How Emerald Hill in Singapore has links with the Cuppage family of Coleraine and Coolock

A December sunset at Clare Hall, Coolock … Clare Grove gave its name to Clare Grove in Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing the other evening about my recent visit to Emerald Hill in Singapore with its colourful and carefully-restored low-rise heritage houses, its rich collection of Peranakan houses and shopfronts and its Perankan and Sino-Baroque architecture that make it a unique part of Singapore’s architectural heritage.

I thought initially that the name Emerald Hill referred to the past green and forested area the area may have been in the days before Stamford Raffles and William Farquhar, when Emerald Hill was covered in primary rainforest.

But now I am convinced that Emerald Hill, and three of the first houses built in the area by the Cuppage family – Erin Lodge, Fern Cottage and Clare Grove – were all named in a romantic harkening back to Ireland and the ancestral homes of William Cuppage (1807-1871), who first began to develop Emerald Hill almost 200 years ago.

The colourful shophouses on Emerald Hill, facing the original Singapore Chinese Girls School (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full-screen viewing)

William Cuppage was a descendant of an Irish family that included many prominent church and military figures in the 18th and 19th centuries. The family homes in Ireland included Clough Castle, near Ballymena, and Mount Edwards, near Cushendall, Co Antrim, and Clare Grove, later Clare Hall, in Coolock, north Dublin.

The Cuppage or Cuppaidge family may have been from Germany originally, and moved from Cumberland in England to Ireland in 1604 when Faustus Cuppaidge bought lands near Coleraine, Co Derry. His son, Stephen Cuppaidge, was MP for Coleraine in 1641 and 1664, and was the father of John Cuppaidge, who bought Clough Castle, Co Antrim.

In military life, at least five members of the Cuppage family were officers in the Madras army in colonial India. In Church life, the Very Revd George Cuppage was Dean of Connor (1739-1743) and Rector of Coleraine, Co Derry. He married a great-aunt of the orator Edmund Burke, bringing the names Edmund and Burke into the family, and his son, the Revd Burke Cuppage was also Rector of Coleraine (1743-1768).

The Revd Burke Cuppiage was the father of Lieut-Gen William Cuppage (1756-1832). He had a distinguished military career in Gibraltar before going to in India in 1808-1809 to lead an expedition to restore the Raja of Panna, Kishor Singh, to his territorial lands in Bundelkhand. Later, he was inspector-general of the Royal Artillery and the Navy in 1815. His son, Lieut-Gen Sir Burke Douglas Cuppage (1794-1877), fought at the Battle of Waterloo under the Duke of Wellington and was Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey (1863-1868).

Another branch of the family lived in Lambstown, Co Wexford, from the 17th century, and Robert Cuppage (1619-1683) of Lambstown was a leading Quaker.

The branch of the family from which William Cuppage of Singapore descends goes back to Canon John Cuppaidge (1658-1725), a brother of the Revd Burke Cuppiage. William was Rector of Magheralin, Co Down, Prebendary of Dromaragh and Vicar-General of Dromore. He married Eizabeth Waring of Waringstown, Co Down, in 1693 and their six children included two sons:

1, Richard Cuppiadge (1698-1765).
2, John Cuppiadge (1704-1797).

Captain John Cuppaidge (1704-1797) was born in Magheralin, Co Down, and matriculated at Trinity College Dublin in 1721 aged 17, but did not take a degree. He enlisted in the army in 1724, and by 1727 he was an ensign in Colonel Sandes Regiment.

In 1730, he married Mary Otway, daughter of James Otway and granddaughter of John Otway of Castle Otway, near Nenagh, Co Tipperary. They lived in Killowning, Nenagh, Co Tipperary, and Ballyborden, Co Offaly, and were the parents of five children, including two sons:

1, John Loftus Cuppaidge or Cuppage.
2, George Cuppaidge.

Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin … William Cuppage’s grandparents were married there in 1768 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The elder son, John Loftus Cuppage married Dorothy Handcock in Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, on 17 December 1768. She was a daughter of the Very Revd Richard Handcock (1712-1791), Dean of Achonry (1752-1791), and a sister of William Handcock (1761-1839), 1st Viscount Castlemaine, MP for Athlone (1783-1801), Governor of Athlone (1813-1839) and Governor of Co Westmeath (1814-1831). Another brother, Richard Handcock (1767-1840), 2nd Baron Castlemaine, was MP for Athlone (1800-1801).

