Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution

First World War memorial in the Church of Ireland, Rathkeale (courtesy: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Throughout the First World War, the War of Independence, and the Civil War, Protestants of all denominations throughout Limerick city and county kept their churches open, maintained their church and social life, and proclaimed constantly their goodwill towards their neighbours and, after the Treaty, their loyalty to the new Irish Free State. Throughout the Civil War, cathedral services continued in St Mary’s, together with ordinations and Holy Week addresses, Sunday services continued in parish churches, and diocesan organisations, including the diocesan synod and council, sought to maintain a semblance of normal church life.1 But this period was also marked by a number of attacks and killings that were inevitably perceived as sectarian.

Members of the Church of Ireland, Methodists, and Presbyterians in Limerick identified overwhelmingly with the British cause in the First World War, and few showed any open sympathy with Irish nationalism and independence. Those members of the Church of Ireland who identified with nationalism at the time stand out as exceptional, although none could be regarded as a marginal member of the Church of Ireland. Conor O’Brien (1880−1952), skipper of the Kelpie during the Kilcoole gun running in August 1914, was a grandson of William Smith O’Brien and a nephew of both Lucius Henry O’Brien, who was the dean of Limerick from 1905 to 1913, and the Revd Robert Malcolm Gwynn (1877−1962), who gave the Irish Citizen Army its name. His cousin Mary Spring Rice (1888−1924), a crew member of the Asgard, was a bishop’s granddaughter. Sir Thomas Myles (1857−1937), who skippered the Chotah in the Kilcoole gun running, was a brother of the dean of Dromore, the Very Revd Edward Albert Myles (1865−1951).2

However, as war memorials in churches throughout Limerick attest, during the revolutionary decade the vast majority of ordinary Protestant churchgoers identified not with independence but with family members who enlisted during the First World War.

Experience of the First World War

The experience of war blighted the lives of almost every Protestant family in these years and in the decades that followed. The men who signed up and fought in the main fields of battle, such as Flanders, the Somme, the Gallipoli landings, and Thessaloniki, included about one hundred former members of the Church Lads’ Brigade, a church-based youth organisation in the Limerick city parishes. It is difficult to overstate the impact of the war on Protestant family life in Limerick. The Heaphy family, for example, paid a heavy price with the deaths of three brothers: Private William Heaphy (28) died of his wounds on 7 May 1916; Gunner Frederick Heaphy (17) was killed on 3 May 1917; and Lance Corporal John Eyre Heaphy (33) was killed on 7 April 1918. A fourth brother, George Heaphy, survived the war. All three Heaphy brothers who died are named on the war memorial in St Mary’s Cathedral, along with two Fogerty brothers, two Hackett brothers, and two brothers from the Wills family. When injured men died at home, their families and churches went to great lengths in organising their funerals. Lieutenant William Brabazon Owens died of his wounds at the age of twenty on 25 June 1916, and received a military funeral in St Mary’s Cathedral. The funeral cortege was headed by a firing party and an army band; his coffin, covered with the union fag and his sword, belt, and cap, was borne on a gun carriage.3

After the First World War, war memorials were erected in St Mary’s Cathedral and in ordinary churches throughout Limerick. The cathedral war memorial was unveiled in 1922 and dedicated ‘In memory of the Men of Thomond fallen in the War: 1914–18.’ The forty-three names are listed alphabetically, without class division or separate categories for ‘officers’ and ‘men’. Lord Glentworth (Captain Edmond William Claude Gerard de Vere Pery), the twenty-three-year-old heir of the Earl of Limerick, was killed in action on 18 May 1918; on the monument, he takes his place alphabetically between a Gabbett and a Gore. In contrast, the war memorial in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, has only seven names, but separates the officers from the men. Their deaths are seen as heroic and are imbued with religious significance, emphasised in the heading and the Biblical citation: ‘1914−1918, To the Glory of God and in loving memory of the following officers and men from this parish who laid down their lives in the Great War … Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.’

Fear among parishioners: The revolutionary years

After the First World War, and as the War of Independence intensified, the Church of Ireland faced difficulties in maintaining diocesan activities. The 1920 diocesan report, for example, refers to ‘the difficulties of travelling, and the early hour at which people must be in their houses.’4 Peter Switzer, an elderly, seventy-five-year-old bachelor, was shot and fatally wounded on 10 January 1922 while he was attending the funeral of his sister in Castletown Church near Pallaskenry.5 When a memorial service for Mrs Maria Lindsay (whose murder as an informer by the Cork No. 1 Brigade IRA on 11 March 1921 caused outrage) was held in St Mary’s Cathedral on 28 January 1922, 450 military of all ranks and ninety Royal Irish Constabulary members attended. In many ways, this service also served to express public anguish in the immediate aftermath of the death of Peter Switzer.6 A week later, on Sunday 5 February 1922, the war memorial in St Mary’s Cathedral was unveiled at a service attended by 800 people. It was unveiled by Brigadier General Louis Wyatt and was dedicated by the newly-elected Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe, Harry Vere White.7 Wyatt was the commanding officer of the troops in Limerick, but was probably invited to unveil the monument because he had become a popular public figure as the general who brought the ‘Unknown Warrior’ from France for burial in Westminster Abbey the previous November.

As the conditions for civil war unfolded across the land in spring 1922, the British Army in Limerick was confined to barracks, and the Church of Ireland Gazette described ‘a strange and dangerous condition of affairs’ in the city.8 Yet, throughout the 1922−23 period, religious services continued in St Mary’s and in parish churches, while the diocesan organisations such as the synod and council worked to maintain the normal routines of church life.9 But on 28 March 1922, an attempt was made to burn Kilpeacon Rectory. Canon Charles Atkinson, who was also precentor of Limerick, may have been singled out because he had been an army chaplain during the First World War. Bishop White visited Kilpeacon the following Sunday and urged calm, saying that Church of Ireland members were ‘law-respecting, God-fearing’ people who showed their patriotism in ‘their frank and loyal acceptance of a new form of Government.’10 In the days that followed, the pavilion of the Limerick Protestant Young Men’s Association (LPYMA) in Farranshone was burnt to the ground, bullets were fired through the windows of its premises on O’Connell Street, and an attempt was made to bomb the building.11 Protestants in Limerick called a public meeting on 4 April 1922 to express their disgust at sectarian outrages in Belfast. The meeting was chaired by Sir Charles Barrington, who – despite the earlier murder of his daughter in May 1921 – praised the toleration shown to Protestants in Limerick and insisted that they ‘had thrived’ in a Catholic community. William Waller declared that Protestants – ‘a small, a very small, minority’ − carried on their daily lives without interference. Their sentiments were echoed by Captain James O’Grady Delmege, who declared that Protestants in Limerick had ‘received nothing but kindness, courtesy and goodwill at the hands of their fellow-countrymen.’12

Brave efforts were made to continue, not only with church-going, but also with the social life of church members. The LPYMA felt confident enough to hold a sports day at its Ennis Road grounds on 27 April 1922 ‘after the lapse of some years.’13 That weekend, however, the diocesan curate, the Revd Ralph Harbord, was shot and seriously wounded on the steps of his father’s rectory in west Cork. In a sermon the following Sunday, White referred to this shooting, and the related murders of thirteen Protestants in the Dunmanway area, as a ‘grim reminder’ of the helplessness of ‘scattered, disarmed members of the Church of Ireland in the South of Ireland.’14

