COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
The former Methodist Church in Castlethorpe, Buckinghamshire … first built in 1811, it closed in 1979 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Patrick Comerford
I was writing yesterday about the Church of Saint Simon and Saint Jude in Castlethorpe, which celebrates its patronal festival tomorrow (28 October), and about the village of Castlethorpe the previous evening. But for over a century and a half, the north Buckinghamshire village, near Stony Stratford and Wolverton, also had a thriving Methodist community and a lively Methodist chapel, from 1811 until 1979.
Methodism had a strong presence in this area going back to a time when John and Charles Wesley regularly preached throughout Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. John Wesley visited Stony Stratford on at least five occasions and the Wesley Elm under which he preached stood in the south-west corner of the Market Square.
However, time and Dutch elm disease have taken their toll, and the last remains of the tree in Stony Stratford were removed and replaced with an oak tree in 2007.
The Wesleyan chapel in Castlethorpe was opened in 1811. The old chapel was small, merely a room 26 ft long by 20 ft wide, and it was once described as a ‘right little tight little’ place.
With the spread and popularity of Methodism in the village, the chapel became far too small for the needs of the congregation.
It was enlarged in 1888 and commemorative foundation stones were laid on 11 July 1888 by Captain Edmund Hope Verney, a former naval captain, and William Grimes, who was described as ‘the founder of Wesleyan Methodism in the village’ and who had seen the opening of the original chapel 77 years before.
Captain Verney placed a £5 note on his stone and said it was the first foundation stone he had ever laid. He recalled his time as a midshipman in the Crimea War and spoke of his visits to the trenches in Sebastopol. He then said Methodists in Castlethorpe were engaged in a great war that would last as long as life. To cheers he said it would always be battle of good against evil, of all the powers of strength of good and upright men and women against all the evil influences of the world.
Before the ceremony a short prayer meeting was held an improvised plank and canvas tabernacle erected close by, and short financial statement was made by the Rev. J. Harris, superintendent of the circuit.
The chapel was extended on the north side, and completed extended chapel was opened in October 1888. The architect was W Poole of Woburn Sands and the contractor was T Islip of Northampton.
Four years earlier, Margaret Verney, later Lady Verney, had laid the foundation stone of the Congregational Church in Winslow in 1884. Captain Edmund Hope Verney (1838-1910) had been the MP Buckinghamshire (1885-1886), and would later become the MP for Buckingham (1889-1891). His stepmother was a sister of Florence Nightingale, and Verney, and he was a Liberal politician who supported Irish Home Rule.
But Verney, who spoke so morally as he laid one of the foundation stones for Castlethorpe Methodist Church in 1888, was expelled from the House of Commons in 1891 and his name was removed from the naval list after he pleaded guilty and was convicted of procuring a girl under 21 years of age, Nellie Maud Baskett, for immoral purposes and was jailed for a year.
After his release from prison he became Sir Edmund Hope Verney in 1894 when he succeeded to his father’s title of baronet.
However, with declining congregations, the last service was held in the chapel on 20 May 1979 before it closed. The chapel was subsequently sold and used as a domestic residence for a time until it became the Acorn Nursery in 1989.
Today, the nearest Methodist churches to Castlethorpe today are in Hanslope, Wolverton, Stony Stratford and Deanshanger.
The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (16 September) recalls Saint Ninian (ca 432), Apostle of the Picts, with a Lesser Festival, and Edward Bouverie Pusey (1882), Priest and Tractarian, with a Commemoration.
Two of us are returning to Stony Stratford today after a few days in York following my ‘gamma knife’ or stereotactic radiosurgery in Sheffield earlier this week. But, before today begins, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season. In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:
1, One of the readings for the morning;
2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’
The Library in Pusey House, Oxford, founded in memory of Edward Bouverie Pusey following his death in 1882 (Photograph Patrick Comerford, 2022)
Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) was born in 1800 and educated at Oxford, where he became a Fellow of Oriel College in 1823. He became an expert in biblical languages and criticism and in 1828 he was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford, the same year he was ordained.
His patristic studies and his firm adherence to a Catholic interpretation of doctrine made him one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. He was significant in encouraging the revival of Religious Life within the Church of England and was a noted preacher. His austere way of life made him much revered by his contemporaries and they founded Pusey House and Library in Oxford in his memory, following his death on this day in 1882.
Luke 8: 1-3 (NRSVA):
1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
‘Dona nobis pacem’ with the Eastman-Rochester Chorus, the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra and Michaela Anthony, soprano
Today’s reflection: 5, ‘The Angel of Death’
For my reflections and devotions each day these few weeks, I am reflecting on and invite you to listen to a piece of music or a hymn set to a tune by the great English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).