John Loftus Cuppage died on 15 April 1797 in Moydrum Castle, Athlone, the home of his brother-in-law, William Handcock. As for Handcock, he was killed on the Night of the Big Wind in 1839 when the wind blew his bedroom shutters open at Moydrum Castle and hurled him ‘so violently upon his back that he instantly expired’.

Dorothy and John Loftus Cuppiadge were the parents of:

1, Richard Cuppage.
2, William Cuppage (1761-1819).
3, George Cuppage.

Lieutenant-Colonel William Cuppage (1761-1819), their second son, was born in Ireland in 1761, and as a young man he went to India and became an officer in the Bengal Army. He was one of ten young Irish volunteers who arrived in India in 1781 to join Eyre Coote’s army and who were given commissions in the Bengal Army, which was part of the East India Company Service.

Colonel William Cuppage did not marry, but he and his ‘housekeeper’ Elizabeth Ramsay were the parents of at least four children, three daughters and a son:

1, Maria (1803-1861), married Alfred Leonard Willis in Calcutta Cathedral in 1826.
2, William Cuppage (1807-1871), who moved to Singapore.
3, Mary Ann, born 1809, married John Reilly Archer Amman in 1829.
4, Eliza, born 1813, married William Gibson in Calcutta Cathedral in 1838.

Some sources suggest William Cuppage also had a home in Dun Laoghaire (Kingstown), Co Dublin. But he seems to have lived in India for most of his life and at the age of 58 he died on 1 July 1819 at Fatehgarh in Farrukhabad District in the State of Uttar Pradesh, India, and he was buried there.

Athlone Castle … William Handcock, Governor of Athlone, was a great uncle of William Cuppage of Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The only known son of Colonel William Cuppage, William Cuppage (1807-1871), was born on 2 August 1807. He moved to Singapore, and first leased Emerald Hill in 1837. In 1845 he secured a permanent grant for his nutmeg plantation. Cuppage moved from his home on Hill Street to Emerald Hill in the early 1850s and built two houses, Erin Lodge and Fern Cottage.

Although his nutmeg plantation failed in the 1860s because of disease, he held onto his land on Emerald Hill, and he was Assistant Postmaster General of Singapore.

Cuppage married Sarah Bradshaw in Singapore on 17 December 1840. After he died in 1872, his plantation was left to his daughters and in 1890 it was sold to one of his sons-in-law, the lawyer Edwin Koek.

Koek turned the area into an orchard and built another house that he named Claregrove, after Clare Grove, near Coolock, the principal Cuppage family home near Dublin. But this orchard failed too, Koek went bankrupt, and the property was sold to Thomas E Rowell in 1891.

The three houses once owned by the Cuppage family were later demolished: Fern Cottage made way in 1906 for terrace houses; Claregrove gave way in 1924 to the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School; and Erin Lodge was replaced with more terrace houses.

William Cuppage’s distant cousin, Edmond Floyd Cuppage (1809-1864), lived at Clare Grove, Coolock, Co Dublin, and Mount Edwards, Co Antrim. Edmond was the son of General Alexander Cuppage (1762-1848) of Clare Grove, and the grandson of the Revd Alexander Cuppage (1727-1772), who was drowned between Ballycastle, Co Antrim, and Rathlin Island.

Edmund’s father-in-law was George Thompson of Clonskeagh Castle, Dublin, while his sister, Marianne Cuppage, married on 6 May 1828 the Revd Francis Law of Salmesbury, a son of Belinda Isabella Comerford and the Revd Francis Law (1768-1807), Vicar of Attanagh and Rector of Cork; Belinda was a daughter of Patrick Comerford, a Cork wine merchant. Their first child, Francis Law (1829-1898), was born at Clare Grove in Dublin on 27 February 1829.

Clare Grove was later renamed Claregrove Hall and then Clare Hall, before becoming the Clare Manor Hotel. The house burned down in a fire, and it later became the site of the Clare Hall shopping centre, which opened in 2004, but the ice house of the original house remains.

The setting sun reflected on the glass walls of the shopping centre at Clare Hall, Dublin … on the site of Clare Grove and the home of the Cuppage family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Emerald Hill is a quiet corner of Singapore with a colourful heritage of Peranakan architecture

The colourful shophouses on Emerald Hill, facing the original Singapore Chinese Girls School (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full-screen viewing)

Patrick Comerford

During our short visit to Singapore last month, we spent much of an afternoon in Emerald Hill with its colourful and carefully-restored low-rise heritage houses, a quiet corner tucked away behind the busy shopping malls and traffic of Orchard Road.

