The influence of two architects on the Trinity boathouse at Islandbridge

The boathouse of the Dublin University Boat Club … designed by WG Ferguson and RM Butler (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

During my walk along the River Liffey, from Islandbridge to Chapelizod and back again earlier this week, I began and finished at the Tudor-style boathouse of the Dublin University Boat Club (DUBC) and Dublin University Ladies Boat Club (DULBC), in a sylvan, riverside setting beside the Irish War Memorial Gardens.

The Trinity boathouse stands out from all the other boat clubs on the banks of the River Liffey at Islandbridge, not only as the only boathouse on the south bank of the river, but because of its architectural taste and style.

This idyllic site was bought in the late 1890s. An unkind commentator has contrasted the Trinity boathouse with the University College Dublin (UCD) boat house upstream, on the opposite bank of the river, declaring: ‘The shed-like structure of breeze block walls and aluminium roof sits ignorantly in its surroundings like a humble cow chewing its cud, existing in a different league altogether.’

The black-and-white Tudor style also reflects the boat club colours of black and white, perhaps an unintended or coincidental element in the design. But it is also associated with the two work of two interesting architects.

The clubhouse was designed in 1897 by the Belfast architect William Godfrey Ferguson (1855-1939). He was articled to Charles Lanyon, and later spent seven years in London, working with John J Stevenson and ER Robson and at the London School Board. He had returned to Belfast by 1883, and after practising on his own he joined the practice of John Harris Hazlitt Swiney and John Ernest Croasdaile.

Ferguson was the architect of the Northern Banking Co and designed many of its branch banks throughout Ireland. He was a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) and a founding member of the Society of Architects in 1884.

Ferguson was a parishioner of Saint Peter’s Church, Antrim Road. He was a magistrate, a member of the Grand Jury, and High Sheriff of Co Antrim in 1935. In his later years, he was involved in prisoners’ welfare and was secretary of the Church Army. He died on 25 August 1939.

The entrance to the Trinity boathouse is sedate, with only a hint in the apex of the two gables of the Tudor style of the rest of the building. This part of of the building is three bays and two storeys, and is modest in contrast to the waterfront façade, where an overhanging pavilion stretches across seven bays.

The ground floor is filled with stacks of boats, oars and other equipment, with wide barn-like doors facing the River Liffey. A broad flight of stairs leads directly to the first floor and to the main reception room. It is plain and generously proportioned with seven glazed French doors.

On the first floor, the seven tall French doors open onto the gabled pavilion, hugging the structure and acting as a viewing platform. This transitional space between interior and exterior is an early 20th century addition by the architect Ruldolf Maximillian Butler (1872-1943).

The black-and-white Tudor-style features reflect the boat club’s colours … an unintended or coincidental element in the design (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Butler was born in Dublin on 30 September 1872. His father, John Butler, was a barrister from Carlow; his mother, Augusta Brassart, was from Schleswig-Holstein. He was educated in Dublin until he was 10, when his father died. At the time of his father’s death, Rudolf was on a Christmas holiday with his mother in Germany, and he stayed on in Germany to finish his education.

He returned to Dublin at the age of 16, and after a brief spell in the wine business, he became a pupil of James Joseph Farrall from 1889, and then, from 1891, of Walter Glynn Doolin (1850-1902).

He stayed on as Doolin’s assistant from 1896 to 1899, when he became his junior partner. When Doolin died in 1902, Butler carried on the practice in partnership with James Louis Donnelly as Doolin Butler & Donnelly. Butler was also architect and engineer to Rathdown Rural District Council, and in that role he designed some 500 cottages in Co Dublin and Co Wicklow.

Butler revived the Architectural Association of Ireland in 1896, with William Richard Gleave, Alfred Ignatius McGloughlin and Harry Allberry, and was an active member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland.

Butler was brought up a Moravian, but was largely engaged in Catholic church work, first through his association with Doolin. When he was 23, a chance encounter with an Irish Passionist, Father McMullen, in a train in France resulted in the commission to design part of the Passionist chapel in the Avenue Hoche, Paris. This probably led to his commissions for the Passionists in Ireland, including the church and monastery at Ardoyne, Belfast (1900-1902) and a new college in Enniskillen (1917).