For these six days this week, I am listening to Dona nobis pacem, a cantata for soprano and baritone soli, chorus and orchestra.
The oratorio falls into the six continuous sections or movements, and I am listening to these movements one-by-one in sequence each morning.
I am posting a full recording of the cantata each day, so each movement can be listened to in context, but each morning I am listening to the movements in sequence.
The six sections or movements are:
1,Agnus Dei
2, Beat! beat! drums! (Whitman)
3, Reconciliation (Whitman)
4, Dirge for Two Veterans (Whitman)
5, The Angel of Death (John Bright)
6,Dona nobis pacem (the Books of Jeremiah, Daniel, Haggai, Micah, and Leviticus, the Psalms, the Book of Isaiah, and Saint Luke’s Gospel)
This morning [16 September 2022], I am listening to the fifth movement, ‘The Angel of Death’.
5, ‘The Angel of Death’
Vaughan Williams’s text for this movement, ‘The Angel of Death,’ is derived from a speech on 23 February 1855 in the House of Commons by the great Victorian politician and reformer John Bright. In his speech, Bright condemned the Crimean War.
John Bright (1811-1889) was a leading Quaker, a Radical and Liberal statesman, and one of the greatest orators of his generation. The historian AJP Taylor says ‘John Bright was the greatest of all parliamentary orators … the alliance between middle class idealism and trade unionism, which he promoted, still lives in the present-day Labour Party.’ He is best remembered for his opposition to the Corn Laws, which came to an end in 1846.
Bright was an MP from 1843 to 1889, promoting free trade, electoral reform and religious freedom. He was almost a lone voice in opposing the Crimean War. In a speech in Birmingham in 1865, he became the first politician to refer to Westminster as the ‘Mother of Parliaments.’
Bright’s speech in 1855 draws on images in the Passover story in the Book Exodus, where the Angel of Death kills the firstborn children of Egypt, but spared any Israelite where the lintels and the door posts have been painted the lintels of his door posts with the blood of the lamb (see Exodus 12: 21-32).
Of course, the Exodus story makes no mention of the ‘Angel of Death’ as the author of this tenth and final plague. But Bright’s eloquence helped to popularise this image.
Afterwards, Benjamin Disraeli told Bright: ‘I would give all that I ever had to have delivered that speech.’ However, the speech did not prevent the Crimean War. As Bright had predicted, the campaign wasted many lives. More were lost through incompetent preparations than on the battlefield. Despite the technical military advances the British military had acquired, the war was marked by incompetence and 600,000 people were left dead.
Shocked by the disaster, and frustrated at being unable to avert it, Bright experienced a nervous breakdown. He lost his seat as MP for Manchester, although he was soon elected MP for Birmingham in 1858.
Bright’s words seem so appropriate to quote today and seem so relevant when we consider the present war in Ukraine, almost 170 years after the Crimean war. At the time Vaughan Williams was writing this oratorio, Bright’s speech was finding new relevance in England with the rise of Nazism and Fascism on Continental Europe, and a fear of yet another great war.
Bright’s words were given new prominence in those fearful days in the 1930s, when they were quoted by the pacifist former Dean of Canterbury, HRL (‘Dick’) Sheppard (1880-1937) in his We Say No (1935), published a year before he founded the Peace Pledge Union and a year before Vaughan Williams’s Dona nobis pacem was first performed.
In this movement, Vaughan Williams creates an atmosphere of anxiety and expectation, which leaves us wondering whether the war will ever end, whether we shall ever find peace.
The ostinato bass which has played out the ‘veterans’ in the last movement now plays in the Angel of Death.
The fifth movement begins with the baritone soloist and a quote from John Bright’s speech in which he tried to prevent the Crimean War: ‘The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land …’ Darkness seeps through the music, first quietly then with a dramatic interjection of Dona nobis pacem.
In the final movement that follows [17 September 2022], the fearful news of the presence of the Angel of Death shall cause the chorus to burst into another cry for peace, but only more trouble rolls across the land: ‘We looked for peace, but no good came … The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved …’
5, ‘The Angel of Death’
The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land;
you may almost hear the beating of his wings.
There is no one as of old …
to sprinkle with blood the lintel
and the two side-posts of our doors,
that he may spare and pass on.
John Bright, who made his ‘Angel of Death’ speech in the House of Commons in 1855, was the first MP to refer to the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayer (Friday 16 September 2022):
The theme in the USPG prayer diary this week is ‘Holy Cross Day,’ and was introduced on Sunday with a prayer written by Naw Kyi Win, a final year undergraduate student at Holy Cross Theological College in the Church of Province of Myanmar.
