The terrace in Charleville that housed nuns and the ‘heroine of Paraguay’

The Georgian houses on Clancy Terrace include the first Mercy convent in Charleville and the house where Eliza Lynch was born (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I took Saturday afternoon off [5 January 2019], and two of us visited Charleville in north Co Cork and nearby Bruree on the borders of Co Limerick and Co Cork.

When I visited Charleville in September, I had strolled around the streets, admiring the architecture of the houses and commercial buildings, visiting the churches and shops, and heard about the story of Eliza Alice Lynch (1833-1886), the Charleville-born woman who has become the ‘National Heroine of Paraguay.’

On Saturday afternoon, I visited Clanchy Terrace, with its interesting buildings, including the former rectory, the first convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Charleville, and two terraces of 19th century houses.

There are two interesting terraces of houses on Clanchy Terrace, a Georgian terrace on the west side dating from the 1830s and a Victorian terrace on the east side dating from the 1880s. The Clanchy family were a well-known business family in the Charleville and gave their name to this terrace.

The first house at the south or left end of the terrace on the west side of Clanchy Terrace is an end-of-terrace, three-bay, three-storey house, built ca 1830. It has a hipped artificial slate roof with carved limestone chimneystacks and a render eaves course.

The rendered walls have painted render edging and a plinth. The square-headed openings have painted render surrounds, painted stone sills and replacement uPVC windows.

The square-headed door opening has a render surround, a replacement uPVC door with sidelights and overlight, and is approached by flight of cut limestone steps. However, looking at the two other houses on the terrace, this house has lost its carved timber engaged columns that originally supported a timber pediment with a spoked fanlight and carved cornice.

Like the other houses on this terrace, it is set back from the street with a painted rendered stone wall, cast-iron railings, and square-profile dressed limestone piers.

This fine house is prominently sited and presents a strong façade to the streetscape. The form of the building and its elevations are classically inspired and heavily influenced by the 19h-century fashion for diminishing windows, a common feature of town houses such as this in Co Cork.

Along with much of its original form, the house also retains notable features such as the cut-stone steps and the carved limestone chimneystack.

The second, mid-terrace house is also a three-bay three-storey house, built ca 1830. It too has a pitched artificial slate roof with a carved limestone chimneystack and a render eaves course.

There are square-headed openings with render surrounds, painted stone sills and timber sliding sash windows, which are 6-over-3 pane windows on the second floor and 6-over-6 pane windows on the ground floor and the first floor.

The house has a square-headed door opening, approached by a flight of cut limestone steps. The replacement uPVC door is flanked by carved timber engaged columns supporting a timber pediment with spoked fanlight and cornice. The form of the handsome house is embellished by the decorative doorcase, with classical features such as the pediment and engaged columns, providing a focus for the façade.

The house retains its six-over-six pane timber sash windows, that are typical of terraced 19th-century houses in Ireland. The site retains cut stone steps, piers with simple caps, and cast-iron railings, which illustrate the skill of masons of the time, as does the carved limestone chimneystack.

This house was given to the Sisters of Mercy by the Clanchy family. The Sisters of Mercy arrived in Charleville and set up a house here on 29 October 1836. This was the order’s third house, and Catherine McAuley, Sister Mary Angela Dunne and two novices came from Baggot Street, Dublin, to Charleville on the invitation of the parish priest, Father Thomas Croke, and Mary Clanchy, whose family gave their name to Clanchy Terrace.

The nuns continued to live in this house until a new convent was built a few years later. These nuns in Charleville went to the Crimean War in 1855, and also established convents in Buttevant and Midleton, Co Cork, New Inn, Co Tipperary, Kilmallock, Co Limerick, and Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia.

The house at the right or north end of this terrace on Clanchy Terrace stands on a prominent corner site. This end-of-terrace, three-bay, three-storey house was also built ca 1830, and, like the other houses on this terrace, it has a hipped artificial slate roof with carved limestone chimneystacks and a render eaves course.

There are square-headed openings with render surrounds, limestone sills and replacement uPVC windows. The square-headed opening with a timber panelled door is approached by a flight of limestone steps and is flanked by carved timber engaged columns that support a timber pediment with a spoked fanlight and carved cornice.

