How the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin became Saint Mary’s Cathedral 200 years after it was completed

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Marlborough Street, Dublin, was the ‘pro-cathedral’ for 200 years until last month (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Dublin last week, I visited three churches in the north inner city: Saint Mary’s Cathedral, known for almost 200 years as the ‘Pro-Cathedral’, on Marlborough Street; Saint Francis Xavier Church, the Jesuit-run church popularly known as Gardiner Street Church, between Mountjoy Square and Dorset Street, which I wrote about on Wednesday (3 December 2025); and the former Welsh Church on Talbot Street, which I wrote about last night (6 December 2025).

Saint Mary’s Cathedral was known for 200 years as Saint Mary's Pro-Cathedral, until it was designated as the Roman Catholic cathedral for the Archdiocese of Dublin last month (November 2025).

Until 2025, Dublin had two cathedrals, both belonging to the Church of Ireland: Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, which is the National Cathedral of the Church of Ireland, and Christ Church Cathedral, which is the diocesan cathedral of Dublin and Glendalough. In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church had no cathedral in Dublin until last month (November 2025).

Last year, the Greek Orthodox church on Arbour Hill, the Church of the Annunciation, began serving as the cathedral of the new Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Ireland, established in 2024 under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and with the appointment of Metropolitan Iakovos. Then this year, the Romanian Orthodox Church upgraded the former Christ Church on Leeson Park as its cathedral in Dublin.

Inside Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Dublin, looking towards the liturgical east and the High Altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Pope Leo XIV granted cathedral status to Saint Mary’s last month (November 2025). Until then it was a ‘pro-cathedral’, meaning it was a provisional or acting cathedral. It had that title officially since 1886, although Saint Mary’s Church had used that designation unofficially since the 1820s.

Saint Mary’s Cathedral dates back to the repeal of the Penal Laws in the early 19th century. But for centuries, Roman Catholics in Dublin had been without a cathedral.

Many of the Penal Laws were cancelled by the late 18th century and early 19th century, and a number of early churches were built in the city centre, including Saint Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner Street (1829) and Saint Nicholas of Myra, Francis Street (1829-1834).

One of these ‘sprinkling pots’ or holy water fonts from Liffey Street Chapel can be seen in an outside wall of the cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s name is a reminder of Saint Mary’s Abbey, the great Benedictine and later Cistercian house in Dublin founded in the 12th century. Saint Mary’s was closed in 1539 at the Dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformations. Marlborough Street, named after the 1st Duke of Marlborough, was the furthest eastern boundary of the abbey lands that were broken up and built on.

A new Church of Ireland parish of Saint Mary’s was formed in 1697, and Archbishop Edmund Byrne, who was in hiding, formed the Roman Catholic Parish of Saint Mary 10 years later in 1707. Father John Linegar (1671-1757), who had been ordained in Lisbon in 1694, became the first pastor of the new Saint Mary’s parish, a parish without church or chapel. He opened Saint Mary’s Chapel on Liffey Street in 1729.

Although it was listed officially as ‘Liffey Street mass-house’, it was a fine chapel with an altar, pulpit, paintings, confessionals, two galleries, several pews and two ‘sprinkling pots of black marble in chapel yard.’ One of these ‘sprinkling pots’ or holy water fonts is now inserted in the wall of the cathedral.

John Linegar became Archbishop of Dublin in 1734, and died in office on 21 June 1757.

Peter Turnerelli’s recumbent figure of Archbishop Troy is modelled on Isaia da Pisa's tomb of Pope Eugene IV in San Salvatore in Lauro, Rome (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

When John Thomas Troy, a Dominican friar and Bishop of Ossory, was appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 1786, he petitioned Pope Pius VI to make Saint Mary’s his mensal parish, and he began to plan for a ‘dignified spacious church’ in a central location. Troy formed a committee that bought Annesley House, Lord Annesley’s Dublin townhouse on the corner of Marlborough Street and Elephant Lane (later Tyrone Place and now Cathedral Street), close to Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) in 1803. The site was chosen as the location for a new cathedral, pending the erection, when funds and the law allowed.

Troy announced a public competition in 1814, inviting designs for the new church. Lord Annesley’s townhouse was demolished in June 1814. The new church, built between 1815 and 1825, combines a number of styles: the exterior is in Greek revival style, while the interior is more Renaissance in style, based on the Church of Saint-Philippe du Roule of Paris.

Some believe the architect, known on the plans only by the initial ‘P’, was John Sweetman from Dublin, who had been living in exile in Paris since the 1798 Rising. A more likely opinion is that, although Sweetman sent the plans to Dublin, the architect was the French architect Louis Hippolyte le Bas, whose Church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris closely resembles Sain Mary’s, and that his identiry was kept secret as le Bas was Napoleon’s architect and Britain was at war with France.

The portico of Saint Mary’s is a copy of the Temple of Theseus or Theseion in Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The design of Saint Mary’s combines a variety of styles: the exterior is Greek revival at its best, the front portico is a copy of the Temple of Theseus or Theseion in Athens, and the fluted Doric columns rise without bases from the podium or floor of the church; the interior is more Roman in style than Grecian.

A major alteration was the addition of a dome. One objector declared that ‘artistically and practically the dome was a mistake; it is no help to the preacher and constitutes a serious and unhappy departure from the graceful lines and principles of Grecian art.’ Another critic described it as ‘a beautiful deformity’.

A flag was flown from the dome in August 1821 to show that the shell of the building was completed. But money was scare, morale was low and in a renewed fundraising drive, Archbishop Troy, at the age of 83, went collecting from house to house.

Archbishop Daniel Murray celebrated the completion of the ‘Metropolitan Chapel’ 200 years ago on 14 November 1825 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The committee passed a resolution that this ‘splendid edifice be considered a National or Metropolitan rather that a Parish Chapel’ and in March 1823 Pope Pius VII sent a gold chalice, commissioned ‘for the new Cathedral being built in Dublin’. Dr Troy died two months later, on 11 May 1823. He had been the driving force behind the project, and his funeral Mass was the first Mass in the unfinished building.

Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin celebrated the completion of the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Chapel, as it was then called, 200 years ago on 14 November 1825, the feast of Saint Laurence O’Toole, patron saint of Dublin. The choir was directed by Haydn Corri and sang Mozart’s Grand Mass in C Minor, Ave Verum and Graun’s Te Deum. Most of the Irish hierarchy were present, and the preacher was James ‘JKL’ Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) spoke at the reception afterwards.

To mark the end of the Penal Laws and the legislation for Catholic Emancipation, a special thanksgiving High Mass was celebrated in the cathedral in 1829. It was attended by Daniel O’Connell, who had taken took his seat as MP for Clare, having been elected the previous year.

As the first Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin in centuries, O’Connell celebrated his election in 1841 by travelling in state to ‘the Pro-Cathedral’ for High Mass. When he died in Genoa on 15 May 1847, his heart was buried in Rome while his body was brought back to Dublin and laid in state in Saint Mary’s for four days before he was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

State funerals of major political figures there include Michael Collins, former presidents Seán T O’Kelly, Éamon de Valera and Patrick Hillery, and a former Lord Mayor of Dublin, Kathleen Clarke.

Cardinal Cullen’s marble monumenent is one the finest works by Sir Thomas Farrell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Architects who worked on the cathedral over the past 200 years include Sir Richard Morrison and William Virtuvius Morrison, John B Keane, John Bourke, George Papworth and Ralph Byrne. The sculptures on the pediment by Thomas Kirk were completed in 1845 and depict the Virgin Mary flanked by Saint Laurence O’Toole and Saint Kevin of Glendalough.

Archbishop Murray and Cardinal Cullen are commemorated with two monuments in marble, among the finest work of the sculptor by Sir Thomas Farrell (1827-1900). Murray is seen in a kneeling pose. Around the base of the standing figure of Cullen are scenes depicting his life and work as archbishop, including his concern for the sick and poor, for training priests and for Catholic education.

John Hogan and other leading sculptors of the day carved memorials to the benefactors of the diocese. Among the gifts of altar plate is a silver-gilt chalice, paten and cruet set presented in 1856 in honour of Saint Laurence O’Toole by Mary Teresa Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, a descendant of the O’Toole family.

Inside Saint Mary’s Cathedral, lookingtowards the liturgical west from the apse behind the sanctuary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s was never intended to be anything other than a temporary acting cathedral, until funds were found to build a full cathedral, and a number of locations for a new cathedral were proposed. WT Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State (the equivalent of taoiseach or prime minister) from 1922 to 1932, once suggested the General Post Office on O’Connell, which had remained a burnt-out shell since the 1916 Rising. But the idea was not acted on and the GPO was restored as a post office.

John Charles McQuaid (1895-1973), who was Archbishop of Dublin in 1940-1972, bought the gardens in Merrion Square with plans to build a cathedral. But his proposals were never acted on and the gardens were eventually handed over to Dublin Corporation and opened to the public. At times, there were suggestions that one of the two Church of Ireland cathedrals in the city might be transferred to the Roman Catholic Church, but this never happened either.

In the meantime, most of the funds collected for building a new cathedral were spent on building new churches in the 1970s and 1980s in a fast-growing diocese.

Pope John Paul visited Saint Mary’s in 1992 and Pope Francis visited in 2018.

The front panel of Turnerelli’s original altar was incorprated in the new altar when it was moved after Vatican II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Architecturally, the cathedral’s dramatic mixture of Greek and Roman styles has been controversial in the past, with different critics describing it as either an artistic gem or an eyesore.

The main aisle leads up to the High Altar, and behind it is a stained glass window of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Saint Mary. The stucco alto-rilievo of the Ascension is the work of John Smyth, while the High Altar was carved by Peter Turnerelli, a Belfast-born, Dublin-based sculptor with Italian parents.

In preparation for the Centenary of Catholic Emancipation in 1928 and the Eucharistic Congress in 1932, the floor space the church was extended on both sides in another unhappy alteration of John Sweetman’s original design. The elegant portico on the Cathedral Street side was walled up between the Doric columns, and what had once been Saint Kevin’s chapel in the north flank became simply open space within the church.

For most of its time, Saint Mary’s had a massive Victorian altar and reredos by Peter Turnerelli. They were removed in the late 1970s during reordering following the liturgical changes introduced at the second Vatican Council. The architect for these changes was Cathal O’Neill, Professor of Architecture in University College Dublin.

The reredos was removed, leaving just the tabernacle, although the front panel of the original altar was reinstated in the new altar, which was moved to the centre of a new paved area in an expanded sanctuary. The altar rails were also removed. The pulpit was moved too, to a position in a corner of the building.

The cathedral went on fire in the early 1990s, and although the fire was brought under control, there was considerable smoke damage in one corner of the building.

Looking towards the liturgical west end of Saint Mary’s Cathedral and the organ from the High Altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The original organ was built by the Dublin organ builder John White in the late 19th century. The present organ has some of White’s original pipework. The present façade of the organ dates from William Hill’s work around 1900. Later work was carried out by Henry Willis & Co in the 1930s, before JW Walker’s major rebuild in 1971 and a more recent refurbishment in 1995. The newly refurbished organ was inaugurated in a gala concert by Olivier Latry on 20 March 1996.

The organ is one of the finest examples in Ireland of the late 19th century grand Romantic organ, and many great organists have played it: Daniel Chorzempa, Xavier Darasse, Sir David Lumsden, Daniel Roth, Dame Gillian Weir, Arthur Wills, Olivier Latry and others.

The Titular Organist of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Gerard Gillen, was appointed in 1976; David Grealy was appointed Associate Organist in 2017. A chancel organ built by John White is on on the epistle (right) side of the High Altar.

The stucco alto-rilievo of the Ascension is by John Smyth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s is known for the resident choir, the Palestrina Choir, which had its origins in a boys’ choir formed in the 1890s by Vincent O’Brien, and Edward Martyn was the founding sponsor. Pope Pius X promoted the music of Palestrina as the standard to which liturgical music should aspire.

The Palestrina Choir was installed in the cathedral in 1903 and Vincent O’Brien was the director until 1946. The Palestrina Choir has attracted notable singers over the years, including Count John McCormack who was a member in 1904-1905. The present director of the choir is Blánaid Murphy.