The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:
Let us give thanks for Holy Cross Theological College, and the work they do to train the clergy of the Church of the Province of Myanmar.
A celebration of the marriage of Sophie Raffalovich and William O’Brien in 1890
Patrick Comerford
One of the best known Jewish women in Irish social and political life was Ellen Odette Cuffe (1857-1933), Countess of Desart, wife of William Ulick O’Connor Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart. She was one of the four women appointed to the first Senate in the Irish Free State, and the first Jew to serve as a Senator in Ireland.
Lady Desart has been described as ‘the most important Jewish woman in Irish history.’ But as I walked around Mallow, Co Cork, after dinner yesterday, I was reminded of another Jewish women who played a prominent role in Irish political and social life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Sophie Raffalovich O’Brien (1860-1960), was a writer and Irish nationalist, and although she converted to Christianity shortly before her wedding in 1890, she continued to insist on her Jewish identity.
Sophie Raffalovich was born in the Black Sea port in Odessa, then one of the most important cities in the Tsarist empire, on 15 January 1860. She was the daughter of Herman Raffalovich (1828-1893) and his wife Marie Raffalovich (1832-1891). Her father was a banker, and Sophie had two brothers, Marc-André and Arthur: Marc-André Raffalovich (1864-1934) became well known as a gay writer, and Arthur Raffalovich (1853-1921) was a banker and Tsarist agent.
The Raffalovich family was Jewish with rabbinical ancestry, and took their family name from a Polish-born ancestor, Raphael Parnes, who died in 1782. When Sophie was four, the family moved in 1864 to France in 1864 to escape to pressure to convert to Christianity. Her father would have to travel back to Odessa for business and spent half of each year there.
Marie was a political republican, interested in the arts and sciences, and held popular salons in France. She had a platonic relationship with the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878).
Sophie was aware as she grew up of her advantages and studied political economy. She translated works on the lives of Cobden and Lord Shaftesbury, who strongly influenced her social values. Her brother André held literary salons in London where she would act as hostess and met Lady Gregory.
William O’Brien was born in Bank Place in Mallow in 1890 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)
Stories and details about William O’Brien’s highly publicised arrests lead both mother and daughter to become interested in Ireland and they corresponded with ‘l'Aiglon’, as O’Brien was known in France. Sophie and William first met him in Paris on 8 June 1889, and they became engaged after a brief courtship, in which she took the initiative.
To her father’s dismay, Sophie converted to Catholicism before her marriage. Several members of Sophie’s mother’s family had already done the same, and both her brothers eventually did so too.
Her father was disappointed, but she later said she had been seeking religious certainty for some time. Although she gave up the Judaism of her childhood, she never abandoned her Jewish identity, and suffered attacks from French and Irish anti-Semites.
Sophie and William O’Brien were married on 11 June 1890, and the guests at their wedding included Charles Stewart Parnell. It turned out to be one of the last major gatherings of the Irish Party before it split later in the year.
A plaque on the house in Bank Place, Mallow, where William O’Brien was born in 1890 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)
Sophie moved to Ireland with her husband after the wedding and was accepted quickly into the social groups. She was particularly close to Anne Deane, niece of John Blake Dillon, and Henrietta Mitchel Martin, John Mitchell’s sister.
William depended heavily on Sophie for his funding, as his secretary and as his nurse during those times in his career when his health was poor. She was the financial accountant and they lived as simply as possible so they could give as much to the poor as possible.
O’Brien refused to pay off debts incurred during the ‘Plan of Campaign,’ choosing instead to go bankrupt in 1895. The couple retired to Mallow Cottage in Westport, Co Mayo, where they worked together on farming, dog breeding and writing. They supported local fisheries, and Sophie wrote a number of novels.
While they were living in Westport, they become active in local famine relief work in 1897-1898. Sophie joined some local nuns in setting up a number of local craft industries and used her contacts to see that locally-made lace could reach the markets in Paris. Sophie describes their life at this time in Under Croagh Patrick (1904).
Sophie also worked with Sister Mary Eustace Eaton at the Harold’s Cross Hospice for the Dying and wrote a biography of her in 1923.
William and Sophie had no children, and when William was unwilling to consider adopting children, Sophie decided to support girls who still lived with their families but lacked other advantages.
William was clear that land redistribution was the way to bring justice to the situation and Sophie became the primary backer of the United Irish League. This that lead to the initial reunion of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1900, although William left again three years later.
