid-fifth century, around 454. Here he baptised Maine, Lord of South Teffia, built a church, and consecrated his nephew, Saint Mel, the son of Patrick’s sister Darerca, as bishop, with Mel’s brother Melchu as co-bishop. It is said Mel and his three brothers had travelled with their uncle Saint Patrick to Ireland.

Although there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support these legends, Saint Mel is still regarded as the founder of the Diocese of Ardagh, and he invited Saint Brigid there to found a convent. He accepted her vows and gave her and her seven companions a site for their convent. There is no trace of an early convent in Armagh, although a holy well is named after Saint Brigid and is visited each year on her feast day, 1 February.

Saint Mel is said to have died ca 490, and his feast day is on 6 February. From the saint’s death, the line of episcopal succession in Ardagh is uncertain and the subject of speculation and legend.

Saint Erard is said to have been Bishop of Ardagh in 754, to have travelled to Rome with his companions and to have died died at Ratisbon, where he is also said to have been bishop.

At the Synod of Rath Breasail in 1111, Ardagh and Ardcarn were named as alternative centres for a diocese in East Connaught. Ardagh was chosen, and at the Synod of Kells in 1152, the Kingdom of Breifne was incorporated into the new Diocese of Kells, while the Diocese of Ardagh remained an independent see, with Saint Mel’s as its cathedral.

The first named Bishop of Ardagh was Mac Raith Ua Móráin (1152-1166). The diocese originally comprised the country of the Eastern Conmaice. It included the territory of the O’Ferals and the O’Quinns in Co Longford, called Annally, and the territory of Muintir Eolais, or the MacRannal (O’Reynolds) family in Co Leitrim.

The rival claims of Armagh and Tuam to primacy in Ardagh, beginning in 1177, led to a schism in the Diocese of Ardagh in1224. Pope Honorius III decided in favour of Armagh in 1216, this was confirmed by Pope Gregory IX in 1235, and a final settlement was agreed in 1326.

The O’Farrells, a local chieftain family, provided seven Bishops of Ardagh in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Early cathedral ruins

The ruins of Saint Mel’s Cathedral in Ardagh, with Saint Patrick’s parish church in the background (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The remains of Saint Mel’s Cathedral in Ardagh stand to the south-east of Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland parish church. Saint Mel is reputed to be buried within the walls of the cathedral ruins. However, this ruined church dates from three centuries after the saint’s death, and predates the introduction of a diocesan system in Ireland.

The present stone ruin, built in the eighth or ninth century, is of a cyclopean nature. Excavations have shown it was built on the site of an earlier timber church.

The ruins of Saint Mel’s Cathedral represent a typical early mediaeval church, with a simple rectangular room, accessed by a western lintelled doorway with inclined jambs, tapering from the base to the top.

The building is 10.35 metres long an 7.70 metres wide. The large blocks of stone that make up the walls sit on a stone plinth that projects slightly. Some limestone blocks in the wall measure an average of 2.5 metres by 0.90 metres. The roof would have been a high-pitched roof, supported somewhat by the antae located at the corners of the ruins.

The cathedral tower was destroyed in 1230 during a fight between supporters of rival claimants to the title of Bishop of Ardagh.

The cathedral was severely damaged in 1496 internecine warfare between factions in the O’Farrell family. A report to Rome said the cathedral was left without sacristy, bell tower or bell, and with only one altar open to the sky in a roofless church. and was never restored.

The cathedral remained in ruins in the 16th century, and when Bishop William O’Farrell died in 1516 Ardagh was said to consist of only four wooden houses and the ruined cathedral, ‘of which hardly the walls are left.’

Patrick MacMahon, who was Bishop of Ardagh in 1553-1572, was accused of leaving the cathedral in a ruinous state and doing nothing to repair it. Given the desolate state of Ardagh, the Bishops of Kilmore were also Bishops of Ardagh after 1604. A royal visitation in 1615 confirmed that the cathedral was still in ruins.

When William Bedell as Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh (1629-1642) visited Ardagh in 1630 and reported to William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, that Ardagh was ‘very miserable’ and that the cathedral and the bishop’s house had been razed to the ground.

Saint Mel’s crozier was found in the vicinity of the church in the 19th century. Then in 1967, archaeological excavations at the site identified the footprints of a wooden structure, dating to the eighth century, almost identical in dimensions to the present footprint of the upstanding stone structure.

The late mediaeval cathedral

The church ruins in the graveyard to the south-east of Saint Patrick’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The church ruins in the graveyard to the south-east of the 19th century Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland parish church may represent the late mediaeval church built to replace Saint Mel’s Cathedral.

This is a single-chamber rectangular building, with a west doorway and an east window, and three windows in both the north wall and the south wall. The church is covered with ivy and there is no architectural details that would indicate its date or age. There is a blocked doorway with a horizontal lintel in the graveyard wall.

