Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 103, Thursday 21 August 2025

Waiting for a wedding reception at the Boot and Flogger in Southwark … we are all invited to the heavenly banquet, but are we ready to accept the invitation? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX, 17 August 2025).

I hope to be involved in a drama group meeting in Stony Stratford this evening. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Go therefore into the … streets, and invite everyone you find to the … banquet’ (Matthew 22: 9) … empty tables at restaurants in the side streets in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Matthew 22: 1-14 (NRSVA):

1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” 10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 ‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.’

‘A Peasant Wedding’ (1620), Peter Brueghel the Younger, the National Gallery of Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

‘For many are called, but few are chosen.’

Sometimes, the ways I can behave as a snob can catch me off-guard and unexpectedly, and I shame myself.

When I was growing up, the snobberies and class distinctions of previous generations were challenged over 60 years ago in an old-fashioned way in the film My Fair Lady (1964), based on George Bernard Shaw’s earlier play, Pygmalion (1913).

But Pygmalion also inspired what I think is a much funnier film, Hoi Polloi (1935), with the Three Stooges, Larry, Curly and Moe.

Two professors are arguing about whether our social behaviour is caused by environment or heredity. It is a very funny take on the old Nature v Nurture argument.

To settle a bet, the two professors take three binmen – Larry, Curly and Moe – train and coach them for three months, dress them up, and send them off to a posh society dinner.

Their behaviour descends into farce, and it looks as if one professor has won his bet: our social behaviour is dictated by inherited class.

But then the tables are turned – literally. Everyone else at the party descends to the same riotous behaviour. At a base level, we are all the same, even if some refuse to accept it.

Nature or nurture? It was an important statement that we all share the same humanity, coming as racism and the Nazis were on the rise in the 1930s.

The title of the film, Hoi Polloi, is a way of expressing class-based social prejudice. It is a Greek phrase, meaning ‘the many’ and it was used in Victorian England by people who had the benefit of a classical education in English public schools and the universities, to describe the masses, who they presumed did not understand the phrase.

Gilbert and Sullivan use the phrase to mock those who used it in their comic opera Iolanthe. Later, it was used by English public schoolboys in the 1950s and the 1960s, when they referred to ‘oips’ and ‘oiks’.

The term hoi polloi also appears in a scene in the film Dead Poets Society (1989). Professor John Keating, played by Robin Williams, speaks negatively about the use of the definite article ‘the’ in front of the phrase.

Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero) raises his hands and speaks: ‘The hoi polloi. Doesn’t it mean the herd?’

Keating replies: ‘Precisely, Meeks. Greek for the herd. However, be warned that, when you say “the hoi polloi” you are actually saying “the the herd.” Indicating that you too are “hoi polloi”.’

This morning’s Gospel reading (Matthew 22: 1-14) begins with a very joyful occasion – a posh nosh, a planned wedding, and generous invitations to a lavish banquet. But, instead of the farce in that film with the Three Stooges, it quickly descends into very difficult images: slaves who are kidnapped, mistreated and killed; cities that are burned down; a man who is bound hand and feet and thrown into outer darkness.

The images of the wedding banquet and the wedding covenant are important ways of describing our relationship with God.

But the parable in this morning’s Gospel reading is particularly difficult.

The king has invited a long list of guests, but even after being repeatedly sought out, none of these guests comes to the banquet.

To refuse to come, to refuse a king’s command, is treason; to kill his slaves amounts to insurrection. So the king sends out troops to put down the rebellion.

The king then sends his slaves into the streets to find enough people to sit at the tables at the wedding banquet. The phrase translated as ‘the main streets’ (διεξόδους τῶν ὁδῶν, verse 9), means not the main fashionable, shopping streets in a chic part of a city centre. It refers to dirty, gritty, street corners and junctions, perhaps the main junctions outside the city gates.

This is the place where those who want to be hired as labour gather, where those who are refused entry wait without hope, this is where those who are on margins are found. Other translations catch these images when they talk about the highways and the byways.

And the king’s invitation, in verse 10, goes out to all people, ‘both good and bad.’

Yet, when the king sees that a man is not dressed appropriately for the event, the king throws him into the outer darkness. In this case, the robe probably symbolises the white robe worn for baptism.

Do we wear that robe all the time? In other words, do we live up to our promises of discipleship made at Baptism – summarised in the call to love God and to love others?

If you were to imagine yourself as one of the characters in this parable, who would you be?

And would you behave that way?

Are you the king, throwing a lavish wedding banquet?

Are you a wedding guest who has denied the generosity of the king?

Are you the bride or groom, sidelined and marginalised at our own wedding, incidental to all the power playing and role playing?

Are you one of the people brought in from the streets, but not prepared for the celebration about to take place?

Where do you find Good News in this parable?

What is meant by the many and the few here?

In our western way of thinking, the word many is a quantity much more than the majority, while few is many less than the majority. But in eastern thought, one less than 100% would be considered few.

We could put the Greek use of ‘few’ and ‘many’ by Christ in this parable in its cultural context. Pericles, in his ‘Funeral Oration’ in Athens, according to Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, uses ‘the many,’ οἱ πολλοί (hoi polloi), in a positive way when he extols democracy in Athens.

