COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
‘The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep’ (John 10: 2) … ‘Paternoster’ or ‘Shepherd and Sheep’ … a bronze sculpture by Dame Elisabeth Frink in Paternoster Square by Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost. The week began yesterday with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV), although this is still the Season of Great Lent, and yesterday was the Fifth Sunday in Lent.
Throughout this Season of Easter, my morning reflections each day include the daily Gospel reading, the prayer in the USPG prayer diary, and the prayers in the Collects and Post-Communion Prayer of the day.
I have been staying in Rethymnon for an extended weekend since last Wednesday. But this is the last day of my visit, and I leave Rethymnon for Chania later this afternoon to catch a flight this evening to Luton.
Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
3, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep’ (John 10: 7) … Lichfield’s last remaining pinfold, where Beacon Street turns into Stafford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
John 10: 1-10 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 10 ‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
7 So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’
Sheep and goats grazing together in a field in Platanias near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 22 April 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Living by faith is hard, and it is never the obvious path.’ This theme was introduced yesterday with an extract taken from a sermon by the Revd Chris Parkman, Chaplain at Saint John’s Menton, and volunteer for A Rocha France at Les Courmettes.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (22 April 2024, International Earth Day) invites us to pray:
Today we pray for the Earth. May we work together to protect and sustain God’s creation rather than damage and destroy it.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.
Collect on the Eve of Saint George:
God of hosts,
who so kindled the flame of love
in the heart of your servant George
that he bore witness to the risen Lord
by his life and by his death:
give us the same faith and power of love
that we who rejoice in his triumphs
may come to share with him the fullness of the resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
‘The Irish Times Clock’, Dublin … the clocks go back an hour tonight (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
The Irish Times once ran an advertising campaign with the slogan: ‘If you miss The Irish Times, you miss part of the day.’
If I miss putting the clock back an hour tonight, I may find myself missing things at the right time throughout the day tomorrow.
When I worked there from the mid-1970s until 2002, for almost 30 years, The Irish Times clock was a landmark on D’Olier Street. It was moved there from Westmoreland Street, and it has been moved again.
But, as the clocks fall back an hour tonight, I thought I would invite you to join me in a ‘virtual tour’ of landmark clocks in other towns and cities, found on churches, synagogues and public buildings.
1, The Astronomical Clock, Prague:
The Astronomical Clock was installed on the Old Town Hall in Prague in 1410 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The astronomical clock or Prague Orloj is a mediaeval astronomical clock on the south wall of the Old Town Hall in Prague. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest clock still in operation.
The mechanism of the clock in the Old Town Square has three main components: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the Sun and Moon and with various astronomical details, and with statues of saints on either side of the clock; ‘the Walk of the Apostles,’ an hourly show of moving Apostles and other figures, including a skeleton representing Death, striking the time; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months.
According to legend, the city will suffer if the clock is neglected and its good operation is placed in jeopardy. A ghost mounted on the clock was supposed to nod its head in agreement. According to the legend, the only hope is represented by a boy born on New Year's night.
The oldest part of the Orloj, the mechanical clock and astronomical dial, dates back to 1410, when it was created by the clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and the professor of mathematics and astronomy at the Charles University Jan Šindel. A legend says the maker was blinded on the order of the city councillors so that he could not repeat his work. He in turn then disabled the clock, and no one was able to repair it for the next 100 years.
The Orloj was damaged on 7-8 May 1945, during the Prague uprising against the Nazis. The most recent renovation of the clock in 2018 became controversial when it was alleged the work had ‘radically changed the appearance, ages, skin tone, dress and even genders of the figures.’
The four figures flanking the clock are set in motion on the hour, and they represent: Vanity, represented by a man admiring himself in a mirror; Greed or Usury, depicted as a miser holding a bag of gold; Death, seen as a skeleton that strike the hour; and Lust or Earthly Pleasures in the form of a Turkish figure.
2, The Jewish Town Hall, Prague:
The Jewish Town Hall in Prague has two clocks, in Roman and Hebrew numerals (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Jewish Town Hall in Josefov, Prague, was built beside the Old New Synagogue in 1586 in Renaissance style by the Jewish community leader and philanthropist Mordechai Maisel (1528-1601), who also built the nearby Maisel Synagogue in 1590-1592.
The building was the main meeting house of the local Jewish community, but is now closed to the public. The Rococo façade dates from the 18th century.
The Jewish Town Hall is best known for its two clocks. One clock on a tower has Roman numerals. The second, lower clock has Hebrew numerals that are letters in the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with aleph and continue counterclockwise around the clock dial.
3, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge:
The grasshopper on the Chronophage or ‘Time Eater’ at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge … the clock is accurate only once every five minutes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Chronophage or ‘Time Eater’ at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is a large sculptural clock unveiled by the Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking 15 years ago on 19 September 2008.
The clock is on the corner of Bene’t Street and Trumpington Street in Cambridge, looking out onto King’s Parade. I am familiar with this clock, as Saint Bene’t’s Church nearby was effectively my parish church whenever I was staying at Sidney Sussex College. The clock was conceived and funded by John C Taylor, an old member of Corpus Christi College.
The clock’s face is a rippling 24-carat gold-plated stainless steel disc, about 1.5 metres in diameter. It has no hands or numerals, but displays the time by opening individual slits in the clock face backlit with blue LEDs. These slits are arranged in three concentric rings displaying hours, minutes, and seconds.
The dominating visual feature of the clock is a grim-looking metal sculpture of a creature that looks like a grasshopper or locust. John Taylor called this grasshopper the Chronophage or ‘time eater,’ from the Greek χρόνος (chronos, time) and εφάγον (ephagon, I ate). It moves its mouth, appearing to eat up the seconds as they pass, and occasionally it blinks in satisfaction.
The constant motion of the Chronophage produces an eerie, grinding sound, and the hour is tolled by the sound of a chain clanking into a small wooden coffin hidden in the back of the clock. Below the clock is an quotation in Latin from I John 2: 17: mundus transit et concupiscentia eius (‘the world and its desire are passing away’). The full verse says: ‘And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever’ (I John 2: 17).
The clock is accurate only once in every five minutes. For the rest of the time, the pendulum may seem to catch or stop, and the lights may lag or, then, race to get ahead. According to John Taylor, this erratic motion reflects the ‘irregularity’ of life.
The Chronophage was conceived as a work of public art, and it reminds viewers in a dramatic way of the inevitable passing of time. Taylor deliberately designed it to be terrifying: ‘Basically I view time as not on your side. He’ll eat up every minute of your life, and as soon as one has gone he’s salivating for the next.’
4, Saint Mark’s Clock, Venice:
The Torre dell’Orologio or Clock Tower on the north side of Saint Mark’s Square, Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Torre dell’Orologio or Clock Tower on the north side of Saint Mark’s Square, Venice, is an early Renaissance tower dating from the end of the 15th century. Its location was chosen so the clock could be seen from the waters of the lagoon to let everyone who arrived know the wealth and glory of Venice.
The clock and tower stand above an archway into the main street of the city, the Merceria, which linked the political and religious centre of the city at Saint Mark’s with the commercial and financial centre at the Rialto.
Two great bronze figures known as the Moors strike the hours on a bell. One is old and the other is young, to illustrate the passing of time. Below is an image of the winged Lion of Saint Mark with the open book, before a blue background with gold stars. Below the lion, a semi-circular gallery has statues of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. On either side are two large blue panels showing the time: the hour on the left in Roman numerals and the minutes at five-minute intervals on the right in Arabic numerals.
Twice a year, on the feast of the Epiphany (6 January) and on Ascension Day, the three Magi, led by an angel with a trumpet, emerge from one of the doorways normally taken up by these numbers and pass in procession round the gallery, bowing to the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child, before leaving through the other door.
Below again is the great clock face in blue and gold inside a circle of marble engraved with the 24 hours of the day in Roman numerals. A golden pointer with an image of the sun moves around this circle and indicates the hour of the day. Within the marble circle beneath the sun pointer are the signs of the zodiac in gold. These revolve slightly more slowly than the pointer to show the position of the sun in the zodiac. In the middle of the clockface, the earth and the moon are surrounded by stars against a background of blue enamel.
The clock was made by a father and son, Gian Paolo and Gian Carlo Ranieri. The tower was built in 1496-1497, the mechanism of the clock was then built into it, and the clock and tower were inaugurated on 1 February 1499. Legend says the clock’s craftsmen were later blinded to stop them from repeating the work. By 1500, the elder Raineri had died. But his son remained in Venice to look after the clock, and he continued to live in Venice until he died in 1531.
