Saint Dunstan-in-the-West remains a constant presence in the midst of change on Fleet Street

The Guild Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West, next door to the former DC Thompson building on Fleet Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

During all the years I worked as a journalist with The Irish Times, I had many working visits to Fleet Street, when the London offices were based in the old PA Building at 85 Fleet Street, a building designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

There were colleagues to meet from other newspapers too, and exchanges with the Guardian. In those days, liquid lunches were popular among journalists on the ‘Streets of Shame,’ and at a time when many journalists still worked on Fleet Street, Private Eye developed the character of Lunchtime O’Booze as the archetypal drunken journalist.

But all has changed in recent years, and DC Thomson journalists were the last on Fleet Street until they left in 2016.

During those working visits to Fleet Street, there were visits too to Saint Bride’s, the journalists’ church on Fleet Street, which also had a family link through a former rector, the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins (1827-1906), father of Anthony Hope, author of The Prisoner of Zenda. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were constant vigils in Saint Bride’s for John McCarthy, Terry Anderson and other journalists held hostage in Lebanon.

Yet, until last week, I had never visited the Guild Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West, next door to the former DC Thompson building on Fleet Street. The church has links with the media barons Lord Rothermere and Lord Northcliffe, who were brothers, and Lord Camrose, and it appeared as the ‘journalists’ church’ in the 2018 TV series Press. But Saint Bride’s, not Saint Dunstan’s, has always been the real journalists’ church on Fleet Street.

Saint Bride’s and Saint Dunstan’s are two of the remaining constants on Fleet Street, reminders of what this street was in the past. Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is impressive inside, with an octagonal nave that creates the impression of a round church. However, this is not the original church, and it was built in the 1830s to designs by John Shaw to replace an earlier mediaeval church demolished to allow for a 19th century street widening programme.

Saint Dunstan depicted in a stained glass window above the High Altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is dedicated to Saint Dunstan, one of the most venerated saints in England before the cult of Saint Thomas Becket became popular. He was born in 909 and was taught by Irish monks at Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset. He became Abbot of Glastonbury in 945, and was Bishop of Worcester and then Bishop of London before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 960. When he died in 988, he was buried at Canterbury Cathedral.

The Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is first mentioned in written records in 1185, but there is no evidence of the date of its original foundation. Some accounts say it was built by Saint Dunstan or by priests who knew him well. Others suggest a foundation date between 988, when he died, and 1070.

It could be that a church on this site was one of the churches of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Lundenwic, such as Saint Martin within Ludgate, Saint Martin in the Fields, the first Saint Mary le Strand, Saint Clement Danes and Saint Bride’s, which may pre-date any churches within the walls of the City of London.

King Henry III gained possession of site of Saint Dunstan’s and its endowments from Westminster Abbey by 1237. He then granted them to the Domus Conversorum (‘House of the Converts’) in Chancery Lane, housing converted Jews. This led to neglect of the parochial responsibilities of the church until a separate rector was appointed in 1317.

Inside the Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West, facing the north or liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

William Tyndale (1494-1526), an early translator of the Bible into English, was a lecturer at the church. The priest-poet John Donne (1572-1631) was the vicar (1624-1631) while he was also Dean of Saint Paul’s (1621-1631), and preached in the church.

George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who founded Maryland, was buried in the church in 1632, as was his son.

The church narrowly escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666. In the middle of the night, the Dean of Westminster, John Dolben, woke up 40 schoolboys from Westminster School to form a fire brigade that extinguished the flames with buckets of water. The flames reached a point three doors away.

Samuel Pepys mentions the church in his diary and was a regular worshipper. Izaak Walton (1593-1683), author of the Compleat Angler and biographer of John Donne, George Herbert and Richard Hooker, was a sidesman.

Inside the Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West, facing the south or liturgical west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The mediaeval church underwent many alterations over time. Small shops were built against its walls, and the churchyard became a centre for bookselling and publishing: John Milton found a publisher there for Paradise Lost in 1667.

Later repairs were carried out in an Italianate style. Rusticated stonework was used, and some of the Gothic windows were replaced with round-headed ones. The old vaulted roof was replaced in 1701 with a flat ceiling, ornamented with recessed panels.

The London clockmaker and watchmaker Charles Gretton was a churchwarden and was buried there in 1731. The church has a bronze memorial plaque for Thomas Mudge (171516-1794), inventor of the lever escapement and watchmaker to George III.

The baptismal font in the Church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The mediaeval church was spilling onto what is now the tarmac of Fleet Street, and was removed to allow the widening of Fleet Street in the early 19th century, when a new church was built on its burial ground. An Act of Parliament in 1829 authorised the demolition of the church, and some of the materials of the old church were auctioned off in December 1829 and September 1830.

The new building was designed by John Shaw Sr (1776-1832). The first stone was laid in July 1831 and building went ahead proceeded rapidly. The last part of the old church, left as a screen between Fleet Street and the new work, was removed in August 1832.

Shaw handled the restricted site by designing a church with an octagonal central space. Seven of the eight sides open into arched recesses, the northern one containing the altar. The eighth side opens into a short corridor, leading beneath the organ to the lowest stage of the tower, which serves as an entrance porch. Shaw designed a clerestory above the recesses, with a groined ceiling above the clerestory.

The square tower has an octagonal lantern, resembling those at Saint Botolph’s Church, Boston, and Saint Helen’s Church, York (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The square tower has an octagonal lantern, resembling those at Saint Botolph’s Church, Boston, and Saint Helen’s Church, Stonegate, York. Shaw died in 1833, before the church was completed, leaving it in the hands of his son John Shaw jr (1803-1870).

The communion rail has survived from the old church. It was carved by Grinling Gibbons when John Donne was the vicar (1624-1631). Some of the monuments from the mediaeval building were kept in the new church, and a fragment of the old churchyard remains between Clifford’s Inn and Bream’s Buildings.

The church survived the London Blitz largely intact, though bombs damaged the open-work lantern tower and the church lost its stained glass. The church was damaged again on the night of 24-25 March 1944.

The church was designated a Grade I listed building in 1950, and it was largely restored that year, when the tower was rebuilt through the generosity of newspaper magnate William Ewart Berry (1879-1954), Viscount Camrose, proprietor and/or editor at various times of the Sunday Times, the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph.

Saint Dunstan-in-the-West became a Guild Church in 1952, dedicating its ministry to the daytime working population around Fleet Street.

The chiming clock on the façade has figures that strike the bells with their clubs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The chiming clock on the façade has figures of giants, said to represent Gog and Magog, who strike the bells with their clubs. It was installed on the previous church in 1671, and may have been commissioned to celebrate its escape during the Great Fire in 1666. It was the first public clock in London to have a minute hand. The figures of the two giants strike the hours and quarters, and turn their heads.

When the mediaeval church was demolished, the clock was removed in 1828 by the art collector Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford, to Winfield House, his mansion in Regent’s Park, which became known as Saint Dunstan’s. During World War I, Winfield House was a hostel for blinded soldiers, and the new charity took the name Saint Dunstan’s – now Blind Veterans UK.

The clock was returned to the church to mark the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1935 by the press baron Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, brother of Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe.

There are numerous literary references to the clock, including in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, the Vicar of Wakefield and a poem by William Cowper (1782).

The statue of Elizabeth I in the courtyard dates from 1586 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The statue of Queen Elizabeth I above the entrance to the old parochial school in the courtyard is the only one known to have been carved during her reign.