As the new state found its feet, the Diocese of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe reflected the general mood throughout southern dioceses, eager to express loyalty to the new Irish Free State, yet anxious to see an end to violence. In the diocesan report of 19 June 1922, the diocesan auditor, C.H. Fitt, noted that ‘Nation and Church’ had been ‘passing through’ a ‘great crisis and change’, but his report pledged the loyalty of the church to ‘the new state’ and its commitment to ‘the welfare of all the people in our beloved native land.’15 When the diocesan synod met in the Diocesan Hall in Pery Square on 5 July 1922, disruptions to transport prevented a full attendance and the synod struggled to find a quorum. In his address, Bishop White declared: ‘We meet today in great anxiety about public affairs and in a city which is in the hands of opposing bands of armed men.’ White claimed that the Church of Ireland in Limerick had lost up to 60 per cent of its members ‘and many churches are now half empty.’ As a consequence, parishes were amalgamated and fewer curates were employed. ‘Ireland is losing many of her best, most patriotic, and most progressive citizens, who are forced to leave their native land by economic causes or by political and religious intolerance.’ The financial reports showed that collections and subscriptions were falling off, reflecting that economic and numerical decline.16

First World War memorial by Conor O’Brien, St Mary’s Cathedral (courtesy: Patrick Comerford)

War and memory

In the aftermath of the War of Independence and the Civil War, the diocesan report for 1923 noted that the year ‘began in strife and disorder’, but ‘happily ended in peace’ and with a ‘general improvement of the civic life of the country.’17 By 1924, the Diocesan Council was giving ‘thanks to Almighty God for His providential guidance’ and the ‘quietness and peace’ that allowed church life to continue.18

At his diocesan synod in 1923, White lamented the ‘hundreds of industrious Protestant Irish men and women’ who had left ‘because they felt that they were not welcome here, and that satisfactory careers could not be secured for their boys and girls in their own country’. If this hinted at sectarian undertones, White also added that ‘anything like a Protestant exodus would be deplored by our present rulers’.19 But the Protestant exodus continued. Prominent among those who left was Sir Charles Barrington, who never returned; he sold Glenstal Castle in 1926 and died in Hampshire in 1943, aged ninety-three. Ordinary families suffered the greatest haemorrhage: by 1926, the Church of Ireland population in Limerick city had dropped by 55.4 per cent from the figure in 1911, the Methodist population had declined by 51 per cent, and the Presbyterians had fallen by 82.6 per cent.

The sufferings of laity and clergy alike were seldom spoken of. Noone was ever charged with Peter Switzer’s murder, and his youngest sister Eliza died in 1927 at the age of seventy-five, bringing to an end their branch of the Switzer family. The sectarian undercurrents remained for a decade or more after independence. During a wave of sectarian attacks that swept across Ireland in the summer of 1935, an estimated crowd of 200−300 young men attacked churches and Protestant-owned shops and homes in Limerick on Saturday night, 20 July 1935, including Trinity Episcopal Church on Catherine Street and St Michael’s Church of Ireland on Pery Square, the homes of Canon Thomas Abbot and Archdeacon John Waller, the LPYMA building, the Gospel Hall, the Diocesan Hall, and the Masonic Club, and they attempted to set fire to the Presbyterian Church on Henry Street.20 St Peter and St Paul Church, the Church of Ireland parish church in Kilmallock, was destroyed in an arson attack the following night, while the windows of the local rector’s home were smashed along with those of a Protestant-owned shop. No-one was ever convicted or jailed for the attacks.21

Mary Spring Rice died in a sanatorium in Wales in 1924. When her body was brought back for burial in the Church of Ireland churchyard in Foynes, she was given a guard of honour by the local IRA, the Gaelic League, and trade unionists.22 But the role played by a few other members of the Church of Ireland in the War of Independence was forgotten by their co-religionists and their neighbours alike. Conor O’Brien failed to get elected to the Senate in 1925 and spent his later years in semi-isolation on Foynes Island, where he died in 1952. Sir Thomas Myles had become a colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps on the outbreak of the First World War and an honorary surgeon to King George V; he died in 1937 in the Richmond Hospital, Dublin, where he spent much of his career.

In the decades that followed, as churches continued to close, every effort was made to ensure that their war memorials were not lost. The memorials in Christ Church Methodist Church, Limerick, for example, include a war memorial with six names salvaged from the Presbyterian Church on Henry Street when it closed. When Rathkeale Methodist Church closed, the war memorial was moved to Ballingrane Methodist Church near Adare.

To this day, the war memorials in many churches in all three denominations remain the focus for Remembrance Sunday services each November. Yet, only one Church of Ireland churchyard in County Limerick has memorials to members of the Church of Ireland who supported the nationalist cause. A plaque on the gate leading into Mount Trenchard churchyard near Foynes was unveiled in 2014: ‘In memory of Conor O’Brien, Kitty O’Brien, George Cahill, Mary Spring Rice, Thomas Fitzsimons, Sir Thomas Myles. Go ndéana Dia trócaire orthú. Limerick men and women who imported rifles for the Irish Volunteers, July 1914.’ The church at Mount Trenchard had been long closed by 2014, however, and all that remained standing was the church tower. Perhaps the determination to keep open other churches in places such as Castletown and Kilmallock reflects, not only the piety and commitment of their parishioners, but an inherited and inbuilt yet unspoken determination not to concede to the sectarian attacks of previous decades.

Memorial to Limerick members of the Howth and Kilcoole gun running team, Mount Trenchard churchyard, Foynes. Mary Spring Rice and Conor O’Brien are buried within (courtesy: Patrick Comerford)

Notes

1. See, for example, Church of Ireland Gazette, 10 March, 16 June 1922.
2. Valerie Jones, Rebel Prods: The forgotten story of Protestant radical nationalists and the 1916 Rising (Dublin, 2016), passim.
3. Limerick Chronicle, 27 June 1916.
4. Representative Church Body Library, Dublin (RCB Library), D13 Limerick, Ardfert & Killaloe Diocesan Records, 1693–2008: 13/6, Diocesan Report, 1920, p 33.
5. John Lucey, ‘The shooting of Peter Switzer’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 53 (2013), pp 237-240.
6. Church of Ireland Gazette, 3 February 1922.
7. Ibid., 10 February 1922.
8. Ibid., 10 March 1922.
9. See Ibid., 10 March, 16 June 1922.
10. Ibid., 7 April 1922.
11. Thomas Keane, ‘Class, religion and society in Limerick city, 1922–1939’ (PhD thesis, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, 2015), pp 54-6.
12. Ibid, pp 54-55; Brian Hughes, ‘Unionists and loyalists in Limerick, 1922–23’ in Seán William Gannon (ed.), The inevitable conflict: Essays on the Civil War in County Limerick (Limerick, 2022), p. 94; Limerick Chronicle, 5 April 1922; Irish Times, 5 April 1922.
13. Church of Ireland Gazette, 5 May 1922.
14. Ibid., 10 May 1922.
15. RCB Library, D13/13/6, Diocesan Report, 1921, p 4.
16. Church of Ireland Gazette, 28 July 1922.
17. RCB Library, D13/13/6, Diocesan Report, 1923, pp 3-4.
18. RCB Library, D13/13/6, Diocesan Report, 1924, p 4.
19. Church of Ireland Gazette, 22 June 1923.
20. Limerick Leader, 9 January 2010. The primary context for these attacks was an outbreak of sectarian attacks against Catholics in Northern Ireland following that year’s 12 July celebrations.
21. Irish Times, 22 July 1935; Limerick Leader, 27 July 1935.
22. Jones, Rebel Prods, p. 90.

Contributor’s Note:

The Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford was Precentor of St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale Group of Parishes (2017–22), including Rathkeale, Askeaton, Castletown, and Tarbert. He is a former adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College, Dublin and a former Irish Times journalist. He now lives in retirement in England. www.patrickcomerford. Com

• ‘Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution’ is Chapter 6 (pp 83-89) in Dr Seán William Gannon and Dr Brian Hughes (eds), Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912–1923 (Limerick: Limerick City and County Council, 2023, ISBN 978-1-999-6911-6)

‘Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912–1923’ … published in recent days in Limerick

Praying with the Psalms in Easter: 3 May 2022 (Psalm 69)

‘To the leader: according to Lilies. Of David’ (the superscription in Psalm 69) … the Lily Prince in a fresco in the Minoan palace in Knossos in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I have a medical appointment early this morning (3 May 2022) as a follow-up to my stroke a few weeks ago. But, before this day begins, I am continuing my morning reflections in this season of Easter continues, including my morning reflections drawing on the Psalms.