He contrasts ‘the many’ with ‘the few’ (οἱ ὀλίγοι, hoi oligoi), the few who abuse power and create an oligarchy, rule by the few. Pericles demands equal justice for ‘the many’, ‘the all’, before the law, against the selfish interests of the few.

When we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember that Christ is the victim, and that he said his blood is shed ‘for you and for many.’ The word ‘you’ here means us, the Church, the few in this parable. But the phrase ‘the many’ here, οἱ πολλοί (hoi polloi), refers to the masses, the multitude, the great unwashed, who are called to the banquet too.

Christ’s invitation is not just to you and me, who know we are invited to the banquet. It is also for the many, the lumpen masses, all people, the ones who are not usually invited to the posh nosh, the Larry, Curly and Moe in our midst.

The invitation to come in, to celebrate at the banquet, symbolised in the Eucharist this morning, is not just for the few, the oligarchs. The many are invited to this banquet this morning.

Who are we to behave like a tyrannical despot and exclude them? For if we exclude them, we are in danger of excluding Christ himself.

‘Look, I have prepared my dinner … and everything is ready’ (Matthew 22: 3) … waiting for diners at the Black Horse in Great Linford, Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 21 August 2025):

The theme this week (17 to 23 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Tell the Full Story’ (pp 28-29). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 21 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, we pray for all trapped in modern-day slavery and exploited labour. Bring freedom, dignity, and hope to those who suffer, and help us be a voice for the voiceless.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
revive your Church in our day,
and make her holy, strong and faithful,
for your glory’s sake
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘Those who had been invited to the wedding banquet … would not come’ (Matthew 22: 3) … empty tables at the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

A grave in Kerameikós, Athens, where Pericles delivered his funeral oration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When window shopping is simply not enough on Charing Cross Road

Enticed and invited by the bookshops in London this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I was staying earlier this week in the Saint Giles Hotel on Bedford Avenue in Bloomsbury, near the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, and around the corner from the British Museum.

This is the heart of literary London, and within a few minutes’ walking distance – if not less there are blue plaques and monuments remembering great literary figures who lived and worked in this part of London in the 19th and 20th centuries.

An unexpected plaque in Great Russell Street marks the place where Charles Kitterbell lived, as related by Charles Dickens in sketches by Boz, ‘The Bloomsbury Christening.’

Anthony Hope lived at 41 Bedford Square … and had a Comerford family connection (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

On the south side of Bedford Square, a blue plaque at No 41 recalls that Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933) lived there in 1903-1917. As Anthony Hope, he was the author of The Prisoner of Zenda … and there was a distant family connection there too, for his father was the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins (1827-1906) of Saint Bride’s Church, Fleet Street.

On the west side of Bedford Square, Thomas Wakely (1795-1862), founder of the Lancet and Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866), who gave the first account of Hodgkin’s Disease, have plaques, one above another, on the same wall at No 35.

TS Eliot worked with Faber and Faber at the corner of Russell Square for 40 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

At the north-west corner of Russell Square, close to the University of London and the School of Oriental and African Studies, TS Eliot worked for Faber and Faber for 40 years from 1925 to 1965. The Faber Building is now part of SOAS.

But an additional pleasure earlier this week, despite the rain, was window shopping in the bookshops as I walked along Charing Cross Road.

The American writer Helene Hanff immortalised this street in 1970 with 84 Charing Cross Road, which tells of her 20-year correspondence with Frank Doel, a buyer at the antiquarian booksellers Marks & Co that began in 1949.

But long before that book, Charing Cross Road has had an interesting collection of bookshops and second-hand bookshops. Decades ago, the street was part and parcel of London’s literary scene and the book trade.

Famous bookshops on the street include Foyles at No 107, which first opened its doors in 1907.

William Foyle’s daughter Christina launched the Foyle’s Literary Luncheons in 1930. They featured speakers as diverse as HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Barbara Cartland, Kingsley Amis and Doris Lessing.

Legends say that in the 1950s, writers like Dylan Thomas and Auberon Waugh would emerge from basement clubs and hidden drinking places in Soho and stagger from shop to shop, scanning the heaving shelves.

Window shopping at Quinto and Francis Edwards (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Quinto has been selling second-hand and rare books for decades. Its labyrinthine Charing Cross Road branch moved up the street in 2010 from No 48A to No 72, and is in the basement of Francis Edwards, their rare and antiquarian booksellers dating back to 1855.

Francis Edwards has its best-known outlet in Hay-on-Wye, the ‘Town of Books.’ Quinto is in the basement at Charing Cross Road, and sells all kinds of second-hand books. They completely refresh their stock for the first Tuesday of each month so there is always something new to discover. They also buy books from people with large collections to sell, but also offer to supply books in quantity for use as props or interior decoration.

Part of this month’s stock, for example, comes from the library of Anthony Lejeune, the writer, editor and literary critic who died last year at the age of 89. Lejeune had a great taste for books, from first editions Wodehouse and Edgar Rice Burroughs to vintage crime and horror stories.

In addition to Lejeune’s library, they have a few other large buys of literature and the performing arts: books about music from the rock-n-roll and football writer Paolo Hewitt, as well as large sections on classical music and opera.