The statue by William Kerwin dates from 1586 and is said to be the oldest outdoor statue in London. It was moved from the old Ludgate when it was demolished in 1760.

In the porch below are three statues of ancient Britons also from the old Ludgate, and said to represent King Lud, the mythical sovereign, and his two sons.

The memorial to Lord Northcliffe has an obelisk by Sir Edwin Lutyens and a bronze bust by Kathleen Scott (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The wall of the church also has a memorial to Lord Northcliffe, co-founder of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. The obelisk was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with a bronze bust by Kathleen Scott, and was unveiled in 1930.

Next to Lord Northcliffe is a memorial tablet to James Louis Garvin (1868-1947) was a journalist, author and editor of The Observer (1908-1942).

The High Altar and reredos are Flemish woodwork dating from the 17th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Much of the internal fabric predates the rebuilding in the 1830s. The High Altar and reredos are Flemish woodwork dating from the 17th century, and many of the monuments have been retained from the original church.

The church is often associated with the legend of Sweeney Todd, the ‘demon-barber’ of Fleet Street. It was mentioned in the original ‘penny dreadful’, The String of Pearls. According to some sources, Sweeney Todd set up shop as a barber, tooth-puller and surgeon at 186 Fleet Street in 1785.

He is said to have murdered over 100 clients, selling their flesh to Margery Lovett who owned a pie shop in nearby in Bell Yard, and dumping the remnants of their victims in the church crypt.

The Hoare family donated the stained glass window showing Archbishop Lanfranc, Saint Dunstan, Saint Anselm and Archbishop Langton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church has been associated with the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers (shoemakers) since the 15th century. Once a year the company holds a service in the church to commemorate two of its benefactors, John Fisher and Richard Minge.

The church also has a long association with C Hoare and Co, whose bank has stood facing the church from the other side of Fleet Street since 1690. The Hoare family donated the four-light stained glass window above the high altar and the carved canopies of the altar-piece. The window shows Archbishop Lanfranc, Saint Dunstan beside a roaring furnace into which he has thrust his pincers ready to pull a devil’s nose, Saint Anselm and Archbishop Langton with King John at the signing of Magna Carta.

Members of the Hoare family have been generous benefactors and many have been churchwardens over the centuries. Two have been Lord Mayors of London and a family vault still lies in the church crypt.

The Romanian iconostasis was brought from Antim Monastery in Bucharest in 1966 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Saint Dunstan’s is also home to the Romanian Orthodox Church in London, and serves as Saint George’s Church. The chapel to the left of the main altar has beautiful iconostasis or icon screen, brought from Antim Monastery in Bucharest in 1966.

Behind the iconostasis, high on a wall, is a marble memorial tablet to the 17th century clockmaker Henry Jones (1634-1695), who worked in the Inner Temple, and his wife Hannah.

Saint Dunstan-in-the-West is home to the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, and is a centre of prayer for Christian Unity. The side chapels contain altars dedicated to various traditions, including the Lutheran Church in Berlin (EKD), the Oriental Orthodox Churches (Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian, Syro-Indian), and a shrine of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches.

Saint Dunstan’s continues in its special role of promoting good relations with Churches outside the Anglican Communion, including through its role as the Diocese of London’s Church for Europe.

Meanwhile, any journalist feeling nostalgic about the ‘Old Fleet Street’ and its memories must be heartened by the news last week that the Tipperary, one of Fleet Street’s best-known and oldest pubs, is to reopen, after closing during the pandemic two years ago and never reopening. Save London Pubs, a social media campaign, reported last week that the Tipperary is to reopen after a refurbishment, with repairs to the exterior and interior, new seating, and work to preserve its old features.

• The Priest-in-Charge of , the Revd James Wilkinson, became Associate Vicar at Saint Andrew, Holborn Circus, last month. Mass is celebrated at 12.30 pm every Tuesday, and the church is open 10am-3pm Monday-Friday. Friends of the City Churches are there from 11am-3pm on Tuesdays to answer questions.

Looking out onto the world … with a glimpse of the Hoare Bank to the left on the other side of Fleet Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Love, unrequited love, and a village wedding in the poetry of John Betjeman

‘How new its weathered stone appears / When vows are made in Heaven’ … reading the poetry of John Betjeman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

For decades, Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) was Britain’s best-loved poet. Since Betjeman’s death, his statue at Saint Pancras Station – which he campaigned to save – has become a popular wedding venue.

He was the Poet Laureate from 1972, and was known for his television appearances and for his love of architecture and churches. He was a life-long friend of the artist John Piper, known for his Baptistry window in Coventry Cathedral and his East Window, ‘Christ in Majesty’ (1984), in the chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, and Betjeman and Piper worked together on the series of illustrated Shell Guides to English counties.

Betjeman was born in London in 1906. He had an interest in poetry from an early age and his interest in churches and architecture was kindled at the Dragon School, Oxford. He was part of the ‘literary set’ at Magdalen College, Oxford and after Oxford he was determined not to join his father’s business but to carve out a literary career instead.

Betjeman was married to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a former commander-in-chief of the Indian army. They were married for 53 years and had two children, Paul and Candida.

But Betjeman also had lengthy affairs with many women, including a lifelong affair with his muse Lady Elizabeth Cavendish (1926-2018) of Lismore Castle. They first met in 1951, and she was a daughter of Edward Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire. Betjeman also had a four-year affair with Margie Geddes in the 1970s.

John and Penelope Betjeman rented Garrard’s Farm in Uffington in 1934. They soon became immersed in village life and entertained many famous friends there. Their son Paul was born in Uffington in 1937, and their daughter, Candida, was born in Dublin in 1942 while they were in Ireland.

Betjeman was the press attaché to John Maffey at the British Embassy in Dublin from 1941 to 1943, and during that time the family lived in Collinstown House, near Clondalkin in Dublin.

Betjeman wrote a number of poems inspired by his experiences in Ireland. ‘The Irish Unionist's Farewell to Greta Hellstrom in 1922’, is set in west Waterford, with each stanza closing with the line ‘Dungarvan in the rain.’ The poem recalls the story of his unrequited love for a woman called Greta Hellstrom. It opens with the lines:

Golden haired and golden hearted
I would ever have you be,
As you were when last we parted
Smiling slow and sad to me.

The woman Betjeman refers to as ‘my Swedish beauty’ was, in fact, Emily Sears, an American who later married Ion Villiers-Stuart of Dromana House, near Cappoquin, Co Waterford.

Their granddaughter Barbara Grubb, who now lives at Dromana, said in recent years that Betjeman ‘was stunned by my grandmother’s extraordinary beauty, but though he worshipped her, it was only from afar, for she was in fact in love with my grandfather, Ion Villiers-Stuart, whom she married. They did, however, remain good friends right up to the end of his life.’

The final lines of the poem show the poet’s respect and his final acceptance of Emily’s decision to remain friends and never to be lovers:

You were right to keep us parted:
Bound and parted we remain,
Aching, if unbroken hearted –
Oh! Dungarvan in the rain.

After World War II, the family moved to Farnborough in 1945, then to Wantage in 1951. One of Betjeman’s poems set in Farnborough, ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song, is one of Betjeman’s best-known love poems. The narrator, a junior army officer, is beguiled by the doctor’s daughter, attractive and athletic young Joan Hunter Dunn. The young officer is defenceless in the face of ‘strenuous singles’ with her on the tennis court.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The real Joan Hunter Dunn (1915-2008), later Joan Jackson, was a daughter of Dr George Hunter Dunn, a GP in Farnborough, Hampshire. Her grandfather, Andrew Hunter Dunn, was Bishop of Quebec in 1892-1914, and her uncle Edward Dunn was Bishop of Honduras and Archbishop of the West Indies.