In the 1911 census, he gave his religion as ‘Catholic Church’ rather than the usual ‘Roman Catholic.’

Butler’s first major architectural success came in 1912, when he won first prize in the competition for designing University College, Dublin. He was appointed examiner in architecture of the National University of Ireland in 1923 and became the first Professor of Architecture at UCD in 1924. When the RIBA conference took place in Dublin in 1931, he received the honorary degree of Master of Architecture from the NUI.

He was involved in establishing the Georgian Society, and in 1899 he became the editor and, for a for a few months, co-proprietor, of the Irish Builder. The magazine was sold in 1900, but Butler remained editor until 1935.

He retired as Professor of Architecture at UCD in 1942 and died on 3 February 1943. He was a member of Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (MRIAI, 1896), and a fellow (FRIAI, 1915), a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1906), a founding member of the Architectural Association of Ireland (1896), a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA, 1919), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (FRSAI, 1920) and an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (1927).

He lived at 21 Harcourt Street, 3 Martello Terrace, Bray, 59 Harcourt Street, 11 Wellington Place, Clyde Road, 34 Upper Leeson Street, and 73 Ailesbury Road, 1920.

Butler and his Annie Gibbons from Co Mayo were the parents of a son and three daughters. His son John Geoffrey Butler and his daughter Eleanor Grace Butler carried on the practice after his death.

I knew his daughter, Eleanor Butler (1914-1997), also known as Lady Wicklow, through her role in the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation.

Eleanor Butler was born on 7 September 1914, and suffered a polio attack at age six. She went to school at Tudor Hall, Kent, and Alexandra College, Dublin, and after earning a degree in architecture from UCD in 1938, she suffered a riding accident that required a year of care in Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Her childhood polio and her riding accident almost left her without the ability to walk.

Her father’s influence pushed her towards public life, and he urged her to base her morality on Catholic social teaching and social justice. She became a Labour member of Dublin Corporation, and ran as a Labour candidate for the Dáil in 1948. She was nominated to the Senate by John A Costello in 1948 and remained a senator until 1951. Throughout her life, she maintained strong links with the trade union movement and her friendship with Denis Larkin.

After qualifying as an architect, she became honorary secretary of the Irish Architectural Records Society, and became friends with the poet John Betjeman, then press attaché at the British embassy in Dublin. Through Betjeman, she met her future husband, William Howard (1902-1978), then known as Lord Clonmore or Billy Clonmore.

He had been ordained a deacon and priest in the Church of England and was an active Anglo-Catholic slum priest in the East End of London, working with the Magdalen Mission. When he became a Roman Catholic in 1932, he was disinherited by his father. He succeeded his father as eighth Earl of Wicklow in 1946, and the couple married in Glasthule on 2 September 1959.

As Lady Wicklow, she was deeply concerned about the violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Under her leadership, 20 women’s organisations joined together to work for peace, eventually creating groups such as the Southern Movement for Peace, Co-operation North, and the Ireland Fund of America, and she was a co-founder of the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation. She died on 21 February 1997.

The entrance to the Trinity boathouse is sedate and modest in contrast to the waterfront façade (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A tranquil setting is a timely reminder of the evils of war and nationalism

Evening tranquillity on Saint Patrick’s Day in the German War Cemetery in Glencree, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

During a short walk through Dublin city centre earlier this week on my way to a board meeting in Christ Church Cathedral, I was impressed that as part of the 1916 centenary commemorations the Bank of Ireland in College Green has been decorated with a large banner celebrating the lives of Henry Grattan, Daniel O’Connell, Charles Steward Parnell and John Redmond.

These four patriots represent a strong, continuous tradition of Irish parliamentary and democratic action, and it seem so appropriate that during these commemorations these leading democrats should be celebrated on the façade of the building that once housed the Irish Parliament, ‘Grattan’s Parliament,’ until the Act of Union was passed in 1800.

A reminder of parliamentary democracy at ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ in Dublin this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

One Sinn Féin councillor, with an air of the surreal, has tweeted: “Tourists will be torturing the poor guides with ‘so, where did these guys fight?”