In my blog, I am reflecting each morning in this Prayer Diary in these ways:

1, Short reflections on a psalm or psalms;

2, reading the psalm or psalms;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Psalm 69:

Psalm 69 is sometimes known by its opening words in Latin, Salvum me fac Deus. In the slightly different numbering system in the Greek Septuagint and in the Latin Vulgate, this psalm is counted as Psalm 68.

This Psalm speaks of exile, so it is to be accompanied on the shoshanim or roses – the NRSVA says lilies. The symbolism is that Israel is like a rose, but the trials of exile are like thorns.

David asks God for salvation from troubles that reach the soul like deep water up to one’s neck. David cries for help until he reaches the point of exhaustion and his voice goes hoarse. He strains his eyes scanning the horizon for help, but he sees none.

Most Christian commentaries cannot comfortably place the events in Psalm 69 in the life of King David. Many say this Psalm contains prophecies about Christ, his rejection by his family, and even that he was given vinegar to drink on the cross. But few refer to the traditional Jewish interpretations that Psalm 69 was written during David’s youth.

These traditional Jewish interpretations say Psalm 69 is full of pain, rejection, and hardship because David was an outcast among his family.

They say David grew up in a family in which he was despised, rejected, shunned, and outcast. He was treated with scorn and derision (Psalm 69: 7-8). The community followed the example of the family, and assumed that David was full of sin and guilt (Psalm 69: 11-12). If something turned up missing, they believed he stole it, and forced him to replace it (Psalm 69: 4). He was often the object of jokes and pranks, filling his plate with gall and his cup with vinegar (Psalm 69: 20-21).

If this is true, it somewhat explains why Jesse did not have David present when the Prophet Samuel came to choose a man to be God’s anointed king (see I Samuel 16: 1-13), and why his oldest brother Eliab reacted when David later showed up at the Israelite camp when they were being mocked by Goliath (I Samuel 17: 28).

The traditional Jewish answer to why David’s family rejected him is that they all thought that David’s mother had committed adultery and borne him out of wedlock. They thought he was a bastard – the word ‘stranger’ in verse 8 has the same Hebrew root as muzar, meaning ‘bastard.’

David’s father, Jesse, was the son of Obed, who was the son of Boaz, who married Ruth, the Moabite woman. Jewish traditional law explicitly forbade Hebrew women from marrying Moabite men because of how the Moabites treated the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert after fleeing Egypt. But the law was unclear about whether a Hebrew man could marry a Moabite woman. Boaz believed the law allowed such a marriage, and so he married Ruth.

However, according to the Midrash, Boaz died on the night he and Ruth were married (Midrash Zuta Ruth 4). Many believed his death proved that God had condemned Boaz’s marriage to Ruth, and had punished him. And yet, after this one night, Ruth conceived and gave birth to Obed.

Obed was regarded as illegitimately born, as was his own son Jesse. Nevertheless, both of these men laboured hard in learning the Torah and loving God. Their lives helped convince others that although Boaz had sinned, they were accepted by God as part of the covenant community.

Jesse married a Jewish girl, Nizbeth (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 91a). After Jesse had been married for many years, had fathered seven sons with Nizbeth, and had gained honour as a righteous man and spiritual leader, he began to doubt whether his line and seed were permanently polluted by his Moabite blood. It was at this point that he resolved to cease all sexual relations with Nizbeth. He did this out of love for her, because she, as a pure Israelite, would be sinning to be married to someone who was of impure Moabite ancestry.

Furthermore, Jesse began to doubt the legitimacy of his seven sons. If he was impure, then his children were illegitimate and impure as well. So, wanting a legitimate heir, Jesse came up with a plan to have a son in the same way that his forefather Abraham had done: through relations with his wife’s Canaanite maidservant.

Whether Jesse was viewed by God as a true Israelite or just as a Moabite convert to Judaism, the law allowed him to marry a female convert to Judaism. If they had a son, he would be recognised as a legitimate heir, thus securing Jesse’s family line.

When the Canaanite woman heard of this plan, she did not want to take part, for she loved Nizbeth, and had seen the pain that she had gone through by being separated from her husband for many years. She told Nizbeth about Jesse’s plan, and they decided to do what Laban had done with Leah and Rachel. On the night that Jesse was to have intimate relations with the Canaanite maidservant, she switched places with Nizbeth. Nizbeth conceived that night, and Jesse remained ignorant of what had taken place.

Several months later, Nizbeth began to show that she was pregnant, and Jesse and her seven sons believed that she had committed adultery. The sons wanted to kill their adulterous mother by stoning her and her illegitimate baby. But out of love for his wife, Jesse intervened. Nizbeth did not reveal to her husband that the child was his, for she did not want to embarrass him by revealing the truth of what had happened. Instead, she chose to bear the shame of their son, much as her Tamar was prepared to be burned rather than bring public shame upon Judah, her father-in-law and the father of her child (see Genesis 38: 24-25).

David grew up in a family in which he was despised, rejected, shunned and outcast, as described in Psalm 69. He was treated with scorn and derision. The community followed the example of the family, and assumed that David was full of sin and guilt. If something turned up missing, they believed he stole it, and forced him to replace it. He was often the object of jokes and pranks, filling his plate with gall and his cup with vinegar.

It was said that all the great qualities of Boaz were to be found in Jesse and his seven sons, while all the despicable traits of Ruth the Moabite were concentrated in David. The tradition is that this is also why David’s family forced David to be the shepherd in the fields by himself … they were hoping a bear or lion might kill him.

This may also help explain why later in life, when David was fleeing from a murderous Saul, David asked the King of Moab to harbour his mother and father (I Samuel 22: 3-4).

Some years later, when David became King of Israel, he slaughtered two-thirds of the Moabite army. According to Jewish tradition, this was because after David left his three family members under the protection of the King of Moab, the King killed David’s father and mother, but left his brother alive (see II Samuel 8: 2).

Indeed, this may also explain why David, when he was confessing his own adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, he says ‘In sin my mother conceived me …’ (see Psalm 51: 5).

‘I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me’ (Psalm 69: 2) … winter floods in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Psalm 69 (NRSVA):

To the leader: according to Lilies. Of David.

1 Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
2 I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.
3 I am weary with my crying;
my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God.

4 More in number than the hairs of my head
are those who hate me without cause;
many are those who would destroy me,
my enemies who accuse me falsely.
What I did not steal
must I now restore?
5 O God, you know my folly;
the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.

6 Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me,
O Lord God of hosts;
do not let those who seek you be dishonoured because of me,
O God of Israel.
7 It is for your sake that I have borne reproach,
that shame has covered my face.
8 I have become a stranger to my kindred,
an alien to my mother’s children.

9 It is zeal for your house that has consumed me;
the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.
10 When I humbled my soul with fasting,
they insulted me for doing so.
11 When I made sackcloth my clothing,
I became a byword to them.
12 I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate,
and the drunkards make songs about me.

13 But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
At an acceptable time, O God,
in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me.
With your faithful help 14 rescue me
from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
15 Do not let the flood sweep over me,
or the deep swallow me up,
or the Pit close its mouth over me.

16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
17 Do not hide your face from your servant,
for I am in distress – make haste to answer me.
18 Draw near to me, redeem me,
set me free because of my enemies.

19 You know the insults I receive,
and my shame and dishonour;
my foes are all known to you.
20 Insults have broken my heart,
so that I am in despair.
I looked for pity, but there was none;
and for comforters, but I found none.
21 They gave me poison for food,
and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

22 Let their table be a trap for them,
a snare for their allies.
23 Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,
and make their loins tremble continually.
24 Pour out your indignation upon them,
and let your burning anger overtake them.
25 May their camp be a desolation;
let no one live in their tents.
26 For they persecute those whom you have struck down,
and those whom you have wounded, they attack still more.
27 Add guilt to their guilt;
may they have no acquittal from you.
28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living;
let them not be enrolled among the righteous.
29 But I am lowly and in pain;
let your salvation, O God, protect me.