When O’Brien broke with the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1903 over the issue of land purchase, Jasper Tully (1859-1938), MP for South Leitrim, put forward a conspiracy theory in which he claimed O’Brien was the pawn of Jewish financiers who wished landlords to get good prices for their estates so that they could redeem their debts. O'Brien was heckled at public meetings with cries of ‘Down with the Russian Jewess and her moneybags.’
Sophie continued to fund William’s political activities despite the heavy financial expenses that came when he founded a daily newspaper, the Cork Free Press. In 1907 she published a novel, Rosette: a romance of Paris and Dublin.
William O’Brien is honoured in the name of O’Brien Street in Mallow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)
When they moved to Bellevue House, Mallow, Co Cork, in 1912, Sophie took on local charity work again and wrote extensively on both religious and political topics for the newspapers, including a women’s column on women’s education and women’s involvement in local government for the Cork Free Press.
Despite her work on women’s rights, Sophie was not a suffragist and did not accept a woman’s right to vote. Although her husband was in favour of women’s votes and she appeared with him when he spoke, she never supported it and refused to allow her name to be added to the electoral register when women won the right to vote. Her Unseen friends (1912) is a collection of essays on women she admired.
Sophie’s mother continued to live in France and Sophie felt very connected to the country where she had grown up. The couple supported the allied cause and Sophie had no sympathy for Sinn Féin when it appeared to endanger the allied war effort in World War I.
The war wiped out what wealth Sophie had through the loss of the Raffalovich family investments in Russia and Germany. Her finances had supported her husband’s political career and that career came to an end with the 1918 election.
William’s career ended at the 1918 election and they retired to Mallow, spending time writing and on country walks. She published two books of sketches, describing her poorer neighbours at this time, In Mallow (1920) and Around Broom Lane (1931).
After William died in 1928, Sophie spent some years working through his remaining papers and documents. She worked with his biographer, Michael MacDonagh and published some of his work. She donated his papers to both University College Cork and the National Library of Ireland. Sophie was made a Doctor of Letters (Litt.D.) by the National University of Ireland in 1938.
She moved back to France in 1938 to live near Amiens with Fernande and Lucie Guilmart, sisters who had been pupils in the orphanage and school she had supported since the 1880s. She and the sisters become friends when they visited her in Ireland in the early 1930s, and they now took care of her. Sophie called them ‘the best daughters a childless old woman could have.’
A year after Sophie moved to France, World War II began and German invaded France. The sisters ensured her escape with them to a region near the Pyrenees. While Sophie was living in semi-hiding under the Vichy regime and in Nazi-occupied France, she refused to change her name or to disavow her Jewish identity. Two members of the Raffalovich family – a nephew and a cousin – died in Nazi concentration camps.
Eamonn de Valera prevented a public collection of funds in Ireland to help the three women who had been reduced to near destitution. He claimed the Irish government would provide for her, but all he sent was a single amount of £150 through the Irish consulate to Vichy. However, Paul O’Dwyer raised a collection for her through the Irish community in New York.
By the end of the war, Sophie was extremely impoverished. She continued to live with the Guilmart sisters at Neuilly-St Front, near Soissons. Lucie died in 1957; Fernande outlived her; Sophie died at Neuilly on 8 January 1960, a week before her 100th birthday.
William O’Brien remembered on the façade of an empty shop in Mallow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)
The nativity scene in the Martin Commerford Memorial Window in Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral, Geraldton, erected by his widow Ellen and daughter Susan Commerford
Patrick Comerford
The siege of Sevastopol, from October 1854 until September 1855, was one of the decisive battles in the Crimean War, lasting almost a full year. Martin Comerford or Commerford from Callan, Co Kilkenny, was injured at Sevastopol and was decorated for his part in the siege and at other battles in the Crimean War, including Inkerman and Alma.
Martin Comerford (1830-1889), also known as Martin Commerford or Cummerford, was born on 7 April 1830 in Killmanaugh, Callan, Co Kilkenny.
At the age of 17, Martin joined the 33rd (Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment as a private (Regiment No 2412) in Callan, Co Kilkenny, on 7 April 1847 Callan, Kilkenny. He was tall for his day and was described at 5’ 9½”, with a fresh complexion, grey eyes and dark brown hair.
The 1851 census places him at the Regimental Barracks in Sunderland. He was promoted private to corporal on 1 April 1852.
He was tried by a regimental court martial for neglect of duty when on escort. He was held in confinement from 31 December 1852 to 5 January 1853, and he was reduced from corporal to private on 6 January 1853. But the Crimean War broke out the following October, and Martin became a decorated hero.