Betjeman saw her for the first time in December 1940 while he was working in London for the Films Division of the Ministry of Information, based in the Senate House of the University of London, where she worked in the canteen. Although married for seven years, he was struck by her beauty, he fell in love, and composed his 44-line poem fantasising about them being engaged and playing tennis together. To him, she was ‘A girl to lean against for life and die adoring.’

When Betjeman left for Dublin, he continued to think of her. She married Harold Wycliffe Jackson, a civil servant in the Ministry of Information, in January 1945, in Saint Mark’s Church, Farnborough. Betjeman was invited, but did not attend.

As Poet Laureate, Betjeman also wrote a poem, ‘For A Royal Wedding, 29 July 1981,’ to mark the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

When Betjeman died at Trebetherick in Cornwall on 19 May 1984, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish was at his side. Joan Hunter Dunne attended his memorial service in Westminster Abbey, and died in 2008.

Later, his daughter Candida and her husband lived again in Uffington, and she donated many of her father’s papers to the museum.

Perhaps the best wedding poem he wrote was written for the wedding of Sally Weaver, who had been a childhood friend of Candida. The poem ‘Village Wedding’ blends imagery of natural beauty, a rain-purified atmosphere, church bells and a festive occasion that spans the generations.

It seems as if the entire parish of Uffington is brought together into the ancient church to witness a sacrament that binds together not just a young couple but all the living and dead with the timeless communal rituals of Christian faith.

Village Wedding by Sir John Betjeman

In summer wind the elm leaves sing,
And sharp’s the shade they’re shedding,
And loud and soft the church bells ring
For Sally Weaver’s wedding.

With chasing light the meadows fill,
The greenness growing greener,
As racing over White Horse Hill
Come bluer skies and cleaner.

The chalk-white walls, the steaming thatch
In rain-washed air are clearing,
And waves of sunshine run to catch
The bride for her appearing.

Inside the church in every pew
Sit old friends, older grown now;
Their children whom our children knew
Have children of their own now.

The babies wail, the organ plays,
Now thunderous, now lighter;
The brighter day of Sally’s days
Grows every moment brighter.

And all the souls of Uffington,
The dead among the living,
Seem witnessing the rite begun
Of taking and of giving.

The flying clouds! The flying years!
This church of centuries seven!
How new its weathered stone appears
When vows are made in Heaven!

Dromana Gate Lodge and Bridge … Betjeman’s ‘Greta Hellstrom’ was Emily Sears, who married Ion Villiers-Stuart of Dromana House, near Cappoquin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In search of a family mausoleum and finding John Betjeman cycling with Emily in the Burren

Ballyvaughan, the Burren and Galway Bay spread out below Corkscrew Hill in north Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

During the weekend, two of us went in search of some more Comerford family stories in Kinvara, Co Galway, and some Comerford family graves and mausoleums in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare.

Ballyvaughan overlooks Galway Bay and stands as the gateway on the North Clare coast to the Burren. Corkscrew Hill is a narrow road that rises up from Ballyvaughan, on the road on to Lisdoonvarna, bending and folding several steps, and providing breath-taking views back down across Ballyvaughan and out to Galway Bay.

John Betjeman visited the Burren with ‘Emily’ in the summer of 1943, and described the landscape in his poem ‘Ireland with Emily,’ first published two years later in New Bats in Old Belfries (1945).

As I gazed on the Comerford mausoleum in Bishop’s Quarter in Ballyvaughan, I thought too of John Betjeman and his reference to a ‘fantastic mausoleum’ as he recalled cycling along Corkscrew Hill with Emily almost 80 years ago.

John Betjeman and Emily Sears cycled over Corkscrew Hill on a road built to provide work for starving labourers during the Great Famine a century earlier.

His wrote:

Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place,
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,
Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe’s stone age race.

These words are quoted in a sign at the viewing point near the top of the hill, where I had a vista of the natural amphitheatre carved out by giant ice sheets of ancient ice ages. The ice sheets left behind a fertile valley surrounded by Aillwee Mountain to the east, Cappanwalla Mountain to the west, and opening out onto Galway Bay to the north.

The typical and often contrasting characteristics of the Burren are on view there: bare limestone terraces, fertile fields, dense overgrowth of hazel scrub alongside areas of incredible biodiversity created by traditional farming practices.

There are other literary links too. JRR Tolkien often stayed in Gregans Castle, nestling in the valley below, and many have asked whether he was influenced by this view when he was writing Lord of the Rings.

John Betjeman’s lines on the Burren in ‘Ireland with Emily’ may not be the most comprehensive description of this uniquely valuable area of north-west Clare. But he conveys a sense of the overwhelming bareness of its characteristic limestone landscape.

The ‘soil-less, treeless, waterless’ hills of the Burren also made an impression on Robert Lloyd Praeger. In his classic, The Way That I Went, he wrote: ‘The strangeness of this grey limestone country must be seen to be realised; it is like nothing else in Ireland or in Britain.

According to the Belfast-born environmentalist Gordon D’Arcy, 70 per cent of Ireland’s wild plants grow here in less than 0.5 per cent of Ireland’s land area.

The archaeological heritage of the Burren is also disproportionately large, with evidence of human settlement in the upland area stretching back through 6,000 years. It includes no less than 350 ring forts, notably Cahercommaun, as well as 70 wedge tombs, the highest concentration known, and numerous fulacht fiadha or cooking sites.

John Betjeman’s relationship with Emily Sears did not last that long. He returned to England, and later became Poet Laureate; she later married Ion Villiers-Stuart. ‘They did, however, remain good friends right up to the end of his life,’ according to her ddaughter, Barbara Grubb, who now lives at Dromana House, near Cappoquin, Co Waterford.

‘Ireland With Emily’ by John Betjeman

Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
Twisted trees of small green apple
Guard the decent whitewashed chapel,
Gilded gates and doorway grained,
Pointed windows richly stained
With many-coloured Munich glass.

See the black-shawled congregations
On the broidered vestment gaze
Murmer past the painted stations
As Thy Sacred Heart displays
Lush Kildare of scented meadows,
Roscommon, thin in ash-tree shadows, And Westmeath the lake-reflected,
Spreading Leix the hill-protected,
Kneeling all in silver haze?

In yews and woodbine, walls and guelder,
Nettle-deep the faithful rest,
Winding leagues of flowering elder,
Sycamore with ivy dressed,
Ruins in demesnes deserted,
Bog-surrounded bramble-skirted –
Townlands rich or townlands mean as
These, oh, counties of them screen us
In the Kingdom of the West.

Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place,
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,
Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe’s stone age race.

Has it held, the warm June weather?
Draining shallow sea-pools dry,
When we bicycled together
Down the bohreens fuchsia-high.
Till there rose, abrupt and lonely,
A ruined abbey, chancel only,
Lichen-crusted, time-befriended,
Soared the arches, splayed and splendid,
Romanesque against the sky.

There in pinnacled protection,
One extinguished family waits
A Church of Ireland resurrection
By the broken, rusty gates.
Sheepswool, straw and droppings cover,
Graves of spinster, rake and lover,
Whose fantastic mausoleum,
Sings its own seablown Te Deum,
In and out the slipping slates.