Emerald Hill has a rich collection of Peranakan houses and shopfronts and its Perankan and Sino-Baroque architecture make it a unique part of Singapore’s architectural heritage.

This is a conservation area and the residents have become used to curious tourists coming to see and photograph their homes. For half a century or more it was home to many members of the wealthy Peranakan community. Small metal signs along the way offer bite-sized facts about many of the houses. The house numbers on Emerald Hill are even on one side and odd on the other.

But, almost two centuries ago, Emerald Hill was a nutmeg and fruit orchard, established in 1837 by Singapore’s acting Postmaster General, William Cuppage, who came from an Irish family that once lived in Coolock in north Dublin.

The Perankan and Sino-Baroque architecture make Emerald Hill a unique part of Singapore’s architectural heritage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Before the days of Stamford Raffles and William Farquhar, Emerald Hill was covered in primary rainforest. By the early 1800s, many Chinese immigrants settled on the land, growing gambier and pepper to make a living but exhausting the land. By the time William Cuppage (1807-1871) came to own the land legally, it had already become a barren field.

Cuppage first leased Emerald Hill in 1837 and in 1845 he secured a permanent grant for his nutmeg plantation, but this failed in the 1860s because of disease.

Cuppage moved from his home on Hill Street to Emerald Hill in the early 1850s and built two houses, Erin Lodge and Fern Cottage. After he died in 1872, his plantation was left to his daughters and in 1890 it was sold to one of his sons-in-law, the lawyer Edwin Koek. Koek turned the area into an orchard and built another house that he named Claregrove. But his orchard failed, he went bankrupt, and the property was sold to Thomas E Rowell in 1891.

Emerald Hill is a quiet corner tucked away behind the busy shopping malls and traffic of Orchard Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The land, totalling 13.2 ha, and its three houses – Erin Lodge, Fern Cottage and Claregrove – were bought in 1900 by two businessmen, Seah Boon Kang and Seah Boon Kiat. The three houses once owned by the Cuppage family were later demolished: Fern Cottage made way in 1906 for terrace houses; Claregrove gave way in 1924 to the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School; and Erin Lodge was replaced with more terrace houses.

Seah Eng and Seah Boon Kang sold small pieces of the land to new owners who went on to build the terrace houses and shophouses on Emerald Hill. They subdivided the property in 1901 into 38 plots, 10 of which they kept while the remaining 28 lots were sold to various people.

Three lots were bought by an influential Peranakan doctor and social reformer, Dr Lim Boon Keng (1869-1957). He was one of the earlier residents of Emerald Hill, and lived at No 2 Emerald Hill, then known as Claregrove. His was the most prominent among the Straits Chinese families that lived on the hill.

The builders of the houses at Emerald Hill Road were mostly Peranakans or Straits-born Chinese in general. The first house in the area was built in 1902. By 1918, one-third of the houses had been built.

The houses along Emerland Hill combine the influences of traditional European architecture and Peranakan and Chinese culture (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Majolica tiles, abundant foliage and mood-boosting paint jobs are clear design features along Emerald Hill. The houses further along the street reflect the influence of traditional European architecture, including cast iron-balustrade and classical pilasters, alongside architectural features steeped in Chinese symbolism, creating an eclectic yet elegant vintage aesthetic. There are houses with Peranakan tiles, carved timber window screens and half-length timber doors known as pintu pagar.

Many architects contributed to this eclectic combination of Chinese and European architectural elements. The terraces from 8 to 16 Emerald Hill Road were built in 1911 for the developer Phua Poh Kim by Tan Seng Chong, the first Chinese person in Singapore to start his own architectural practice. The houses at 64 to 74 were designed in 1916 by Johannes Bartholomew (Birch) Westerhout for Puey Soo Keng. Westerhout was also the Municipal Commissioner (1929-1934) and a magistrate.

On the other side of the street, a row of houses show whitewashed façades and traditional Teochew gateways with emerald green, porcelain roof ornamentations. The houses at 39 and 43 were built for Goh Kee Hoon and were designed in 1905 by Wan Mohamad Kassim, the leading architect at GA Fernandez and Company.

No 41 Emerald Hill is one of the houses built for Goh Kee Hoon and designed by Wan Mohamad Kassim in 1905 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

No 41 Emerald Hill was restored in 1990-1991, and boasts fine craftsmanship in its wood, metal and plasterwork. The intricately carved antique pintu pagar pr half-length door at the entrance was salvaged from another house in Smith Street in Chinatown.