Of course, he conveniently forgets that Sinn Féin did take part in the 1916, that in 1916 the Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith was a monarchist who advocated a dual monarchy for Britain and Ireland, and that the IRA was not formed until long after the Easter Rising.

It is not just Easter, but Saint Patrick’s Day too that have been hijacked this year, so that they have been robbed of their religious significance and turned into celebrations that are in danger of supporting a very narrow view of nationalism that writes out the stories of those who eschewed violence and advocated both a democratic and a more inclusive set of values for Ireland.

From army barracks to working for peace … the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation in the spring sunshine this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

This was no day to go into the city centre. Instead, two of us decided this afternoon to celebrate this “green and pleasant land” by going up into the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, through Cruagh and Killakee, across the Feather Bed and down into the little valley of Glencree, with the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation and the German War Cemetery by the banks of the River Dargle.

When I was more active in the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Glencree was a regular venue for residential committee meetings and for training workshops in nonviolent direct action.

But the centre has a more militaristic background. We approached it this afternoon along a military road built over 200 years ago to hunt down the United Irish rebels who were holding out in the Wicklow Mountains after the 1798 Rising.

The army built a barracks at Glencree in 1806, but this was vacated after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. In 1858, the buildings were converted into Saint Kevin’s, a reformatory school run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

During World War I, Glencree held German prisoners of war. The school reopened after the war, but finally closed in 1940. During World War II, Glencree was used as a detention centre for German pilots who crashed in Ireland and for German agents captured trying to plan anti-British activities with IRA collaborators.

After World War II, the Irish Red Cross and the French Sisters of Charity ran Operation Shamrock, caring for German and Polish war orphans in Glencree until 1950.

The Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation was set up in 1974 and continues to run programmes on violence, war and conflict and to provide training in mediation and conflict resolution.

We had coffee and a snack with friends in the Armoury Café, where the conversation included recollections of days of CND activism and nonviolent protests.

The German War Cemetery in Glencree, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

From there, we crossed the road to the German War Cemetery (Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof). There are 134 graves, mainly of German air force, army and navy personnel: 53 are identified, 28 are unknown, and six are World War I prisoners of war.

But 46 graves tell the tragic story of German civilian detainees who were being shipped from Britain to Canada for internment. Their ship, the SS Arandora Star, was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Tory Island, Co Donegal, in July 1940.

The grave of the German spy Dr Hermann Görtz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

One grave is that of Dr Hermann Görtz, a German spy who died by suicide after World War II, fearing he was going to be handed over to the Soviet Union to face trial for war crimes.

In the 1930s, Görtz had been jailed for four years in Maidstone for espionage, and was then deported to Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II. In 1940, he parachuted into Ballivor, Co Meath, as part of an espionage mission to gather information. He arrived with his uniform, his World War I medals, and papers marking out selected military targets in Ireland.

Görtz moved in with a former IRA leader Jim O’Donovan. As ‘Agent V-Held,’ O’Donovan had visited Germany three times in 1939 on behalf of the IRA, and Görtz was sent to Ireland to act as a liaison officer with the IRA and to enlist IRA support for a German invasion of Britain.

However, Görtz decided that the IRA was too unreliable. Dressed in his Luftwaffe uniform, he walked to Dublin, where he stayed in a number of “safe houses” in, Templeogue, Glenageary, Dún Laoghaire, Dalkey, Rathmines and Shankill, Co Dublin. He also stayed briefly in Brittas Bay, and in Laragh Castle, Glendalough, Co Wicklow, Fenit, Co Kerry and Mount Nugent, Co Cavan.

For 19 months, he remained at large. His spying operations against Ireland and Britain were aided by Anthony Deery of Dundalk, an IRA wireless operator who transmitted his coded messages to Nazi Germany, and Charlie McGuinness of the IRA who helped him to move around Ireland.

When police raided the Clontarf home of another IRA activist Stephen Carroll Held, in May 1940, they found Görtz’s parachute, papers, war medals, and documents outlining his widespread spying operations, as well as detailed plans of ‘Plan Kathleen,’ an IRA plan to invade Northern Ireland with the military support of Nazi Germany.