5, Ankeruhr, Vienna:
The ‘Ankeruhr’ or Anker Clock was commissioned by the Anker insurance company as part of the ‘Clock Bridge’ in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Hoher Markt Square is one of the oldest squares in Vienna, dating back to a time when Vienna was part of the Roman army camp Vindobona – one of the streets beside the square is named after the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died near Vienna.
Today, the square is often seen as an ugly car park in the heart of Vienna. But it has its attractions, including the Vermählungsbrunnen (‘Marriage Fountain’), erected to celebrate the marriage of Empress Maria Theresia and Franz Stephan of Lorraine but depicting the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph at their wedding.
However, you have to look up to see the most attractive feature in this square. The Ankeruhr or Anker Clock, was commissioned by the Anker insurance company to bridge two office buildings owned by the company, now known as Helvetia. The covered bridge is known as the Uhrbrücke or ‘Clock Bridge.’
The Anker Clock was designed in the Jugendstil style, similar to Art Nouveau, by the Austrian painter and sculptor Franz von Matsch (1861-1942), who worked closely with Gustav Klimt. Matsch made the clock in 1911-1917, at a creative but turbulent time in Austrian history. The Anker Insurance Company was expanding its headquarters in Vienna and saw the clock as an artistic contribution to the city’s culture and a subliminal reminder of the importance of life insurance, with figures representing life and death flanking the sun motif above the centre.
The clock is 10 metres wide, 7.5 metres high, with a diameter of 4 metres. The design includes 12 historic figures from Vienna’s past, each made of copper. On the hour, every hour, one figure or couple is visible and on the hour a tune is played matching this figure.
At noon, all the figures and their matching tunes can be seen and heard to the gasps and cheers of tourists on the street below. It is a spectacle that can be compared to the hourly sight at the Astronomical Clock on the Old Town Hall in Prague. The last figure is Joseph Haydn, who composed the Imperial Anthem, which also became the German national anthem.
A plaque next to the clock reveals the identities of these rotating figures, offering a journey through Austrian history. The figures or couples and the hours to see them are:
1-2: The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who is said to have died in Vienna, then the city of Vindobona, in 180 CE
2-3: Charlemagne, who first incorporated Austria into the Holy Roman Empire ca 800
3-4: Leopold VI, Duke of Austria, who granted Vienna its city charter in 1221, and his wife Theodora
4-5: Walther von der Vogelweide, a mediaeval minstrel singer during Leopold’s reign
5-6: King Rudolf, the first Habsburg ruler of Austria, and his wife Anna von Hohenberg
6-7: Hans Puchsbaum, a 15th-century architect and master builder closely associated with the Stephansdom (Saint Stephen’s Cathedral)
7-8: Emperor Maximilian I, a major figure in the expansion of the Habsburg empire in the 16th century and a patron of the arts
8-9: Johann Andreas von Liebenberg, mayor of Vienna during the second Turkish siege in 1683
9-10: Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, who led the defence of the city in 1683
10-11: Prince Eugene of Savoy, who built the Belvedere and Hofburg Palace and the commander of the Imperial forces during the War of the Spanish Succession
11-12: Empress Maria Theresa, the 18th-century Habsburg monarch, and her husband Prince Franz Stephan of Lorraine
12-1: Joseph Haydn, the composer: when he appears, the clock plays his oratorio, The Creation
The tunes include works by Haydn, Mozart and Wagner. They were originally played by a mechanical organ with 800 tubes. However, the organ was so damaged during World War II that it was beyond repair and was replaced by recorded music.
6, The Friary Clock, Lichfield:
Lichfield Clock Tower or Friary Clock Tower … originally built on the corner of Bore Street and Bird Street in 1863 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Lichfield Clock Tower or Friary Clock Tower is a 19th-century Grade II listed clock tower on The Friary, south of Festival Gardens in Lichfield. It was first erected in 1863 at the corner of Bird Street and Bore Street on the site of the ancient Crucifix Conduit that supplied water to the Franciscan Friary since 1301.
Building clock towers became a fashion in England in the mid 19th century after ‘Big Ben’ was built, and Lichfield Council first suggested a clock tower in 1858. A number of locations were proposed, including the roof of the Guildhall and in the Market Square, beside the statue of Samuel Johnson. Eventually it was decided to build the tower at the corner of Bore Street and Bird Street on the site the redundant Crucifix Conduit.
The tower was designed in a Norman style by the Lichfield architect Joseph Potter jnr (1756-1842), who also restored Lichfield Cathedral with James Wyatt and who designed Newtown’s College, the Causeway Bridge and Holy Cross Church, Lichfield, and Saint John the Baptist Church, Tamworth
The clock tower was financed by the Lichfield Conduit Lands Trust to a total of £1,200. Originally, the tower only had three clock faces – a west face was deemed unnecessary as it would only look onto one property, the Friary. However, a fourth face was added after complaints from the tenant at the Friary. The whole mechanism was overhauled by Joyce of Whitchurch in 1898.
The 11-acre Friary estate was sold to Sir Richard Ashmole Cooper in 1920. He gave the site to the city for developing the area and laying out a new road. By then, traffic was making Bird Street and Bore Street increasingly congested. They are narrow streets and the position of the clock tower made matters worse.
When the road named The Friary was built across the site of the former friary in 1928, the clock tower was taken down and re-erected at its present site south of Festival Gardens, 400 metres west of its original location along the new road. The tower was repaired and restored in 1991 with the assistance of the Conduit Lands Trust, and it is now in the care of Lichfield City Council.
7, Brick Lane Mosque, London:
The clock on one side of Brick Lane Mosque … the building has been a church, mission hall, chapel, synagogue and mosque (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Brick Lane Mosque at the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street in the East End of London was once the Great Synagogue and been home to a succession of Christian, Jewish and Muslim congregations since it was built in the mid-18th century, reflecting the waves of immigration in Spitalfields area.
It was first built in 1743 as La Neuve Eglise or the New Church by Huguenots who had fled religious persecution in France. It later became a Wesleyan and then a Methodist chapel. It became the Machzike Hadath or Spitalfields Great Synagogue in 1891. The synagogue eventually moved to new premises in Golders Green, and the building became a mosque in 1976.
The clock on the building complements a sundial with a Latin motto, Umbra sumus (‘We are shadow’), which in turn is derived from Horace’s Pulvis et umbra sumus (‘We are dust and shadow’).
8, Shandon Bells, Cork:
Saint Anne’s Church, Shandon, was built in 1722-1726 on the site of the earlier Saint Mary’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The claim by the Unitarian Church on Prince’s Street to be the oldest church in Cork City may be rivalled by Saint Anne’s Church, the Church of Ireland parish church in the Shandon district.
Saint Anne’s has been described as ‘the most important ecclesiastical structure of any period, within the city of Cork and its immediate environs, it is also one of the most important early 18th century churches in Ireland and one of a small number which still retains their original 18th century bells.’
The name Shandon is derived from the Irish Sean Dún (‘old fort’). Saint Mary’s, a mediaeval church, stood close to the site of the fort and is mentioned in the decretals of Pope Innocent III in 1199 as ‘Saint Mary on the Mountain.’ Saint Mary’s Church stood until the Williamite wars when it was destroyed during the Siege of Cork in 1690.
A new Saint Mary’s Church was built in 1693 at the bottom of Mallow Lane, modern-day Shandon Street. However, the population of Cork was growing quickly, and it was decided to build a new church on the site of the ancient church.
The present Saint Anne’s Church was built in 1722-1726 on a hill in Shandon overlooking the River Lee, as a chapel of ease to the former Saint Mary’s Church, meaning this has been a site of worship since before mediaeval times.
Saint Anne’s was designed in the Old English architectural style and extended for the ‘pepper pot’ adornment on the tower. The belfry, added in 1749 to accommodate the bells, is a noted landmark and symbol of the city, and the church bells were made popular in a 19th century song.
Some sources draw a connection between the red and white materials and the red and white colours that represent Cork. The distinct colours are recorded in a rhyme collected by 19th century antiquary Thomas Crofton Croker, which he attributes to the 18th century Catholic priest and writer Father Arthur O’Leary:
Party-coloured, like the people,
Red and white stands Shandon Steeple
The church is noted for its eight bells, cast in 1750 and first rung on 7 December 1752, for the wedding of Henry Harding and Catherine Dornan.
The clock is known to people in Cork as ‘The Four-Faced Liar’ because the time seldom seems to correspond on each face. This was the first four-faced clock until Big Ben was built in London.
There are four clock faces, one on each side, each 14 ft in diameter. The clocks were erected by Cork Corporation in 1847 and were supplied by James Mangan, who had a clock shop on Saint Patrick's Street until the 1980s. One clock face is inscribed ‘Passenger measure your time, for time is the measure of being.’
