reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
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I am sure the Great Professor knows all about vis locativa and will be more than happy to explain – on application.
The Cathedral of the Assumption, Carlow, was begun in 1826 to plans drawn for the patriot Bishop James Doyle (aka JKL) by Joseph Lynch, eventually replaced by Thomas Cobden. The Cathedral is more a large parish church done in the neo-Gothic idiom, allegedly influenced by the Town Hall in Bruges. The building cost the considerable sum of £9,000 and was opened for public worship in 1833 but not consecrated until 1933. It has a simple interior approached through a columned gallery, the shallow transepts divided from the nave by narrow clustered columns. “The result was the clearest view of the high altar in any Irish cathedral”. The magnificent (demolished) wooden pulpit was designed by M.J.C. Buckley and carved in Bruges in 1898. Its canopy survives as shelter for the (liturgically) misplaced baspismal font. The glass is by Mayer of Munich. The (vanished) Choir Stalls were by Cobden. The Cathedral contains a fine statue of JKL by John Hogan. In 1997, following a High Court case and an arbritration process and in the face of widespread public opposition -remarkably unheeded in the age of the laity- a brutal reordering of the interior was mitigated to some degree. The High Altar survived but relegated to redundant remoteness in favour of a disproportioned altar raised on the inevitable projection into the nave. Prissy trellis work chairs replaced the Choir Stalls along both walls of the chancel. It is not clear what purpose these can possibly serve. The Throne has, yet again, been moved forward and parked against a column – at the liturgically incorrect side of the chancel and altar. A grand piano has strayed into the formula. Although a relief from the hackneyed use of the same formula, it has gone unnoticed that pianos are liturgically excluded from Catholic churches since Pius X’s motu proprio Inter sollicitudines of 1903. With the reordering of the interior in Carlow, it may not have been noticed by the architects that the great dramatic gesture of Hogan’s JKL has acquired an altogether new significance – an example of transignification – for he now gestures at their work. Perhaps Eirn’s dejection is more contextual than may have been realized.
@johannas wrote:
Does anyone know where one can obtain any published works on Ludwig Oppenheimer or of his firm. Thanks.
Dear Johannas,
So far, we (the group researching the firm of Oppenheimer) have been unable to identify any published work on the firm. The only material seems to be the reference already mentioned earlier in this thread. We have identified 2 company catalogues, unpublished in art-historical terms, which will be published in due course with a narrative on the company, the people, the little surviving archival material as well as an inventory of their known works. Because this is a collective effort, you’ll appreciate that I cannot post this material yet.
Any information that contributors can offer about Oppenheimer Ltd. and their works would be very gratefully received.
Kind regards,
‘Mosaic1’
@Praxiteles wrote:
“There seems to be little or no appreciation of ecclesiastical architecture amongst the clergy. The cathedral I built at Enniscorthy is completely ruined. The bishop has blocked up the choir, and stuck an altar under the tower!!…it could hardly have been treated worse had it fallen into the hands of the Hottentots….It is quite useless to attempt to build true churches , for the clergy have not the least idea of using them properly. A.W.N. Pugin
I wonder what Pugin would have to say about our current crop of ecclisiastical Hottentots 😉
Re #147: “Hottentot” was apparently a Boer dialect word for “stutterer”. The Oxford Dictionary of South African English nowadays condemns it as offensive. Interestingly enough, though, the Khoikhoi – their own name for themselves, meaning the “people-people” – were moon-worshippers. Their merry moon dance would have graced perfectly the new interior of Carlow Cathedral (#142), grand piano and all – but they too, alas, have been the victims of a ruthless “modernity”…. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoikhoi
The Pro-Cathedral Church of the Conception of the Virgin Mary was built on the site of Lord Annsley’s town house at Marlborough Street and Elephant Lane, which had been acquired by Archbishop Thomas Troy in 1803 for £5,100. The building commenced in 1814 and was completed in November 1825. Plans for a church in the revivalist Greek Doric style, submitted by an architect who signed himself “P”, won the commission. It is accepted that the architect was George Papworth (1781-1855). Born in London, he moved to Ireland in 1806, and won commissions for Grattan Bridge, King’s (Heuston) Bridge (1828), Camolin Park, Wexford (1815), the Dublin Library in D’Olier Street (1818-1820) and Sir Patrick Dunn’s Hospital and was eventually Professor of Architecture in the Royal Hibernian Academy. The Pro-Cathedral contains monuments to Cardinal Paul Cullen and his immediate predecessor Archbishop Daniel Murray by Thomas Farrell. The apse is decorated by an alto-relief of the Ascension by John Smyth. Thomas Kirk (1781-1845) supplied a monument for the Reverend Thomas Clarke: two figures of Religion and Charity bewteen an urn which was his first exhibited work at the Society of Artists (as Piety and Chastity) in 1813. A relief of the Good Shepherd and a monument to William and Anne Byly are also attributed to Kirk. The organ is by the Dublin organbuilder John White. Its present architectural case was build by WIlliam Hill c. 1900. The great artistic treasure of the Pro-Cathedral, however, was the High Altar by Peter Turnerelli (1774-1839). Born in Belfast, Turnerelli had been deeply influenced by Canova (who much admired Turnerelli’s bust of Grattan (1812). From 1798-1803 drawing master to the princesses of George III, he was appointed Sculptor in ordinary in 1801. While his busts of George III, Washington and Wellington (1815), Louis XVIII (1816), Henry Grattan (1812 and Daniel O’Connell (1829) are well known, his master piece was the High Altar of the Pro-Cathedral with its splendidly proportioned mensa, reredos and ciborium. In 1886, rather incongrously, three stained-glass windows were installed behind the High Altar. Archbishop Dermot Ryan introduced a reordering to the Pro-Cathedral in the late 1970s. The architect for the re-ordering was Professor Cathal O’Neill . In an act beggering civilized belief, he demolished Turnerelli’s High Altar and reredos. The praedella of the altar mensa was salvaged and re-used to form a new altar erected on a lower plain in a hum drum extended sanctuary covered with carpet. The neo-classical altar rails were removed. The canopied and dignified neo-classical Throne was dismantled. The pulpit was reduced to the redundancy of a side aisle and a few surviving vestiges of the High Altar scattered about the interior. The Ciborium of Turnerelli’s High Altar was conserved and placed on a squat disproportioned plinth on a lower plain. The result has been the complete loss of the graceful, proportioned, symetrically articulated dimensions of the Apse and of the building itself which now lacks a central focus and suffers from the same focal void as Longford and Thurles. It seem strange that nobody seems to have realized that the High Altar was custom built to a location it occupied for 150 years. Attempts to relieve the focal void by drapery have not been convincing. It is suggested that at the time of the reordering, the significance of the High Altar and its provenance may not have been known to the architect responsible for its demolition. In Irish circumstances, the destruction of such a major work of art may possibly have cultural significance not too dissimilar to the bombing of Monte Cassino or the feuerblitzing of the Frauenkirche in Dresden.
It is without doubt the loss of the High Altar that so destroyed the interior of the Pro-Cathedral.
You have the great line of Doric columns marching into the distance, building up the tension and heightening expectation, then they powerfully sweep around at the western end, terminating the vista by enclosing…….well…….nothing.
It’s such a let down.The mind boggles how such drastic alterations could be carried out at any time, even the 1970s, and that they be permitted by so many people, not least the church’s own congregation. Was there any disquiet at the time Praxiteles do you know?
The altar rails look magnificent too – so befitting of a classically inspired church 🙁One niggly thing that’s always annoyed me about the Pro is the little circles with gold crosses painted on them half-way up every column. They look finicky and inappropriate, an unnecessary detail so typical of Catholic churches – features that are for the most part appealing in a strange way – but here they detract from the power and drama of the columns, especially around the sanctuary.