Marks and Co is long gone, but Charing Cross Road still has that special atmosphere beloved of every booklover. I spent some time window shopping at Quinto and Francis Edwards on that rainy afternoon earlier this week, and it took great determination, personal resolve and self-discipline to move on and return to my hotel.

More on offer than can be seen in the window (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Falls Hotel in Ennistymon holds stories of family feuds and poets’ dreams

The Falls Hotel in Ennistymon, Co Clare, hides within its walls an 18th century mansion, a late medieval castle, and a history of four or five centuries(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Nestled in a wooded vale in Co Clare beside the tumbling waters of the River Inagh in Ennistymon, it is difficult to visualise how the Falls Hotel hides within its walls an 18th century mansion, a late medieval castle, and a history of four or five centuries that tells of clans and warfare, disputes between landlords and tenants, and visiting poets, dreamers and entrepreneurs.

Ennistymon Castle may have been built ca 1560 by Sir Domhnall O’Brien, although there is a suggestion that an earlier castle may have been built by Donough MacDonall O’Conor of Corcomroe, who also built Dough Castle in nearby Lahinch.

It seems all the O’Connor properties in the area passed to Turlough O’Brien in 1582, although Ennistymon may have remained an O’Connor castle for a short time after. However, Sir Domhnall is O’Brien founded the branch of the O’Brien family at Ennistymon Castle.

Sir Domhnall was Governor of Clare in 1576 and died in 1579. His son, Sir Turlough O’Brien, became High Sheriff of Clare. Another son, also Domhnall O’Brien, was nominated as Church of Ireland Bishop of Killaloe, but never took office.

At one time, Sir Turlough O’Brien owned over 2,000 acres in the area, including the castle at Ennistymon. In 1588, at the height of the Spanish Armada, he was given permission to arrest and torture any Spaniards found in the country. On the other hand, his son Tadhg O’Brien joined the rebel forces of Red Hugh O’Donnell, and was mortally wounded after a large-scale local skirmish.

By 1619, the Earl of Thomond was recorded as holding ‘the castle, town and three quarters [about 360 acres] called Innisdyman.’

During the Confederate War, in 1645, Sir Daniel O’Brien of Ennistymon Castle was appointed to organise an exchange of prisoners with the commanders of English troops in Connacht. After that war, the Earl of Thomond leased Ennistymon Castle to Neptune Blood in 1656. Three years later it was let to Edward Fitzgerald.

Thomas Moland’s survey in 1703 describes Inishtimond as having a manor, a good castle and a two-storey house, all in good repair.

The farm of "Inishtymond" was granted in 1712 to a John O’Brien of Dublin, who was probably acting on behalf of his relative Christopher O’Brien. According to the lease, the tenant was required ‘… for the preservation of the public peace and Protestant interest … to find, set out, and maintain a man of the Protestant religion, sufficiently fitted and furnished with a horse, sword and case of pistols …’

Christopher O’Brien died in 1743 and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Edward O’Brien. He became a member of the Church of Ireland in 1755. In 1764, Edward O’Brien, a descendant of the original Domhnall O’Brien, demolished much of the old castle building. By the late 19th century, few traces of the castle could still be seen.

The castle was rebuilt as Ennistymon House, a Georgian-style building with large sash windows, fine panelling and rococo decoration inside. It was a two-storey, seven bay house over a basement, on a mound facing east towards the Ennistymon falls, with a central one-bay pedimented breakfront, containing a side and fan-lit front door, and a lunette above the second storey window. A yard and stabling stood some distance to the north-west.

The house passed to Ann O’Brien and her husband, Matthias Finucane, in 1792. A year later, Ann was divorced by her husband by a special Act of Parliament. But because she was deemed to be the ‘guilty party,’ Ennistymon House remained in the Finucane family.

The Cascades at Ennistymon, between the bridge and the Falls Hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The Finucane family continued to live at Ennistymon House throughout the early 1800s. When Andrew Finucane died without heirs in 1843, the house passed to his brother-in-law, Major William Nugent Macnamara (1775-1856) of Doolin, who had married Susannah Finucane in 1798. She, in turn, was a granddaughter of Edward O’Brien, formerly of the Ennistymon House. Susannah died at the age of 39 years after giving birth to six children.

William Nugent Macnamara had a distinguished career. He was a major in the Clare Militia, a Justice of the Peace and High Sheriff of Co Clare. He was also a noted marksman and duellist, and he acted as second to Daniel O’Connell in his duel with John d’Esterre in 1816.

The Catholic Association had originally selected Major Macnamara as its candidate for the Clare byelection of 1828. However, he declined for family reasons, and it was only then that Daniel O’Connell was chosen and in turn enjoyed a famous victory that would prove a turning point in Irish history.

Major Macnamara was elected Liberal MP for Clare in 1830 and held the seat for 22 years until 1852. He was described as ‘a Protestant in religion, a Catholic in politics, and a Milesian in descent.’

Perhaps unusually for his time, Macnamara never remarried, and he died in 1856 at the age of 81. His obituary described him as ‘the poor man’s magistrate,’ and his funeral to the family vault in Doolin was one of the largest ever seen in Co Clare.