During the school term, the Palestrina Choir sings at Sunday morning Solemn Latin Mass (Novus Ordo), Friday Vespers and Benediction (5:15 pm) and Mass (5:45 pm). A girls’ choir was formed in 2009.

Inside the dome of Saint Mary’s Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

More recently, there were proposals to name Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, as the cathedral, but with last month’s decision, Saint Andrew’s has been declared a basilica and Saint Mary’s is now officially the cathedral of the city, the diocese and the archbishop – although it is likely to be known to generations to come in Dublin simply as ‘the Pro’.

As the architectural historian Christine Casey says, it ‘still ranks among the most powerful Greek Revival Church interiors in these islands.’

‘The Dublin Martyrs’, Margaret Ball (1584) and Francis Taylor (1621), bronze figures (2001) by Conall MacCabe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Further reading:

Christine Casey, Dublin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Buildings of Ireland series).

Peter Costello, Dublin Churches (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1989).

Dermod McCarthy, Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral Dublin (Dublin: Eason, 1988, the Irish Heritage series).

Saint Mary’s Cathedral seen from the grounds of the Department of Education, the former Model School and Scoil Chaoimhínon Marlborough Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A return visit to Saint Francis Xavier, the Jesuits’ classical-style church on Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin

Saint Francis Xavier Church, or Gardiner Street Church, Dublin … designed by Bartholomew Esmonde and Joseph B Keane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Today, the Church Calendar remembers the great Jesuit saint and missionary, Saint Francis Xavier. During my visit to Dublin this week, I visited Saint Francis Xavier Church, popularly known as Gardiner Street Church, the Jesuit-run church on Upper Gardiner Street, near Mountjoy Square.

Gardiner Street Church has associations with many famous Dubliners, including James Joyce, but this was my first time to visit the church since the funeral of Seán MacBride almost 40 years ago in January 1988.

The church was one of the first to be built in Dublin after Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The church was designed by the Jesuit priest Father Bartholomew Esmonde working with the architect Joseph B Keane, as a classical cut granite stone essay. An earlier chapel at 30 Hardwicke Street was opened by Father Charles Aylmer SJ in 1816, the first public chapel of the restored Society of Jesus.

Inside Saint Francis Xavier Church facing east … the church was built in 1829-1835 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The four founders of Gardiner Street church were Father Peter Kenny, Father Bartholomew Esmonde, Father Charles Aylmer and Archbishop Daniel Murray. The foundation stone was laid by Father Charles Aylmer on 2 July 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation, and Archbishop Murray on 3 May 1832 celebrated the first Mass in the church on 3 May 1832 at a temporary altar. The church was solemnly blessed by Archbishop Murray on 12 February 1835 in the presence of 14 bishops and a large congregation.

The church is considered one of the best executed churches of the period. The architectural historian Christine Casey describes it in her book Dublin as ‘the most elegant church of the period in Dublin’. The building is known for its sculpted altar piece and paintings, mostly Italian in origin and dating from the Victorian period.

Father Bartholomew Esmonde (1789-1862) was a Jesuit priest, educator, and amateur architect. He was superior of the Society of Jesus in Ireland briefly in 1820. He was born on 12 December 1789, the second son of Dr John Esmonde and Helen (née O’Callan) of Sallins, Co Kildare. His father was executed by hanging on 13 June 1798 for his part in leading the United Irishmen at the Battle of Prosperous in Co Kildare in the 1798 Rising.

The High Altar and sanctuary in Saint Francis Xavier Church … the high altar was designed in Rome by Bartholomew Esmonde (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Bartholomew Esmonde was a younger brother of Sir Thomas Esmonde (1786-1868), 9th Baronet, MP for Wexford. He was educated at the Jesuit novitiate at Stonyhurst College, England and studied philosophy and theology in Palermo, Italy. Esmonde returned to Ireland as Master of Novices at Clongowes Wood College and later served as Rector of Clongowes, where his nephews, Sir John Esmonde (1826-1876), later the tenth baronet, and Colonel Thomas Esmonde VC (1829-1872), went to school.

Bartholomew Esmonde lived in Rome from 1842 and then in Malta, returning to Ireland in 1850. He died on 15 December 1862. His brother Sir Thomas Esmonde commissioned a portrait of him in the Jesuit building in Gardner Street and a monument in Saint Michael’s Church, Gorey, Co Wexford.

His nephew, Colonel Thomas Esmonde (1829-1872), was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his role in the siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War. His daughter Eva Esmonde married James Charles Comerford (1842-1907), of Ardavon, Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, and their children included the Irish Republican activist Maire Comerford (1893-1982).

Inside Saint Francis Xavier Church facing west … the organ is played in the 1991 film ‘The Commitments’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Dublin-born architect John Benjamin Keane, who worked closely with Esmonde in designing Gardiner Street Church, also designed courthouses in Tralee, Co Kerry (1828), Tullamore, Co Offaly (1832), Downpatrick, Co Down (1832-1834), and Nenagh, Co Tipperary (1842). It is said he designed the courthouse in Carlow (1830-1834), but this was designed by William Vitruvius Morrison and is modelled on the Temple on the Ilissus in Athens.

Keane also designed Saint Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, and Saint John’s Roman Catholic Church, Waterford. He also worked with Sir Richard Morrison on the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin and with AWN Pugin and Patrick Byrne on the designs for the Loreto Convent chapel and lantern in Rathfarnham.

He first appears in records in 1819, as an assistant to Richard Morrison. Some biographical sources say that Keane was trained as an architect at the Office of Works, Dublin, but this has been questioned. By 1823, he was working independently. He exhibited regularly with the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1828 to 1841.

Keane designed the Gothic Revival quadrangle at Queen’s College, Galway (now NUI Galway) in 1845 very much in the fashion of Christ Church College, Oxford. His other buildings include Ballybay House, Co Monaghan (1830), Belleek Manor, Ballina, Co Mayo (1831), Tullamore Courthouse (1835), the Mausoleum at Oak Park, Co Carlow (1841), the courthouses in Nenagh (1843), Waterford (1849) and Ennis (1852), Saint John’s Church, Waterford (1845), and Barmouth Castle, Co Louth.