Görtz went into hiding but was arrested as yet another IRA member, Pearse Paul Kelly, was visiting him in his hiding place in Dublin in November 1941.

He was released from jail in August 1946, but when he was rearrested the following year and served with a deportation order he took a phial of cyanide and died in Mercer’s Hospital. He was buried in a Dublin cemetery, but his body was transferred to the German Military Cemetery in Glencree in 1974.

A mother’s grief … a Pieta mosaic in the German War Cemetery in Glencree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The cemetery in Glencree is a tranquil place today. Many of the graves are marked simply in German with epitaphs such as “Two German Soldiers,” or “Two German Airmen.” Many of those who are named were only in their 20s when they died.

The waterfall behind the German cemetery in Glencree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In this afternoon’s sunshine, with the babbling sound of the river and the small waterfall behind me, this was a place of peace and calm. But it was also a reminder that the victims of war are so often young people, and a reminder of the follies and evils of nationalism, whether it is the extreme nationalism of Nazis in Germany or the IRA in Ireland. We must continue to value our democracy and to celebrate those who chose the path of democratic and nonviolent action.

‘A terrible beauty is born’ … words from ‘Easter 1916’ by WB Yeats in Dame Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Further along Dame Street, between the Bank of Ireland and Christ Church Cathedral, another public building, in front of Dublin Castle and facing the Olympia Theatre has been draped with the closing, chilling words of the poem ‘Easter 1916’ by WB Yeats:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –

MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

A poetic reminder of war at the entrance to the German cemetery in Glencree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Celtic mists in the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains on Saint Patrick’s Day

The Orlagh Retreat Centre … another chapter is about to come to an end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

What does Patrick do on Saint Patrick’s Day?

I am very uneasy with green, Gaelic triumphalism of any kind, and I am very uneasy with “Paddy-whackery,” including the expressions of it that reduce “Saint Patrick’s Day” to “Paddy’s Day.”

But I am very happy with my name Patrick, and this morning in the chapel at the Orlagh Retreat Centre that I described how I sit happily with the name Patrick – even if my mother intended to name me Paul.

Saint Patrick probably came from the English Midlands, and was captured by slave traders who brought him to a coastal town where he was sold into slavery to Irish traders.

It is a delight to me that the Irish patron saint is not Irish – no more than Saint George is English – and his name is a reminder that Ireland and England are the closest neighbours and ought to be the best of friends.

But his name is also a reminder that cultural diversity is an essential part of Irish identity and the story of Christian identity in Ireland.

In the New Testament reading this morning (Acts 13: 46-49), Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas describe themselves as being sent as “a light for the Gentiles, so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.”

There was no celebration of the Eucharist in either Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, or the chapel of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute this morning, and so I went to Mass in the Orlagh Retreat Centre, just a few minutes away in the hills above where I live.

The mist-clouded view from Orlagh across the city and Dublin Bay this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Augustinian community, the Orlagh Team and the house staff have created a welcoming atmosphere and a warm welcome in a beautiful setting in pasture and woodland, with panoramic views over Dublin City and Bay out to Howth Head. It is a combination that has created an atmosphere that invites contemplation and reflection.

I was invited to read the Gospel (Luke 10: 1-12, 17-20), and later spoke of the delight in celebrating my name day on this day which challenges so many prejudiced notions of Irish identity. We heard stories of Irish missionaries and monks who had brought the Gospel to the ends of the earth, but that must always be about “the gentiles” or “the nations” and never about narrow national pride.

Two of us were offered a guided tour of the chapel and the old house afterwards, and we lingered a little longer over coffee in Orlagh.

In the old drawing room in Orlagh … the house dates back to the late 18th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

I was saddened to hear last night after the Bible study I was leading in Whitechurch Parish that Orlagh is about to close.

A statement issued by the Orlagh community and team on Sunday [15 March 2015] said that the Augustinian Province and council have decided “with regret, to close Orlagh.”

The team has been asked not to take any booking after next September, not to prepare programmes for 2015-2016, and the property will be placed on the market in Spring next year. As long as Augustinians are living in the house, Sunday and weekday masses and the weekly meditations will continue.