30 I will praise the name of God with a song;
I will magnify him with thanksgiving.
31 This will please the Lord more than an ox
or a bull with horns and hoofs.
32 Let the oppressed see it and be glad;
you who seek God, let your hearts revive.
33 For the Lord hears the needy,
and does not despise his own that are in bonds.

34 Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and everything that moves in them.
35 For God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah;
and his servants shall live there and possess it;
36 the children of his servants shall inherit it,
and those who love his name shall live in it.

Today’s Prayer:

The theme in this week’s prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Truth Tellers.’ It was introduced on Sunday morning by Steve Cox, Chair of Christians in the Media.

The USPG Prayer Diary this morning (3 May 2022, World Press Freedom Day) invites us to pray:

We pray for journalists and all who work in the media. May we work to protect press freedom across the world.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

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

In Kilcoole and Bray for a last walk on the beach as a New Year arrives

A last walk on the beach for 2019 … on the seashore at Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, on New Year’s Eve (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I marked New Year’s Eve yesterday [31 December 2019] by going for my last walk on a beach in the year at Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, followed by a late lunch – or an early dinner – at Carpe Diem in Bray.

I had been in Laytown and Bettystown in Co Wicklow the day before. But if it had been almost a year and a half since I had been in either Laytown or Bettystown, it was more than three years since I had last been in Kilcoole, picking blackberries in the lanes before Michaelmas in late September 2016.

I first spent a childhood summer in Kilcoole 60 years ago in 1960 – I remember year because it was the year of the Rome Olympics – and I have always thought of Kilcoole as a quiet, rural or tranquil sort of place, between Greystones and Wicklow Town.

The railway line still evokes happy memories of the journey between Dublin and Wexford town in those years when Wexford was home for me.

Saying goodbye to 2019 as 2020 rolls in at Kilcoole, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

But Kilcoole is on the way to becoming part of the suburban conurbation that spreads out from Bray through Greystones and Delgany. There is evidence of this in the ramp up to the railway platform, the bicycle rack for commuters, and the new shiny train timetables highlighting the early morning trains that bring workers into financial services centre in Dublin.

More visible evidence of these changes could be seen in the number of families and young couples walking with their children and their dogs along the railway line. And yet there is still an air of rural tranquillity here that attracts photographers and bird-watchers as well as those seeking some quiet in days after Christmas.

After a brisk walk along the shore and by the railway line, two of drove back into Bray for a late lunch or early dinner in Carpe Diem to mark the close of the year. The sun had set, night was enveloping the north Wicklow coast, and we never ventured down onto the shore for another, last beach walk of the year.

We returned to Knocklyon to wait for 2019 to turn to 2020.

Happy New Year.

Toasting the old year, toasting the new year, in Carpe Diem, Bray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A search for the childhood homes of the Kilcoole gun-runner in Limerick

Sir Thomas Myles as President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland … he was born in Catherine Street, Limerick in 1857

Patrick Comerford

I have written about Sir Thomas Myles (1857-1937) in my monthly column in two diocesan magazines in 1914, and that year I also spoke to the Kilcoole Heritage Group, Co Wicklow, about the role of this forgotten surgeon in the Kilcoole gunrunning. In 1914, he used his own private yacht Chotah in an episode that paralleled the Howth gunrunning involving the Asgard.

Myles was born over the family shop in Catherine Street, Limerick, in 1857, and was a leading surgeon of his day and was also an outstanding sports figure politics before he died in Dublin in 1937.

He was President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, was knighted by King Edward VII, at the outbreak of World War I he was commissioned an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps and appointed an honorary surgeon to King George V in Ireland. During the 1916 Rising, he attended victims of the violence on all sides at the Richmond Hospital.

Perhaps Myles has been conveniently forgotten in the narratives of the 1916 Rising because he does not fit easily into the exclusivist definitions of national identity.

No 13 Catherine Street, where the Myles family had their home and shop, is now No 21 Catherine Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Sir Thomas Myles was the second child son of the Limerick merchant John Myles and his second wife Prudence Bradshaw. He was born on 20 April 1857 at 13 Catherine Street, which was later numbered 15 Catherine Street.

But which house was this? The street numbers have changed in more than a century and a half, and the numbers 13 and 15 were later used for the vicarage and female orphanage attached to Trinity Episcopal Church in the 19th century. So, I was sure Thomas Myles could not have been born at either of these addresses.

Later, in the mid-1860s, John Myles moved with his family to 13 Upper Mallow Street.

As I walked through Limerick’s city centre yesterday [2 November 2017], I went in search of these houses, the house where Thomas Myles was born, and the house that was his family home throughout his teens before he went to Trinity College Dublin as an undergraduate.

The numbers were confusing, and there are no civic or historical plaques on either street to mark these houses, despite the significant role Thomas Myles has played in national history.

So, on Thursday morning I turned to the work of the local historian, Paddy Waldron, who attended my lecture in Kilcoole three years ago marking the centenary of the Kilcoole gunrunning. Paddy is distantly connected by marriage to the Myles family and also has an interest in the genealogical stories of the Comerford families in Co Clare.

He has traced how the houses on Catherine Street were renumbered in the mid-19th century, and identifies No 13 with No 21 Catherine Street. The house looks neglected today, and is close to the corner with Cecil Street.

No 13 Upper Mallow Street … once the childhood home of Sir Thomas Myles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The Myles family later moved around the corner from Trinity Episcopal Church to No 13 Upper Mallow Street.

Despite its present use, it is possible to image how this house was once one of the elegant late Georgian townhouses that formed a terrace of largely uniform houses. They share a parapet height and their windows are aligned. No 13 still has its original doorcase, balconettes and coach house.

In recent narratives, the role of Sir Thomas Myles has been overshadowed by other Limerick members of the Church of Ireland, including Conor O’Brien, his sister Kitty O’Brien and their cousin Mary Spring-Rice from Mount Trenchard. All three were great-grandchildren of Thomas Spring-Rice (1790-1866), 1st Baron Monteagle, remembered in a public monument in the People’s Park in Limerick.

But surely Sir Thomas Myles is worthy of a plaque in the city of his birth.

The decorations and medals received by Sir Thomas Myles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Blackberry picking in autumn in fields beside the rectory

Ripening blackberries above the rectory garden walls in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

The blackberries are ripening in the fields in the glebe land behind and beside the Rectory in Askeaton.

Sunday afternoon [17 September 2017] was almost like a summer’s day, with warm, bright sunshine and blue skies. After two church services – in Saint Mary’s, Askeaton, and Saint Brendan’s, Kilnaughtin – two of us went picking blackberries in the warm autumn sunshine.

They are growing high on the other sides of the walls of the rectory garden, and many of them are now in full fruit, plump, juicy and ready for eating.

I was surprised earlier this summer when I was at High Leigh in Hoddesdon for the USPG conference, and noticed during my walks in the countryside that the blackberries were already ripening at that early stage on the laneways and by the roadside in East Anglia.

But as we were picking the blackberries yesterday, I was reminded of childhood days at this time of the year in the 1950s or the 1960s, picking blackberries in the laneways and narrow roads close to my grandmother’s farm outside Cappoquin, Co Waterford, and the childhood joys that stayed with me as an adult in more recent years picking blackberrries before Michaelmas and the end of the blackberry-picking season in Kilcoole or Greystones in Co Wicklow, or along Cross in Hand Lane in Lichfield.

I was reminded too of the poem ‘Blackberry-Picking’, written in the 1960s by the late Seamus Heaney for Philip Hobsbaum.