He was the engineer on the River Suir navigation in 1846-1848. Towards the end of his life, it appears Keane suffered from alcoholism, falling into debt and was jailed in Marshalsea gaol. He died on 7 October 1859.

The cast-iron foliated pulpit with the ‘IHS’ monogram of the Society of Jesus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Esmonde’s design of Gardiner Street church is informed by his knowledge of the temples of Italy when he lived there. Esmonde and Keane based their designs on Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in Paris, designed by Louis-Hippolyte Lebas ca1824, and on the Jesuits’ mother church in Rome, the Church of the Gesù, with a nave with low side chapels, shallow transepts and a deep apsidal chancel.

There are differences, however, with the roof in Saint Francis Xavier’s flat and coffered, while at the Gesù, it is barrel-vaulted.

The church is significant for its use of native granite for the portico and the fact that it was completed within a relatively short period of time. The apse was originally rectangular and shallow, but was enlarged in 1851, and this was further influenced by the style of the Gesù.

‘Saint Francis Xavier preaching in Japan’ (1860) over the High Altar by Bernardo Celantano (1835-1863) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Outside, the figures on top of the front pediment, the Sacred Heart, Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier, are by the sculptor Terence Farrell (1798-1876). The Latin text on the pediment is Deo Uni Et Trino Sub Invoc S Francisci Xaverii , ‘To God one and Three under the invocation of Saint Francis Xavier’.

It is said Father Esmonde designed and assembled the High Altar in Rome. The paintings and sculpture inside the church include the ‘Madonna and Child’ by Ignazio Jacometti (1881), ‘The Agony in the Garden’ by Jacques Augustin Dieudonne (1848, bought in 1853) and ‘Saint Francis Xavier preaching in Japan’ (1860) over the High Altar by Bernardo Celantano (1835-1863).

There is a cast-iron foliated pulpit, with the ‘IHS’ monogram of the Society of Jesus and gilded portrait heads of ‘Christ Crowned with Thorns’ and the ‘Sorrowful Mother of Christ’, and a balustraded timber rail between the nave and the transept. The retention of these interior fittings is of considerable importance in church architecture.

Four oil paintings in the nave are attributed to Pietro Gagliardi (Rome) and were hung in church when Father Nicholas Walsh was the rector (1877-1884).

The organ has been rebuilt several times, always in original organ case. The original instrument was made by Flight and Robson (London) in 1836, and was bought by the Jesuits for 800 guineas.

The Sacred Heart Chapel in Gardiner Street Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The presbytery is on the north side of the church and the Convent of the Sisters of Charity is on the south side. Together, these three form part of a group of impressive ecclesiastical buildings that standing out among the Georgian terraces on the street.

The Jesuits opened a school at Hardwicke Street close to Gardiner Street church in 1832, and this later became Belvedere College on Denmark Street. The church also has close associations with Mother Mary Aikenhead and the early days of the Irish Sisters of Charity.

Over the years, many well-known people have been associated with Saint Francis Xavier’s Church. Matt Talbot, regarded by some as the patron of people struggling with alcoholism, prayed there each morning. John Henry Newman celebrated Mass there when he lived on Dorset Street in 1854. The funeral of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was held in the church in 1889.

The church was also the place where Father James Cullen founded the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association in 1898.

The church features in James Joyce’s short story ‘Grace’ in Dubliners and in the 1991 film The Commitments, the church organ is used to play A Whiter Shade of Pale. Many Dubliners also know the church hall, known as the SFX Hall.

The shrine of Blessed John Sullivan in the Sacred Heart Chapel in Gardiner Street Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Father John Sullivan, who was based at the church for a short time in 1907, was beatified (declared blessed) in the church, and he is now buried in the church.

John Sullivan (1861-1933) was a Jesuit priest known for his life of deep spiritual reflection and personal sacrifice, and for his dedicated work among the poor. He taught at Clongowes Wood College, Clane, Co Kildare, from 1907 until he died in 1933.

He was born on 8 May 1861 at 41 Eccles Street, Dublin, a son of Sir Edward Sullivan (1822-1885), later the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and he was baptised in Saint George’s Church of Ireland parish church, Hardwicke Place, on 15 July 1861. Later that year, the family moved to 32 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin.

He attended Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, studied classics at Trinity College Dublin, and studied for the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, London. He then travelled across Europe, visiting southern Italy, Macedonia, Greece and Asia Minor, and spent several months in a monastery on Mount Athos.

As a barrister, he was appointed in 1895 to a commission to investigate the massacre of Armenians in Adana, Asia Minor. He joined the Roman Catholic Church at Farm Street Church in Mayfair, London, on 21 December 1896.

From 1900, Sullivan studied with the Jesuits at Tullabeg, near Tullamore, Co Offaly, Stonyhurst and Milltown Park. Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin ordained Sullivan priest in the chapel at Milltown Park in 1907. He said his first Mass at Mount Saint Anne’s convent, Milltown, and was based in Gardiner Street. He then taught at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit-run school near Clane, Co Kildare. For five years he was the rector of the Jesuit house at Rathfarnham Castle (1919-1924), but then returned to teaching at Clongowes Wood.

He died in Saint Vincent’s Nursing Home, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, on 19 February 1933 with his brother Sir William Sullivan at his side. He was buried at Clongowes Wood, but his body was moved to the Sacred Heart Chapel in Gardiner Street Church in 1960.

The chapel of the Virgin Mary in Saint Francis Xavier Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Archbishop George Simms spoke at a memorial service on 8 May 1983, to honour Sullivan’s life and work in Saint George’s Church, where Sullivan was baptised. The Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Bishop James Kavanagh, brought greetings from Pope John Paul II.

His beatification was celebrated in Dublin in Saint Francis Xavier Church on 13 May 2017, the first ever beatification to take place in Ireland.

• The Church Co-ordinator (parish priest) is Father Brendan Comerford SJ. Sunday Masses are Sunday 9:15 am, 11 am and 7.30 pm; weekday Masses (Monday to Friday) are at 11 am and 1 pm; Saturday Masses are at 11 am, 1 pm and 6 pm. Gardiner Street Gospel Choir sings at the 7:30 Sunday Mass, except on bank holiday weekends.