The clock continues to be maintained by Cork City Council. It was stopped for maintenance in 2013, was repaired and restarted on 2 September 2014.
On top of the pepper pot, the weather vane is in the shape of a salmon. Some say it represents fishing of the River Lee, but the fish is an early Christian symbol. It is known locally as the ‘goldie fish.’
When Saint Anne’s Church became a full parish in 1772, the first rector was the Revd Arthur Hyde, great-great-grandfather of Dr Douglas Hyde, first President of Ireland.
The graves in the churchyard include Francis Mahony (Father Prout), author of ‘The Bells of Shandon.’ He was a grandson of Timothy Mahony, founder of Blarney Woollen Mills. He eventually left the priesthood to concentrate on writing. His took his pen-name Father Prout from a learned but eccentric priest from Watergrasshill.
9, Bevis Marks Synagogue, London:
The clock above the doorway of Bevis Marks Synagogue displays the Hebrew and secular dates of its manufacture: 5618, 1858 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Bevis Marks Synagogue is often seen as the Jewish ‘cathedral’ among synagogues in London, and it is also the oldest operating synagogue on these islands. Bevis Marks Synagogue is officially the Qahal Kadosh Sha’ar ha-Shamayim (קָהָל קָדוֹשׁ שַׁעַר הַשָׁמַיִם, or ‘Holy Congregation Gate of Heaven’). It stands in a courtyard off Bevis Marks, the street in the city of London that gives the synagogue its popular name.
The synagogue was built in 1701 and is at the heart of the story of London’s Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community. It is the only synagogue in Europe that has held regular services continuously for more than 300 years.
Bevis Marks Synagogue was built in 1701 for the congregation of Sephardim or Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London, formed in 1698. It was built by Joseph Avis, a Quaker, to erect a building at a cost of £2,650. According to legend, Avis declined to collect his full fee, on the ground that it was wrong to profit from building a house of God. Another legend says the timber for the roof was donated by the then Princess Anne, later Queen Anne.
The plain exterior and its large, clear windows are both characteristics of the church architecture of Sir Christopher Wren. Above the central doorway are the Hebrew and secular dates of its opening: 5462, 1701. Above the doorway, in similar fashion, the clock bears the Hebrew and secular dates of its manufacture: 5618, 1858.
10, Saint John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta:
The three clocks on the bell tower of Saint John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The bell tower of Saint John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, the capital of Malta, has three clocks to tell the time, the date and the day of the week. The bell tower is on the south side of the cathedral in Saint John’s Square.
Saint John’s Co-Cathedral, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, was built by the Order of Saint John or Knights of Malta in 1572-1577. The church was commissioned by the Grand Master, Jean de la Cassière, as the Conventual Church of Saint John and was designed by the Maltese architect Girolamo Cassar, who designed several of the more prominent buildings in Valletta.
The Time-Date-Day-Clock has several unusual features. Below a balcony from which a newly selected Grand Master was announced to the knights and the people of the town is a large single-hand clock. Lower and to the left is a dial that indicates the date, and to the right is a dial that indicates the day of the week in Latin abbreviations.
10, Trinity College, Cambridge:
The clock tower in Trinity College, Cambridge … part of the Great Court Run (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The college clock in Trinity College, Cambridge, is housed in King Edward’s Gate, otherwise known as the clock tower. This gate originally formed a grand entrance to King’s Hall, which was dissolved in 1546 and joined with Michaelhouse to found the new College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.
A clock, dial-plate, and bell seems first to have been added to the clock tower in 1610 by Thomas Tennant of London. The bell is still in place and in use. A new clock and dial-plate were put in place in 1726-1727.
The old clock was replaced yet again in 1910. It was built by Smith of Derby and designed by Lord Grimthorpe, who drew on ‘Big Ben. The Trinity clock is notable for striking the hour twice, first on a low note, the ‘Trinity’ chime, and then on a much higher one, the ‘Saint John’s’ chime. William Wordsworth refers to this phenomenon in his poem ‘The Prelude’ (1850):
Near me hung Trinity’s loquacious clock,
Who never let the quarters, night or day,
Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice.
The Great Court Run is an attempt to run around Great Court within the time it takes the clock to strike the hour of 12, including the preparatory chiming of the four quarters and the two sets of 12.
The course is about 370 metres long. Depending on the state of winding, the clock takes between about 43 and 44½ seconds. It is traditional for athletic members of Trinity to attempt the run every year at noon on the day of the Matriculation Dinner. The Great Court Run is a central scene in the film Chariots of Fire (1981) – although, in fact, it was not filmed at Trinity.
The race was recreated for charity in 1988 by Britain’s two foremost middle-distance runners at that time, Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram, with Daley Thompson as a reserve. Starting from under the clock-tower and running anti-clockwise, the runners restricted themselves to the customary course dictated by the flagstones between the cobbles, and so had to turn very sharply at each corner. Coe won, with a time of 46.0 seconds beating Cram’s 46.3 seconds. Neither runner, however, beat the clock, which took 44.4 seconds.
On 20 October 2007, Sam Dobin, a second year undergraduate reading Economics, made it round within the sound of the final chime, with a time of 42.7 seconds. The course taken by the runners that year was slightly different to that of 1988, as the competitors ran on the cobbles as well as the flagstones.
11, The Clock Tower, Youghal, Co Cork:
The Clock Gate Tower, the symbol of Youghal, was built in 1777 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Youghal, Co Cork, with a population of about 8,000, stands on the edge of a steep riverbank on the estuary of the Blackwater River. The town, with its long, narrow streets and narrow side lanes, dates back in time to a Viking settlement in the 11th century, and received its first charter of incorporation as a town in 1209.
Youghal is the first town in either Ireland or Britain to have a Jewish mayor when William Annyas or William Moses Annyas Eanes (Ben Yohanan) was elected Mayor of Youghal in 1555.
The Clock Gate Tower, the symbol of the town, was built in 1777 on the site of Trinity Castle, part of the town’s mediaeval fortifications. The Clock Gate was the town gaol until 1837, and later became a family home, until the McGrath family left in 1959.
12, Villierstown Church, Co Waterford:
The clock over the front door of the church in Villierstown, Co Waterford, was erected in 1910 by Mary Villiers-Stuart of Dromana (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Villierstown is on the banks of the River Blackwater in west Waterford, about 8 km south of Cappoquin. The village was founded by the Villiers-Stuart family, who give the place its name. The family and their direct ancestors have lived in Dromana House in its different forms for over 700 years, making it one of the oldest family estates in Ireland up to the 20th century.
John Villiers (1684-1766), 1st Earl Grandison, established the village in the 1740s to develop a linen industry. The original village consisted of a church, a rectory, a school, 24 houses, a court, a police barracks and a quay on the river. It was initially populated with linen-weavers, some of whom were from Lurgan, Co Armagh.
Grandison built a new church in the Queen Anne style 1748 for the new village and its new residents. The new chapel could accommodate about 400 people, and regular Sunday services were being held by 1757.
The church remained outside the parochial and diocesan structures of the Church of Ireland. It was a ‘chapel of ease’ and marriage services, for example, could not take place there without a special licence. Affane Parish, which included Villierstown, was united with Cappoquin in 1874. The position of chaplain at Villierstown came to an end in 1919, and from then on, the chapel was served by the clergy of Lismore Cathedral and the curate of Cappoquin. Lismore and Cappoquin were united in 1955.
Sunday attendance figures in Villierstown had dropped to about six by 1955, and the chapel closed in 1958. A church commission recommended removing the roof and capping the walls, retaining the porch as a mortuary chapel for the churchyard. But the Villiers-Stuart family was unhappy and James Henry Ion Villiers-Stuart (1928-2004) donated the church to the village in 1965 to prevent it from ‘falling into disrepair and ruin.’
After a meeting with the Roman Catholic bishop, Dr Daniel Cohalan, it was agreed that it would become a church for the Catholic villagers. It was the first time a Church of Ireland church was given to a Roman Catholic parish. The gift was welcomed by Bishop Cohalan and the parish priest, Father Hackett. A local committee raised £1,500 for its adaptation as a Catholic church.
However, Bishop Cohalan and Father Hackett died within weeks of each other. Their successors, Bishop Michael Russell and Father Quinlan, were less than enthusiastic, and decided the three existing churches were enough for the parish. The church is now an arts, entertainment, community and wedding venue.