John Betjeman is quoted on a sign at the viewing point near the top of the hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Remembering some personal saints in a time of remembrance

A time for gathering in memories … the barn on my grandmother's former farm (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

In my sermon on All Saints’ Sunday (30 October), I referred to the paucity of saints’ commemorations in the calendar of the Church of Ireland, particularly when we compare it to the calendar of the Church of England.

Just consider the commemorations in the Church of England, which include these in the first week or so in November alone:

1 November: All Saints’ Day
2 November: All Souls’ Day
4 November: Saints and Martyrs of the Anglican Communion
8 November: Saints and Martyrs of England and Wales

The Church of Ireland calendar also misses the opportunity to mark 6 November, traditionally the commemoration of All Saints of Ireland.

November is traditionally a month of remembrance: next Thursday, 11 November, is Remembrance Day, and this year Remembrance Sunday falls on 14 November.

As we were placing candles in two bowls filled with water in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, last Sunday to celebrate the saints and to remember those who are dead but who are still in our hearts and still loved, I remembered my ‘Gran Hallian’ … Mary Hallinan of Moonwee, Cappoquin, Co Waterford, who died on this day 60 years ago, 6 November 1961, and her husband Edmond Hallinan of Moonwee, who died on 8 March 1963.

As we remembered those from previous generation who had passed on the faith to us, I recalled my ‘Gran Hallian’ and recalled how, as I say on her lap as a small child, she had presented me with my first image of Christ – a print of Holman Hunt’s ‘Light of the World.’

It was an interesting image for an old woman to present to a small boy of Christ. Little did I realise then, I suppose, how this would later become a treasured memory as my adult faith developed and depended.

Mary and Ned Hallinan are buried near Cappoquin, with her sister, Bridget McCarthy who died in 1964, two of their sons, Willie Hallinan (died 1988) and Patrick Hallinan (died 2001), and one of their daughters, Bridie Hallinan (died 1995).

In a nearby grave are our neighbours in Moonwee, John and Mary Hackett, who died in 1964 and 1965, and their extended family.

On one of my recent ‘road trips,’ when the pandemic lockdowns were easing, I once again visited their grave, a few km south of Cappoquin, on the west bank of the River Blackwater opposite Richmond House, as the river flows south towards Villierstown and Dromana and on to the sea at Youghal.

I was invited to read Sunday’s first reading (Wisdom 3: 1-9) at Pat’s funeral in Cappoquin 20 years ago, in 2001.

The opening verse was the response to the psalm in the Lectionary on Sunday: ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, no torment will ever touch them.’

Childhood memories from Cappoquin remain alive in my mind’s eye (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Irish diplomat who was at the centre of an early anti-Semitic crisis in Athens

Sir Thomas Wyse (1791-1862) from Waterford … played a key role in the ‘Don Pacifico’ affair in the decades after Greek independence

Patrick Comerford

Next month marks the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the Greek War of Independence on 25 March 1821. To mark that bicentennial, I have been working this week on a magazine feature on some of the Irish Philhellenes who were involved in the struggle in Greece and in Greek politics and public life later in the 19th century.

One of those Irish public figures in Greek life was the diplomat Sir Thomas Wyse (1791-1862) from Waterford, who played a key role in the decades immediately after Greek independence.

Wyse was born in Waterford in 1791, the eldest son of Thomas Wyse of the Manor of St John, and was educated at Stonyhurst and Trinity College Dublin. He first visited Athens, the Greek islands and Constantinople 1818, three years before the Greek War of Independence began.

Wyse had an unhappy marriage to Napoleon’s niece, Princess Letizia Bonaparte (1804-1871). Back in Waterford, he became chairman of the Co Waterford election committee for Henry Villiers Stuart of Dromana, and 1826 general election he presided over Villiers Stuart’s successful campaign in 1826. During his time as the Whig MP for Tipperary (1830-1832) and Waterford City (1835-1841, 1842-1847), he served as a Junior Lord of the Treasury (1839-1841), and Secretary to the Board of Control (1846-1849), and he was involved in commissioning AWN Pugin to build the new Houses of Parliament in London. Wyse had erlier also commissioned Pugin to redesign Manor Saint John for the Wyse family ca 1842

Wyse returned to Athens in 1849 as the British minister or ambassador, in succession to Sir Edmund Lyons. The appointment may have been engineered by his estranged wife, Princess Letizia, who had influence with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston.

In Athens, Wyse soon found himself at the centre of the ‘Don Pacifico Affair,’ one of the most famous incidents of anti-Semitism in Britain or Greece in the 19th century.

David Pacifico, known as Don Pacifico (1784-1854), was a Portuguese merchant and diplomat. He was considered a British subject by birth and he was the central figure in 1850 in what became known in Greek history known as the ‘Don Pacifico Affair.’

Pacifico was a Sephardic Jew of Italian descent. His grandfather, also David Pacifico, was born in Italy. His family had been expelled from Spain with the rest of the Jews in 1492. His ancestors reached Italy, particularly Tuscany, first Leghorn and then Florence. David Pacfico, the grandfather, eventually settled in Gibraltar, and worked in Portugal.

The elder David Pacifico was the father of Asser Pacifico, who married Bella Rieti – the daughter of Moses Rieti and the descendant of a Venetian Jewish family – in Bevis Marks Synagogue in London in 1761.

David Pacifico was born in 1784, but gave varying accounts of his place of birth, suggesting he was born in Oran in north-west Algeria, then a Spanish possession, or in Gibraltar, by then a British possession. He claimed to be a both a Spanish subject and a British subject at different times.

Because of his family’s work in Portugal, David Pacifico grew up in Portugal, speaking fluent Portuguese. This led to the myth that the Pacifico family was of Portuguese descent, although the family was actually of Spanish descent.

David Pacifico entered business at Lagos in Portugal in 1812. However, as a liberal living in Portugal during the Civil War in 1828-1834, he was persecuted by the supporters of Don Miguelists and his property was confiscated. He was rewarded by the victorious liberals in 1835 when they appointed him the Portuguese Consul in Morocco and granted him Portuguese citizenship.

He was Portugal’s consul-general in Athens from 1837 to 1842, and became a prominent member of the local Jewish community.

However, his reputation was tarnished after allegations of abuses of power came to light and he was dismissed as consul on 4 January 1842. Despite this, when his time as consul in Athens came to an end, Pacifico stayed on in Greece.

Five years later, the German Jewish financier and banker, Amschel Mayer de Rothschild (1773-1855), visited Athens in April 1847. In deference to Rothschild, the Greek Prime Minister, Ioannis Coletti (1773-1847), banned the traditional burning of an effigy of Judas Iscariot during Greek Orthodox Easter celebrations, often seen by as an anti-Semitic element in the Greek Easter traditions.

This political manoeuvre was not popular with people in Athens. A riot ensured, and – as the police looked on – an angry mob ransacked and looted Don Pacifico’s house, beating him and his family.

Pacifico sought help from the British legation in Athens, claiming £32,000 in compensation from the Greek government for damage to property, plus 10% interest and £500 for physical violence.

Pacifico demanded compensation totalling 800,000 drachmas, then the equivalent of £26,618. The Greek government refused to consider his claims and even confiscated Pacifico’s real estate. Pacifico appealed to Britain for help from Britain, claiming British nationality because he was born in Gibraltar. Pacifico’s claims were supported by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, but the case dragged on until 1850.