This end-of-terrace house presents a symmetrical and regular façade to the streetscape of Charleville, continuing the form of the adjoining houses. The provincial Georgian style doorcase provides a decorative focal point, the diminishing windows emphasise the vertical thrust of the building, and the house retains interesting and well executed features such as the chimneystack, surrounding wall and cast-iron railings.

This is the house where Eliza Lynch was born on 19 November 1833. Her father was Dr John Lynch, and her mother, Jane Clarke Lloyd, came from a long line of naval officers. She was baptised in the former Catholic Church on Chapel Lane in Charleville on 2 May 1834, but her family later moved to Paris. A woman of renowned beauty, she had an intriguing life as a Paris courtesan and mistress to the president of Paraguay, where she moved, before eventually being forced into exile back in Paris, where she died in 1886.

On the opposite side of the street, a less imposing but equally elegant terrace of houses was built half a century later, ca 1880. The terrace begins at the left or north end with a two-bay three-storey house with attic accommodation.

This substantial house retains its one-over-one pane timber sash windows. The gate and railings are examples of late 19th and early 10th century metalwork and the round-headed window and its unusual slated sill to the rear add interest to the rear elevation.

The second house on this terrace is a six-bay, three-storey house, with a square-headed integral carriage. This large house provides a structural contrast to the terraces of mainly two and three-bay houses on the street and retains much of its handsome and regular form.

The terrace ends at the right or south end with a pair of three-bay, three-storey houses.

There are other interesting houses on this street, and I hope to look at them later today. But I left Charleville on Saturday evening with an image of the contrasting lives lived by the Mercy Sisters who came to Clancy Terrace to start their convent in Charleville and Eliza Lynch who moved from Clancy Terrace to an intriguing life in Paris and Paraguay.

The Victorian terrace of houses on Clancy Terrace dates from the 1880s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A former Church of Ireland parish church lives on as a library in Charleville

Saint James’s Church, Charleville, Co Cork … built in 1846, and converted into a library in the 1990s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Charleville Library is located in the former Church of Ireland parish church on Main Street, on the main road between Limerick and Cork.

Saint James’s Church was built as a Gothic Revival Church in 1845-1846 on the site of an earlier Church of Ireland parish church that had been built in 1663 by Roger Boyle (1621-1671), 1st Earl of Orrery and the founder of Charleville after the Restoration of Charles II.

Boyle had been a supporter of Oliver Cromwell during the Civil Wars of the 1650s, and just as the choice of Charleville as the name of his new planned town was a declaration of his new-found loyalty to Charles II, his choice of Saint James as the patron of the parish church was also a declaration of his loyalty to the restored House of Stuart: Charles II was a grandson of James I, and his brother and heir was James Stuart, Duke of York, who later succeeded as James II.

The Very Revd Jonathan Bruce (1681-1758), who was Vicar of Charleville and Prebendary of Ballyhea in Cloyne Cathedral from 1709 to 1758, was also Dean of Saint Fachan’s Cathedral, Kilfenora (1724-1758). He was descended from a Scottish family, and was a son of Saul Bruce, twice Provost (Mayor) of Bandon, Co Cork, in the 17th century.

Dean Bruce was the grandfather of George Evans Bruce, who founded the Bruce Bank, which traded in Limerick and Charleville, in 1806. He lived at the Hermitage, Castleconnell, and was High Sheriff of Co Limerick in 1800. The Bruce Bank closed after financial difficulties in 1820.

Canon William Dunn (1757-1834), who was Rector of Charleville in 1821, was also the Sovereign or Mayor of Charleville.

The 19th century church built as a successor to Boyle’s Caroline-era church, was consecrated in 1846. It is built of limestone ashlar and is a fine example of the Neo-Gothic style that was popular at the time. The ornate limestone dressings are finely carved, displaying quality work by 19th century craft workers.

The church had a five-bay nave with a shallow chancel projection at the north-east, a link bay, an elaborate, square-plan, three-stage, bell tower with a tall octagonal spire at south end of the main, east elevation, and a porch at the west gable of nave.

The tower and spire of the former Saint James’s Church in Charleville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Outside, the architectural features of this former church include limestone walls, buttresses, hood mouldings and carved stops. The tower has a clock, there is a three-light window in the chancel, lancets in the nave, and double lancet windows in the tower.