The bellcote embellishes the pedimented roof. The clock over the front door was erected in 1910 by Mary Villiers-Stuart of Dromana, and a plaque reads: ‘This clock was the gift of Mary Villiers Stuart of Dromana to the people of Villierstown, to whom she was deeply attached. 1910. Restored by Mary’s grandson James, 1990.’
13, The Clock Tower, Valentia Island, Co Kerry:
The Clock Tower on the harbour front at Knightstown on Valentia Island, Co Kerry (Patrick Comerford)
There is an extra hour tonight as the clocks go back, so I thought I might add an extra clock to this ‘virtual tour’ of a dozen clocks and clock towers. The clock tower is the dominant landmark on the harbour at Knightstown, the main village on Valentia Island in Co Kerry.
Valentia Island, off the Iveragh Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry, is one of Ireland’s most westerly points. It is about 11 km (7 miles) long, 3 km (2 miles) wide, and has a population of 665.
Tourism began on Valentia Island in 1833, and the Royal Valentia Hotel, which began as an inn, has been in business for almost two centuries. The hotel faces onto the harbour at Knightstown, the island’s main village. It has been known as the Royal Valentia Hotel since Queen Victoria’s youngest son Prince Arthur (1850-1942), later Duke of Connaught, visited in 1869.
The clock tower, in front of the Royal Valentia Hotel, is a square-plan weigh house, built ca 1880, with a round window opening and a tapered pyramidal roof, a central clock in the apex, ogee-domed capping and a decorative urn finial. It is part of a composition on the quay that includes a cast-iron lever, a group of six iron weights arranged in a pyramidal fashion, and a cast-iron weigh bridge. The clock was decommissioned in 1922, but was restored in 1990.
A car ferry runs a shuttle service from Knightstown to Reenard Point, near Cahersiveen, on the Ring of Kerry, throughout the day in the summer months (April to October). The island is also linked to the mainland by a bridge at Portmagee.
Skellig Michael and the Skellig Rocks … both the church and the monastery were dedicated to Saint Michael (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVI, 24 September 2023).
Two of us are travelling to York later today. But, before the day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection.
The Church celebrates Saint Michael and All Angels today (29 September). So my reflections each morning this week and next are taking this format:
1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The ruins of Ballinskelligs Priory, Co Kerry … still a place of prayer and peace for pilgrims and tourists alike (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Skellig Michael and Ballinskelligs Priory:
Legend says that the first inhabitants in Ireland arrived in in the Bay of Ballinskelligs. The myths say that Ireland was uninhabited until a woman named Cessair, accompanied by her father, two men and over 40 women, arrived in a ship that landed at Ballinskelligs Bay in the year 2361 BC.
The legend says Cessair was the granddaughter of Noah, who had no room for her in the Ark when he had finished building it. She built her own three ships and set sail for Ireland, believing it was free from sin.
After surviving a voyage that endured for seven years and that suffered the loss of two ships, Cessair landed in Ballinskelligs and decided to stay. Two of the men died, the third fled, leaving Cessair so heart-broken that she too died soon.
I first became enamoured with Ballinskelligs when I spent the summer of 1966 at Dungeagan as part of an Irish summer school programme that my parents hoped would give me adequate Irish to pass the ‘Inter Cert’ (Junior Certificate) in 1967.
It was a beautiful summer, but I learned less Irish than they probably expected, and I have memories of endless, sun-filled afternoons swimming at the long sandy beach, reading Anne Frank’s Diary and Catcher in the Rye in the sand-dunes, watching the 1966 England v Germany World Cup final on the only television my cousins and I could find – a black and white television in a convent – and maturing as a teenage boy.
I have been back in Ballinskelligs three or four times since, enjoying walks along the long sandy beach, watching the Atlantic waves break against the sand, and walking out to the ruins of the old Augustinian priory, the old graveyard and the ruins of the MacCarthy castle that once guarded the entrance to Ballinskelligs Bay.
It is said the monks of Skellig Michael called Ballinskelligs ‘the nearest thing to heaven’ when they settled in the area, and they made this place a spiritual centre in early Christian Ireland. According to legend, the monks had travelled across Ireland to find ‘a paradise on earth.’
These early Irish monks wished to emulate the sacrifice and the pure withdrawal into a life of faith exemplified by Saint Anthony who went out into the Western Desert in Egypt.
Ireland’s remote and deserted offshore islands offered a parallel experience. The monastic ideal was to demonstrate an intense devotion by acts of self-exile: peregrination pro Dei amore or ‘pilgrimage for the love of God.’
The monastic settlement on Great Skellig is said to have been founded in the sixth century by Saint Fionán, a saint from south Kerry who founded Innisfallen Abbey. The site attracted the support of the members of the local Corcu Duibne dynasty in Kerry, and there the love of God was brought to a new level, for no other Irish monastery was built in such a challenging location.
Saint Finian is said to have founded both the monastic settlement on the Skelligs Islands and a church at Killemlagh in the sixth century. The ruins of two early churches can still be seen near the Skelligs Chocolates factory, a major attraction on the Skelligs Ring, and Saint Finian’s Bay, which offers some of the best views of the Skelligs Rock – although they are often shrouded in clouds and mist at this time of the year.
While the monks settled on the rocks of Skellig Michael, they found a winter home on the mainland in Ballinskelligs.
The first definite reference to monks on the Skelligs dates to the eighth century when the death of ‘Suibhni of Scelig’ is recorded. By the ninth century, the continuity and survival of life on the remote monastery was challenged with the arrival of the Vikings. The flights of steps on three sides of the island, which had provided the monks with landing for their boats in different sea conditions, now gave the invading Vikings the opportunity to attack the monastic site from different sides simultaneously.
The annals record: ‘In 824 AD, Scelec was plundered by the heathens and Étgal was carried off into captivity, and he died of hunger on their hands. There came a fleet from Luimnech [Limerick], in the south of Erinn, they plundered Skellig Michael, and Inishfallen and Disert Donnain and Cluain Mor, and they killed Rudgaile, son of Selbach, the anchorite. It was he whom the angel set loose twice, and the foreigners bound him twice each time.’
It is said that in 993 the Viking Olaf Trygvasson, later to become Olaf I, King of Norway, was intent on a raid of the monastery but instead was baptised a Christian by a Skellig hermit. His son, Olaf II, became the patron saint of Norway.
Increasing hardships, Viking raids and changing climatic conditions all contributed to the eventual decision of the monks to move from their monastic settlements on the Skelligs Rocks to the mainland, settling on an outcrop at the edge of Ballinskelligs Bay.
The Skelligs Rocks and the Abbey at Ballinskelligs shared one abbot, and the move was completed some time between the 11th and 13th century.
The dedication of the monastery to Saint Michael the Archangel appears to have happened some time before 1044, when the death of ‘Aedh of Scelic-Mhichíl’ is recorded. It is probable that this dedication to Saint Michael was celebrated by the building of Saint Michael’s church in the monastery.
The church of Saint Michael is mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in the late 12th century. His account of the miraculous supply of Communion wine for daily Mass in Saint Michael’s Church implies that the monastery had a large community at the time.
The Church was being reorganised along diocesan patterns in Ireland in the 12th and 13th centuries. These changes, and harsher winter storms, forced the monks to abandon the island.
By then, the monks on Skellig Michael had adopted the rule of Saint Augustine. Eventually, they left the island and settled on the mainland at Ballinskelligs, where they founded a new abbey. In the early 14th century, the Prior of the Augustinian Abbey at Ballinskelligs was referred to as the Prior de Rupe Michaelis, indicating that the island still formed an important part of the monastery at the time.
The ruins of the later Augustinian Priory date from ca 1210, and include a church, the prior’s house, cloisters and a refectory. A number of buildings, mainly from the 15th century, constitute the priory, including a rectangular church. The church and the other buildings were arranged around a central cloister, which had covered walkways for working and praying. Parts of the cloister and a large domestic hall still survive.
The abbey is one of a number of important spiritual sites dedicated to Saint Michael in this area. For visitors who come to Ballinskelligs as pilgrims or tourists, this remains a place of peace and prayer.
The names of the vicars and rectors of Killemlough are known only from the early or mid-15th century. Eugene O’Sullivan was appointed to the parish ca 1447 even though he had not been ordained. He was eventually forced out of the parish in 1459 because he had still not been ordained.
His successor, Florence O’Sullivan, also had to leave the parish after he was ‘said to have committed simony and to be guilty of fornication.’ Cornelius O’Mulchonere had to obtain a dispensation to be ordained for the parish because he was the illegitimate son of an Augustinian Canon Regular – perhaps a friar from the priory at Ballinskelligs.
In the Church of Ireland, the parish was known as Killemlough and sometimes as Killemlagh or Kyllemleac, and the parish included the offshore island of Puffin Island and the Skelligs Islands.