Shortly after Wyse’s arrival in Athens, Palmerston sent the Mediterranean fleet under the command of Sir William Parker to blockade the port of Piraeus in January 1850. Wyse had tried to persuade Otho and his government to agree to amicable arbitration, but when this failed Palmerston ordered Wyse to issue an ultimatum, declaring that should an ultimatum proved unsuccessful he was to go on board the admiral’s ship and to prepare for armed conflict.

The British naval blockade to seize Greek ships and property equal to the amount of Pacifico’s claims. The blockade lasted two months and caused a rift with France and Russia, who shared a protectorate of Greece and did not support Britain’s intervention. Queen Victoria also criticised Palmerston for ending 14 British ships, 731 guns and 8,000 sailors to Greece, all for the sake of one ‘foreigner.’

The incident was important at the time because Palmerston had to defend himself for supporting the lawsuit of a Jew. Palmerston replied that it was not right that because ‘a man is of Jewish persuasion’ he should be outraged.

In a speech to Parliament that lasted almost five hours on 25 June 1850, Palmerston defended his actions, famously declaring, ‘As the Roman in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say, Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him from injustice and wrong.’

The Greeks ultimately agreed to pay nominal reparations totalling 120,000 drachmas and £500. Palmerston’s ‘gunboat diplomacy’ was seen as a victory for British foreign policy. Palmerston’s popularity soared, and he became prime minister five years later.

Pacifico retired to London and died there on 12 April 1854.

David Pacifico … born in Gibraltar and died in London

As for Wyse, he was involved in engineering a joint occupation of Piraeus by Britain and France during the Crimean war. His efforts to secure Greek neutrality during the Crimean War (1854-1856) were recognised when he was knighted in 1857.

Wyse remained the British Minister in Athens, and devoted the rest of his life to helping Greek artistic, literary and educational projects. He died in office of heart failure on 15 April 1862 and was given a state funeral in Athens on the orders of the King of Greece. As the cortege passed through the city, King Otho and Queen Amalia stood in silence on the palace balcony.

Wyse left his Waterford estates to his niece Winifrede Mary Wyse. She had never married but accompanied her uncle in his travels throughout his adopted country. After his death, she edited his An Excursion in the Peloponneses in the Year 1858 (1865) and Impressions of Greece ... and Letters to Friends at Home (1871). Following a legal challenge, however, the estates reverted to his estranged son and heir-at-law, Napoleon Alfred Bonaparte-Wyse (1822-1895).

His second son, William Charles William Charles Bonaparte-Wyse (1826-1892) was the leader of the revival of the Provencal language and earned a reputation for as a Provencal poet. He bought the Manor from his brother rather than see it leave the Wyse family. He died in Cannes and is buried there.

The Manor of Saint John ... designed by AWN Pugin for the Wyse family ca 1842 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A Comerford countess with links to the Fitzgerald family of Askeaton Castle

The ruins of Askeaton Castle … the brother of the ‘Sugán’ Earl of Desmond married a Comerford from Danganmore, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

It is almost four years ago since I moved to Askeaton I have often pointed out that I have no immediate family connections with this part of west Limerick. There are other branches of the Comerford family that lived for short periods in Pallaskenry and near Castleconnell, and one Comerford family that lived for generations in Limerick City. But I am a complete ‘blow-in’ when it comes to this part of west Limerick.

However, as I was going back over my notes of my visit late last summer to Dromana House, outside Cappoquin, Co Waterford, I realised that there was one – albeit remote – connection between my side of the Comerford family and Askeaton and this part of Co Limerick. And this link involves the story of a Comerford woman who became a countess and fled into exile in Barcelona 400 years ago.

Richard ‘Boy’ Comerford was a younger son of Richard ‘Oge’ Comerford of Ballybur Castle, Co Kilkenny, who died ca 1579/1580, and a younger brother of Thomas Comerford of Ballybur. In the late 1560s, and certainly by the early 1570s, this Richard ‘Boy’ Comerford was living at Danganmore Castle, and probably worked as the equivalent of a legal clerk to the Butlers of Kilkenny Castle, witnessing numerous Ormond legal documents.

Richard was the father of two sons – Edmund Comerford and Richard Comerford, who eventually inherited Danganmore Castle – and one daughter, whose name has been forgotten in time, but who married John FitzThomas FitzGerald, who became the claimant to the title of Earl of Desmond at the end of the last Desmond rebellion.

John FitzThomas FitzGerald was a younger brother of James FitzThomas FitzGerald, the ‘Súgán’ Earl of Desmond, and they were the sons of Sir Thomas FitzGerald, commonly called ‘Thomas Roe,’ ‘Tomás Ruadh’ or ‘Red Thomas,’ and his wife Ellice Le Poer, daughter of Richard Le Poer, Baron Le Poer.

Thomas Rue FitzGerald, in turn, was the son of James FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond and Joan Roche, daughter of Maurice Roche, Lord Fermoy. As Joan Roche was his own grandniece, their relationship fell within the proscribed limits of consanguinity. Because of this, their marriage was annulled and their son, Thomas Roe FitzGerald, father of James and John FitzGerald, was declared illegitimate and disinherited.

Instead, the title of Earl of Desmond was handed to Thomas’s younger, but decidedly legitimate, half-brother, Gerald FitzJames FitzGerald, who was recognised as Earl of Desmond by the Parliament in Dublin.

However, Gerald first entered into a bloody conflict with the Ormond Butlers of Kilkenny, and was heavily defeated at the Battle of Affane, near Cappoquin, by ‘Black’ Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1570.

After his release, Gerald returned to Ireland and rebelled in 1579. He was killed in battle on 11 November 1583 and his severed head was displayed on London Bridge.

After the suppression of the rebellion in 1583, Thomas Roe FitzGerald and his son James FitzThomas claimed the title and estates of the Earl of Desmond. Their petitions failed, however, and Thomas Roe died in 1595 and was buried in Youghal.

His son, James FitzThomas FitzGerald, assumed the title of Earl of Desmond. He became known as the ‘Sugan’ Earl of Desmond. He soon gathered an 8,000-strong force and engaged in a three-year struggle. He took Desmond Hall and Castle in Newcastle West in 1598, but lost them the following year. In 1599, the Earl of Essex also brought to an end the 147-day siege of Askeaton Castle the ‘Sugan’ Earl of Desmond.

After escaping from Kilmallock, he was finally captured on 29 May 1601 while he was hiding in a cave underground, near Mitchelstown.

FitzGerald was placed in irons and taken to Shandon Castle, where he was found guilty of treason. He was then brought to England, and he was made a prisoner in the Tower of London. Historians suggest that he died sometime in 1608, and was buried in the chapel of the Tower.

Richard Comerford’s tomb in the ruined church in Kilree, south of Kells, Co Kilkenny … his daughter married John FitzThomas FitzGerald, ‘Earl of Desmond,’ and they fled to Barcelona (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The next male heir in this line of the Desmond FitzGeralds was his younger brother, John FitzThomas FitzGerald, who had taken part in the Desmond rebellion. John fled Ireland in 1603 with his wife, the daughter of Richard Comerford of Danganmore, Co Kilkenny, to Spain. There he was known as the Conde de Desmond. John died a few years later in Barcelona, probably after 1615.

Meanwhile, his father-in-law, Richard Comerford, continued to live at Danganmore Castle, Co Kilkenny. He died at an advanced age on 5 October 1624, and was buried against the wall in the north-west chancel of Kilree Church, Co Kilkenny, with his wife Joanna St Leger, who had died on 4 October 1622.