Colonel Francis Macnamara (1802-1873) was the only son and heir of William Nugent Macnamara, was born in 1802. He was a captain in the 8th Hussars and a lieutenant-colonel in the Clare Militia. He was MP for Ennis (1832-1835) and was also High Sheriff of Co Clare. His uncle was Admiral Sir Burton Macnamara, who died in 1876.

He married Helen McDermott of Dublin in 1860 and they lived between London and Ennis until 1863, when they made their home at Ennistymon House. They added a west wing to the house to accommodate guests who came to enjoy the shooting and fishing.

Colonel Francis Macnamara renovated Ennistymon House, developed parts of the town, and was responsible for giving Ennistymon its distinctive appearance. In 1876, the Macnamara estate included 15,000 statute acres in Ennistymon, Liscannor, Doolin, Fanore, Ballyvaughan and Carron, with about 700 tenants paying a yearly rent of almost £10,000.

Colonel Francis Macnamara’s eldest son, Henry Valentine Macnamara (1864-1925), was born two years before his parents moved into Ennistymon House. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1882. He was a captain in the Royal Carmarthen Artillery Militia and later a lieutenant in the Clare Militia. He also became a justice of the peace, and High Sheriff of Clare in 1885.

In 1883 ‘Henry Vee’ (as he was commonly known) married Edith Elizabeth Cooper, an Englishwoman of Australian descent. He lived at Ennistymon House during the Land War, and relations between landlord and tenant were not always amicable. Later, during the War of Independence, Henry Vee and others were ambushed near Leamaneh Castle in 1919, and he suffered gunshot wounds to his face and arms.

Three years later, in 1922, the IRA told Henry Vee that it was ‘confiscating’ Ennistymon House. The family home in Doolin was burned to the ground. Henry Vee reluctantly left Ennistymon and never returned. He died in London in 1925 at the age of 64. A short time after Henry Macnamara left, Ennistymon House became a temporary barracks for the new police force, the Garda Siochana.

An archway off Main Street leads to the riverside walk to the Falls Hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Henry Valentine Macnamara’s eldest son, Francis Macnamara (1884-1946), was responsible for turning Ennistymon House into a commercial property for the first time.

At an early stage in his life, he turned his back on a career in law for the bohemian lifestyle of London and in 1909 published a collection of poems, Marionettes, some inspired by his home in Ennistymon.

He secretly married Yvonne Majolier in 1911 and they lived together in London. They were the parents of a son, John Macnamara, and three daughters, Nicolette, Brigit and Caitlin.

One daughter, Nicolette Devas (1911-1987), described her unusual childhood in Two Flamboyant Fathers (1966), a memoir full of anecdotes about celebrated figures such as WB Yeats and TE Lawrence. Her sister, Caitlín (1913-1994), married the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), with whom she had a fiery alcohol-fuelled relationship in London, Ireland, Wales and the USA, spending her last years in Italy.

Francis and Yvonne spent some of their honeymoon in Doolin, and returned many times with other writers and artists, including Augustus John, George Bernard Shaw, JM Synge and Oliver St John Gogarty.

The marriage of Francis and Yvonne broke down and in 1928 he married Augustus John’s sister-in-law, Edie McNeil. At the time, he had plans o turn the family home at Ennistymon House into a country hotel.

After Edie died, Francis married his third wife, Iris O’Callaghan-Westropp of O’Callaghan’s Mills, in 1936. He was then 52, some 30 years her senior, and shortly after they both returned to Ennistymon House which they opened as the Falls Hotel.

Although guests appreciated Francis Macnamara’s, generosity, his hotel management skills were unprofessional. At the end of the 1930s, he leased the hotel for five years to Brendan O’Regan, who later pioneered catering and sales services at Shannon International Airport.

O’Regan ran the hotel during World War II, and Francis and Iris moved into a small house – known as the ‘Henrun’ or the ‘Chateau’ – behind the hotel.

When Brendan O’Regan’s lease ran out, Francis decided to sell the hotel, bringing to an end an almost unbroken connection that stretched back over 400 years to the original O’Briens of Ennistymon Castle. Francis later died in 1946 at the age of 62.

The new owner of the Falls Hotel was a retired Welshman, Gerard Henry Williams-Owen, but he and his family only ran the hotel during the summer months.

When John F Wood and his wife Bridget acquired the hotel in 1955, they added a hydroelectric plant that for many years provided power to the building, and the plant can still be seen a short distance upstream, just below the cascades.

Later, John F Wood’s son Tony and his wife Meg ran the hotel for some years. The current owners of the Falls Hotel are Dan and Eileen McCarthy. The hotel has been extended and improved, and now has 150 bedrooms, a restaurant and bar, and a 400-seat conference and banqueting room.

The Cascades or the Falls are one of the finest features in Ennistymon. They can be viewed from the bridge or from the footpath walk that can be entered through the archway leading off Main Street and along the riverside walk to the Falls Hotel.

This stretch of the river, from the bridge to the deep water near the Falls Hotel, is a popular trout and salmon fishing beat, especially when the river is in flood. Favourite pools by the Cascades were known as Tuneys, the House, the Big Rock, the Salmon Hole and the Eel Hole.