The Parish of Killemlough was held by the Treasurers of Ardfert from 1615 to 1839. They included William Steere, who became Bishop of Ardfert in 1628, James Bland, who became Dean of Ardfert in 1728, and William Cecil Pery, who became Bishop of Limerick. The Church of Ireland parish was united with Valentia in the 1870s.
Meanwhile, the connection between the monastic settlement on the Skelligs Rocks and the people of Ballinskelligs remained part of romantic memory and folklore.
In the late 1930s, JB Leslie recalled a custom from 60 years earlier known as the ‘Skelligs Lists.’ Doggerel poetry was issued early in Lent naming and pillorying couples who were supposed to be courting but who had not married before Shrove Tuesday.
‘Sometimes those lists were distinctively libellous and perhaps malicious, but were anonymous,’ Leslie notes.
Leslie quotes the phrase ‘send them to Skelligs,’ and suggests ‘that on the island (Skelligs) marriages might be celebrated, perhaps as in Gretna Green.’
‘Or could it have been,’ he asks, ‘that the keeping of Easter and Lent was different in Skelligs and on the mainland, so that marriage could be celebrated there after Shrove Tuesday?’
The monks from Skellig Michael settled at the priory in Ballinskelligs in the 13th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
John 1: 47-51 (NRSVA):
47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48 Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49 Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50 Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51 And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’
The ruins of the Augustinian priory, behind the beach at Ballinskelligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayer:
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Flinging open the doors.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Anthony Gyu-Yong Shim, Diocese of Daejeon, Korea.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (29 September 2023, Saint Michael and All Angels) invites us to pray:
Almighty God, renew your spirit within us and your churches across the globe.
A lancet window in the old priory buildings in Ballinskelligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Collect:
Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Lord of heaven,
in this eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect:
as in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The monk’s beehive at Saint Michael’s Well, behind the house where I stayed in my teens in Dungeagan in Ballinkselligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The writer and sculptor Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald (1830-1925) was in his late 70s when he donated his statue of James Boswell to Lichfiield in 1908 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald (1830-1925) was an Irish-born lawyer, author and critic who became a painter and sculptor later in life, and when he was in his late 70s made public donations of two major works with Lichfield connections: his statue of James Boswell in Lichfiield (1908), and his statue of Dr Samuel Johnson in the Strand, London (1910).
But who was the sculptor who completed these public works at a late stage in life?
And what inspired him to work on them?
Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald was born on 26 April 1830 at Fane Valley near Dundalk, Co Louth. His father Thomas FitzGerald, was an Irish politician and slave trader, who became wealthy in the West Indies as the owner of the slave plantation at Richmond Hill in Demerera, British Guiana (now Guyana).
Thomas Fitzgerald was a son of Christopher Fitzgerald and Anne Esmonde. He was the co-owner of Richmond Hill with his brother Laurence Fitzgerald and Thomas Fitzgerald and his business associate of Thomas Naghten were slave-factors in Demerara in the early 1800s.
When Fitzgerald returned to Ireland with a fortune from slavery and sugar, he bought Fane Valley in Co Louth in August 1823. He was elected MP for Co Louth for Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association in the 1832 general election. He was still in office when he died in 1834.
FitzGerald was the father of two sons: Thomas Christopher Fitzgerald (1820-1871), and Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald (1830-1925).
Percy Fitzgerald’s statue of James Boswell with the statue of Samuel Johnson and the Samuel Johnson Museum in the background (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald was educated by the Jesuits, first at Belvedere College in Dublin and then at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, before studying at Trinity College Dublin. He was called to the Irish Bar and for a time crown he was a prosecutor on the north-east circuit and briefly served as high sheriff for Co Louth.
In 1853, and perhaps on other occasions, he made a pretentious claim to the title of ‘Knight of Kerry’, one of three unique hereditary knighthoods in the FitzGerald/FitzMaurice dynasty in Ireland, the others being the Knight of Glin and the White Knight. However, the true Knight of Kerry was Sir Peter George FitzGerald (1808-1880) of Valentia Island.
Percy Fitzgerald stood back from his legal career, and moved to London in the hope of becoming a journalist and writer. He introduced himself to the literary critic and biographer of Charles Dickens, John Forster, who had recently completed a biography of Oliver Goldsmith and was working on another of Jonathan Swift. Forster encouraged Fitzgerald to write and introduced him to Dickens in 1856.
Fitzgerald became a regular contributor to Dickens’s magazine Household Words, founded in 1850, and All the Year Round. Other contributors included William Henry Wills, Edmund Yates, Douglas Jerrold, Blanchard Jerrold, Wilkie Collins, Eliza Lynn Linton and George Augustus Sala.
Claire Tomalin, in Dickens: A Life (2011), describes Fitzgerald as an Irish lawyer with a fluent pen and one of the clever young men Dickens surrounded himself with, ‘aspiring writers who were eager to learn from him and ready to flatter.’ She describes how ‘Dickens gave them work, corrected and improved their copy, was a good friend to them and dined them well.’
Fitzgerald contributed to a variety of journals and papers, including the Temple Bar Magazine, London Society, the Art Journal, the Daily News, the Gentleman’s Magazine, Cassell’s Magazine, and the Illustrated London News.
Fitzgerald was also a drama critic for the Observer and the Whitehall Review, and wrote a series of biographies and histories of the theatre.
One of the three bronze reliefs shows Boswell and Johnson together in the Hebrides (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
He edited the works of Samuel Johnson (1898), wrote biographies of Charles Dickens (1905, 1913), James Boswell (1891, 1911, 1912), David Garrick (1868), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1886), Laurence Sterne (1864), Charles Lamb (1866), Henry Irving (1893), George IV (1881) and William IV (1884). He produced several histories of theatres and theatre companies, including the Savoy Theatre, the Lyceum and the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
His output was prolific: at any one time he claimed to be at work on two serials and he is credited with more than 200 publications on a variety of topics including fiction, drama, history, biography, religion, and dramatic criticism. He wrote several volumes of memoirs, in which he included detailed personal recollections of Dickens and his circle.
Most of these books were published by Chapman and Hall. Although his fiction is no longer read, at the time he experienced considerable success with novels such as Bella Donna (1864), published under the pseudonym ‘Gilbert Dyce’, and its sequels, Jenny Bell (1866) and Seventy-five Brooke Street (1867).
His shorter pieces included the Foreword to Dickens’s Dream Children (1895) by Mary Angela Dickens and others.
Fitzgerald married the Hon Dorcas Olivia Skeffington, eldest daughter of John Skeffington, 10th Viscount Massereene and Ferrard, on 8 July 1869. Already, there were interesting Lichfield connections through this marriage.
The Skeffington family were descendants of the Skeffingtons of Fisherwick Hall. Dorcas was a niece of Amelia Spread Deane O’Grady, who eloped to Gretna Green as a young teenager in 1821 to marry Lord Edward Chichester (1799-1889), who became the Dean of Raphoe in 1831. Dorcas’s parents were married in the Deanery in Raphoe, Co Donegal, in 1835. Lord Edward eventually succeeded as 4th Marquess of Donegall in 1883, but he never inherited the vast estates once owned by the family that gave its name to Donegal House on Bore Street in Lichfield.
Dorcas brought her husband a fortune of £12,000. He recalled that they quickly ran through this money, but only briefly experienced financial difficulties before he inherited his father’s fortune when his elder brother died in 1871. Dorcas died on 27 September 1876.
Percy Fitzgerald boasts on his Lichfield statue of his published works on Johnson and Boswell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
In later life, Fitzgerald turned his hand to being an artist, illustrator, and sculptor. He completed a bust of Dickens in 1900 for the Pump Room in Bath, another in the courtyard of the Prudential Assurance building, Holborn, London, and a bust of Charles Reade, the plaster cast of which is in the National Portrait Gallery.
Most noticeably, Fitzgerald was responsible for the eccentric statues of James Boswell in Lichfield (1908), and of Samuel Johnson behind Saint Clement Danes Church on the Strand, London (1910).
In the inscription on the Boswell statue in Lichfield, Fitzgerald describes himself as the ‘Biographer of Boswell and editor of Boswell’s Johnson.’
The more than life-size bronze figure shows a jaunty, fashionably dressed Boswell, sword at his side, with a comical crown-like hat and a turned-up nose. He stands on a black marble base with a Portland stone plinth.
A decorative medallion with a portrait of Mrs Thrale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Three bronze reliefs show Boswell with Johnson in different scenes: travelling together in the Hebrides; Boswell being introduced by Johnson to the Literary Club in London; and Boswell and Johnson dining at the Three Crowns Inn in Lichfield.
