“At St Michael’s, Castlecaulfield, Co Tyrone, the south porch of 1685 has a door surround with Tuscan columns supporting an architrave on which are two cherubs holding a Bible open at Psalm 24, perhaps referring to holy places, gates and doors.” This entry from Michael O’Neill’s odyssey around Irish churches An Architectural History of the Church of Ireland (Church of Ireland Publishing, £50) illustrates his informative and evocative writing style. His forensic detail is the result of dogged exploration of the Representative Church Body’s drawings, vestry minute books and synod reports and of his examination of the role and activities of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (1833-70), as well as considerable church-crawling fieldwork.
Using this storehouse of historical data, his rigorously referenced study provides illuminating accounts, guiding readers across the centuries from the medieval period through the Reformation, Victorian era and the Disestablishment of 1871. During the early part of the 20th century he finds a gradual “cathedralisation” of the parish church involving the introduction of cathedral-like furnishings.
Sprinkled throughout the pages — accompanying hundreds of illustrations — the lingua franca of church architecture deals with bell-cotes, clasping buttresses, clerestory lighting, lancet windows and supermullions. Although congregations have fallen in numbers, many cathedrals, parish churches and glebe houses (rectories) survive in good condition. While the fabric may be crumbling in some buildings, they provide comfort and succour, and O’Neill’s book is an indispensable companion on your travels. The author is not shy of making judgments and suggests that the most spectacularly large memorial church is St Saviour’s in Arklow, Co Wicklow, while one of the most impressive late Gothic buildings is St Columb’s Cathedral in Derry, built between 1628 and 1633.
In the same city, but on another scale and concentrating only on one church, Casting a Long Shadow (Colmcille Press, £20) by Ivor Doherty, Martin McGeehan, Joseph Martin and other contributors, looks at the history of Long Tower Church in Derry’s Bogside. The church opened in 1786, although its foundations date to the sixth century when Columba arrived in Derry
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Seven sections consider the building’s history, its people, remains and records, the Columban celebrations and their legacy, poems and lore. Stories from the parishioners consider their engagement with church life reflecting sensory aspects such as the beauty of the stained glass windows, the smell of incense at Benediction and in one case dropping burning incense on the chapel carpet. A 40-page photographic section reflects many figures from the church’s illustrious past. In an epilogue, Bishop Donal McKeown said the long shadow is always cast by the sun and he hoped the articles would help recognise the shadows of the past, but also never to doubt the existence of the sun in all its power.
Another branch of ecclesiastical architecture deals with unlocking the mysteries of wall furnishings and inscriptions with links to the past. The Writing on the Walls (St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, €25) edited by Mary Leland and Alicia St Leger, provides a unique study of lesser-known, and in some instances esoteric, aspects of the memorials on the interior walls of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, in Cork. The text of stories is engraved on marble plaques or slabs recounting far-flung wars. For example, Capt Robert William Travers was “struck down in the flower of his age” on January 13th, 1849, at the Sanguinary conflict of Chillianwallah in the East Indies.
One of the curiosities is the expressive heraldic terminology. On the colourful crests — themselves small exquisite works of art — are figures of animals including a black goat passant (walking with one forepaw raised), a griffon or hare sejant (sitting upright), a peacock’s tail proper (in its natural colours) and a demi-lion rampant. This exuberant book is brimful of descriptive detail and a paean to close observation. Readers soak up the visuals while mulling over thought-provoking Latin mottos such as In arduis viget virtus (Virtue flourishes in adversity) and Claritate dextra (With brightness on the right).
The Maxwells of Finnebrogue and the gentry of County Down (Ulster Historical Foundation, £49.99) by APW Malcomson, covers 350 years from 1610 to 1960. This study of the Co Down gentry defines them in the old-fashioned way of “titled and untitled aristocracy”, viewed through the prism of the Maxwell family of Finnebrogue House, Downpatrick. Themes in the book’s scholarly 15 chapters include the gentry’s sense of pride in what they regarded as their county’s superiority over all other counties in Ireland. This manifested itself not just in buildings and institutions such as the Down Hunt and Down Royal, but also through generosity, selflessness and what is referred to as the “specialness” of their own gentry class.
Handsomely enlivened with illustrations, the pages include family oil and mezzotint portraits, paintings, engravings and photogravures, contemporary prints, maps, caricatures and sepia photographs as well as colour vignettes and images of their mausoleum at Inch Abbey fronted by other Maxwell family graves. Following the departure of the Perceval-Maxwells, the fabric of Finnebrogue has been saved and today the building, reputedly one of the oldest inhabited houses in the North, is in private hands and hosts events — but as the author notes, “its country-house spirit is fled”.
In another part of the country the fortunes of the landed gentry who left their footprints on a rural parish in the west of Ireland are scrutinised. The Burkes and the Polloks (€20) by Martin Duffy considers two landed families in the rural parish of Kilbegnet in the Elphin diocese on the Galway/Roscommon border. The parish covers Creggs, Glinsk, Donamon and other areas. The book recounts how the Land Act and Land League led to the ending of landlordism. In 1870 only 3 per cent of householders owned any land, but by the time of the 1916 Rising the figure had grown to 64 per cent.