The Bridge at Ennistymon is a seven-arch rubble stone road bridge built over the river ca 1790. The Board of Fisheries built a fish pass on the river in 1961 to allow salmon to migrate upstream to breed.

The Bridge at Ennistymon is a seven-arch rubble stone road bridge built over the river around 1790(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Georgian Museum gives an insight into life in Dublin 200 years ago

The Georgian Museum at 29 Fitzwilliam Square gives unique insight into middle class life in Georgian Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

Last Friday afternoon [14 October 2016], during a walk around Dublin after lunch, I visited the ESB Georgian House Museum at No 29 Lower Fitzwilliam Street, for the first time. The museum, which is run by the ESB (Electricity Power Board) in partnership with the National Museum of Ireland, presents images of life in Georgian Dublin in the period 1790-1820.

The displays throughout the house are supplemented by story boards giving information on each room and explaining life of an upper middle class family in a townhouse in Georgian Dublin. Visitors take a tour from the basement to the attic, through rooms that have been furnished with original artefacts as they would have been in the Georgian era.

No 29 Lower Fitzwilliam Street was first occupied in 1794, during a time of great change and expansion in Dublin. The first person to live here was the widowed Mrs Olivia Mary Beatty. The museum offers an opportunity to experience what life was like for families who lived townhouses like this, and for the people who worked in them.

Olivia Beatty (née Bell) moved into No 29 in November 1794. She was the mother of seven children, Edward, Thomas, David, Robert, Frederick, Maria and Olivia. Edward, her eldest son, was then 11, while Olivia, the youngest child, was just two.

Olivia Bell was 21 in 1782 when she married David Beatty, a prominent Dublin wine merchant and paper manufacturer of Saint Andrew Street, in Saint Anne’s Church, Dawson Street. His father, Edward Beatty, had been a paper merchant, and one-time stationer to the Revenue Commissioners. Trade directories at the time shows that both father and son traded from No 1 Saint Andrew Street, and they probably lived above the shop.

However, Olivia was only 33 when she was widowed when, after a few days illness, David Beatty died on 7 January 1794. In September 1794, his father Edward Beatty died in Blackrock at the age of 78. To compound Olivia’s grief, one of their daughters, Maria, died later that year.

David Beatty left no will, and so it was through the estate of her father-in-law, Edward Beatty, that Olivia gained the means to support herself and her children. Over and above her marriage settlement, she received the ‘sum of £100 for life,’ and the choice of either her father-in-law’s country or town house. Although the house had been built by John Usher, an apothecary, who leased to Olivia Beatty, the land lease from the Fitzwilliam Estate was held by one William Osborne.

She bought No 29 for £320. Yet it must have been with a heavy heart that the widowed Olivia moved with her surviving children that November into the house on the corner of Lower Fitzwilliam Street and Upper Mount Street, across from the corner of Merrion Square.

According to Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, that November saw severe weather conditions in Dublin, with flooding in the lower yard of Dublin Castle, boats plying the area around Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and numerous deaths around the city caused by drowning.

Mrs Beatty left Fitzwilliam Street in 1806 and sold the lease for £700 to Ponsonby Shaw (1784-1871), then a young Dublin banker from Bushy Park House, Terenure. He was a founder of the Royal Bank of Ireland and his first cousin, Bernard Shaw, was the grandfather of the playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).

The interior design of No 29 reflects the dominant architectural and decorative style of the period 1790-1820. It is in the neo-classical style, epitomised preferred by figures such Robert and James Adam and represented in Dublin by fine buildings such as the Customs House and Four Courts by the English-born architect James Gandon. The emphasis in neo-classical design is on the formal and on the sense in which all of the individual parts of a plan, from a scheme for a room to the façade of the building, fit together to form a harmonious whole.

By the beginning of the 19th century, greater variety had been introduced into decoration, with a range of new styles introduced in architecture: the Empire Style frequently drew inspiration from Egypt, stimulated in part by Napoleon’s military campaigns; the Neo-Grecian style can be seen at the General Post Office designed by Francis Johnston; and the neo-gothic style, which took its inspiration from Northern European architecture of the mediaeval period, was a reaction against the restraint of neo-classicism. All of these trends can be seen in the pieces and decorative finishes of No 29. =

The furniture, glassware, ceramics, and painting on display are mostly Irish from the late 18th century or early 19th century. To meet the rising demand of an expanding Dublin, manufacturers of luxury goods prospered in the city. In 1798, Dublin had at least 25 coach builders, over 30 gold and silversmiths, and nearly 50 cabinet makers, all supplying the residents of the new large townhouses in Merrion Square and Saint Stephen’s Green, and increasingly to those moving into the more moderate developments in areas such as Mountjoy Square, Fitzwilliam Square and Fitzwilliam Street Lower. Many fine cabinet makers worked in Dublin in the late Georgian period, such as William Moore and the 19th century firm of Mack Williams and Gibson. Examples of work by both these makers can be seen in the house.

Few homes, however, were entirely fitted out from one period. So, most of the furniture on display in No 29 today is contemporary with the building and the first residents occupation of the house and dates from the period 1790-1820. It includes furniture from earlier in the 18th century. In the hallway there is a long case clock, manufactured by John Sanderson, a second generation Huguenot refugee whose father had fled religious persecution in France. In the back drawing room, there is a fine example of an Irish Chippendale drawing room chair.