Boswell’s name and dates (1740-1795) are on the front bronze panel on the north side, with his heraldic crest at the base. There are additonal decorative medallions with portraits of James Boswell, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds and Mrs Hester Thrale, friend and patron of Johnson and Boswell.
The inscription on the south side reads: ‘The Work of Percy Fitzgerlad MA FSA, Biographer of Boswell, also Editor of Boswell’s Johnson, presented by him to the City of Lichfield.’ Smaller lettering at the base names ‘WR Coleridge-Roberts Mayor, Herbert Russell Town Clerk, 1908.’
Percy Fitzgerald’s bronze statue of Samuel Johnson at the east end of Saint Clement Danes Church in the Strand, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Fitzgerald also made the bronze statue of Johnson behind the east end of Saint Clement Danes Church in the Strand, London. The statue, which has been dismissed by critics as ‘grotesque’ and ‘quirky’ and as ‘modelled in a very rough style.’
Johnson used to worship in the church and Fitzgerald depicts him looking past the Law Courts down Fleet Street.
Fitzgerald is said to have copied Johnson’s face from a portrait by Reynolds and a bust by Nollekens. He looks stout and crumpled, as he did in life, and is commenting animatedly on a book he is reading, with two more books and an inkpot at his feet.
Percy Fitzgerald’s statue of Johnson in London has been dismissed by critics as ‘grotesque’ and ‘quirky’ and ‘modelled in a very rough style’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
The main part of the inscription reads: ‘Samuel Johnson L.L.D. Critic. Essayist. Philologist. Wit. Poet. Moralist. Dramatist. Political Writer. Talker.’ On either side of the Boswell medallion are Johnson’s dates (Born 1709 Died 1784).
Below that is information about the sculptor and the erection of the monument: ‘The gift and handiwork of Percy Fitzgerald FSA and erected by the Revd S. Pennington MA, Rector of St Clement Danes 1910.’
The London relief showing Johnson and Boswell in the Highlands is similar to the one on Fitzgerald’s statue of Boswell in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
The relief showing Johnson and Boswell in the Highlands is similar to the one on Fitzgerald’s statue of Boswell in Lichfield. A whimsical relief showing Johnson and Mrs Thrale misspells her name as ‘Mrs Thrall’.
The original plan was to have a royal unveiling by Princess Louise. But this was postponed when Edward VII died that very day. Then Septimus Pennington, the Rector at Saint Clements, died just as the statue was ready.
At Fitzgerald’s suggestion, he eventually unveiled his own work as Pennington’s body was brought into the church for lying in rest before his funeral.
The relief showing Johnson and Mrs Thrale misspells her name as ‘Mrs Thrall’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Fitzgerald took his sculptures and ‘handiwork’ much more seriously than his writing, and more seriously than his critics: in An output (1912), he mentions up to 50 works.
Nevertheless, he continued to write, and he produced new editions of his biography of Boswell in 1911 and 1912.
However, it must be asked whether Fitzgerald’s sculptures were inspired by his books? Or whether his sculptures were merely an enthusiastic but amateurish and awkward effort to promote his books and their sale?
Percy Fitzgerald was 80 when he unveiled his own statue of Samuel Johnson in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
He remained loyal throughout his life to Dickens. He was in his mid-80s when he published Memories of Charles Dickens in 1914. He was the first president of the Dickens Fellowship, and he presented much of his collection of Dickens memorabilia to the Eastgate Museum in Rochester.
He was 95 when he died on 23 November 1925 at his Bloomsbury home at 37 St George Square, London. His body was brought back to Ireland and he was buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
Samuel Johnson used to worship in Saint Clement Danes Church and Percy Fitzgerald depicts him looking past the Law Courts down Fleet Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
George W Walsh’s circular window in Lahinch, Co Clare, depicting the Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)
Patrick Comerford
Earlier this week, I was offering ‘virtual tours’ of cathedrals and churches dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the real ‘Santa Claus,’ whose feast day was on Tuesday (6 December).
Today (8 December) is the Feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary, known among Roman Catholics alone as the Immaculate Conception.
The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. The idea was first debated by mediaeval theologians, but was so controversial that it did not become part of official Roman Catholic teaching until 1854, when Pius IX gave it the status of dogma in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.
This evening, I invite you to join me on a ‘virtual tour’ of ten churches in Ireland that are dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, including one cathedral (Sligo) and nine other churches: three in Co Limerick, two in Co Clare, and one each in Co Kerry, Co Cork, Dublin and Wexford.
1, The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo:
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was designed by the English-born architect George Goldie (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Temple Street, Sligo, is the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin. The cathedral and its tower dominate the skyline of Sligo, and the chimes of its bells peal out over the city, with Ben Bulben in the background.
The Diocese of Elphin is said to date from the fourth century. According to tradition, Ono son of Oengus offered a house to Saint Patrick ca 450, who renamed it Ail Fionn (‘Rock of the Clear Spring’) and placed his disciple, Saint Assicus, in charge.
However, it was not until the 12th century that Elphin was established as a diocese of East Connacht. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin did not have a cathedral until the mid-19th century, but Saint John’s, a small parish church near the site of the Cheshire Home, had served as the pro-cathedral from 1827.
Bishop Laurence Gillooly (1819-1895) was appointed co-adjutor bishop in 1856 and succeeded George Browne as Bishop of Elphin in 1858. Sligo was then a growing, thriving town, and Bishop Gillooly became the inspiring figure in planning and building a new cathedral there.
A year after becoming diocesan bishop, Bishop Gillooly secured a renewable lease from Sir Gilbert King of two adjacent properties close to the Lungy, and beside Saint John’s Church which would become the Church of Ireland cathedral in 1961. One of these properties, known as the Bowling Green, became the site of the new Roman Catholic cathedral.
Inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Temple Street, Sligo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Goldie was born in York, the grandson of the architect Joseph Bonomi the Elder. He was educated at Saint Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw, in Durham, and trained as an architect with John Grey Weightman and Matthew Ellison Hadfield of Sheffield, in 1845-1850, and then worked with them as a partner.
Goldie was joined in his architectural partnership in 1880 by his son Edward Goldie (1856-1921), whose work includes Hawkesyard Priory in Armitage, near Rugeley and six miles north-west of Lichfield, built for the Dominicans in 1896-1914, and which I knew in my late teens and early 20s.
The cathedral was built in a Norman style, and it is the only Romanesque Revival cathedral among the cathedrals of the 19th and 20th centuries in Ireland, built at a time when the fashion was for Gothic cathedrals and churches.
The main contractor was Joseph Clarence of Ballisodare, and Bishop Gillooly took complete charge of the building project when work began in 1869. The cathedral is built of cut limestone and is modelled on a Norman-Romano-Byzantine style.
Goldie designed this cathedral in the form of a basilica. Contemporaries called his design ‘Norman,’ but it is in a round-arched style that includes elements of English, German and Irish Romanesque.
2, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Lahinch, Co Clare:
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Lahinch, Co Clare … designed by McCormick and Corr in the 1950s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)
Lahinch, Co Clare, featured prominently in the recent RTÉ drama series Smother. The Church of the Immaculate Conception in the centre of Lahinch is similar in design to the Church of Our Lady and Saint Michael in neighbouring Ennistymon, and the two churches form one parish in the Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora.
An earlier church was built on this site in Lahinch by a Father Keane in the period 1830-1840. That church was extended for the parish priest, Canon McHugh, by Thomas Joseph Cullen in 1923, and a new church was planned in the 1940s, with Ralph Henry Byrne as architect.
However, it was another decade before a new church was built on the site of the original church in Lahinch.
Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Lahinch, Co Clare, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)
The architects of the Church of our Lady of the Immaculate Conception were the Derry-born architects, William Henry Dunlevy McCormick (1916-1996) and Francis Michael (Frank) Corr, who also designed the new church for Ennistymon in 1947.
Liam McCormick was one of the founders of modern Irish architectural movement and also one of the most important church architects in Northern Ireland. He was responsible for designing 27 church buildings and many commercial and state buildings. These include the iconic Met Éireann building in Glasnevin, Dublin, and Saint Aengus’s Church in Burt, Co Donegal, was voted Ireland’s ‘Building of the 20th century’ in 1999.
The church in Lahinch was built in 1952-1954 by Farmer Brothers of Dublin at a cost of £38,000. The cornerstone was laid in November 1952 and the church was opened in March 1954.
The church is oriented south/north rather than east/west, and faces onto to the Main Street in Lahinch.