Blackberry-Picking, by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

Source: Death of a Naturalist (1966)

Soon it will be Michaelmas, when blackberry-picking ceases (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

‘Westward Ho!’ takes me from Mungret to Kilcoole and childhood reading

‘Westward Ho!’ in Mungret, Co Limerick … on the road back to memories of early childhood reading (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

On the road from Limerick to Askeaton, Mungret is an attractive village that is quickly being absorbed into the city as a suburb. Mungret, Co Limerick, has a large, historic monastic site, and is also known for the former Jesuit college that still dominates the skyline.

But for some years Mungret has had only one pub, known as Westward Ho!, and this is now on the market to lease as ‘a substantial pub/restaurant.’ It includes a large lounge area, bar area, four rooms on the first floor and large afrea suitable for a beer garden.

But it was not the pub or its location that first caught my imagination.

For many people on their way from Limerick heading west to the port at Foynes or the beach at Ballybunion, the name may seem appropriate. But the name is also a reminder of Westward Ho!, the historical novel by Charles Kingsley published in 1855.

I still remember first reading Westward Ho! when I was a boy of 8. We were spending the summer in a house in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, and I remember the year because it was the year of the Rome Olympics.

It was a house with a sunny veranda, close to the coast, filled with books and the only house my parents ever found that also had a piano. Nearby were the ruins of an old house with bats that provided interesting watching as those summer days came to a close.

I have often tried to locate that house as an adult, but I have never managed to find it. Perhaps it has been rebuilt beyond recognition, or is hidden behind high walls.

The house was close enough to Dublin so that it allowed my father to commute into work during the day, while he seemed to spend the summer evenings and the weekends playing golf. The beach was close by, and we had no fear of crossing the Dublin-Wexford railway line on our way to the shore. On those sunny days, we also enjoyed picking blackberries on the way to and from the beach, so it must have been about this time of the year.

I can still recall playing in the gardens in front of this house, with a small brook running by a tall stone wall. And I still have a clear memory of the books in the house I read that summer as an eight-year-old: Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley, Kidnapped and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which was attractive to someone of my age not because of its religious fervour but because its ghoulish illustrations had a certain hold over a boy’s imagination, as had the adventures described by Charles Kingsley in Westward Ho!.

As my sisters and cousins were reading Little Women and The Water Babies, or learning to pick out ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano, I was enthralled by the books in the house, and even ventured into my first reading of the King James Version of the Bible.

Westward Ho! was written by Charles Kingsley eight years before The Water-Babies (1863), a tale about a chimney sweep, and ten years before Hereward the Wake (1865), which was regularly serialised in boys’ comics during my childhood.

If my parents were ever aware of Kingsley’s alleged racism in his descriptions of Irish people, they never alluded to it, and they never stopped us reading his books. Perhaps they had little care about what we read, just as they cared little whether we had any musical education yet never stopped us playing on the piano in the house in Kilcoole.

Kingsley wrote in a letter to his wife from Ireland in 1860, telling her: ‘I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country ... to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours.’

The vile anti-Irish images continue in The Water-Babies. There is the fisherman Dennis, who always tells his masters pleasant lies, ‘but, instead of being angry with him, you must remember that he is a poor Paddy, and knows no better.’ There are the ‘wild Irish’ who ‘would not learn to be peaceable Christians,’ but prefer to ‘brew potheen ... and knock each other over the head with shillelaghs, and shoot each other from behind turf-dykes.’

There are the simian-like Doasyoulikes, an indolent and lazy people who ‘lived very much such a life as those jolly old Greeks in Sicily, who you may see painted on the ancient vases.’ But they may be an offensive, thinly-veiled metaphor for the Irish, whose ugliness is explained by their diet, for ‘when people live on poor vegetables instead of roast beef and plum-pudding, their jaws grow large, and their lips grow coarse, like the poor Paddies who eat potatoes.’

In Hereward the Wake, the hero finds refuge in Ireland among the Vikings, who are civilised and live in cities like Dublin, Waterford and Limerick, while the native Irish are deceitful, dishonest and treacherous.

It was only later in life that I realised Westward Ho! was also a lesson in what Kingsley saw as the faults and failings of Roman Catholicism in the Reformation period. Kingsley was also highly critical of Cardinal John Henry Newman, accusing him of untruthfulness and deceit, which prompted Newman to write his Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

And so, given a strong Irish perception of Kingsley as a writer who was prejudiced against Irish people and against Roman Catholics, it surprised me that a popular pub in Ireland could be called ‘Westward Ho!’ It is even more surprising as the pub is so close to a former Jesuit college and the novel repeatedly attacks the worst excesses of the Spanish Jesuits and the Inquisition.

But my childhood excitement at reading Kingsley’s Westward Ho! over half a century ago still returned with joy to my memory when I noticed the name of the pub in Mungret, and I have had a life-long affection and respect for many of the political and theological values of the Revd Charles Kingsley (1819-1875).

Kingsley was an Anglican priest, university professor, social reformer, historian and novelist. He is particularly associated with Christian Socialism, the working men’s college, and labour co-operatives that led to the working reforms of the progressive era.

Kingsley was born in Holne, Devon, the elder son of the Revd Charles Kingsley, and he spent his early childhood in Clovelly, Devon, where his father was the curate (1826-1832) and later the rector (1832-1836). He entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1838 and graduated in 1842.

From 1844, he was Rector of Eversley, Hampshire. In 1860, he became Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. Kingsley resigned from Cambridge in 1869 and from 1870 to 1873 he was a canon of Chester Cathedral. In 1873, he was made a canon of Westminster Abbey. When he died in 1875, he was buried in Saint Mary’s Churchyard, Eversley.

Kinglsey was a friend of prominent Victorians such as Charles Darwin, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens and Alfred Lord Tennyson. He was one of the first public figures to welcome Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, and had a lengthy correspondence with Thomas Huxley about Huxley’s early ideas on agnosticism. Darwin added an edited version of Kingsley’s remarks to the next edition of On the Origin of Species, and when a heated dispute developed over human evolution, Kingsley gently satirised the debate, known as the Great Hippocampus Question, as the ‘Great Hippopotamus Question.’

His books include The Heroes (1856), a children’s book about Greek mythology, and several historical novels, including Hypatia (1853), Hereward the Wake (1865) and Westward Ho! (1855).

The Water-Babies (1863), a tale about a chimney sweep, illustrates Kingsley’s concern for social reform. Kingsley’s social and political values were influenced by Frederick Denison Maurice.

Westward Ho! is based on the adventures of an Elizabethan corsair Amyas Preston, who becomes Amyas Leigh in the novel. The book celebrates England’s victories over Spain in the Elizabethan era and is based on the real-life Preston Somers Expedition in 1595. This was a daring raid in which the Spanish inland colonial city of Caracas in South America was captured and plundered by English privateers led by Amyas Preston and George Somers.

In Westward Ho!, Amyas sets sail with Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh and other privateers to the New World, where they battle with the Spanish. Amyas is an unruly child and as a young man he follows Sir Francis Drake to sea. Amyas loves local beauty Rose Salterne, as does almost everyone else, and much of the novel involves the kidnap of Rose by a Spaniard.

Amyas spends time in the Caribbean coasts of Venezuela seeking gold, and eventually returns to England at the time of the Spanish Armada, finding his true love, the beautiful Indian maiden Ayacanora, in the process. Yet fate had blundered and brought misfortune into Amyas’s life, for not only had he been blinded by a freak bolt of lightning at sea, but he also loses his brother Frank Leigh and Rose Salterne, who were caught by the Spaniards and burned at the stake by the Inquisition.

The title of Charles Kingsley’s ‘Westward Ho!’ recalls from the traditional calls of boat taxis on the River Thames (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A prominent theme of the novel is the 16th-century fear of Roman Catholics, and it repeatedly shows the Protestant English correcting the worst excesses of the Spanish Jesuits and the Inquisition.