No 29 also has an interesting and varied collection of prints, oil paintings, watercolours and sketches, from well-known and lesser-known artists, including Thomas Roberts, Gilbert Stuart, GF Mulvany, Martin Archer Shee and Nathaniel Hone, including some of particular interest to the history of Dublin.

There is a view by Thomas Snagg, an English actor turned painter who came to Ireland initially to perform in the Smock Alley Theatre. Over the fireplace in the back drawingroom is an unusual portrait of the Irish revolutionary, Robert Emmet, by the Scottish born painter, James Petrie. This portrait is at the centre of an historical mystery. Tradition says it was painted by Petrie for Emmet’s sweetheart, Sarah Curran, the daughter of a Dublin barrister, Jonathan Phillpot Curran. Petrie is said to have produced the portrait from Emmet’s death mask as Emmet’s body lay in Kilmainham Gaol after his execution in 1803.

On the reverse of the canvass are two significant pieces of documentation. The first is a trade label from Jackson of No 5 Essex Bridge. The second is a hand-written note: ‘Susanna Boulton to her beloved sister Mary Wilson July 1 1805.’

The artist’s son, the antiquarian George Petrie, recalled a woman he was told was Sarah Curran being shown the portrait in his father’s studio in 1804, but no concrete information has come to light yet about the identity of these two sisters.

Other most interesting pieces in the museum include two early 19th century dolls’ houses in the nursery, illustrating the pastimes of children who would have lived in a house such as No 29. The children’s quarters were tucked away in the attic at the top of the house, free from unnecessary decoration, such as carpets and plaster work. The children educated at home may have had a governess who taught them English, history, geography, music, needle work, and a continental language, probably French.

After lessons, late morning and early afternoon presented the family with an opportunity to take some air, possibly in the park nearby in Merrion Square. In dark winter evenings, children’s evening entertainment was formal , perhaps performing a song or a word game for their parents and their guests before going to bed.

By contrast, poorer children would have worked hard in such houses. For example, chimneys were swept by children, despite the existence of machines that could do this job ‘with superior cleanliness and effect.’ Until 1829 or even later, children in Dublin were being sold into the service of master sweeps, suffering injury, deformity, and often death, from the age of seven until they grew too large to fit the narrow chimney passages of Dublin.

In the Beatty family, at least three of the boys, Edward, Frederick, and Thomas, went to Trinity College Dublin, where they most probably were boarders. Their sister, Olivia, married at the age of 15.

When she left Dublin and No 29 in 1806, Olivia Beatty moved to Co Wexford, where some years earlier her husband had bought Borodale, a house on the banks of the River Slaney, near Enniscorthy. When she died on 9 September 1843 at the age of 83, she was buried in Kilurin churchyard.

Edward Beatty (1784-1858), the eldest son of David and Olivia Beatty, married Elizabeth Mansergh in 1813, and around 1820 he rebuilt Healthfield Manor, near Killurin, Co Wexford, taking advantage of the panoramic vistas overlooking rolling grounds and the meandering River Slaney.

The family story is told in Killurin that Mrs Beatty died twice and was buried twice in the 1840s, and that both deaths were recorded in the parish register. On 8 October 1846, she was buried in the family vault in Killurin. That night, the family butler, a man named Furlong, visited her grave at night, entered the vault, opened the coffin and tried to remove her wedding ring from her hand.

When the task proved more difficult than Furlong anticipated, he tried to amputate her ring finger. As the blood began to flow, Mrs Beatty came to life, and a terrified butler fled from the scene towards the Slaney, never to be seen again.

The revived Mrs Beatty stuggled from the vault and made her way from Killurin churchyard back to the family home at Healthfield Manor. There she knocked on the door, but the housemaid recognised the familiar knock and was too scared to open the door and let her mistress in.

However, David Beatty welcomed his wife back into the house, and a night of mourning turned into a night of celebration as she joined him at the dinner table.

Mrs Beatty died a second time on 2 March 1848, and once again she was buried in the Beatty family vault in Killurin.

Olivia Beatty of 29 Lower Fitzwilliam Street was also the mother of Captain David Beatty (1787-1855) of Borodale House. In 1813, he married Elizabeth Martin, daughter of John Martin of Corle, the Sheriff of Cork. This David and Elizabeth were the parents of David Vandeleur Beatty (1815–1881) of Borodale, who married his cousin Mary Elizabth Longfield from Cork. Their son, David Longfield Beatty (1841-1904), was the father of Admiral David Beatty (1871-1936), 1st Earl Beatty.

No 29 is open on a self-guided basis, although some guided tours are also possible for pre-booked groups. As for Borodale House, the house was demolished in 1937. Healthfield Manor is run as a boutique guesthouse by Loretto and Mayler Colloton.

The basement entrance to Georgian Museum, which also gives an insight into the lives of servants and the working class (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

‘People sitting will now have more colourful company’

‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe’ is at ‘the place where many Carlovians have sat and enjoyed a bag of chips’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

After two successive weekend visits to Carlow, one after another, I thought it would bring a smile to the start the working week with some images of street art in Dublin Street, Carlow.