Their grandson, Gerald FitzJohn FitzGerald, claimed the title as 17th Earl of Desmond, according to the family tree in Dromana House, and was also known as the ‘Conde de Desmond.’ He served in the Habsburg armies of the Emperor Ferdinand in Spain and Germany, and died in Germany in 1632. As he had no male children as heirs to his claims, with him ended the male heirs of the four eldest sons of Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Desmond.

As for Richard Comerford, brother of the exiled ‘Countess of Desmond,’ he inherited Danganmore Castle in 1624, and was the ancestor of the Ryan and Langton families who later lived there.

Richard Comerford of Ballybur Castle, first cousin of this exiled Comerford countess, died in 1637, five years after the death of her son Gerald in Germany. The descendants of this Richard and his wife Mary (Purcell) include the Bunclody branch of the family, and so they are my immediate ancestors.

The connections with Askeaton – and with Dromana – are distant and may even seem obscure. But, almost 400 years later, they are still there.

The FitzGerald connection with the Comerford family … a corner of one of the family trees in Dromana House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A monument in Lichfield Cathedral recalls pioneer in medical inoculations

The monument to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) by the West Door of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Reports over the last day or two of a breakthrough in the scientific race to find a coronavirus vaccine has raised hopes of an immunisation programme before Christmas, starting with elderly people in care homes.

The outbursts of hope are reflected in the public response and on the stockmarkets. I wonder whether there were similar outbursts of joy in the mid-18th century when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced the smallpox inoculation to Britain about 300 years ago, following her return from Turkey in 1718.

A monument beside the West Door in Lichfield Cathedral commemorates Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), who is remembered for her letters, her descriptions of her travels in the Ottoman Empire while her husband was the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, and especially for introducing the smallpox inoculation to Britain from Turkey.

She was born Lady Mary Pierrepont in 1689, a daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull.

By 1710, Lady Mary had two possible suitors to choose from: Sir Edward Wortley-Montagu (1678-1761), MP for Huntingdon (1705-1713), and Clotworthy Skeffington, MP for Antrim (1703-1714) and, from 1714, the 4th Viscount Massereene in the Irish peerage.

To avoid marriage to Skeffington, Mary eloped with Montagu, and they probably married on 23 August 1712. The Montagus and Harringtons, two inter-related families from Northamptonshire, were at the heart of the early years of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. James Montagu (1568-1618) was the first Master of Sidney Sussex and became Dean of Lichfield in 1603-1604.

Meanwhile, on 9 September 1713, Clotworthy Skeffington married Lady Catherine Chichester, sister of Arthur Chichester (1695-1757), 4th Earl of Donegall. The Skeffington family were the original proprietors of Fisherwick Park, between Lichfield and Tamworth. In the 1580s, William Comberford married Mary Skeffington, his first wife and a daughter of William Skeffington of Fisherwick.

This William Comberford entertained the future Charles I as his guest at the Moat House in Lichfield Street, Tamworth, in August 1619. The Skeffington family acquired Comberford Hall in the first half of the 18th century. Both Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall were bought by the Earls of Donegall in 1789.

Mary Wortley-Montagu’s brother died of smallpox in 1713, and her own famous beauty had been marred by a bout of smallpox in 1715, although she survived. A year later, Edward Wortley-Montagu was appointed the British Ambassador to Constantinople in 1716. She travelled with to Vienna in August, and from there they travelled on to Adrianople and Constantinople.

Edward Wortley-Montagu was recalled to London in 1717, but the couple, nevertheless, remained at Constantinople until 1718. They finally set sail for England, travelled through the Mediterranean, and arrived back in London on 2 October 1718.

Edward Wortley-Montagu’s coat-of-arms at the Wortley Almshouses in Peterborough (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Her account of this voyage and of her observations of Turkish life, including her experiences in a Turkish bath, are often credited as an inspiration for subsequent female travellers and writers and for Orientalist art. During her visit, she was sincerely charmed by the beauty and hospitality of the Ottoman women she encountered, and she recorded their lives and thoughts.

In her writings, she praised Islam for what they saw as its rational approach to theology, for its strict monotheism, and for its teaching and practice of religious tolerance. She saw Islam as a source of the Enlightenment, and claimed the Qur'an was ‘the purest morality delivered in the very best language.’

She also returned to England with knowledge of the Ottoman practice of inoculation against smallpox, and defied convention by introducing smallpox inoculation to Western medicine. At the time, smallpox was a devastating disease. On average, three out of every 10 people who got it died. Those who survived were usually left with scars, which were sometimes severe.

In April 1721, when a smallpox epidemic struck England, she had her daughter Mary inoculated by Dr Charles Maitland, the same physician who had inoculated her son Edward at the Embassy in Constantinople in 1715. She publicised the event, and it was the first such operation in Britain.

Lady Mary’s daughter Mary married the future Prime Minister, John Stuart (1713-1792), 3rd Earl of Bute, in 1736, despite her parents’ disapproval of the match. Her great-grandson, Henry Villiers-Stuart (1803-1874), inherited Dromana House at Villierstown, near Cappoquin, Co Waterford, from his mother, was MP for Co Waterford (1826-1830), and became 1st Baron Stuart de Decies in 1839.

Meanwhile, in 1736, the year her daughter married, Mary began an affair with Count Francesco Algarotti. She left England in 1739 and went to live with Algarotti in Venice. Their relationship ended in 1741, but she continued to travel extensively, visiting Florence, Rome, Genoa and Geneva and Avignon as well as Venice.

During all this time, Sir Edward Wortley-Montagu was MP for Huntingdon once again (1722-1734) and then for Peterborough (1734-1761).

When Edward died in 1761, Mary left Venice for England. She arrived back in London in January 1762, and died on 21 August 1762.

However, inoculation was not as safe as vaccination against smallpox. But vaccination did not begin on any thorough scale until 1796, when Dr Edward Jenner noted how milkmaids who got cowpox did not show any symptoms of smallpox after variolation. Janet Parker, a medical photographer at the Birmingham University Medical School, was the last person to die of smallpox when she died on 11 September 1978.

A monument to Lady Mary was erected beside the west door in Lichfield Cathedral in 1789 by Henrietta Inge, widow of Theodore William Inge (1711-1753) of Thorpe Constantine, near Lichfield. Yet the only potential family connections she might have had with Lichfield that I have been able to trace may have been through her jilted suitor, Clotworthy Skeffington, whose family were buried in Saint Michael’s Church on Greenhill, Lichfield.

Lady Mary’s monument reads:

Sacred to the Memory
of
The Right Honourable
Lady Mary Wortley Montague,
Who happily introduc’d from Turkey,
into this Country,
The Salutary Art
Of inoculating Small-Pox.
Convinc’d of its Efficacy
She first tried it with Success,
On her own Children,
And then recommended this practice of it
To her fellow-Citizens.
Thus by her Example and Advice,
We have soften’d the Virulence,
And escap’d the danger of this malignant Disease.
To perpetuate the memory of such Benevolence,
And to express her Gratitude
For the benefit She herself has receiv’d
From this alleviating Art,
This monument is erected
by
Henrietta Inge
Relict of Theodore Inge Esqr.
And Daughter of Sir John Wrottesley Baronet
In the year of Our Lord MDCCLXXXIX .