Is there a future for the unique ministry at Orlagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Is the Orlagh ministry, which has a unique charism, going to continue in another way? Whatever happens, the next few months are going to be very painful for a community and team that contributed so much to the spiritual growth and development of so many.

Despite my reservations about the artificial greening of Saint Patrick’s Day, I am still captivated by the images of Celtic Mists that shroud this day.

There was little point in going for a walk on a beach this afternoon, as the streets of the coastal towns were busy with parades and pageants. Instead, two of us spent a few hours in the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains, in green mountain countryside, shrouded in clouds and mist but with little rain.

The Hazel House … a rustic setting for coffee in the Dublin Mountains (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

We stopped first at the Hazel House in Tibradden, a self-service café, craft shop and woodwork school in the Dublin Mountains.

The Hazel House is run by Niall and Kate Fitzharris, and the café is entirely self-service with an honesty box. Although in the mountains above Rathfarnham and Whitechurch, the courses are accessible with a shuttle bus service available from the Yellow House in Rathfarnham.

Later, we drove on through the Mountains, around Glencullen, Knockree and Glencree, where Spring has brought out the full range variety of shades of green in the fields, the hills and the mountainside, covered at times in clouds and mists.

By the time we climbed down into Enniskerry at the end of the day, the day’s celebrations were coming to end.

Celtic Mists in the Wicklow Mountains near Knockree this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

A welcome reminder of summer in Italy on a winter’s evening in Bray

Winter darkness closes in on Bray Head and the beach in Bray this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

A working weekend running into a full working week is a sure recipe for feeling tired by the time Saturday comes around again.

The busy working week included a Remembrance Day Service of the Word and celebration of the Eucharist, dissertation supervision and lectures, and an on-campus time at Trinity College Dublin to sort out a new staff ID card and an unused TCD email account that had not been dealt with for over eight years.

In between, I also attended a memorial service in a care home, read the Gospel and took part in a celebration of the Eucharist in Saint John’s Church Sandymount, attended a provincial chapter meeting of the Society of Catholic Priests, attended a meeting of the chapter of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and was present at the launch of the new branding and imaging of the cathedral and a Foundation Day reception in the cathedral crypt after Festal Evensong to mark the Feastday of Saint Laurence O’Toole, patron of the Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough.

And there was time at the end of the week for a little book browsing and buying, spending wisely with a book token given by the Church of Ireland Historical Society after my recent lecture in Christ Church Cathedral on the Archbishops of Dublin and the Deanery of Penkridge – books on liturgy, Orthodox theology, church architecture and the poetry of TS Eliot.

Some of this morning was spent writing a report and filing photographs on the cathedral launch for the Church Review and the Church of Ireland Gazette. But by this afternoon I needed some fresh air either in mountains or by the sea … and despite the early evenings that come with the arrival of winter, I managed both.

A surprise encounter on the old military road through the Dublin and Wicklow mountains between Tibradden and Glencree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Late in the afternoon, two of us drove up into the mountains above Knocklyon to Tibradden, and – despite the fading, dimming lights of dusk – we caught the view across the city, out over Dublin Bay, and as far north as Howth Head.

We continued on through the Dublin Mountains into Co Wicklow, and a descending mist made our minds up for us when it came to continuing on towards the Sally Gap or down into Glencree.

At Glencree, council workers were out cleaning up the roads in advance of tomorrow’s Remembrance Service at the German War Cemetery, organised by the Lutheran Church.

As the sun was setting behind us, we followed the road down into Enniskerry, and then along the banks of the Vartry and the Dargle into Bray, where we parked on the seafront, and walked along the beach as darkness was closing in.

Despite the encroaching evening darkness, there was a number of families on the pebbled beach, and the sound of the tumbling, beating waves echoed all along the shore.

Signs and wonders … in chalk in Carpe Diem in Bray late this afternoon (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

We had two double espressos and Italian cakes in Carpe Diem, the coffee, wine and mozzarella bar that opened earlier this year on Albert Avenue. It is so authentically Italian that we were amused by some of the blackboard signs and entertained by conversations in Italian at the bar, between customers and staff.