Although Carlow Arts Festival took place three months ago, in June 2016, the streets are still benefitting from the creative approach many artists had to empty buildings, street corners and shut-up shops.

Seen in Centaur Street, Carlow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

When George Bernard Shaw donated the Assembly Rooms to the people of Carlow, it was the beginning of a creative bequest of properties from an Irish literary giant that would benefit the arts and creativity in the town.

But he probably had little idea that the street corner with Cox’s Lane would become a gathering place late at night, especially on weekend evening, for people with bags of chips.

Putting touches to ‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Two artists – Mary Cullen Kelly and Cristina Carratti – realised that a once dreary street corner could come back to life. With the assistance of Bernie Dunne O’Reilly, Kay Carbery, Betty O’Gorman and Michael Byrne, they created ‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.’

They realised that Cox’s Lane, once a dreary place, could come to life again. They see ‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe’ at ‘the place where many Carlovians have sat and enjoyed a bag of chips’ from a different aspect and with more colourful light. ‘People sitting will now have more colourful company.’

A splash of colour here and there in Carlow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In other places, bright colours have been daubed randomly but creatively on the façades of empty buildings, and old rusting window railings have been given a splash of colour, or a street arch has been transformed into street art.

And that should brighten up the start of any week.

Where a street arch becomes street art in Carlow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Plaques recall George Bernard Shaw as Carlow’s generous benefactor

Carlow remembers George Bernard Shaw as a generous benefactor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

‘Shaws – Almost Nationwide’ was the memorable advertising slogan for the chain of department stores that has come to epitomise middle Ireland. So memorable, that one comedian asked on stage how many more shops needed to open before the chain became ‘totally nationwide.’

As I passed by Shaw’s in the centre of Carlow at the weekend, I recalled Billy Shaw who built up the Carlow arm of that family empire, from 1949 until the 1990s. He was at the helm when Shaws took over Hadden’s Stores on North Main Street in Wexford in 1976.

The story of Shaws dates back to 1865 when the first drapery show was by Henry Shaw, and for decades, three Shaw brothers – Mervyn, Trevor and Billy – controlled Shaws. Billy Shaw was a patriarchal figure in Carlow, much loved by staff and customers alike, and his personal ties to the Carlow branch ran deep. When he died almost ten years ago at the age of 81, the Service of Thanksgiving at the Methodist Church on Athy Road was packed to overflowing.

Today, Shaws stores generate revenues of over €40 million a year. About 500,000 people visit Shaws stores every month, and the group employs close to 1,000 people.

George Bernard Shaw is remembered with a plaque on a shopfront across the street from Shaws department store v(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

But across the street from Shaws landmark department store in Carlow, a discreet plaque celebrates the town’s links with another, unrelated Shaw, the Nobel Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), who was one the quiet benefactors of Carlow Town.

Shaw was born in Dublin and in 1876, at the age of 20, he followed his mother and moved to London. There he became a successful author and wrote over 60 plays.

Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend from Rosscarbery, Co Cork, in London in 1898. He made his first return visit to Ireland in 1905, when they stayed at his wife’s family home in West Cork. From that year on, they frequently spent holidays in Ireland, visiting Dublin and Cork for extended periods.

Almost 100 years ago, George Bernard Shaw visited Carlow town in February 1918 to see various properties in the town which he had inherited through descent from his mother’s grandfather, Thomas Gurly. Shaw’s maternal ancestors in Carlow can be traced back to the mid-1700s.

George Bernard Shaw inherited 13 proprieties in Carlow town. They were in Tullow Street, Dublin Street, John Street, Centaur Street, Ballymanus Terrace, The Quay, Athy Road, Grave Lane and the Barrow Track.

When he visited Carlow in 1918 to view his properties, Shaw stayed in the Railway Hotel. He later recalled how the proprietor presented him with a joint of ‘Carlow pig’ for supper. When he explained that he was a vegetarian, she told him he would not live long without eating meat.

The Assembly Rooms on Dublin Street were built in 1794 and were inherited by George Bernard Shaw in 1899 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The properties Shaw inherited in Carlow in 1899 through his uncle, Walter John Gurly, included the Assembly Rooms on Dublin Street. This neo-classical pedimented building with flanking blocks was built in 1794. The Assembly Rooms were used for dinners, balls and musical performances by the ‘nobility and gentry of the Co Carlow.’ Advertisements for these in the Carlow Post at the time usually had the addenda: ‘Servants not admitted into the ballroom.’

In 1912, the Silvester Brothers acquired the lease of the Assembly Rooms and set up a cinema which they called the Picture House.

Shortly after his visit in 1918, Shaw decided to give the Assembly Rooms as a gift to the Carlow Technical Instruction Committee. He offered the premises to the Technical Instruction Committee through its Chairman, Bishop Patrick Foley of Kildare and Leighlin, in 1919. He stipulated that the building was to be used for educational purposes.

In a lengthy letter, Shaw explained the many leases under which the Assembly Rooms were held, and how he had come to realise that that they ‘have always been a very bad bargain for me.’ He had cleared all the mortgages on the premises, but ‘I can neither sell them or let them at present, and of course, I can’t use them. If I assign them to a pauper and leave him to be evicted by the head landlords, I actually gain by the transaction.’