There are pointed arch door openings, a timber battened door, and inside the former church was altered in the 1990s, a century and a half after it was built, to accommodate the town library.

Some of the interior work in the 19th century was designed by the architects James Franklin Fuller and Charles William Harrison, including a Caen stone pulpit. A brass eagle lectern was presented by the Sanders family of Charleville Park in memory of Thomas Sanders.

The Bruce family tomb in the plaza between the former church and the Main Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The surrounding churchyard still retains many graves, with grassed over barrel-roofed burial vaults behind the church and a carved limestone tomb of the Bruce family, a prominent banking family in Charleville and Limerick, in the plaza area that has been created between the library and the Main Street.

The building breaks the street-line of the town because it is set back from the Main Street, and it provides a green space in the centre of Charleville.

The Paraguayan vice-minister for higher education, José Gabriel Arce Farina, visited Charleville Library last year [January 2017], with Professor Patricia Coughlan and Professor Nuala Finnegan of University College Cork, for the showing of a film and a short lecture on the life of the Paraguayan national heroine Eliza Lynch, ‘Queen of Paraguay,’ who was born in Charleville.

Saint James’s Church fell into disrepair after the Church of Ireland population in the town declined in the 1950s and the 1960s. But it was converted to a library by Cork County Council in the 1990s, and it retains much of its early character and form as a church.

Today, Charleville is incorporated in the Mallow group of parishes, where Canon Eithne Lynch is the rector. The former Saint James’s Church stands out as an example of how an historic church building in a vibrant provincial town can be put to an appropriate use again after years of neglect.

Many of the early graves in the churchyard can be seen behind the library (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

How a doctor’s daughter from Charleville became the ‘Queen of Paraguay’

The Community Centre on Chapel Street in Charleville, Co Cork, was built as the Roman Catholic parish church in 1812 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

The Community Centre on Chapel Street in Charleville, Co Cork, looks for all the world like an old Welsh chapel, with its matching pair of doors that could be separate entrances for men and women, its high, almost austere, Georgian Classical façade, and its decorative bellcote with a decorative urn and obelisks.

You would be right in thinking that this had once been used for worship, for it was built over 200 years ago – not as a Presbyterian meeting house or Methodist chapel, but as a Roman Catholic church in the days before the last of the Penal Laws were finally abolished. For almost a century it served as the parish church of the north Cork town, and it was here almost 200 years ago that Eliza Lynch, the doctor’s daughter who would become ‘Queen of Paraguay,’ was baptised in 1834.

This former church was built in 1812 in the Classical style, and it retains its grand and splendidly composed façade. The fine details include a cut limestone clock face and polychrome glass.

The building is unusual as a Roman Catholic church of this size and style built before Catholic Emancipation. The Georgian Classical style was more popular in building 18th century dissenting chapels, including those for Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists.

This is a free-standing gable-fronted multiple-bay two-storey building, with multiple-bay two-storey extensions at the rear corners.

The ground floor has an elliptical-arched entrance opening flanked by round-headed window openings, with cut limestone block-and-start surrounds and timber panelled double-leaf doors. There is a fanlight and a keystone with the date 1812 at the central opening.

The elliptical-arched central opening on the first floor is flanked by segmental-headed openings, with cut limestone block-and-start surrounds, cut limestone sills, and margined timber framed polychrome glass with a double lancet motif in the central window.

The ashlar limestone bellcote at the apex was added in 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation. It is designed like a triumphal arch, with free-standing columns supporting the lintel over a round-headed arch, and it is surmounted by a carved limestone urn and flanked by obelisks.

Local lore claims the bellcote was the first erected and the bell the first tolled in the immediate aftermath of Catholic Emancipation.

This building continued to serve as the Catholic parish church in Charleville for more than 90 years until Holy Cross Church was built in 1898-1902. It then became a Parochial Hall, and is now Charleville Community Centre.

Eliza Lynch, the ‘Queen of Paraguay’ … photographed in Paris in 1855 when she was about 21

A plaque on the façade of the former church recalls that this was the place where Eliza Lynch, ‘National Heroine of Paraguay’, was baptised on 2 May 1834.