Today, the church looks the worse for wear, and has suffered over the past half century. But inside the church has an impressive three-light stained-glass window by George W Walsh, depicting the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Presentation, in memory of the Dixon family, and a circular window by Walsh above the entrance depicting the Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception. Both windows date from 1995.
3, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Bruree, Co Limerick:
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bruree, Co Limerick, was built in 1922-1925 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Bruree, Co Limerick, is best-known as the childhood home of Eamon de Valera. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1922-1925, when Father John Breen was the parish priest, and was officially opened on 26 April 1925.
The foundation stone to the left of the main door of the church was laid by Bishop Denis Hallinan of Limerick on 8 December 1922. The inscription says Samuel Francis Hynes from Cork was the architect and Jeremiah J Coffey from Midleton, Co Cork, was the builder.
The church is built in the Hiberno-Romanesque style, with limestone from nearby Tankardstown, in Kilmallock.
Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bruree, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
This church is oriented on a north-south axis, instead of the traditional east-west liturgical axis. It has a fine interior with stained-glass windows, a well-carved timber roof and marble colonnades. These features add architectural significance to the church and are a testimony the skilled craftsmanship used in its construction.
This is a gable-fronted church, with a seven-bay nave and six-bay side aisles, two transepts, and gable-fronted porches that have chamfered corners, and a distinctive, square-plan three-stage tower at the front, to the right of the main door, with a battered base, a large open bell chamber and a short spire.
The snecked limestone walls have a stringcourse and an inscribed plaque at the front.
There are four, round-headed lancet windows above the double-leaf, timber battened front doors, with a stained-glass oculus above them. There are stained glass oculi in the nave too.
4, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Kanturk, Co Cork:
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Kanturk, Co Cork … designed by the Cork-based architect John Pine Hurley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
The Church of the Immaculate Conception, beside the Courthouse in Kanturk, Co Cork, was built in 1867 in the transitional Gothic style, designed by John Pine Hurley, an architect who practised in Cork from the 1850s or earlier until the 1870s.
Hurley’s first major commission came in 1856 when Bishop Timothy Murphy appointed him architect for the new Saint Colman’s College in Fermoy. Two years later, he designed improvements to the chapel of Saint Mary’s Convent, Cobh, in 1858, and in 1867 he designed the new Catholic church and convent schools at Kanturk. Nothing is known of Hurley in Cork after the mid-1870s, and he may have moved to Dublin or have emigrated.
Hurley’s church in Kanturk was completed in 1867 at a cost of £11,000. It stands in an extensive church campus with a graveyard, convent and school. The convent and school on the site were built at a cost of £4,000. The builder, JE Devlin of Bantry, later went bankrupt.
Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Kanturk, Co Cork, facing west, the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
This is an imposing Gothic-style church that is oriented on a west-east axis rather than the traditional liturgical east-west axis. It has fine craft work in its exterior details, and retains many original features such as the stained-glass windows, carved limestone detailing and timber batten doors.
The gable-fronted church has a projecting entrance frontispiece, a seven-bay nave, a single-bay chancel, recessed six-bay side aisles with gabled porches at the east (liturgical west) ends, a gabled sacristy, a two-bay transept, and gabled confessional projections.
It is built with cut tooled limestone walls with a moulded plinth, and there are buttresses at the corners and between the clerestory windows.
The church has pointed arch windows, trefoil lights, stained-glass, chamfered limestone surrounds, hood-mouldings and carved tracery. The chancel has a traceried six-light window and rose window, with a trefoil at the top of the gable. There are latticed lancet windows in the porches with hood-mouldings.
The order arch style entrance doorway, with timber battened doors, has a shallow gable, a tympanum with triangular window opening, and pair of door openings divided by and flanked by engaged colonnettes with decorative capitals and surmounted by a quatrefoil panel with an inscribed date plaque. All this is flanked by paired short lancet windows with hood-mouldings.
A freestanding ashlar limestone bell tower stands to the north-west of the church.
5, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Knightstown, Valentia Island, Co Kerry:
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Knightstown, on Valentia Island, Co Kerry … designed by Ashlin and Coleman and built in 1914-1915 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Church of the Immaculate Conception on the Promenade in Knightstown was paid for by the people who worked at the Cable Station on Valentia Island and by local people.
The church was designed in the Gothic-revival style by Ashlin and Coleman, the architectural partnership of George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921) and Thomas Aloysius Coleman (1865-1950). Ashlin was noted for his work on churches and cathedrals throughout Ireland, including Saint Coleman’s Cathedral, Cobh, and was AWN Pugin’s son-in-law.
The Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1914 and dedicated on 1 August 1915. This is a cruciform-plan, double-height, Gothic Revival church. It is oriented on a west/east axis instead of the traditional east/west liturgical axis, but this gives beautiful views of the sea to people as they leave the church by the front door.
The view from the front porch of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Knightstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The church has a three-bay nave, single-bay transepts at the north and south sides, a two-bay chancel at the west gable end, a two-bay single-storey sacristy projection, an entrance bay at the east gable end, and a single-bay, two-stage corner turret at the north-east, with an octagonal plan, a limestone ashlar open belfry at the upper stage and a spirelet above.
The roofs, appropriately, are of pitched Valentia slate. There are decorative ridge tiles, cut-stone coping at the gables with finials, a coursed rubble stone chimneystack and a limestone ashlar flue.
The coursed rubble stone walls have a continuous cut-limestone sill course and cut-limestone brackets at the eaves. There is a base batter at the plinth of the turret with cut-stone coping and the cut-limestone open belfry at the upper stage.
The church has lancet arch windows with limestone sills, cut-limestone block-and-start surrounds, and metal-framed diamond-leaded windows.
The lancet arch door at the east gable end (the liturgical west end) has a cut-limestone, block-and-start, fielded doorcase with timber double doors. There are paired lancet arch window openings and a rose window over the entrance.
Inside the church, the full-height interior opens into the open scissors-truss timber roof. There are decorative tiles on the floor, timber pews, carved timber Stations of the Cross, a pointed-arch chancel arch on moulded corbels, and an organ that came from an opera house in Piccadilly, London. The sanctuary was refurbished in the 1960s to meet the needs of the liturgical reforms introduced by Vatican II.
The five-light traceried window above the altar in the west end (liturgical east) is filled with a stained-glass window made by the Earley Studios in Dublin 1916-1917. The window was donated to the church by the Galvin family of the Royal Valentia Hotel in Knightstown.
6, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Ballingarry, Co Limerick:
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Ballingarry is one of a handful of churches in Co Limerick designed by JJ McCarthy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Ballingarry is one of a handful of churches in Co Limerick designed by AWN Pugin’s Irish successor, James Joseph McCarthy (1817-1882).
McCarthy’s other churches in Co Limerick include Saint Saviour’s Dominican Church in Baker’s Place, Limerick; Saint Senanus Church, Foynes; Saint Mary’s Church, Rathkeale; and the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Kilmallock. He also remodelled and enlarged the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Newcastle West and designed Cahermoyle House for the family of William Smith O’Brien.
McCarthy completed Pugin’s work at Maynooth and Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney, and his other cathedrals and churches include Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy, Saint Macartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan, the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, Saint Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, the ‘Twin Churches’ in Wexford, Saint Catherine’s Church, Dublin, and the Passionist Church in Mount Argus.
The spire of McCarthy’s church in Ballingarry can be seen for miles around. This is a fine late 19th century church, prominently sited, and it continues to have a strong presence in the Ballingarry streetscape, providing a focus in the area.
The church was built on the site of an earlier T-plan Catholic chapel in Ballingarry, and was dedicated in 1879. The coherent decorative scheme is marked by its elaborate tower that unifies the Gothic style of the building. The rusticated masonry, which was popular in church architecture of the time, adds a textural interest, balanced by the tooled limestone dressings.
Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Ballingarry, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The interior reflects the Gothic style of the exterior and is also highly decorative, with ornate tiling on the floor and sophisticated carpentry in the roof. The mosaics on the chancel walls and the ornate corbels further enliven the interior. The arcade of finely carved marble columns adds another element of richness and colour to the interior of the church. The piers and gates at the front of the church are highly ornate and continue the Gothic Revival idiom of the site.
According to Patrick J O’Connor, in his Exploring Limerick’s Past, the first Roman Catholic Church at Ballingarry stood on the same site from the early 18th century.
When Father James Enraght was appointed parish priest of Ballingarry in 1851, he was in America raising money to build a new church in his then parish of Askeaton. He then started building a new church in Ballingarry, and the foundation stone was laid in 1872. The church was completion of the church was supervised by his successor, Father Timothy Shanahan, and the new church was consecrated on 7 September 1879.