Signs of hope … Lichfield Cathedral in late autumn sunshine (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

How the former church in Villierstown has survived changes and closure

The former church at Villierstown, 8 km south of Cappoquin, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

While I visited Cappoquin, Co Waterford, last month on the first leg of this year’s ‘Road Trip,’ I visited two churches in the area that no longer serve as churches in the Church of Ireland: the church ruins at Affane, close to the entrance to Dromana House, and the former church in Villierstown, built as part of the Villiers Stuart estate.

Villierstown is on the banks of the River Blackwater in west Waterford, about 8 km south of Cappoquin. The village was founded by the Villiers-Stuart family, who give the place its name. The family and their direct ancestors have lived in Dromana House in its different forms for over 700 years, making it one of the oldest family estates in Ireland up to the 20th century.

John Villiers (1684-1766), 1st Earl Grandison, established the village in the 1740s to develop a linen industry. The original village consisted of a church, a rectory, a school, 24 houses, a court, a police barracks and a quay on the river. It was initially populated with linen-weavers, some of whom were from Lurgan, Co Armagh.

There were just 16 churches in repair in the Diocese of Lismore in 1746. But the religious landscape on the Dromana estate was changing. Grandison decided to build a new church to serve the new village and its new residents. The new chapel was built in the Queen Anne style 1748, and the interior fittings, including the seats, pulpit and altar, all in oak, were installed by 1755. The finished chapel could accommodate about 400 people, and by 1757 regular Sunday services were being held.

Villierstown was laid out in the 1740s by John Villiers (1684-1766), 1st Earl Grandison (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

This is a three-bay, double-height church, built on a cruciform plan, aligned on the liturgically-correct axis. It has a single-bay, double-height nave. There are single-bay, single-bay deep, double-height transepts; a single-bay, double-height chancel at the east end; and a single-bay, double-height pedimented narthex at the entrance or west front.

Two cut-limestone steps lead up to the square-headed front door and narthex. The cut-limestone doorcase with a cornice on a pulvinated frieze frames timber panelled double doors.

Inside, the full-height choir gallery stands on fluted cast-iron Doric pillars, and there is a moulded plasterwork cornice at the coved ceiling. The notable features include the coupled windows showing conventional Georgian glazing patterns, and the chancel has a classically-detailed Venetian window.

The bellcote embellishes the pedimented roof. The clock over the front door was erected in 1910 by Mary Villiers-Stuart of Dromana as a gift to the people of Villierstown ‘to whom she was deeply attached.’

The clock on the façade was donated by Mary Villiers-Stuart (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The church was completed in 1748, but remained outside the parochial and diocesan structures of the Church of Ireland. It was a ‘chapel of ease’ and marriage services, for example, could not take place there without a special licence.

The chapel was endowed by John Fitzgerald Villiers, 1st Earl Grandison, in his will in 1763. His personal chaplain, the Revd Francis Green, became the first Chaplain of Villierstown. The chaplain was to provide ‘divine service’ and catechise but he had no parochial district and the village of Villierstown remained part of the parish of Affane and Aglish.

While Green was chaplain of Villierstown, he was also a Vicar Choral of Lismore Cathedral and Vicar of Tallow. He died in February 1768.

There are no records of chaplains in Villierstown from 1768 until 1781, when the Revd Michael Greene was chaplain of Villierstown. The chaplaincy first appears in the bishops’ visitation books in 1784.

Later chaplains include the Revd Harris Oldfield, who married Ann Greatrakes from Affane, from the family of Valentine Greatrakes, the healer known as ‘The Stroker.’ One their daughters, Charlotte, married the next chaplain at Villierstown, the Revd Thomas Sandiford (1818-1820).

A plaque at Villierstown remembering the Revd Philip Homan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The appointment of the Revd Philip Homan (1799-1846) in 1822 was due to family connections: Sir William Jackson Homan had married Lady Charlotte Stuart, a daughter of John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute; Lady Charlotte’s brother, Lord Henry Stuart, married Lady Gertrude Emilia Villiers, only child of George Villiers, last Earl of Grandison, and heiress to the Dromana estate.

Philip Homan died of Famine Fever on 20 November 1846 while ministering to the sick of all denominations. He was regarded as a saintly man and was mourned by rich and poor alike who attended his funeral in large numbers. He is buried in a vault below the altar in the church and a memorial tablet in Saint Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore, describes him as a religious scholar and a benefactor of the poor in times of distress.

After Philip Homan died, Lord Stuart de Decies sought to appoint a successor, but was opposed by the Bishop of Cashel, Waterford and Lismore, Robert Daly. A protracted argument ensued, with Bishop Daly insisting he had the final say on all clerical appointments.

Eventually, the Revd Hans Butler was appointed in 1847, and remained until 1886. He also a Vicar Choral of Lismore Cathedral (1839-1850). During his time at Villierstown, Affane Parish, which included Villierstown, was united with Cappoquin in 1874.

The Revd Richard Bartlett Langbridge (1886-1887) had been headmaster of Dartford Grammar School (1870-1876), a missionary in Chile and a consular chaplain in Montevideo, Uruguay, before coming to Villierstown.

The Revd George Gillington was the chaplain at Villierstown in 1887-1899. The Revd Arthur Wellesley Chapman (1899-1901) had studied at Harvard and was a curate at Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, before coming to Villierstown. The Revd John George Disney (1901-1904) was both chaplain at Villierstown and curate in Cappoquin. He died in 1933.

The Revd William Henry Rennison (1904-1914) was also curate in Cappoquin and chaplain at Villierstown. He became the Rector of Ardmore in 1914, and Rector of Portlaw in 1921. He compiled the Succession List of Bishops, Cathedral and Parochial Clergy of the Dioceses of Waterford and Lismore (1920), and published a series of papers in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society on the early 17th century history of the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore.

He was 52 when he died in 1937 on a family holiday in Annestown near Tramore.

The Revd Charles Geoffrey Nelson Stanley (1914-1916) was a former curate of Tramore before becoming curate of Cappoquin and chaplain of Villierstown. Later, he became Dean of Lismore in 1934. Lismore and Cappoquin were united in 1955. He retired in 1960 and died in 1977.

The Revd William Skuse (1916-1919) had worked in the bank in Templemore, Co Tipperary, and was a curate in Kenmare, Co Kerry, before becoming chaplain at Villierstown and curate of Cappoquin in 1916. The position of chaplain at Villierstown came to an end in 1919, and from then on, the chapel was served by the clergy of Lismore Cathedral and the curate of Cappoquin.

The Villiers-Stuart fountain on the Green opposite the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The glebe land in Villierstown was sold in 1941 and the money was transferred to a diocesan endowment fund. The Villiers-Stuart family also donated another parcel of land near Villierstown.

Sunday attendance figures had dropped to about six by 1955, and the chapel closed in 1958. A church commission recommended removing the roof and capping the walls, retaining the porch as a mortuary chapel for the churchyard. But the Villiers-Stuart family was unhappy and James Henry Ion Villiers-Stuart (1928-2004) donated the church to the village in 1965 to prevent it from ‘falling into disrepair and ruin.’

After a meeting with the Roman Catholic bishop, Dr Daniel Cohalan, it was agreed that it would become a church for the Catholic villagers. It was the first time a Church of Ireland church was given to a Roman Catholic parish. The gift was welcomed by Bishop Cohalan and the parish priest, Father Hackett. A local committee raised £1,500 for its adaptation as a Catholic church.