At one time, Eliza Lynch (1833-1886) was the most vilified woman in Latin American history, and was seen as an ambitious courtesan who had seduced the future President of Paraguay, Francisco Solano López, turning him into a bloodthirsty dictator. However, this reputation was created by propaganda during the Paraguayan War. In recent years her reputation has been restored, thanks to the work of two Irish historians, and she is now regarded the ‘National Heroine’ of Paraguay.

Eliza Alice Lynch was born in Charleville on 19 November 1833. Her father was Dr John Lynch, and her mother, Jane Clarke Lloyd, came from a long line of naval officers. She was baptised in the former Catholic Church on Chapel Lane in Charleville on 2 May 1834.

At the age of 10, she emigrated with her family to Paris to escape the Great Famine. When her father returned to Ireland and died in north Cork in 1846, Eliza’s mother took refuge with her brother-in-law, Commander William Boyle Crooke, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, and Eliza remained in France.

In 1850, when she was only 16, Eliza married Xavier Quatrefages, a young French officer who was soon posted to Algeria. She moved with him to North Africa, but deteriorating health caused her to return to Paris at the age of 18 to live with her mother in the Strafford household.

With the right social introductions, Eliza soon found herself in the elite circle surrounding Princess Mathilde Bonaparte and quickly set herself up as a courtesan.

Eliza was described as having a Junoesque figure, golden blonde hair and a provocative smile. In 1854, Eliza met General Francisco Solano López, son of President Carlos Antonio López of Paraguay.

At the time, the young general was training in the Napoleonic army. Eliza returned with him to Paraguay later that year. There she became his partner, and they had six children.

Her marriage to Quatrefages was annulled on the grounds that he had not received permission from his commanding officer to marry and that he and Eliza had no children together. He remarried in 1857, but Eliza and Francisco Solano López never married.

It is said that Eliza was the reason Lopez was so ambitious, although she later claimed she had no knowledge of politics and did not meddle in political affairs. She was detested by the elite but adored by the common people. By 1860 she had become famous as hostess to Latin America’s leading statesmen and diplomats.

After President Carlos Antonio López died in 1862, his son, Francisco Solano López succeeded him as president. Eliza became the de facto first lady, and she spent the next 15 years as the most powerful woman in Paraguay and the unofficial ‘Queen of Paraguay’ for two ecstatic years.

Eliza became a national heroine in her adopted country and fought alongside López during the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) in which Paraguay was at war with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

Throughout the war, Eliza led a group of women, Las Residentas, including soldiers’ wives, daughters, lovers and sisters, who supported the soldiers.

Eliza was at the Battle of Cerro Corá on 1 March 1870 when López was killed by the Brazilian forces. The Brazilians then headed towards the civilians in order to capture them. The eldest son of López and Lynch, Juan Francisco, who had been promoted to colonel and was 15, was with her. The Brazilians told him to surrender, but he replied Un coronel paraguayo nunca se rinde (‘A Paraguayan colonel never surrenders’).

When he was shot dead by the allied soldiers, Eliza jumped to cover her son’s body, and called out, ¿Ésta es la civilización que han prometido? (‘Is this the civilisation you have promised?’).

Eliza then buried both López and her son with her bare hands in the jungle before she was taken prisoner.

She was taken on the Princesa to Asuncion, where she was banished from Paraguay by the new government. She returned to Europe with her remaining children, but five years later she returned to Paraguay to claim her former property. On arriving, however, she was tried and banished from the country permanently by President Gill.

Eliza Lynch died in obscurity in Paris on 25 July 1886. In 1961, she was proclaimed a ‘National Heroine.’ Later, her body was exhumed and brought back to Paraguay on the orders of the dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner. She is now buried in the national cemetery, Cementerio de la Recoleta.

In their book Eliza Lynch – Queen of Paraguay, the Irish historians Michael Lillis and Ronan Fanning discuss Eliza’s Irish origins and life story, and restore her reputation, rescuing her from the legacy of the propaganda of her 19th century detractors.

Eliza Lynch, the ‘Queen of Paraguay,’ is honoured each year in her native Charleville. In 2014, her great-grandson, Miguel Angel Solano Lopez, the ambassador of Paraguay to Ireland, visited Charleville and unveiled a plaque at the former church recalling her baptism there in 180 years earlier.

The plaque on the former parish church commemorates the baptism of Eliza Lynch in 1834 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)