Perhaps they were amused or entertained by San Marino’s amazing international performance against Estonia this afternoon. After the defeats of Ireland at the hands of Scotland last night and Greece at the hands of the Faroe Islands, football is not bringing a smile to my face at the moment. But it was a delight to get a taste of Italian summer in the middle of the Irish winter this evening.

After walking back up to the Main Street to spend some time browsing in Dubray bookshop and to buy the Guardian and the Economist, we had one more stroll along the promenade in the dark, enjoying the sound of the winter waves on the shore.

Looking across Dublin Bay towards Howth from Tibradden late this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

‘For peace comes dropping slow’ ... and sometimes it seems too slow

A prayer for peace in the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

In the early 1980s, I was secretary and then chair of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND). In those years, Irish CND, the Student Christian Movement (SCM) and Dawn, a nonviolence journal, organised a number of residential weekends in the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation in the Wicklow Mountains.

On one occasion, a residential weekend on nonviolence studied the writings and tactics of Gandhi, and was opened by the Indian Ambassadord in Ireland.

Other weekends looked at the work and thinking of Martin Luther King or provided opportunities for CND council members to get to know each other.

In the grounds in Glencree this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

It was a time long before any of us imagined mobile phones, and Glencree – without phones or television, and with its “Simple Living” style of accommodation – seemed to be a remote and distant place in the Wicklow Mountains, far from the cares and woes of city life.

But on one weekend, however, we all realised, while we had all been living a monastic-style life for a few days, discussing our next anti-war campaign, a real war had been unfolding in the real world.

Between 6 p.m. on 16 September and 8 a.m. on 18 September 1982, between 762 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Shia Lebanese civilians, were murdered in the Sabra neighbourhood and the nearby Shatila refugee camp in Beirut.

The mass murders were carried out by an Israeli proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, and other far-right paramilitary groups. Three months earlier, in June 1982, Israel had invaded Lebanon under the pretext of rooting out the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The Israeli army surrounded Sabra and Shatila and stationed troops at the exits to prevent camp residents from leaving and fired illuminating flares at night that allowed the massacres to continue even throughout the nights.

At the time, the Irish Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Seán MacBride, was President of Irish CND. He was also the assistant to UN secretary general and president of the UN General Assembly. In 1983, Seán MacBride chaired a commission that concluded Israel was responsible for the violence. The MacBride commission also concluded that the massacre was a form of genocide.

That year too, the Kahan Commission in Israel found that Israeli military personnel, aware that a massacre was in progress, had failed to take serious steps to stop it. Israel was found to be indirectly responsible, and the Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, bore personal responsibility “for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge.”

Sharon was forced to resign. But there was no shame – he was back in the cabinet the following year, and eventually he was Foreign Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet and then Prime Minister of Israel from 2001 to 2006. He died earlier this year on 11 January 2014.

The small parish church beside the Glencree Centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

I remembered the shamelessness of Ariel Sharon when I visited Glencree this afternoon, and realised that despite the reports of the MacBride and Kahan commissions, Israel and the international community have forgotten all the lessons that should have been learned after the massacres in Sabra and Shatila.

Similar massacres are taking place in the Gaza Strip today. The only differences today are that weapons are more lethal and the news is reaching us as it happens, whereas over 30 years ago it took some time for the horror of events to reach the outside world.

This time we know what is happening, yet the Republic of Ireland has abstained in the UN General Assembly vote this week on investigating Israel for war crimes.

The principles of a just war may be enshrined in international war but they seem to have been forgotten: there is no distinction between civilian and military targets, there is no proportion between the evil being committed today and the destruction that would follow had war not been waged; and there is no hope of Israel achieving its end – eventually, Israel and Hamas must talk to one another.

A tree was planted in Glencree in 2005 by the Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

I am shocked by the images of children being mowed down as they play football on a beach, I am outraged by images of children being brought into hospitals with limbs severed and heads pulped; I am heart-broken by the images of grieving parents and traumatised children. And the Irish government has the audacity in my name to say it can remain neutral in a vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations.

As I walked around the grounds in Glencree this afternoon, there were signs of hope: a tree planted by Colin and Wendy Parry in memory of their son, Tim (12), killed along with Johnathan Ball (9) by an IRA bomb in Warrington in 1993; a Japanese pole praying that peace may prevail on earth; some sculptures; and a tree planted in May 2005 by the Israeli ambassador in Ireland, Daniel Megiddo, and the Palestinian ambassador, Ali Halimeh, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the formation of VSI.