A statue of Saint Patrick in Gardiner Street Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 25, Tuesday 25 November 2025

‘Many will come in my name and say … “The time is near!” Do not go after them’ (Luke 21: 8) … the clock at Donegal House and the Guildhall in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints’ Day and Advent, and this week began with the Sunday next before Advent and the Feast of Christ the King (23 November 2025). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Martyr in the 4th century, and Isaac Watts (1674-1748), hymnwriter.

Saint Catherine of Alexandria is the Patron Saint of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, where I have studied in Cambridge. IOCS is celebrating her Feast today at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Athanasios, Cambridge, today (25 November 2025), starting with Matins at 9 am, followed by the Divine Liturgy at 10 am, and with a Thanksgiving Service in the evening at 6 pm, followed by refreshments and fellowship in the parish hall.

Meanwhile, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning, even before breakfast, to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified’ (Luke 21: 9) … the 1798 Rising recalled in street art in a laneway behind Anne Street and North Main Street in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 21: 5-11 (NRSVA):

5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6 ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’

7 They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ 8 And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.

9 ‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ 10 Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.’

‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom’ (Luke 21: 10) … ‘Fuascailt’, Eamonn O’Doherty’s sculpture of the 1798 Wexford pikemen on the N25 near Barntown and Taghmon, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist this morning (Luke 21: 5-11) is part of Saint Luke’s ‘Little Apocalypse’, to which we were introduced on the Sunday before last (see Luke 21: 5-19, Sunday 16 November 2025, the Second Sunday before Advent).

On his arrival in Jerusalem, Christ weeps, invokes sayings from the Prophet Jeremiah against a city that ‘did not recognise the time of your visitation from God’ (Luke 19: 41-44), and then faces up to three attempts by the authorities to entrap him, each concluding with Christ silencing his opponents (Luke 20: 1-19; 20: 20-26; and 20: 27-38).

The scene has been set in the verses in this chapter that immediately precede today’s reading. Christ is sitting by the Temple Treasury, where he watches the poor widow offer the smallest of coins (verses 1-4), as we read yesterday.

The scene does not change as he goes on to speak about the Temple, the Nation, and the looming future. But, instead of questioning him about what he has just said about this widow, which might have offered a focus for how the politics of God work, those around him, probably a wider group than just his own disciples, cannot get past the physical presence and appearance of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, then revered as a sign of God’s presence, even as the dwelling place of God’s sheltering protection for Israel (see Luke 13:34-35).

Christ is no longer facing attacks from others. Instead, he alerts his followers to the hardships they face ahead, beyond the time of his journey. But as he approached Jerusalem, Christ had declared that God’s ‘visitation’ had come with his reign, that the very stones of the Temple would testify against those who rejected him (19: 41-44).

Now he again predicts that all the stones will be thrown down (21: 6), as one scene in the divine drama.

A web of prophetic citations is woven through these verses. These include words and phrases from Jeremiah 4, 7, 14, and 21; Isaiah 19; and Ezekiel 14 and 38. Maybe we might say that Christ, like the prophets before him, was not very original in what he said. But there is still the question: how faithfully did these prophetic words and warnings of destruction speak to the people of the time, to the people who heard Christ speak?

But Christ also differentiates his teaching from the teaching of the false prophets, who also quoted the ancient words of God. While announcing the coming judgment, Christ cautions against following prophets who claim to know God’s timetable, even invoking Christ’s own name.

The account in this chapter of Christ’s words could be compared with Mark 13, and its intensity of the coming ‘tribulation.’ Or we might go back to Luke 17: 22-37, which also reminds us that Christ’s death is an integral part of God’s timetable: ‘But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation’ (17: 25). Saint Luke’s longer account of Christ’s discourse (21: 5-36) assures his readers they are experiencing not ‘the end’ … but the period of ‘tribulations’ or ‘persecutions’ through which believers will enter the kingdom (see Acts 14: 22).

And so, Saint Luke’s account of Christ’s speech does not provide yet another programme or timetable to predict the working out of God’s plan, down to the last second. The prophets and Christ teach us that the struggles in history and in disturbances in nature are more than accidental. They remind us that God triumphed over chaos in creating the natural world, and yet both human and supra-historical forces are still contending for the earth. Christ’s followers are aware, therefore, that his death and resurrection is God’s ultimate act in a struggle of cosmic proportions. Only the final outcome is sure.

As the Apostle Paul writes: ‘We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, be we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies’ (Romans 8: 22-23).

The hope to which Christ testifies in this passage, therefore, is no trivial denial of the struggles, the pain and agony of human life, or the catastrophic forces of nature. These are real, and the prophets of old have interpreted such devastations as the context of God’s saving work. Christ joins this chorus, bringing it close to the concrete realities of early Christians. But he says: ‘This will give you an opportunity to testify’ (verse 13) and ‘By your endurance you will gain your souls’ (verse 19).

The ‘opportunity to testify’ does not require Christ’s followers to know every answer to the question: ‘Why do bad things happen to good people.’

Christ is promising that he will give us ‘words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.’ His earlier promise of the Holy Spirit’s wisdom in times of testimony (see Luke 12: 11-12) now becomes his own promise. When he commissions them as ‘my witnesses’ (Acts 1: 8), he assures them of the power and the presence of his Holy Spirit, and the stories in Acts will display the fulfilment of this promise of God’s ‘mouth and wisdom’ (see Acts 4: 13-14; 16: 6-7). And so, even these harsh prophecies in Luke 21 are filled with the confidence of Christ’s enduring presence.

And the ‘endurance’ that ‘will gain your soul’ (verse 19) is also not mere heroic persistence.

The early Christians knew all about endurance, and that endurance was often tested. Paul echoes that theme in Romans 5: 3-5, then transformed this endurance from reliance on human strength to trusting in God’s love: ‘… we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.’

Saving endurance is a gift of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

A problem that continues to dominate parish priorities is the emphasis on buildings rather than people. Are there ‘building blocks’ we need to knock down so we can start again and care for little people like the poor widow who was at the centre of yesterday’s reading?