He wanted the building to be used for public purposes and, if possible, and he hoped that ‘the old front of the building – a façade which belongs to the best period of Irish architecture at the end of the 18th century – retained for the sake of its decorative effect.’

The many leases were dated 1794, 1805, 1810, 1848, 1861 and 1863. On 31 October 1919, the Assembly Rooms were transferred by Shaw to five trustees representing Co Carlow Technical Instruction Committee.

The Technical Instruction Committee converted the old ruin, preserving the façade that Shaw admired, into the two-roomed Carlow Technical School which opened in 1923. Two workshops were added in 1928, and in 1934 the whole building was rebuilt by the first Vocational Education Committee. A large, well equipped engineering workshop and a similarly up-to-date domestic science kitchen were then added.

Shaw visited Ireland for the last time in 1924 when he finished writing Saint Joan while he was staying at Parknasilla, Co Kerry.

On 13 May 1944, almost 30 years after his first visit to Carlow, Shaw made a bequest of his remaining properties in Carlow to Carlow Urban Council. He wrote to the council from 4 Whitehall Court, London, on 13 May 1944:

Will you be so good as to bring the following matter before your Council. I am the landlord of a property in Carlow which I inherited as the great-grandson of the Thomas Gurly whose monument is in one of your chief churches. It was formerly a considerable property, but it now yields a net revenue of only £150 a year. When it came into my hands I received nothing but the legal ownership, a bundle of mortgages and several dependent relatives. As I have cleared off the mortgages and provided otherwise for the surviving relatives, there are now no encumbrances, except the head rents.

I am an absentee landlord, having spent out of the 88 years of my life only one day in Carlow. The estate is managed by Major AJW Fitzmaurice of 1 Leinster Crescent.

I, therefore, propose to hand over the property to the Carlow municipality for the common welfare. I find, however, that this step, being unusual, is not easy. Nobody seems to know how it is to be done. If I propose to leave the property to some relative who might, like my grandfather mortgage it to the last farthing and leave it in a ruinous condition, I could do it without the least trouble. But to leave it to a public body for the public benefit seems to be impossible when the public body in question is a municipality. I have served for six years as municipal councillor on a London Borough Council governing a quarter of a million people. I therefore know the difficulties from the inside.

What I would beg the UDC to consider is this. Suppose I make a gift of the property to the Council on Trust for purposes which exclude its sale to private owners, the use of its revenue to relieve the rates directly, or for almsgiving in any form, confining it to improvements, house modernisation and experimental innovations, embankment of the river Barrow and, generally, for progressive work which would not otherwise be undertaken, would the Council accept the Trust, and establish a Standing Committee or Sub-Committee to administer it?

You may say that the property is too small to be worth considering for such purposes. 1 should reply that it represents solid land, the importance of which to a city is not fairly measurable by the income of its private landlord, and that I can stipulate that it shall not be a closed Trust but be the nucleus of a civic improvement Fund well advertised and open to all citizens who desire to follow my example, but, like myself, do not know exactly how to do it. It should not bear my name, nor that of any other individual, nor of any creed or political party. Its income could be left to accumulate within the limit allowed by the law against perpetuities to any extent thought necessary. Would the Council take it on these conditions?

I should, perhaps, mention that if it refuses, the property will pass after my death to the National Gallery of Ireland, to which in my boyhood in Dublin I owed much of my Art education, which enabled me to earn a living as critic before I made my mark as a playwright. It will, therefore, not be lost to Ireland in any case. But Carlow is clearly entitled to the first offer.

Faithfully,


G. Bernard Shaw.
Shaw was putting into practice his socialist principles. He once said: ‘I want to die destitute as far as Eire is concerned. I can afford it. I can’t afford bother.’

However, Shaw found that Carlow Town Council could not accept his gift as it had no authority to accept gifted property. In 1944, he wrote to the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, asking his government to pass an Act to enable Carlow Town Council to accept his gift. In 1945, the Minister for Local Government, Sean McEntee, introduced the Local Authorities (Acceptance of Gifts) Bill 1945.

Shaw stipulated that the rents from the properties, amounting to £180, became part of a Civic Improvement Fund. He intended this to be the nucleus of a bigger fund, but this never materialised. The fund is now administered by the local council and Carlow Arts Council.

Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Academy Award (1938).

Despite the warnings from the hotel landlady when he visited Carlow that one and only time in 1918, Shaw lived into venerable old age on his vegetarian diet. He died at the age of 94 on 2 November 1950 from injuries incurred after falling from a ladder while he was pruning a tree.

The school, now known as Carlow Vocational School, moved to the Kilkenny Road in the early 1970s. A portrait of George Bernard Shaw hangs in the main lobby of the school. Because of increasing enrolments Carlow Vocational School will move to a new building next year [September 2017]. The new institution will be called Tyndall College in honour of world famous scientist John Tyndall who was born outside Carlow town in Leighlinbridge in 1820.

A plaque on the Assembly Rooms remembers George Bernard Shaw’s generosity to the people of Carlow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)