The full title of the book is Westward Ho! Or The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Rendered into Modern English by Charles Kingsley. It is an elaborate title intended to reflect the mock-Elizabethan style of the novel.

But the title also recalls from the traditional call of boat taxis on the River Thames, which would call ‘Eastward Ho!’ and ‘Westward Ho!’ to show their destination and to attract passengers. The title is also recalls the play Westward Ho! (1604) by John Webster and Thomas Dekker, who satirised the perils of the westward expansion of London.

The tomb of Bishop George Augustus Selwyn in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Kingsley dedicated the novel to Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, and Bishop George Selwyn, two leading Victorians he saw as representatives of English heroic values that harkened back to the Elizabethan era.

George Augustus Selwyn (1809-1878) was the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand. He was Bishop of New Zealand (including Melanesia) from 1841 to 1858, and then Primate of New Zealand from 1858 to 1868. After returning to England, Selwyn was Bishop of Lichfield from 1868 until he died in 1878. He gave his name to Selwyn College in Cambridge. Sir James Brooke (1803-1868), was a born under the British Raj in India, who became the first White Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo.

Westward Ho! is set in Bideford in North Devon during the reign of Elizabeth I, and so became the inspiration for the unusual name of Westward Ho!, a seaside village near Bideford and the only place name in Britain to include an exclamation mark.

Because of the success and popularity of Kingsley’s novel and a growing Victorian fashion for seaside holidays, entrepreneurs in Bideford realised the opportunity to develop tourism in the area. The Northam Burrows Hotel and Villa Building Company was formed in 1863, and was chaired by Isaac Newton Wallop (1825-1891), 5th Earl of Portsmouth and the landlord of Enniscorthy, Co Wexford.

The company prospectus admitted ‘the recent publication of Professor Kingsley’s Westward Ho!’ had ‘excited increased public attention to the western part, more especially, of this romantic and beautiful coast. Nothing but a want of accommodation for visitors has hitherto prevented its being the resort of families seeking the advantages of sea bathing, combined with the invigorating breezes of the Atlantic …’

The hotel built by the company was named the Westward Ho! Hotel, and the adjacent villas were also named after the book. As the development expanded, the settlement also became known as Westward Ho! … with the exclamation mark.

The United Services College was founded in the village in 1874. Rudyard Kipling spent several of his childhood years at Westward Ho!, attending the United Services College, which has since been absorbed by Haileybury College, now in Hertfordshire. His collection of stories, Stalky & Co (1899), is based on his school days there.

The village has become more residential as holiday camps closed and houses and flats were built. Today, Westward Ho! is known for its surfing seas and the long expanse of clean sand. The seaward part of the village lies within the North Devon Coast, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

So, in some remote way, Westward Ho! not only brings me back to my childhood and early reading, but also has connections with Enniscorthy, Lichfield and Cambridge.

The Westward Ho! pub in Mungret first opened in 1896, and there was widespread concern when it closed its doors two years ago.

However, the management insisted at the time that it was ‘business as usual’ at the bar and that the premises had closed only to carry out renovations. It is the last remaining pub in Mungret village. The only bar facility in Mungret is the local GAA club, but it is often booked out for private events.

An old house and former centre for spirituality goes on the market

Luisne, originally built as Darraghville ... the spirituality centre in Kilcoole is now on the market (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I see in the property sections in the national newspapers that Luisne, an old house that is home to a centre for spirituality about a mile north of Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, is now on the market.

This once elegant historic house stands on 52 acres of beautiful unspoilt Wicklow countryside, with a gate lodge, former schoolhouse and two walled gardens.

For more than a decade, this house has been home to the Luisne Spirituality Centre, which was established in 2004. But the presence of the Holy Faith community dates back to the 1890s, and the house is a century older.

The Holy Faith Sisters bought Darraghville in 1894 and opened new schools, including a junior boarding school for boys in 1898, where the more famous pupils included the comedian Jimmy O’Dea.

The ministry of the Luisne Spirituality Centre began in 2004, and the estate is still farmed and used for grazing livestock. However, the Holy Faith Congregation can no longer afford to fund the Luisne Centre. In recent years, there were discussions about setting up a charitable trust to manage Luisne in the years to come so it can continue and expand.

Open and without walls, Luisne has described itself as ‘a contemporary monastic settlement inspired by the early monasteries and the scientific revelation that all life is intimately interconnected and richly diversified.’

The programmes at Luisne have included meditation twice a day and regular extended meditation practice in weekly classes and weekend workshops, as well as classes on art appreciation, astronomy, cookery, herbal remedies, vegetarian cooking, mindfulness and yoga.

Now, it seems, the efforts to save Lusine have come to an end, and the house and lands are on the market through WK Nowlan Real Estate Advisers, with an asking price in excess of €775,000.

The original house, Darraghville, was built by John Darragh, a former lord mayor of Dublin, ca 1782, on lands first leased from the Gardiner family, Earls of Blessington and Viscount Mountjoy – they gave their name to Gardiner Street, Mountjoy Square, Blessington Street and other Georgian streets in Dublin.

Darraghville is a two-storey over basement, five-bay, Georgian residence, with a projecting semi-hexagonal bay to the west, parapet hipped roof to the east, and treble-hipped ‘A’ roofs to the west. There are Venetian windows with sidelights feature on the two principal façades.

The house retains many of its original features, including decorative plaster ceilings, stone flooring, vaulted basements, and staircases and woodwork of architectural importance. The façade was brickwork, but is now concealed behind painted render. The three-storey extension to the north probably dates from the mid-19th century.

Photographs from the 1870s record the resplendent grandeur of a lower walled garden with an extensive glassed greenhouse, tea-house and an ornamental bridge. The lower garden is now overgrown, but the walls and entrances remain, and it still features a meandering stream, the bridge base and the old tea-house, very much in need of restoration.

A second walled garden beside the house is well maintained. It may have had a tennis court and fruit trees originally, but is now a vegetable patch, with fruit trees and flower beds, as well as a small greenhouse.

John Darragh traded as a china and earthenware merchant on Lower Ormond Quay, Dublin. When his widow Mary died in 1799, the Darraghville estate passed to the Newton family, and George Newton built a new house on the site.

What does the future hold for this house? Property journalists are suggesting it could become a wellness-retreat centre, or a hospitality facility.

But I imagine it is more likely that someone is going to buy this part of Kilcoole’s history as a trophy home.

Picking blackberries in the lane in the days remaining before Michaelmas

Blackberries in the lanes in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

Over breakfast this morning, some of us were talking about Michaelhouse in Cambridge and its interesting witness as a church and a café in the heart of the university city. It was a reminder that Michaelmas is soon upon us.

I spent most of the morning working at an academic committee meeting in Trinity College Dublin in the heart of the city. The new academic term which begins on Monday next was known until recently as Michaelmas term, and later next week, I am preaching at the early morning Eucharist on the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels [29 September 2016].

On the way back, walking from the Luas tram station at Windy Arbour to the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, I stopped to admire the blackberries in the hedges and the ditches at the end of Orwell Road, on the edges of Milltown Golf Club.

When I was a child in West Waterford, we were told that Michaelmas Day is the last day blackberries should be picked. As I grew up, I realised that this is a superstition shared across the islands, from Achill to Lichfield, from Wexford to Essex and Cambridge.

Blackberries at the end of Orwell Road, Rathgar, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In his poem ‘Trebetherick,’ the late John Betjeman seems to link ripening blackberries and the closing in of the autumn days with old age and the approach of death:

Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light,
Lonely round the hedge, the heavy meadow was remote,
The oldest part of Cornwall was the wood as black as night,
And the pheasant and the rabbit lay torn open at the throat.

He had spent much of his childhood there, and he died in Trebetherick on 19 May 1984, at the age of 77.

But the former poet laureate had a more benign view of blackberries on a visit to the Isle of Man, when he described ‘wandering down your late-September lanes when dew-hung cobwebs glisten in the gorse and blackberries shine, waiting to be picked.’