Is it time to rebuild, to become the kind of temples God really wants?

Should we change church politics and priorities for God’s politics and priorities?

In pursuing God’s vision for the future of the Church and the Kingdom, are we relying on our own knowledge and strengths?

What risks are we willing to take for our core values?

How would you be prophetic and offer hope in the face of the rise of the far-right across Europe or Trump’s behaviour in office in the US?

How do you read the signs of the times when it comes to global events, such as the conflicts in Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon?

Have we a vision for a new heaven and a new earth (see Isaiah 65: 17-25)?

How do we balance concerns for the wider world with those for the widow and her small coin in our parishes?

‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified’ (Luke 21: 9) … a plaque recalling the executions and deaths on Wexford Bridge in 1798 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 25 November 2025):

The theme this week (23 to 29 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Gender Justice’ (pp 58-59). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by Rachael Anderson, former Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG.

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls, and the day is being marked in Milton Keynes with a vigil at the Rose in Campbell Park from 6 pm to 6:45 ‘to raise Awareness, Reflection and Action’. The USPG Prayer Diary today invites us to pray:

We pray that this year’s 16 Days campaign might make governments, churches and communities around the world take notice and support an end to gender-based violence.

The Collect:

Eternal Father,
whose Son Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of heaven
that he might rule over all things as Lord and King:
keep the Church in the unity of the Spirit
and in the bond of peace,
and bring the whole created order to worship at his feet;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God the Father,
help us to hear the call of Christ the King
and to follow in his service,
whose kingdom has no end;
for he reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, one glory.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Saint Catherine of Alexandria (25 November) is patron of the IOCS in Cambridge … an icon in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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

Smeared blackberries, childhood memories, and Michaelmas reflections on the beauty of creation

Michaelmas blackberries ripening on Mill Lane in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

This was a bumper summer for fruit, with the extra sunshine and rain at the right time giving bumper crops of apples and pears. Most of this year's blackberries are gone by now, but there are still some blackberries coming to full fruit along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford. I I wonder, though, how many people will reach up to pick them and taste them after today, Michaelmas (29 September).

In Irish, sméar dubh or the definite form sméar dhubh is the word for blackberry, and it translates literally as ‘black berry’: smear is the base word for ‘berry’, while dubh means black.

Smearagan is another but less common term for blackberry, while the words dris and dris-choille refer to brambles and blackberry bushes.

The phrase sméar dubh translates directly as ‘black berry’. But when I first heard it as a young boy I imagined – with childish humour – how descriptive the phrase was, thinking how often and how easily I smeared my face and mouth and hands black while picking and eating blackberries on the brambles and hedgerows by the lanes around my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin in Co Waterford.

A well-known belief states that blackberries should not be picked after Michaelmas Day on 29 September because it is believed the devil spits on them after this date.

I remember too the way the phrase ‘Blackmouth’ was used a derogatory label for Presbyterians, especially in parts of Northern Ireland. It goes back to the times in the 18th and 17th century, when Presbyterians were seen as political radicals due to their opposition to the established Church and monarchy.

Before that, in Tudor and Stuart England, a ‘blackmouth’ was a railer, a slanderer, a foulmouthed or malicious person. In the north of England it later referred to a seditious person, and was even used occasionally in the sense of Blackleg.

Some say the phrase was used in Ulster for fugitive Presbyterians or Covenanters eating blackberries as sustenance while they hid, staining their lips and tongues black, although others relate it to their refusal to take the ‘Black Oath’ in 1639.

In Scotland, ‘Blackneb’ emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a label to denote a person who had sympathies with French revolutionaries.

The phrase ‘Blackmouth’ gained prominence in Ulster once again at the end of the 18th century as an insult, used in a contemptuous way to demean Presbyterians who supported the United Irish rebellion in 1798. Many Presbyterians were seen as politically disaffected and radical and were suspected of being a threat to church and state in Ireland. They were reviled and accused of republican sympathies and revolutionary activities, and the epithet came to be applied to the whole Presbyterian community.

Sadly, as my friend and former Irish Times colleague Andy Pollak observes in a blog posting earlier today, much of Presbyterian Ulster has, ‘unfortunately … become … right-wing, fundamentalist, separatist and Orange.’

Saint Michael depicted in a window by Charles Eamer Kempe in the tower of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As I was looking at those blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford at the weekend, I was brought back to childhood memories of West Waterford, and how we were told as children that Michaelmas Day is the last day for picking blackberries.

According to folklore, when the Archangel Michael expelled the Devil from Heaven on this day, he fell into a blackberry bush, cursed the brambles he had fallen into, and continues to spit on them after this day. It is a superstition shared across these islands, from Achill to Lichfield, and from Wexford to Essex and Cambridge.

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.

Betjeman had spent much of his childhood in Trebetherick, and he died there 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.’

Saint Michael in a statue at the tower in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his poem ‘At the chiming of light upon sleep,’ first drafted on this day 79 years ago [29 September 1946], the poet Philip Larkin links Michaelmas and a lost paradise with the chances and opportunities that he failed to take in his youth.

In contrast to Larkin’s dejection, I was reminded earlier today of a well-known story in Orthodox piety:

The devil appeared to three monks and said to them: ‘If I gave you power to change something from the past, what would you change?’

The first monk replied with great fervour: ‘I would prevent you from making Adam and Eve fall into sin so that humanity could not turn away from God.’

The second monk pondered awhile and then said: ‘I would keep you far from God so that you condemn yourself eternally.’

The third monk was the simplest. Instead of responding, he fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross and prayed: ‘Lord, free me from the temptation of what could be and was not’.

The devil cried out, shuddered in pain, and vanished.

The other two, surprised, asked: ‘Brother, why have you responded like this?’

He replied: ‘First, we must never dialogue with the devil. Second, Nobody in the world has the power to change the past. Third: satan’s interest was not to prove our virtue, but to trap us in the past, so that we neglect the present, the only time God gives us his grace and we can cooperate with him to fulfil his will.’