No 45 is a terraced house designed in 1903 for the Seah brothers by Wee Teck Moh, an architect best known for his classic Sino-Baroque shophouses. The house has the widest frontage on Emerald Hill and a swallow tail roof ridge, giving it the appearance of a Chinese temple. The broad site makes it possible for the internal courtyard to be centrally located instead of at the side, as with most terraced houses.

The house has a distinctive traditional Teochew-style gateway, with an upturned swallow tail roof ridge decorated with cut porcelain pieces known as jian nian. When house was restored in 1990s, it kept most of its original fabric, and much of what had been lost over the years was recovered, returning the house to its original glory.

No 45 Emerald Hill was designed in 1903 for the Seah brothers by Wee Teck Moh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

RT Rajoo (Rethinam Thamby Rajoo Pillay), an architect and contractor who died in 1929, designed 17 properties from 53 to 85 in the mid-1920s for Low Koon Yee, a prominent Teochew business figure.

From No 134 on, the heritage houses end and modern apartment blocks begin.

The original Singapore Chinese Girls School (SCGS) stood for almost 70 years at 37 Emerald Hill Street. The school was founded in 1899 by Dr Lim Boon Keng, Sir Song Ong Siang and Khoo Seok Wan for Peranakan girls.

During the Japanese occupation, the building of new houses stopped. After World War II, houses continued to be built on Emerald Hill Road until the 1950s. But most of the Peranakan family started moving out of Emerald Hill in the 1950s, while other plots of lands were developed as blocks of flats.

Many of the streets and roads off Emerald Hill Road also retain interesting examples of Peranakan and ‘Sino-Baroque’ architecture, including Hullet Road, built in 1914 and named after RW Hullet, a former principal of Raffles Institution; Saunders Road, named in 1927 after a British colonial judge, Charles James Saunders; and Peranakan Place, with a row of six two-storey shophouses first built in 1902.

The Ong family transformed an abandoned alley between two shophouses into the Alleybar in the 1990s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The first few residential houses along the row have been transformed in recent years into bars and restaurants. The Alley Bar at 2 Emerald Hill Road is in one of the oldest traditional terrace houses.

The Ong family transformed an abandoned alley between two shophouses into the Alleybar and it opened in 1999.

Inside the Alleybar, opened in 1999 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

We stopped for a while in Que Pasa at 7 Emerald Hill Road, which offers over 100 wines from all over the world. As we waited for the rain to ease off, I had a glass of wine from with what they describe as a library collection of rare wines.

Emerald Hill often features in Singaporean literature, and provides the setting for some of the short stories by the writer Goh Sin Tub. Stella Kon’s play Emily of Emerald Hill is set in one of houses built in 1902. It was one of the bigger houses on Emerald Hill, with two tennis courts and a later front lawn but later pressed up against new apartment blocks.

But I also wanted to find out more about the original proprietor of Emerald Hill, William Cuppage, his Irish roots, and why he gave Irish names to his properties in Singapre, and whether he kept in touch with his family links back in Ireland.

More of that research in the days to come, I hope.

Que Pasa at 7 Emerald Hill Road offers over 100 wines from all over the world (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

‘Dust in sunlight and memory in corners’ … sharing memories of ‘Little Jerusalem’

‘Dust in sunlight and memory in corners’ … sunset at Clare Hall this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

The Sunday after Easter is sometimes called ‘Low Sunday’ for a variety of reasons –ranging from the spiritual anti-climax some feel after the great celebration of Easter, to the fact that the high attendances on Easter Day do not carry through to the following Sunday.

For some people, this Sunday after Christmas is another ‘low’ Sunday. But the attendance figures seemed to be good in Christ Church Cathedral for the Cathedral Eucharist this morning [28 December 2014]. I was the deacon, reading the Gospel and assisting with at the administration of the Holy Communion.

The Dean of Christ Church, the Very Revd Dermot Dunne, presided, and the preacher was the Revd Cecilia Grace Kenny, who spoke about the prophecy of Simeon and Anna when the Christ Child was presented in the Temple in Jerusalem by the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph (see Luke 2: 22-40).

Next Sunday [4 January 2015] marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the poet TS Eliot on 4 January 1965, and I was reminded this morning of his poem ‘A Song for Simeon,’ which is based on this Gospel passage and the canticle Nunc Dimittis.