On the beach in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Two of us decided to go blackberry-picking in the ‘late-September lanes’ of Kilcoole this afternoon. It was a warm autumn afternoon, and despite a large number of commuter cars parked at the railway station, there were only two other people on the beach, and the lane was almost deserted, apart from a mother passing on the traditions of blackberry picking to her young daughter after school, and a woman collecting wild apples that had fallen on the lane in the gentle autumn breezes.

Even when you are picking blackberries in twos or threes, this can be a solitary exercise, following the trails your eyes lead you along, finding your own comfortable areas for standing on your toes and stretching your arms high or stooping low.

It is a time to allow the mind to wander back to childhood memories, and time for contemplation and unstructured prayers, giving thanks for the beauty of creation. September is the beginning of the Church Year in the Orthodox tradition, so this was an afternoon to think about and to give thanks for beginnings and ends, for starting and ending, for openings and closings, for memories and even for forgetfulness.

In the countryside of Co Wicklow between Kilcoole and Bray this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

We filled a bowl and half-filled a bag, and then had a short walk on the beach in Kilcoole before making our way through the autumn countryside of Co Wicklow to Bray.

There we had a late lunch in Carpe Diem, and yet another walk on the beach in Bray, where the only company was a man and his two dogs. And I thought of how Sylvia Plath linked blackberry-picking and the sea in her poem ‘Blackberrying’:

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
…
The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
…

‘The only thing to come now is the sea’ … a late afternoon walk on the beach in Bray, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Christ Church Delgany has a story going back to the sixth century

Inside Christ Church, Delgany, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I was preaching in Christ Church, Delgany, Co Wicklow, last week [10 April 2016], at the invitation of the Rector, my riend and colleague the Revd Nigel Waugh. However, I never got around to describing this unique church and its story.

Delgany is about 25 km south of Dublin and is surrounded by wooded hills and the Glen of the Downs. The area traces its story back to Saint Mogoroc or Saint Moghoróg, who is said to have lived a hermit’s life there in a cell in the sixth century. He was a friend of Saint Kevin, and attended Saint Kevin on his deathbed in Glendalough in 618.

There is evidence of an early Christian settlement from the seventh century in a monumental high cross that is now missing its head, but the granite shaft is still standing with an inscribed prayer.

King Ugain of Leinster defeated King Sitric of Dublin at a battle fought at Delgany in 1022. By the Middle Ages, the parish church in Delgany was the principal church in the Barony of Rathdown, and the 13th century church was in use until the end of the 17th century or later.

The mediaeval Rectors of Delgany included Donald Mackanill, who was “illegitimate” and was said to have “no hope of getting justice in the City or Diocese of Dublin.” Later rectors ere also Vicars of Kilcoole and the two parishes have been joined since the 17th century.

Christ Church, Delgany, Co Wicklow, was built by Peter La Touche in 1789 for £5,000 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The old church had fallen into disrepair, when Peter La Touche offered to a build a new church. Christ Church cost £5,000 and was designed by Whitmore Davis. The church was built at the sole expense of Peter La Touche, was completed in 1789, and was consecrated on 31 July 1789.

This is a light Gothic building with a steeple rising 30 metres over the west entrance, and containing a clock and bell. A stone tablet bearing the La Touche family coat-of-arms is inserted beneath the dial plate of the clock.

The architectural style of the church is later English Gothic. Inside, there is a gallery above the porch at the west end. The church is a very pleasing design, but its orientation is unusual, for the East End contains a lavish white marble monument erected in 1790 to the memory of David La Touche, the father of Peter La Touche.

The marble monument was designed by the Irish sculptor, John Hickey. On top of the monument is a figure of David La Touche, with Peter La Touche’s wife standing to one side, and the figures of David’s sons, David, John and Peter, at the base.

The La Touche monument is such an overpowering presence in the church that it is the first thing you see on entering the church. This is where you would expect the altar and sanctuary, but the church was enlarged in 1832 with a loan of £1200 from the Board of First Fruits, so that the altar and sanctuary are now on the north side. The font of black marble was presented by Chalworth Brabazon.

Remembering a kinsman of the Duke of Wellington, Major Edward Victor Colley William Wellesley, who died 100 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Because of the overwhelming presence of the La Touche monument, visitors could easily miss some of the other monuments and the beautiful stained-glass windows. There is a brass plate remembering a kinsman of the Duke of Wellington, Major Edward Victor Colley William Wellesley, MC, of the Royal Engineers, who died at home almost 100 years ago on 2 October 1916, presumably of wounds received during World War I.

The Revd James Owen Hannay wrote under the pen-name George A Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Another monument remembers the Revd James Owen Hannay (1865-1950). He was a curate of Delgany (1888-1892) before going on to an interesting career in which he was a lecturer in Trinity College Dublin, an army chaplain in World War I, a canon of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and an embassy chaplain in Budapest, before becoming a vicar in parishes in the Church of England. He was prolific writer and is still remembered for the novels he wrote under the pen name George A Birmingham.

Joseph Stock was Rector of Delgany before becoming Bishop of Killala in 1798 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The vestry walls are lined with portraits and photographs of former curates and rectors of the parish, including Joseph Stock (1740-1813), who was Rector of Delgany (1789-1798) at the same time as he was Headmaster of Portora Royal School, Enniskillen (1795-1798). He was Bishop of Killala (1798-1810) during the 1798 Rising, and despite being imprisoned in Killala Castle by the French invaders, he was regarded as a sympathiser of the United Irishmen. Later he became Bishop of Waterford and Lismore (1810-1813).

Canon William Cleaver was Rector of Delgany and a son of long-suffering Archbishop Euseby Cleaver (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

There is another 1798 connection with Canon William Cleaver (1789-1860), who was Rector of Delgany (1819-1847). His father, Euseby Cleaver, was Bishop of Ferns in 1798, when his palace was plundered by Wexford rebels. Euseby Cleaver later became Archbishop of Dublin (1809-1819), but he was so disturbed by the events in 1798 that he was psychiatrically ill for much of his time as archbishop, and the Archbishop of Cashel was appointed his coadjutor in 1811.

Other previous rectors include the late Noel Willoughby (1959-1969), who later became Bishop of Cashel, Ferns and Ossory (1980-1987), and Archdeacon Cecil Price (1969-1994), uncle of the present rector, the Revd Nigel Waugh.

The La Touche monument is a dominating feature inside Christ Church, Delgany (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The Revd David Digges La Touche, probably a member of the Marlay Park branch of his family, was a curate of Delgany in 1771, almost 20 years before the La Touche family built Christ Church in 1789.
The La Touche monument is a tribute to David La Touche, who in 1752 bought a 300-acre estate at Ballydonagh, which he renamed Bellvue. There he built a new house at a cost of £30,000. Later additions were the work of his son Peter La Touche, who inherited Bellvue in 1785.

In 1766, Peter La Touche married Rebecca Vicars and they had a townhouse in Merrion Square. When Rebecca died in 1786, Peter moved to Bellevue and two years later he married Rebecca’s cousin, Elizabeth Vicars.

Elizabeth La Touche was known both as a hostess and for her charity works. She opened an orphanage and school for girls in the grounds of Bellevue, and she supported the children until they were old enough to look after themselves. She also ran a girls’ orphanage on the North Circular Road, Dublin.

She persuaded the infirm Dean Walter Blake Kirwan (1754-1805) to preach the annual Charity Sermon in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in 1801. But the dean was so feeble that day he explained to the congregation he was unable to preach, and promptly fainted. Those who were present were so overcome that they donated over £1,100 for the orphans, a huge sum for the time.