Of all the demons, he continued, the one that catches the most people and prevents us from being happy is that of ‘what could have been and was not’. The past is left to the mercy of God and the future to his Providence. Only the present is in our hands. ‘Live in God, in the moment.’

I was listening yesterday to Morning Worship broadcast from Lichfield Cathedral on BBC Radio 4. The theme was drawn from the Nicene Creed – ‘Maker of all that is, seen and unseen’ – and Canon Gregory Platten reminded us of what it means to believe in God as Creator in a world facing climate change, extinction, and disconnection from nature.

The ripening blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford these days are yet another reminder that Michaelmas today is a day to allow my mind to wander back to childhood memories, and a time for contemplation and unstructured prayers, but to think less of lost opportunities not taken in youth and more about giving thanks for the beauty of the creation and taking responsibility for it.

‘Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light’ … ripening blackberries in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

‘To see Durham is to see the English Sion and by doing so one may save oneself a trip to Jerusalem’

‘To see Durham is to see the English Sion’ (Symeon of Durham) … Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle stand on a peninsula shaped by the River Wear (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025; click on images for full-screen viewing)

Patrick Comerford

My visit to Durham last weekend was all too brief. We were on a family visit to York, I needed to get back to York for a family dinner, and with just a few hours to walk around I wanted to see as much as possible of the mediaeval city, with its cathedral, castle, cobbled streets, riverside walks and the third oldest university in England.

Durham has a population of about 50,000 people, and the cathedral and the castle on Palace Green, high above the River Wear have been designated a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Durham is also the home of the Durham Miners’ Gala and has a rich trade union history: the Durham coalfields developed during the Industrial Revolution, with dozens of collieries around the city. Although the coal pits are long closed, the Durham Miners’ Gala is still a major event each year.

Durham city centre has changed little over 200 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The city is built on a meander of the River Wear that surrounds the centre on three sides and creates a narrow neck on the fourth. The city centre has changed little over 200 years. It is made up of the peninsula containing the cathedral, the castle and Palace Green that give the cathedral a striking position.

Durham dates back over 1,000 years to 995, when a small band of monks from Lindisfarne seeking a place that was safe from Viking raids arrived with the relics of Saint Cuthbert. The church they built eventually evolved into Durham Cathedral, regarded by Unesco as ‘the largest and most perfect monument of Norman style architecture in England.’

The 12th-century chronicler Symeon of Durham wrote: ‘To see Durham is to see the English Sion and by doing so one may save oneself a trip to Jerusalem’.

Sir Walter Scott was so inspired by the view of the cathedral from South Street that he wrote the poem ‘Harold the Dauntless’ (1817), about Saxons and Vikings and set in County Durham. Lines from the poem are carved on a stone tablet on Prebends Bridge:

Grey towers of Durham
Yet well I love thy mixed and massive piles
Half church of God, half castle ’gainst the Scot
And long to roam those venerable aisles
With records stored of deeds long since forgot.

Durham Castle above Silver Street and Framwellgate Bridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The name Durham comes from dun, indicating a hill fort, and the Old Norse holme, referring to an island. But, as I recalled on Thursday evening, legends also link the name with the Dun Cow and the milkmaid who guided the monks of Lindisfarne to the strategic high peninsula that became the site of Durham cathedral.

Durham was once a buffer between warring England and Scotland, and until 1836 the city was part of the County Palatine of Durham, a semi-independent jurisdiction ruled by the prince bishops of Durham.

Mediaeval Durham became a place of pilgrimage because of its associations with Saint Cuthbert, Saint Bede the Venerable and Saint Oswald. The shrine of Saint Cuthbert at Durham Cathedral became the most important religious site in England until Saint Thomas Becket was murdered at Canterbury in 1170.

The Bishops of Durham ruled the County Palatine of Durham from Durham Castle until 1836 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Durham played an important rolw in the mediaeval wars between England and Scotland, and Durham Castle is the only Norman castle keep never to have suffered a breach. The castle on Palace Green was originally built in the 11th century, is an excellent example of early motte and bailey castles built by the Normans.

The Bishops of Durham, who lived in Durham Castle, ruled the County Palatine of Durham from 1071 to 1836 and the bishop was sometimes described as a ‘prince bishop’. The bishops had their own parliament, raised their own armies, appointed their own sheriffs and Justices, administered their own laws, levied taxes and customs duties, created fairs and markets, issued charters, collected revenue, administered the forests and minted their own coins.

The bishops’ powers were so far-reaching that the steward of Bishop Antony Bek said in 1299: ‘There are two kings in England, namely the Lord King of England, wearing a crown in sign of his regality and the Lord Bishop of Durham wearing a mitre in place of a crown’.

Bishop Cosin’s Hall on Palace Green … Bishop John Cosin began a major restoration project in the cathedral, the castle and the city in 1660 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The castle has been in continuous use for over 900 years. It was famed for its vast Great Hall, created by Bishop Bek in the early 14th century. It was the largest great hall in England until Bishop Richard Foxe shortened it at the end of the 15th century. It is still 46 ft high and about 100 ft long.

The city remained loyal to Charles I in the English Civil War, from 1642 until the king’s execution in 1649, and he visited Durham three times during his reign. But the castle suffered considerable damage during the Commonwealth. Cromwell sold the castle to the Lord Mayor of London shortly, and the cathedral was closed in 1650 and used to hold 3,000 Scottish prisoners after the Battle of Dunbar.

John Cosin, one of the great Caroline Divines, became Bishop of Durham (1660-1672) after the restoration and began a major restoration project in the cathedral, the castle and the city.

There were plans in the 18th century to transform Durham into a seaport by digging a canal or altering the course of the river. Nothing came of the plans, however, although the statue of Neptune in the Market Place is a reminder of these maritime ambitions and possibilities.

The statue of Neptune in the Market Place is a reminder of the plans to make Durham a seaport (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 gave governing power of the town to an elected body. All other aspects of the Bishop’s temporal powers were abolished by the Durham (County Palatine) Act 1836 . The last bishop to rule the palatinate, Bishop William Van Mildert, founded Durham University in 1832. It was one of the first universities to open in England for more than 600 years, and is England’s third oldest, after Oxford and Cambridge.