However, Bishop Cohalan and Father Hackett died within weeks of each other. Their successors, Bishop Michael Russell and Father Quinlan, were less than enthusiastic, and decided the three existing churches were enough for the parish.

The Villiers-Stuart vault behind the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The building continued to deteriorate, and the furnishings were removed by the Dean of Lismore. In the late 1960s, the parish of Aglish transferred the church to Helen Villiers-Stuart, then living in Dromana House and some work was carried out with the assistance of the State Training Agency (AnCO). President Erskine Childers visited Villierstown in 1974 and dedicated the chapel for ecumenical use.

When Helen Villiers-Stuart died in 1986, her family agreed to transfer the church to a charitable trust in the hope of securing its future. Some improvements were made, the central crossing of the roof structure was replaced, the building was rewired, and toilets and heating were installed.

However, in the decades that followed, many members of the local trust died. A new Villierstown Church Company was formed by the three remaining trust members and four new members were added. Despite decades of neglect, much of original form and fabric of the chapel, outside and inside, survive, including the glazing panels in the windows. The clock on the church façade was restored by Mary Villiers-Stuart’s grandson, James Villiers-Stuart, in 1990.

Many members of the Villiers-Stuart family are buried in the family vault behind the church, while other family members are buried in the churchyard.

The Celtic Cross in front of the former church in Villierstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The inscription on the limestone Celtic cross in front of the church gates reads: ‘To Henry Villiers Baron Stuart de Decies Died January 23rd 1874 and to his wife Therse Pauline Lady Stuart de Decies who died August 7th 1867. This monument is erected by their son in affectionate remembrance. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.’

On the opposite side of the street, on a prominent corner site on the Green, an elegant memorial fountain dates from 1910 and remembers members of the Villiers-Stuart family. It is an attractive landmark in the village.

The church in Villierstown built by Lord Grandison in 1748 is now an arts, entertainment, community and wedding venue. It remains an important part of the mid-18th century ecclesiastical and architectural heritage of Co Waterford.

Paired Venetian windows in the church in Villierstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The church ruins in Affane and the grave of a Restoration ‘healer’

The church ruins at Affane, 3 km south of Cappoquin, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

While I visited Cappoquin, Co Waterford, last month on the first leg of this year’s ‘Road Trip,’ I visited two churches in the area that no longer serve as churches in the Church of Ireland: the former church in Villierstown, and the church ruins at Affane, close to the entrance to Dromana House.

Affane is a small village in west Waterford, 3km south of Cappoquin, on the north side of the Cappoquin-Aglish road and close to the banks of the River Blackwater.

The first references to a town at Affane are limited. It was included on a list in 1300. The parish church of Affane was listed as Athmethan and valued at over £6 in the ecclesiastical taxation in 1302-1306. There are reports of an incident in 1312.

The presence of a church and castle 300 metres apart indicates how Affane was an important mediaeval settlement. The list of Vicars of Affane dates from the late 15th century, although it is incomplete after that.

The Battle of Affane between the Fitzgeralds of Desmond and the Butlers of Ormond clans was fought in the area in 1565 at a ford over the Finisk, a tributary of the Blackwateron, and close the later bridge and gate lodge at the entrance to Dromana House.

By the mid-16th century, Affane had been united with the church of Dungarvan, but in a visitation of 1588 it was in the Deanery of Ardmore. The list of Vicars of Affane resumes in the early 17th century, and they were often also Vicars Choral of Saint Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore, or chaplains to the Earls of Cork in Lismore Castle.

John Lane was later Dean of Waterford in 1602 and Archdeacon of Lismore in 1610.

Stephen Jerome, who was Vicar of Affane in 1631, was later committed to prison by the Irish House of Lords for preaching a sermon in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, ‘traducing their majesties.’ However, escaped to Manchester.

After the Caroline Restoration, the Parish of Aglish was united with Affane in 1662.

John Walkington, who was Vicar of Affane in 1714-1717 was also Rector and Vicar of Clonmel (1688-1717) and was elected Mayor of Clonmel in 1712. Henry Gervais (1738) was later Archdeacon of Cashel.

A new church was built in Affane in 1819 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A new church was built in Affane in 1819, and in 1837 the church was described the church as ‘a neat building’ built by the late Board of First Fruits with a loan of £500.

The church at Affane was a typical Board of First Fruits Church and it cost £500 to build. It had seating for 200 people and was built to a very simple design with a single-bay, three-stage entrance tower at the west end.

The church had a nave-with-entrance tower and was aligned on a liturgically-correct axis. The slender profile of the windows underpin a mediaeval Gothic-style design, and the chancel had an East Window with curvilinear glazing bars. The tower was embellished with battlements.

The church is now closed and the picturesque ruins are surrounded by a graveyard. Many of the graves date from 1820 to 1920, indicating a large Church of Ireland community in the area until the early 20th century.

The last separate Rector of Affane was Canon William Fitzgerald in 1869-1872, in the immediate aftermath of the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. In 1874, the Parish of Affane was united with Cappoquin in 1874, with the Revd William Going as Perpetual Curate (Vicar) of Cappoquin (1874-1898), the Revd Robert Cleary as curate of Cappoquin (and later Archdeacon of Emly), and the Revd Neville Parry as curate of Affane.

Valentine Greatrakes (1628-1682), who is buried in the churchyard, was a 17th century faith healer popularly known as ‘The Stroker’ who toured England in 1666, claiming to cure people by the laying on of hands.

Valentine Greatrakes was born on Saint Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1628, in the family home at Norrisland, New Affane. His parents were William Greatrakes and Mary Harris, daughter of Sir Edward Harris, Second Justice of the King’s Bench in Ireland and Chief Justice of Munster.

Valentine’s grandfather had moved from Derbyshire to Co Waterford after the Plantation of Munster. At the outbreak of the Munster Rebellion in 1641, his mother decided to move the family to England to live with her brother Edward Harris in Devon. Valentine returned to Ireland in 1647 and for a year he lived in ‘contemplation’ at Cappoquin Castle, later the site of Cappoquin House.

He became a lieutenant in the Earl of Orrery’s regiment in the Cromwellian army in 1649. On leaving the army, he returned to his family home in 1654. He was appointed Clerk of the Peace for Co Cork and Register of Transplantation, but he lost these positions after the Caroline Restoration.

Valentine Greatrakes believed he could cure people of illnesses and diseases. He was popularly known as ‘The Stroker’ because of his method of stroking his patients with his hands. His first patient, William Maher of Salterbridge, Cappoquin, was a young boy who suffered from scrofula (‘the king’s evil’).

His fame as a healer spread quickly and he was so inundated with people visiting his home that he was forced to move to Youghal. However, he was summoned to the Bishop’s court in Lismore, and because he had no licence to practice, he was forbidden to lay hands on anyone else in Ireland.

Nonetheless, he was invited to England to practice his cures, and he attracted huge crowds in London. Robert Boyle of Lismore Castle, an early pioneer of modern scientific method, witnessed many of his healing sessions in London.

Greatrakes published an account of his life and cures in 1666. He was married twice and was the father of three children, two sons and a daughter.

His funeral entry at the Ulster Office of Arms or Herald’s Office in Dublin recorded that he died on 28 November 1682 at Affane, Co Waterford, and was buried in Lismore Cathedral. However, the Revd Samuel Hayman, writing in the 1860s, stated that he is buried in the aisle of the old Affane Church, beside his father.

In the churchyard surrounding the church ruins at Affane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)