In 1790, Peter La Touche acquired the lands of Upper and Lower Rathdown which became the site of present-day Greystones. He improved the houses and grounds at Bellevue and Luggala, a hunting lodge in the Wicklow Mountains. He was active in many charities in Dublin and Wicklow. When he died at the age of 95 in 1828, he directed that he should be buried in the new churchyard in Delgany “with as little expense as decency will allow.”

Peter La Touche had no children and so his estates were inherited by his nephew, Peter La Touche of Marley Park, who died two years later. His eldest son, Peter David La Touche, inherited Bellevue.

During his time, the population of Greystones expanded in the 1850s and 1860s as a result of the extension of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway line to Greystones in 1854-1856. The developments in Greystones meant that Christ Church in Delgany could not meet demands, and so he gave the site for a new church in Greystones, which was built in 1857 as a chapel of ease of Delgany Parish.

When Peter David La Touche died in 1857, the estates passed to his brother William Robert La Touche, who died in 1892, and then to his next brother, Octavius La Touche. But the family finally left Bellevue in 1913, the house fell into decay and it was pulled down in the early l950s.

‘Surgeons and Insurgents’ – a 1916 exhibition at the College of Surgeons

Joe Doyle and Christina Doyle at their 50th wedding anniversary in 1956 … they were both part of the RCSI garrison in Saint Stephen’s Green in Easter Week in 1916

Patrick Comerford

I was in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) last night for a special exhibition exploring the human stories of surgeons and insurgents associated with RCSI and the 1916 Easter Rising.

The exhibition at the RCSI on Saint Stephen’s Green tells the occupation of the RCSI building on Saint Stephen’s Green during the Easter Rising in 1916, with a focus on the stories of nine surgeons and nine insurgents involved in those events 100 years ago.

The college was occupied by rebels under the command of Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz during the Easter Rising. But many surgeons from the RCSI also played roles in surrounding hospitals that week, working tirelessly with the wounded, the injured and the dying.

Sergeant Joe Doyle’s name is on the RCSI ‘Roll of Honour’ in the exhibition (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

I was at the exhibition because of my interest in one insurgent and one surgeon.
Barbara’s grandfather, Joseph Doyle (1878-1958), a printer from 117 Capel Street, Dublin, is named in the ‘roll of honour’ among the insurgents, and was a sergeant in the Irish Citizen Army.

He was born in Kilmainham on 18 October 1878 and was baptised on 24 October 1878 in Saint James’s Church, Dublin. He worked as a printer in the machine department in Dollards.

He was a sergeant in the Irish Citizen Army in 1916, and was with James Connolly in Liberty Hall on the Tuesday before Easter. He was a member of the garrison at the RCSI in Saint Stephen’s Green, which included the largest number of women members to take part in the Rising.

Joe Doyle was sent to command a unit of 16 men at Davey’s pub in Portobello, deployed to delay troops sent from Portobello Barracks. He also fought at Harcourt Street Railway Station and at the RCSI in Saint Stephen’s Green under Countess Markievicz and Michael Mallin.

After the Rising, he was first interned in Stafford Gaol and Wandsworth, and then at Frongoch in north Wales, but he was released for Christmas 1916. After his release he took part in a raid for arms at Portobello Barracks in September 1917 and raids for arms on US army supply ships as well as on Wellington Barracks, Islandbridge Barracks and in the defence of Liberty Hall during the night of 11 November 1918.

The two medals he received for his part in the War of Independence later passed to his eldest son, Paddy Doyle, along with a handkerchief he had in Frongoch and which had inscribed on it: “Joseph Doyle Irish Prisoner Stafford Cresant F. 57 New Hall B.4.15 Wansworth A.1.14 Frongoch Camp Hut.23 no. 1631 Home Office No. 316548 War Office No. 9 July 22 1916.”

Joe Doyle and Christina ‘Tiny’ Bird were married on 8 January 1906 in Saint Michael’s and Saint John’s Church, Dublin. She was the daughter of Matthew Bird of 10 Henrietta Place and Elizabeth (Byrne). She was born on 21 December 1884 and was baptised on 24 December 1884 in Saint Michan’s Church, Dublin. She had worked in the post office, and she joined Cumann na mBan at the inaugural meeting in 1913.

She was a member of the Ard Craobh Branch (Central Branch) of Cumann na mBan in 1916. On Easter Day 1916, she took first aid equipment and got to Saint Stephen’s Green where she remained until the evening, distributing food and doing other work.

After Easter Week, she continued to attend meetings of Cumann na mBan, visited prisoners and helped collect funds for distressed families. She was a member of the Ranelagh Branch of Cumann na mBan until February 1922.

The Doyle family, which was living in Capel Street in 1916, had moved to Anner Road, Inchicore, by 1929. Joe died on 26 July 1958, ‘Tiny’ died in 1963, and they are buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. They were the parents of seven sons and four daughters.

The other women at the RCSI during Easter Week in 1916 included Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, the daughter of a Royal Naval surgeon who attended injured comrades in the College Hall during Easter Week, and her friend, Dr Kathleen Lynn, the daughter of a Church of Ireland rector from Co Mayo. Together they later founded Saint Ultan’s Hospital, the first hospital for infants in Ireland.

A photograph of Sir Thomas Myles in the exhibition

I was also interested in one of the surgeons, Sir Thomas Myles: I have written and lectured about his extraordinary life-story in recent years. He was a Fellow and elected President of the RCSI in 1900. Myles was a believer in Home Rule but also fair play.

He ran guns for the Irish Citizen Army on his yacht after Sir Edward Carson and the Ulster Unionists had successfully carried out a similar gunrunning expedition in 1914.

The decorations and medals received by Sir Thomas Myles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

He became an honorary surgeon to King George V during the war and his medals from World War I and the insignia from his knighthood are on display.

Another prominent surgeon featured in the exhibition is Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Richard Tobin, a veteran soldier for 20 years. He attended the wounded James Connolly in Dublin Castle Hospital and a strong friendship developed between these opposites, military man and revolutionary.

A brass plate on a door still shows the marks of a bullet from the 1916 Rising (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Despite being a focal point for the Rising, the RCSI building and rooms occupied during Easter week remain intact as they did in 1916 and they provide a fitting setting for this exhibition. In the room where last night’s reception was hosted, one of the doors still shows the marks of a bullet that struck the brass plate during the Rising.

The features in the exhibition include a scale model of Saint Stephen’s Green in 1916 with visual and sound-effects, showing the firing-lines across the Green and reconstructions of furniture barricades, the first aid station and a “live bombs” table, re-creating some of the scenes found in the college during the Rising.

The artefacts in the exhibition include the will of Countess Markievicz, reportedly taken from the college by the wounded Margaret Skinnider. A sword disguised as a walking stick, belonging to Captain Christopher Poole, is on loan from the Poole family is also be on display.

The tricolour reportedly flown over RCSI during the Rising is on public display for the first time (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Another item on display is the tricolour that is believed to have flown over RCSI during the Easter Rising and that was taken from the college by the wounded Margaret Skinnider. This tricolour, which is on loan to the college from Margaret Skinnider’s family, is on public display for the first time.

The nine surgeons featured in the exhibition are: Sir Thomas Myles, John Stephen McArdle, Michael Francis Cox, Sir Robert Henry Woods, Charles Hachette Hyland, Euphan Montgomerie Maxwell, William Ireland de Courcy Wheeler, Francis Tobin and Sir Charles Alexander Cameron.

The nine insurgents featured in the exhibition are: Countess Markievicz (Constance Gore-Booth), Thomas Clifford, Michael O’Doherty, Frank Robbins, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, Helen ‘Nellie’ Gifford, Michael Mallin, Christopher Poole and Margaret Skinnider.

A special commemorative book accompanies the exhibition. Surgeons and Insurgents was written by Dr Mary McAuliffe of University College Dublin and was researched by the RCSI Archivist, Dr Meadhbh Murphy, who was present last night. It was an added pleasure to see that one of my own papers on Sir Thomas Myles is referenced in this book.

Further details of opening times of the exhibition and bookings are available here.