The bishop moved to Auckland Castle and Durham Castle became University College, the first college in the new university. Durham University was founded in 1832. Bishop Hatfield’s Hall, later Hatfield College, was added in 1846, specifically for the sons of poorer families. Durham University ranks in the top 200 of the world’s universities.

The Industrial Revolution also placed the city at the heart of the coalfields, the county’s main industry until the 1970s. Practically every village around the city had a coal mine and, although these have since disappeared as part of the regional decline in heavy industry, the traditions, heritage and community spirit are still evident. The first Durham Miners' Gala was attended by 5,000 miners in 1871, and it remains the largest socialist trade union event in the world.

Durham was not bombed during World War II, although one raid on the night of 30 May 1942 did give rise to the local legend of ‘Saint Cuthbert’s Mist’. According to the legend, the Luftwaffe tried to target Durham, but was thwarted when Saint Cuthbert created a mist that covered both the castle and cathedral, sparing them from bombing.

Palace Green, in front of the cathedral and the castle … Durham was not bombed during World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Durham is a hilly city, said to be built on seven hills, like Rome and Constantinople. The steep riverbanks are densely wooded, adding to the picturesque beauty of the city. The cathedral and castle stand on the most central and prominent position high above the Wear and dominate the skyline. The Bailey is almost entirely owned and occupied by the university and the cathedral.

The River Wear forms a peninsula that encloses the centre Durham on three sides. The Market Place at the base of the peninsula remains the venue for regular markets and the Market Place and surrounding streets form the heart of commercial and shopping life in the city.

Three old roads lead off the Market Place: Saddler Street heads south-east, towards Elvet Bridge, the Bailey and Prebends Bridge. Elvet Bridge leads to the Elvet area of the city and the south; Prebends Bridge is smaller and provides access from the Bailey to south Durham. Heading west, Silver Street leads out of the Market Place towards Framwellgate Bridge and North Road, the other main shopping area of the city.

The old commercial heart of the city encompasses the peninsula on three sides, following the River Wear, and much of the original mediaeval street plan remains intact in the area close to the cathedral and the Market Place.

Durham Market Place, with Durham Town Hall, the Guildhall and Saint Nicholas Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Durham Market Place, with its impressive array of buildings and sculptures, is first mentioned in 1040, the heads of Scottish marauders were displayed on poles around the Market Place. Saint Nicholas Church was built in 1133, and part of its former churchyard lies beneath the Market Place.

Durham Town Hall is on the west side of the Market Place. The earliest part of the complex of buildings is the Guildhall which dates from 1665. The town hall, at the rear, was opened in 1851, at the same time as the indoor market.

The statue of Neptune is the oldest statue in the Market Place. It was made of stone covered in lead in 1729, and is a reminder of the plans to make Durham a port. It had a pant or drinking vessel, but was moved in 1923 when the water was no longer needed. Neptune was returned by popular demand in 1991, but the pant did not come with him.

The equestrian statue of Lord Londonderry by Raphael Monti in the Market Place (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The equestrian statue in the Market Place is of Charles William Vane Tempest Stewart (1778-1854), 3rd Marquis of Londonderry. He was born in Mary Street, Dublin, was involved as a young man in suppressing the 1798 Rising in Ireland, and was later a commander under the Duke of Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars.

He married the very wealthy Lady Frances Anne Vane-Tempest and took her name too, and only inherited his family title after Lord Castlereagh, his half-brother and the childless second marquis, died by suicide. He opposed the Mines and Collieries Act and wanted women, girls and boys under 10 to continue working in his pits.

He was one of the 10 richest people in the United Kingdom, yet during the Irish Famine evicted many of his tenants. He advised his tenants ‘to help themselves and heaven will help them’, and suggested only the most ‘supine and inert’ among them could be ‘suffering in any serious degree under the failure of the potato’.

After he died, his widow raised subscriptions for a statue by Raphael Monti (1818-1881), who used a new technique of electroplating copper over a plaster base. The statue was unveiled in 1861, but the larger-than-life work was not popular in Durham and people wanted it moved. Nobody wanted it anywhere else, the cathedral clergy rejected plans to place it on Palace Green, and so it stayed in the Market Place, although it has been moved from its original setting.

In the narrow cobbled streets beneath Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

I arrived in Durham on the train from York, crossing over the Victorian railway viaduct on North Road, high above the city, and walked along the banks of the River Wear to Durham Cathedral, Durham Castle and the city centre.

A path runs alongside the south bank or cathedral side for the entire length of the stretch available for rowing. Durham Regatta has been held on the River Wear in Durham since 1834. It is the second oldest regatta in Britain and is often referred to as ‘the Henley of the North’.

More than 2 km of the River Wear can be rowed on, stretching from Durham University Boat Club boathouse at Maiden Castle in the east to the weir next to Durham School Boat Club boathouse in the west. This includes the 700 metres ‘short course’ straight used for most Durham Regatta races, the 1,800 metres ‘long course’ that includes navigation through the arches of Elvet Bridge, reputed to be the narrowest row through bridge in Europe, and 1,000 metres and 2,000 metres measured distances.

There are many boating clubs, including Durham Amateur Rowing Club, founded in 1860 and is one of the country’s oldest clubs, Durham University Boat Club, and 16 college clubs, as well as school clubs.

The Victorian railway viaduct on North Road, high above the city, is one of over 630 listed buildings in Durham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In addition to Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle, the city has over 630 listed buildings. The Grade I listed buildings include the Chorister School, Crook Hall, Durham Castle, Durham Cathedral, and four bridges. The Grade II* listed buildings include Bishop Cosin’s Hall, Palace Green, Cosin’s Library, now part of University Library, Palace Green, the Railway viaduct on North Road, and the Town Hall and Guildhall on Market Place.

As well as visiting the cathedral, other listed churches and former churches I managed to see last weekend include Saint Margaret of Antioch, Crossgate; Saint Mary-le-Bow, now Durham Heritage Centre; Saint Godric’s Roman Catholic Church; and Saint Nicholas Church.

But more about Durham Cathedral and those four other churches in the days to come, hopefully.

Climbing the steps leading to Durham Railway Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)