The timber scissors truss ceiling in the church in Ballingarry, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The High Altar is the work of Edmund Sharp (1853-1930), and in 1890s Pugin’s son-in-law George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921) drafted proposals for a ‘throne’ to the High Altar. The builder was Michael Walsh of Foynes, who also worked with McCarthy on this churches in Foynes, Rathkeale and Kilmallock.
The church has an eight-bay nave, two transepts, a hexagonal turret, a gable-fronted porch, a four-stage square-plan battered tower, and a gable-fronted chancel with flanking side chapels. There is a four-bay side aisle, a single-storey over basement sacristy and a canted side chapel.
The pitched slate roof has a fish-scale pattern, cast-iron ridge crestings, limestone brackets and limestone copings with cross finials. The sacristy has a limestone chimney-stack.
The church has rusticated sandstone walls with tooled limestone quoins, buttresses, limestone plaques, trefoil-headed lancet stained-glass windows with limestone hood-mouldings, and Corinthian style columns with banded marble shafts, timber panelled doors with ornate cast-iron strap hinges, and a timber scissors truss ceiling.
The chapels and transepts have oculi, the entrance has a timber gallery, and the floors have geometric tiles. The sandstone and limestone tower has limestone turrets and a cast-iron spire.
Father Ronald Costelloe restored the church in 1991.
7, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Newcastle West, Co Limerick:
The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Newcastle West, Co Limerick, was extended in the 1860s by JJ McCarthy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, was built in 1828 on a site donated by the Earl of Devon along with a sum of £1,400, which covered half the costs of the original church.
The church was extended in the 1860s, when the Gothic style façade with its impressive rose window was erected, and a new sanctuary and Lady Chapel were also added.
The architect James J McCarthy designed the extension and façade. The bell tower was raised in height in 1885.
Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Newcastle West, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The stained glass windows depicting the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the centre lancet, and Saint Bridget and Saint Ita in the two lancets on the right, and Saint Munchin and Saint Patrick in the two lancets on the left, were put into the large Gothic window behind the High Altar in 1894 in memory of Dean O’Brien.
The interior details include diverse forms of plasterwork on the ceilings. These are of considerable artistic achievement, and are highlighted by an ornate plaster medallion and pendant.
8, The Franciscan Church of the Immaculate Conception, Merchants’ Quay, Dublin:
The Merchants’ Quay entrance to the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, better known to Dubliners as ‘Adam and Eve’s’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
The Franciscan Church of the Immaculate Conception on Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, is better known to Dubliners as ‘Adam and Eve’s’ or simply as ‘Merchants’ Quay.’
The Franciscans have been in the south side of Dublin since mediaeval times. At the dissolution of monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, King Henry VIII, the Franciscan Friary at Francis Street, on the site of the current church of Saint Nicholas of Myra, Francis Street, was confiscatedca 1640, and the Franciscan community was dispersed.
A new friary was built on Cook Street in 1615, and was Ireland’s first post-Reformation seminary. A chapel on the site was destroyed in 1629, and the friars did not return to the area until 1757, when they bought a house on Merchants’ Quay. At first, the Franciscans secretly said Mass in the Adam and Eve Tavern, giving the present church its popular name. A newer church was built in 1759, and this was later replaced by the current church.
Inside the church on Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)
After Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the friars set about building a new church and laid the foundation stone of the current church in 1834. The church was designed in 1852 by the architect Patrick Byrne, who planned a tower at the Merchants’ Quay entrance. However, because of financial problems, the church was built without a nave or tower.
The church was originally dedicated to Saint Francis, but was rededicated to the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady in 1889.
The church was reorganised after 1900 by moving of the altar to the left wall and the original sanctuary was changed into a transept and an entrance from Cook Street. A small nave was added to the right and a dome built over the sanctuary.
A shrine to Saint Anthony, designed by the architects Doolin, Butler and Donnelly, was built in 1912. To mark the seventh centenary of Saint Francis in 1926, the friars built a circular apse, remodelled the transepts and extended the nave with an entrance to Skipper’s Alley. This work was designed by JJ O’Hare.
The high altar was consecrated in 1928. The granite bell tower added in 1930 was probably designed by JJ Robinson and RC Keefe, and is crowned by a pedimented temple with columns.
In recent years, the Franciscans of Merchants’ Quay have been closely identified with the work of the Simon Community and addiction and counselling services.
9, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Ennis, Co Clare:
Saint Mary’s or the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the Friary Church in Ennis, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The old Franciscan Friary in Ennis, Co Clare, is now an archaeological site managed by the Office of Public Works. But the Franciscans maintain a living presence in the town in their friary on Francis Street.
The Franciscans began to return to Ennis in the 18th century, and they were living again as a community in Lysaght’s Lane by 1800. They then moved to Bow Lane, where they opened a new chapel in 1830.
The Franciscan Provincial threatened to close the friary in Ennis in 1853 unless conditions were improved. The Franciscan community in Ennis responded by buying the present site at Willow Bank House on Francis Street and in 1854 Patrick Sexton designed a new, cruciform chapel built by the Ennis builder William Carroll in 1854-1855.
The first Mass in the new church was celebrated on 1 January 1856, and the church was dedicated as the Church of the Immaculate Conception on 10 September 1856.
Inside the church in Ennis designed by William Reginald Carroll in the 14th-century Gothic style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
At the end of the 19th century, a new friary church, designed by William Reginald Carroll (1850-1910) and incorporating Sexton’s earlier church, was built in the Gothic Revival style in 1892. Carroll designed the new friary church in Ennis in the 14th-century Gothic style, with a nave, apse, two side chapels and a tower. The altar was designed by the Dublin-based monumental sculptor, James Pearse (1839-1900), father of the 1916 leader, Padraic Pearse (1879-1916).
The church was built by a local builder, Dan Shanks, at a cost of £11,000, and was dedicated on 11 June 1892.
The church is a T-plan, gable-fronted church, with a polygonal apse, a tower to the west, and a connecting block that leads to the neighbouring friary.
A statue of the Virgin Mary stands in a niche on the façade and is flanked by lancet windows with stone tracery, and with a quatrefoil and hood moulding above. Paired lancet windows are set between the buttresses.
Inside, the church has an open timber roof, with tongue and groove sheeting. There are four polished granite columns with carved stylised ivy capitals that divide the nave from the transepts. The stained-glass windows are by Earley.
The foundation stone of the earlier church on the site is set in the grotto beside the church.
The friary site includes the site of the birthplace of William Mulready (1786-1863), the Ennis-born artist who studied at the Royal Academy and designed the first penny postage envelope, introduced by the Royal Mail at the same time as the ‘Penny Black’ stamp in May 1840.
10, The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Rowe Street, Wexford:
The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Rowe Street, Wexford … one of the town’s ‘Twin Churches’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
When I was living on School Street and then on High Street in Wexford 50 years ago, I was living within sound of the chimes of Rowe Street church. Until the Theatre Royal on High Street was rebuilt as the National Opera House, the skyline of Wexford was dominated by the town’s great Gothic Revival churches known as the ‘Twin Churches’: the Church of the Immaculate Conception or Rowe Street Church, on the corner of Upper Rowe Street and Lower John Street; and the Church of the Assumption or Bride Street Church, on the corner of Bride Street and Joseph Street.
The twin churches are architectural masterpieces by Wexford’s own Gothic Revival architect, Richard Pierce (1801-1854) from Kilmore. Pierce’s earliest churches include Saint Mary Magdalene’s Catholic Church, Bunclody (Newtownbarry), which was built in 1825-1826 and demolished in 1970, Saint Mary’s Church, Kilmyshall (1831), outside Bunclody, and All Saints’ Church, Castledockrell (1840). By the 1830s and 1840s, he was working closely with AWN Pugin (1812-1852) on his churches throughout Co Wexford, and during that time he developed his own interpretation of Gothic Revival.
Pierce designed the collegiate wing of Saint Peter’s College on Summerhill Road, Wexford, in 1832-1837. While he was completing this collegiate wing, Pugin was invited to Wexford to attend the blessing of the foundation stone of the chapel. Pugin had come to Wexford through the Talbot and Redmond family connections with the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury, who were his patrons in Staffordshire. Pugin appointed Pierce as his clerk-of-works to oversee the work on his chapel (1838-1841), which is Pugin’s earliest urban church in Ireland.
From then until 1850, Pierce was Pugin’s clerk-of-works in Ireland, overseeing the construction of all his projects in Ireland in that period, including Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy (1843-1850).
Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Rowe Street, Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep’ (John 10: 7) … Lichfield’s last remaining pinfold, where Beacon Street turns into Stafford Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