He was rendered unfit for service losing his left thumb from a gunshot wound received in the trenches at Sebastopol on 4 December 1854. His medals, clasps and badges included the Crimea War Medal, with the Alma, Inkermann and Sebastopol clasps, and the Turkish Crimea Medal.
The Crimean War Medal with Sebastopol, Inkerman and Alma Clasps
After 7 years 83 days in the army, he was discharged at Chatham on 3 July 1855 Chatham, with a pension of 8 pence a day, and he moved back to Co Kilkenny. There he joined the Kilkenny Fusiliers Militia in 1856, and was based in Kilkenny (1856), Birr (1856-1857) and Dublin (1858).
He married Elllen Jones (1856-1922) in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, on 5 May 1856; She was born in Nenagh, the daughter of Bryan Jones and Bridget (née Hingerty) and was baptised on 30 September 1836.
The couple soon emigrated to Western Australia. They left Plymouth on the Lord Raglan on 5 March 1858 and arrived in Freemantle on 1 June 1858. There he enrolled in the Pensioner Force in 1858, and remained with them until 1865.
He was a ‘tide waiter’ or customs officer at Champion Bay (Geraldton) from 1858 to 1889, was a Magistrate’s Clerk briefly in 1860, and Postmaster in Geraldton from 1864 to 1889, and was also in charge of the telegraph office.
The Commerfords bought a plot of town land in Geraldton in 1867, and there they family bult their own house. From 1876 to 1885, he was an enthusiastic member of the Geraldton Rifle Volunteer Corps, in which he held the rank of Quartermaster and Sergeant. Later, he was elected a Geraldton Municipal Councillor.
His charitable subscriptions and donations include funds for Lancashire Relief Fund, the Perth New Convent and Female Orphanage, the Pensioners Benevolent Fund, Geraldton Working Men’s Society, and the new Catholic Church in Geraldton.
Martin Commerford and Ellen Jones and they were the parents of eight children, five daughters and three sons:
1,Susan Maria (1857-1942), baptised in Nenagh on 27 February 1857, died in Perth 3 August 1942. She followed her father into the Post Office and worked there all her adult life. 2,Brigid (1859-1927), born 1859, Geraldton, Western Australia, died in Adelaide, 10 November 1927. 3,Helen, or Ellen (1862-1892), born 1862, Geraldton; she joined the Sisters of Mercy in Australia and was known as Sister Mary Augustine. She was described as an ‘accomplished musician’ when she died in York, Western Australia, at the age of 30 on 31 October 1892. 4,Elizabeth Cecilia (1864-1927), born 1864, married Joseph James Griffin of Geraldton in 1886; she died in Perth on 17 March 1927. 5,Martin Commerford (1866-1867), born 1866, died in infancy in 1867, in Geraldton. 6,Mary Frances (1869-1942), born 19 May 1869, Geraldton. She married 19 February 1895 the journalist and politician John Michael Drew (1865-1947), son of Cornelius and Mary (Gavin) Drew. He was a contributor to the Catholic Record (later Western Australian Record); sub-editor, Western Australian Record, Fremantle (1887-1889), secretary and manager, Victoria Express (later Geraldton Express), 1890, editor (1892-1905), and owner (1912). He also started a vineyard and orchard in Northampton. He was elected to the Western Australia parliament in 1910 as an independent and joined the Australian Labor Party in 1912. He was a member of the state parliament in 1900-1918, and 1924- 1947. He was the Labor leader in the legislative Council (1910-1936) and his government posts included Minister for Lands (1904-1905), Colonial Secretary and Minister for Agriculture (1905), Colonial Secretary (1911-1916), Chief Secretary Ministry of Health, Education and the North West (1924-1930), and Chief Secretary (1933-1936). Mary (Commerford) Drew died 31 July 1942; John Drew died in Perth 17 July 1947. 7,Morris William Commerford (1871-1883), born 1871, Geraldton, died 27 April 1883. 8,Edward John Commerford (1874-1976), born 1874, Geraldton, died 1876.
John Michael Drew (1865-1947), Chief Secretary of Western Australia … he married Mary Frances Commerford
Martin Commerford died on 15 December 1889, Marine Terrace, Geraldton, Western Australia, and he was buried on 18 December 1889, in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Geraldton.
Newspaper reports at the time described him as one of the earliest settlers and oldest Government officials in Champion Bay.
His wife and eldest daughter erected a stained-glass window to his memory in Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral, Geraldton. His widow Ellen died on 26 June 1922.
The Martin Commerford Memorial Window in Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral , Geraldton, erected by his widow Ellen and daughter Susan Commerford