This is one of four poems by TS Eliot published between 1927 and 1930 and known as the Ariel Poems. In ‘Journey of The Magi’ and ‘A Song for Simeon,’ Eliot shows how he persisted on his spiritual pilgrimage. He was baptised and confirmed in the Church of England on 29 June 1927; ‘Journey of the Magi’ was published two months later, in August 1927, and a few months later Faber, for whom he worked, published ‘A Song for Simeon’ as part of a series of Christmas booklets. In all, Eliot wrote four poems for the series.

Both ‘Journey of The Magi’ and ‘A Song for Simeon’ draw on the stories of Biblical characters concerned with the arrival of the Christ Child. Both poems deal with the past, with a significant Epiphany event, with the future – as seen from the time of that event, and with a time beyond time – death.

‘A Song for Simeon,’ as with ‘Journey of The Magi,’ is also in the mouth of an old man, the Prophet Simeon in the Temple in Jerusalem. Here too, Eliot draws on a Christmas sermon by Lancelot Andrewes: “Verbum infans, the Word without a word, the eternal Word not able to speak a word.” In Eliot’s words, the old man sees a faith that he cannot inhabit in “the still unspeaking and unspoken Word.”

I hope to speak about Eliot again next Sunday when I preach in Zion Church, Rathgar, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.

After coffee in the Cathedral Crypt following this morning’s Eucharist, three of us went for lunch in La Dolce Vita in Cow Lane, in the Temple Bar area near the cathedral.

This was my first time to meet my cousin Stephen Comerford – his late father, also Stephen Comerford, was my second cousin. There were family stories to recall, reminiscences to share, and memories to exchange as we recalled Comerford families in Wexford and Dublin, the family links with Comberford, Lichfield and Bunclody, and competed to see who could remember the most Jewish shops in the Clanbrassil Street area.

It was like we had moved from Simeon and Anna in the Temple in Jerusalem to the Erlichs and Rubensteins in Little Jerusalem.

‘The winter sun creeps by the snow hills’ … the setting sun reflected on the glass walls of the shopping centre at Clare Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Later, two of us went on for a Christmas visit to other family members. On the way back, as we stopped briefly at Clare Hall, we could see in the east the snow-filled clouds that are hovering above the Irish Sea but not moving into the coast.

To the west, the sun was setting and casting long rays onto the high glass walls of the shopping centre and the surrounding buildings. There was such a clear sky, and colours were so sharp it might have been possible to imagine that this was a summer evening in Greece. And I recalled those lines by TS Eliot in ‘A Song for Simeon’:

The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
…
My life is light …
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners

Christ Church Cathedral before this morning’s Cathedral Eucharist (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

A Song for Simeon (TS Eliot)

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season had made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have given and taken honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

Four weddings and a funeral ... or four committees and a funeral?

The Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Coolock ... the church dates from 1760, but the church site is pre-Norman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

In the 1994 romantic comedy movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, Rowan Atkinson—better known as Mr Bean – has a cameo role as Father Gerald, a bumbling and stuttering nervous priest who keeps fluffing his lines.

The movie seems to take place in an England of eternal summer, a land that consists almost entirely of green and pleasant countryside and the upper middle-class parts of London.

The first wedding is that of Angus and Laura, and features Father Gerald in a small role as a trainee priest. By the time of the second wedding, when Bernard and Lydia are getting married, Father Gerald is now in holy orders and is a friend of the family who offers to conduct their wedding, his first-ever wedding ceremony. By now, he is even more gaffe-prone, he gets the names of the bride and groom wrong. Despite a bishop being present, and he speaks in malapropisms at the wedding of an “awful wedded wife” instead of a “lawful wedded wife,” and of the couple being “johned in matrimony.”

Father Gerald: ... through your son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Goat – ...Ghost, one God forever and ever. Amen. (...) Bernard, repeat after me ... I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment ...

Bernard: I do solemnly declare that I know not any lawful impediment ...

Father Gerald: Why, I, Lydia..

Bernard: Why, I, Bernard ...

Father Gerald: Sorry – why, I, Bernard Godfrey Saint John Delaney ...

Bernard: why, I, Bernard Geoffrey Saint John Delaney ...

Father Gerald: May not be joined in matrimony to Lydia John Hibbot.

Bernard: May not be joined in matrimony to Lydia Jane Hibbot.

Father Gerald: Lydia, repeat after me ... I do solemnly declare (...) that I know not of any lawful impediment why, I, Lydia Jane Hibbott, may not be johned in matrimony ...

Lydia: May not be joined in matrimony ...