Looking across the city and Dublin Bay to Howth Head from Kilakee this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

I had spent the morning and much of the afternoon, enjoying the summer sunshine and temperatures as I caught up on some reading and research. Late in the afternoon, two us decided to head up into the mountains behind where I live, and we stopped briefly at Kilakee to enjoy the uninterrupted panorama across the city and Dublin Bay as far as Howth Head.

From there we drove across the Wicklow Mountains and down into Glencree.

By then the Armoury Café in Glencree was closed, and after saying a prayer for peace in the small church behind the centre, we drove on down into Enniskerry in search of that cup of coffee.

A prie-dieu for sale in Enniskerry ... but prayers for peace are priceless (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

It was now almlost 6, and every coffee shop but one was closed, and even there the coffee machine was not working properly. An antique shop was open, and while I was not in the mood to pay €90 for a 100-year-old prie-dieu, I thought how I’d pay anything and pray for ever if it brought peace to those traumatised children in the Gaza Strip.

Instead, we sat in the centre of the village, enjoying an ice cream in the still-warm summer sunshine. And I thought of the words of William Butler Yeats in The Lake isle of Innisfree:

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I returned to the garden for dinner with a jug of Pimm’s. And I was thankful for the peace I have in my own life. May Peace Prevail on Earth. Meanwhile, call your TD, your MP, the Department of Foreign Affairs, your Foreign Ministry, ambassadors ... anyone who should know that this violence in Gaza must not continue.

Enjoying the summer sunshine in Enniskerry this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Skies and seas of blue, green and golden fields

Sailing in the bright blue yonder ... Greystones, Co Wicklow, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

It was warm today. It was almost as if we were being reminded of the unfulfilled promises of what summer ought to have been this year. The temperatures in south Dublin and north Co Wicklow rose to 18 and 19, and there are promises of warmer, sunnier days in the week ahead – just as the students return for a new academic year.

Coming back from Belfast to Dublin on the train last night, darkness closed in at Newry, and had completely enveloped the countryside before the train even reached Dundalk. I peered out as the train passed over the Boyne at Drogheda, hoping to get a glimpse of the estuary waters. He train then moves little inland, but at Laytown and Balbriggan there were glimpses of the coast and a harbour once again.

And then, as the train moved along the line that runs parallel with the coast road between Balbriggan and Skerries, beside Ardgillan estate, the North Strand and harbour at Skerries spread out in a delightful and bejewelled arc to the east.

Glimpses of the sea were hidden in the dark by the time the train passed from Rush over Rogerstown estuary to Donabate, and the last glimpse of the sea was under the lights of the marina and the boatyards at Malahide.

I was hardly going to miss an opportunity to walk on the beach today if it came my way.

Here was lunchtime meeting in Rathmines with a bishop, three people from the agency Feed the Minds, two people from the Church of Ireland Bishops’ Apeal Fund and two ordinands.

And as I stepped out into the sunshine in Rathmines, it was obvious those bright blue skies and the warm sunshine were gifts that were going to remain for the afternoon.

A feeling of a lingering, if not enduring, summer in Greystones this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

We ended up in Greystones, were people were walking along the cliffs, and down on the small beach behind the new harbour families were gathered in small numbers, and two dogs were chasing in and out of the water. People braving the water included a happy little girl, one elderly woman and two people in wet suits with snorkels.

Out in the water, there was a large number of sailing boats.

Oh what a summer this could have been.

Waves on the shore in Greystones this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Crossing over the railway line, we had coffee in Insomnia on the Main Street, before heading back under the railway line for another walk on the main beach.

Fields of green and gold above Greystones, looking out to the Irish Sea this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

We headed back through fields of green and gold that looked back out onto the sea, through Enniskerry and Glencree, back over the Feather Bed by Lough Dan, and down through Hell Fire Cub Forest.

Indeed, oh what a summer this could have been.

Green fields in Glencree, looking across to the Sugarloaf (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)