This may be the ruined cathedral that Bishop Bedell saw when he visited Ardagh in 1630. If so, then it was ruined again during the rebellion of 1641.

The church or cathedral was restored after the Caroline restoration, but it was certainly probably abandoned by the beginning of the 19th century when the present parish church, Saint Patrick’s, was built in 1810-1812.

Saint Patrick’s Church

Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland parish church in Ardagh was built in 1810-1812 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland parish church was a cathedral church for a period during the early 19th century, until the Dioceses of Ardagh and Kilmore were united in 1839.

The church stands in the centre of Ardagh on an elevated site in landscaped grounds, surrounded by a graveyard to the south, east and west, and with random rubble stone boundary walls.

This church is typical of churches financed the Board of First Fruits between 1711 and 1833, with two or three bays and a tower and found throughout the Irish countryside. The front or west face of the church exhibits an interesting mix of classical influences in the cornice and frieze and Gothic details. The side vestibules are a feature found in a number of the Church of Ireland churches in Co Longford.

This may be a slightly quirky church, but it is attractive and retains its early form and character and its fabric, and fine craftsmanship can be seen in the carving and detailing.

Saint Patrick’s is a three-bay single-cell church built or rebuilt in 1810, with a three-stage tower on square-plan to the west, added around 1812. It is flanked on either side, to the north and south, by a single-bay vestibule and narthex.

The church is built of rendered walls over a dressed limestone plinth, with dressed limestone quoins to the corners.

The front of the church is reached by stone steps. The front or west elevation of the church has a parapet, with moulded cornices, a carved limestone quatrefoil decoration on the frieze, a date plaque and inscribed crosses and cross loops to west elevation.

At each side of the nave, the pointed arch window openings have dressed limestone block-and-start surrounds, sills and stone tracery with quarry and storm glazing.

The east end has a triple-light pointed arch window, with dressed limestone block-and-start surrounds, sills, timber tracery and with quarry and storm glazing. There are blind pointed arch window openings, with corbelled dressed limestone surrounds, and pointed arch timber louvered openings.

The square-headed entrance opening has a pointed arch dressed limestone surround to a plain tympanum. There is a timber battened double leaf door with elaborate strap hinges, flanked by carved limestone pilasters and a moulded cornice.

There are pointed arch window openings at the sides of the vestibules too, with dressed limestone block-and-start surrounds, sills and six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows with intersecting tracery to the heads.

The tower is built of random rubble stone at belfry level with cut stone quoins to the corners. It has cut stone corner pinnacles and a crenellated parapet. The tower also has pointed arch timber louvered openings.

The church has a pitched, natural slate roof with overhanging eaves and cast-iron rainwater goods.

The church cost £1,809 to build, and Lewis records in 1837 that the church in Ardagh is ‘a plain commodious building with a square tower, for the erection of which the late Board of First Fruits granted a loan of £900, in 1812, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have lately granted £301 for its repair.’

The tracery details in the nave windows suggest they were altered in the second half of the 19th century, perhaps to designs by the architect James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911), who carried out extensive works in Ardagh between 1860 and 1865.

The elevated position and the prominent site in the village makes it a dominant feature in the surrounding landscape. It forms part of an interesting group of related buildings, including the former rectory and the lychgate at the entrance to the church.

The graveyard has a number of good quality grave markers, the earliest of which is dated 1818.

Saint Patrick’s Lychgate

The lychgate leading into Saint Patrick’s churchyard was erected in 1863 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A charming timber lychgate at the main, west entrance to Saint Patrick’s churchyard was erected in 1863. This is composed of a half-hipped terracotta flat tiled roof, with slates on each side, supported by a painted open timber post construction on red brick bases. There are double leaf timber gates with latches.

A lychgate was the place where priests traditionally met coffins before a church funeral. The word lych has its origins in Old English and means ‘corpse.’ Although lychgates are a typically Anglican feature, they are unusual in Ireland. In England, they can date from the 13th century, but many are thought to date from the 15th century. The tile roof is also an unusual feature in Ireland.

This lychgate was probably designed by the architect James Rawson Carroll (1830-1911), who carried out a number of works in Ardagh for Sir Thomas Fetherston in 1860-1865, when he was commissioned to improve the village as a memorial to his uncle, Sir George Fetherston.

Today’s cathedrals

In 1961, the parish church of Saint John in Sligo became the cathedral of the Dioceses of Ardagh and Elphin as the Cathedral Church of Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, and the dean is the Dean of Elphin and Ardagh. In the renaming, the stories of Saint Mel have been forgotten.

In the Roman Catholic Church, the Bishops of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise lived in Ballymahon from 1788, but the cathedral was moved to Longford in 1838, and today the cathedral for the Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise is Saint Mel’s Cathedral in Longford.

Inside Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland parish church in Ardagh, Co Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)