It is the bold architecture of the Pro-Cathedral that makes it what it is – there is no need for applied decoration.🙂 ‘Mosaic1’ , thank you for the information, I look forward with anticipation to the publication of the materials mentioned. Thanks 😉
Stained glass window by Mayer of Munich in Monaghan Cathedral.
And as we cannot enjoy his masterpiece I give you this lovely piece by Peter Turnerelli – Robert Burns Mausoleum.@Graham Hickey wrote:
The mind boggles how such drastic alterations could be carried out at any time, even the 1970s, and that they be permitted by so many people, not least the church’s own congregation. Was there any disquiet at the time.
I don’t know about Dublin, but there was great opposition in Carlow as there is now in Cobh, but should the appeals to ABP fail, Bishop Magee and O’Neill et al. will forge ahead irregardless.
I believe if you were to investigate you would find that the congregation of the pro-cathedral were presented with a fait accompli. Also in the 1970’s people tended to trust their priests and bishops and would never have contemplated going against them on any issue. This situation has changed and nowadays it is usually the more committed catholics who object to the destruction of their churches/cathedrals. The vast majority are generally too apathetic to bother. Unfortunately many clerics are still living in the past and tend to think that any opposition to their plans is tantamount to perfidy. 🙁Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich who are responsible for stained glass in at least nine of Irelands Cathedral churches (Derry, Thurles, Letterkenny, Ballaghadereen, Waterford, Ballina, Enniscorthy, Carlow, Cobh) is an interesting firm. I found the snippet below on the site for St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Dunedin, New Zealand.
“Franz Mayer and Co., Munich. This firm has been working in stained glass from 1848 to the present day. According to Konrad Mayer (fourth generation), Franz Mayer had a school for crippled children. When their schooling finished about the age of fifteen, there were not job opportunities for these children. Franz Mayer founded his Art Studios to provide work for these handicapped children. It is said that at times as many as a hundred young people worked on church furnishings in his studios.
Regarding the windows in St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Dunedin, New Zealand the Franz Mayer and Co. firm state that the stained glass in the fourteen windows is genuine mouth-blown antic glass produced in Bavaria. The colouring of the glass is made by different metal oxides. After the artist has drawn his subject it is transferred on to pieces of glass to match the drawing in detail and colour. There can be as many as four to five hundred pieces in each window. The glass is put into a furnace and the colours thoroughly burnt in. This process results in the colour not deteriorating, and they grow more mellow and beautiful with the lapse of time.”See attached some examples of their work.
Franz Mayer is still flourishing in Munich and has branched out to more than glass. All information is available under http://www.mayersche-hofkunst.de .
The enclosed photograph shows the Chancel of Cobh Cathedral without the temporary altar placed there in the 1970s.
South Transept WIndows of St Colman’s Cathedral installed in 1899 by John Hardman of Birmingham with “water themes” appropriate to the window’s overlooking the sea:
1. Namaan washing in the Jordan
2. Elisha dividing the Jordan
3. The ark carried through the Jordan
4. The creation of water
5. The passage through the red sea
6. Noah’s sacrifice after the flood
7. David pouring out the cup of water to the Lord.Hardman of Birmingham windows from Cobh Cathedral.
South Transept – (slightly clearer version)- description provided above by Praxiteles – he just beat me to it. :p
Detail of centre of south Rose window – Mary Star of the Sea.
Detail of window in Blessed Thaddeus Chapel – Death of St. Finbarre at CloyneFor Mosaic 1.
Mosaic from Cobh Cathedral that may be lost plus some detail shots.
The harp symbol in the second attachment signafies that St. Colman was a Bard to the King of Munster.
The third attachment show detail of the mosaic in front of Our Lady’s Chapel.
The final attachment show a section of the sanctuary mosaic which it is proposed will be lifted up to allow the dropping of the level of the floor and then relayed. 😮
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