Father Gerald: I call upon those persons here present to witness that I, Bernard ... (long pause) Delaney, do take Lydia Jane Hibbott ...

Bernard: (...) that I, Bernard Delaney, do take Lydia Jane Hibbott ...

Father Gerald: To be my awful wedded wife.

Bernard: To be my lawful wedded wife.

Father Gerald: That’s right. That’s right. May Almighty God bless you all, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spiggot – Spirit.

All: Amen.

Gareth: Bravo.

Not that any of my students are going to end up like Father Gerald, but at least he gets the job down.

I suppose most people in ordained ministry can identify with Father Gerald, not because we are so bumbling and accident-prone, but because it puts us in touch with our constant fears of getting it wrong at sacred, special and public moments such as weddings and funerals.

No-one ever promises you that ordained ministry is going to be about “four weddings and a funeral” – but in the past two days most of my working hours have been taken up with four committees and a funeral.

The committee meetings included a faculty meeting, the Interfaith Working Group, the Commission for Christian Unity and Dialogue, and, this afternoon, the Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland.

This morning’s funeral took place in the Parish Church of Saint John the Evangelist on Tonalegee Road in Coolock in north Dublin, which I first visited around 30 years ago, when the curate was the Revd Kenneth Kearon, now General Secretary of the Anglican Communion Office.

The area of Coolock or ‘Culocke’ was dependent on the Priory of Swords until the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, but in the late 12th century the parish was granted by the Archbishop of Dublin to the Priory of Lanthony in Gloucestershire.

The list of vicars begins around 1186 but comes to an end in 1243. However, there are more continuous records from the mid-16th century, when the vicar was Marmaduke Middleton, later Bishop of Waterford. By the 1590s, the right of presentation passed to the Moore family, who became Earls of Drogheda.

The oldest gravestone in the church grounds dates from 1688 and marks the grave of a man named Thomas Ward who lived in Kilmore. A new Church of Saint John the Baptist was built in 1760 on the site of an older church, Saint Brendan’s, on the banks of the River Santry, opposite Saint Brendan’s Holy Well.

The first Arthur Guinness, founder of the brewery, for example, was a churchwarden in the newly-built Saint John’s 1777 and in 1782. A plaque on the church tower says it was added in 1791 by the Vicar of Coolock, the Very Revd Peter Carleton (1758-1825), who was also the Dean of Kiallloe.

The Very Revd Richard Ponsonby (1772-1853), who was Vicar of Coolock from 1821 to 1828, was a son of Lord Ponsonby. He was Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral at the same time, before becoming Bishop of Killaloe and then Bishop of Derry and Raphoe.

Inside, the church has interesting monuments honouring local people and colourful stained-glass windows. The windows in the church porch honour local people who died in World War I, including Captain George C Colvill.

In 1924, Coolock was united with Santry and Glasnevin, and in 1960 it was united with Raheny. The present rector is the Revd James Carroll, who conducted this morning’s funeral.

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh ... three new deacons were ordained here earlier this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Meanwhile, the furtive round of committees, weddings, funerals and other ministerial tasks continues apace. Earlier in the week, I was back in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, for the ordination of three new deacons by Archbishop Alan Harper – the Revd Jacob Caldwell (Magherafelt) and the Revd Richard Conlan (Ballymore) for the Diocese of Armagh, and the Revd Stephanie Woods for the Diocese of Armagh.

On the way back from Armagh to Dublin, two of us stopped off in Skerries for short break.

Although it was now dark, we drove around the harbour in the lights of the late evening and early night, and then took a short walk on Red Island, where the sound of the wives and deep blues in the night skies brought a sense of refreshment and calm.

Back in Skerries, we had dinner in Tarragon before heading on south to Dublin.

The deep blues of the late evening sky on Red Island in Skerries last Sunday night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

The third year students returned on Monday morning, and on Friday I am in Edgehill Theological College, Belfast, to lead the reflections at the retreat marking the start of the new academic year.

The last ordinations of deacons this year take place next week. On Sunday afternoon, Yvonne Ginnelly, John Godfrey (Greystones), Nicola Halford (Athy), Sarah Marry (Booterstown) Martin O’Connor (Saint Anne’s and Saint Stephen’s) and James Wallace (Rathfarnham) are being ordained in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin; at the same time, Keith Marshall is being ordained in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Trim, Co Meath; and on Friday evening, Naomi Quinn is to be ordained in Belturbet, Co Cavan.

May they enjoy the many weddings they are asked to conduct and weep with those who mourn at the funerals they take part in.