An Irishman’s Diary about the rise and fall of St Werburgh’s

St Werburgh’s Church has come down in the world, literally and metaphorically, over the centuries. I’ll come back to the literal part in a moment. But a measure of its social decline is that it’s almost always closed these days, apart from a service on the first and third Sunday of every month.

So when I happened to be passing last weekend and saw the doors open, I seized the chance to slip inside and have a look at some of its reportedly fascinating artefacts. And there, sure enough, were the ancient fire engines I’d read about – the first in Dublin. There too, on a back wall, was the 1728 price-list for various religious services, with one set of prices for “parishioners”, and another (much higher) for “foreigners”. The services included the usual marriages, “churchings”, and burials. But interestingly, they also included a range of bell-ringings for the faithful departed. The deluxe produce was the “muffled” ring (wherein a piece of leather was attached to one side of the clapper, for a softer tone), although of course such luxury didn’t come cheap in 1728 – a hefty £1.1s for a parishioner and £1.7s for a foreigner.

The church was approaching its prime back then, having been rebuilt in 1719 on the site of the 12th-century Norman original. It being next door to Dublin Castle, 18th-century parishioners included the lord lieutenant. And with such regal connections, the church soon acquired a suitably lofty tower and spire, soaring 160 feet towards the heavens.

Alas for St Werburgh’s, it was the view downwards – into the Dublin Castle yard – that became a problem. In the early 1800s, the authorities affected to be worried about the dangerous condition of the building’s upper extremities. In fact, after the events of 1798 and 1803, it was the dangerous condition of the parishioners and church officials that was a bigger concern.

By then, the remains of Lord Edward Fitzgerald lay interred in St Werburgh’s crypts. He had plenty of local sympathisers, however, and the Castle wasn’t inclined to allow them a prime sniping position in the event of renewed hostilities.

An offer from the architect Francis Johnston to fix the supposed structural problems was ignored. The spire came off in 1810, the tower some years later, and St Werburgh’s would never regain its former grandeur, in either sense of the term.

Johnston, by the way, went on to design two other buildings that were to prove unwittingly subversive. One was the General Post Office. The second was Dublin Castle’s Chapel Royal, to which the lord lieutenants now relocated their pews.

An architectural masterpiece, the interior of the Chapel Royal appears to made of stone, but couldn’t be, or it would collapse into the subterranean river Poddle, as a predecessor on the site had. Instead, Johnstone used a wooden framework and wrapped it in “faux-pierre” plaster.

But even more impressively, at least from a republican point of view, was the fact that his chapel’s decor also included the coat of arms of every lord lieutenant (or the historic equivalent) of Ireland – dating back from Hugh de Lacy in 1172 to modern times.

These were displayed first on wood panels, then in stained-glass windows. But it was a very long list. And as the 19th century added new names every two or three years, the chapel fast ran out of spaces. Eventually, there was room for only one more coat of arms – which, by uncanny coincidence, was that of Viscount FitzAlan, appointed in 1921, just in time for the office to be abolished.

Getting back to the now truncated St Werburgh’s, however, the strange exhibits in its porch remind us that republicans were not the only dangers in that part of old city once. At a time when most of the surrounding buildings were wooden, fire was a continual risk too. Indeed, the church itself was burned down at least twice in its long history.

But as well as looking after their own buildings, church officials also used to be responsible for fire-fighting in their parishes. This duty became all the more urgent after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Then, fearing similar disaster in Dublin, St Werburgh’s was forced to upgrade to that era’s cutting-edge technology, which happened to be French.

It also happened to be expensive. So rather than import the actual equipment, the canny church opted instead to import the design, via industrial espionage. The parish engineer was dispatched to France where, posing as a customer, he took copious notes. Then he came back to Dublin and built the fire engines himself.

@FrankmcnallyIT