Praxiteles

And another nice one from the quondam Cork Examiner:;

20 March 2007

Bus Éireann needs to review its priorities

I WAS the only passenger on a Bus Éireann bus yesterday, which was a day off for most people in lieu of St Patrick’s Day.

The state bus operator, in its wisdom, decided to run a Sunday service in Cork on the national holiday, which was potentially one of the busiest days of the year, and a full weekday service yesterday.

I understand that on our national holiday our national bus operator ran such a sparse service that people were left behind, including passengers at Cork airport.

I wonder is Bus Éireann run for the benefit of its passengers or slavishly to follow its own bizarre operating procedures?

Peadar Ó Laoire
Ardán Túreen
An Pasáiste
Co Chorcaí

The statue in Youghal is that of Our Lady of Youghal – I am not sure whther it is the medieval one that survived or a copy of the same.

I must say, looking at the present sanctuary, the roundels over the the Crucifixion and the figures at either side look ridiculous without the interlinking stencil work. But, it is important that a record exists for at some stage in the future all of this can be retrieved.

I understand that quite a considerable amount of work has recently gone on in the interior of Youghal church. I wonder did the heritage office of Cork County Council suggest anything about the recovery of the original stencil work and decoration of the church? Or, indeed, did they even know of the problem we have?

St. John’s church (1824-1826), Farnworth, Lancashire by Thomas Hardwick

Catherdal of St. Peter and Paul by Dominick Madden and begun in 1827 but delayed completion for lack of funding:

The Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady at Tuam co. Galway by Dominic Madden begun in 1827 also has an early plaster gothic revival ceiling:

The ceiling as it was in pre-1890:

And here are some of the surviving tatters from the first 19th. century High Altar of the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne, Cork: the predella depicting the Last Supper by John Hogan

And this must surely get the crap-of-the-year award:

Richard Hurley’s apologia for the spoilation of St Mary and St Anne’s and he has the gall to tell us that:

The interior restoration has respected the patrimony of the building’s heritage. Many fine pieces have been restored and given new life in the new plan. Paint and plaster have been removed from stone and wood, revealing formerly hidden beautiful materials. The magnificent timber columns in the nave are a fine example of this work. The Bishop’s chair, the stalls, the old pulpit, the old altar and reredos, the Baptismal Font, the Shrine of Blessed Thadeaus McCarthy, the Hogan Sculptures; were all subject to Planning Permission restrictions. The retention and relocation of these and many other artefacts will cement the link with the past, and the present with the future.

http://www.rha.ie/cork.html

@Fearg wrote:

There is quite a bit of suspect decoration up there – look at the floor around the font for instance:

[ATTACH]4376[/ATTACH]

I feel Dizzy!!

That is just awful! The daft idea of having a primitive baptistery INSIDE the church saya just how much Richard Hurley knows about anything – and then the anachronism of setting the baptismal fount directly ontto the floor of the depression – RH would have benefitted from a visit to the Lateran Baptistery to see how this sort of operation happened in a genuine HISTORICAL evolution. It would have saved us from his efforts at ecclesiastical Disneyland!

And where is the cover of the fount?

Concerning the pro-Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, Fermoy, Co. Cork, Praxiteles has been shown a description dating from 1 July 1828 which requires revision of the idea that the church was given its gothic interior in 1842.
The description says: “The chapel is a fine and spacious edifice 100 x 150 feet begun in 1810 or 1811 and finished very lately. It is ceiled and stuccoed and has commodious and handsome galleries, and and an altar which though handsome is not as commodius as might be wished. Its style is gothic on a plan furnished by Payne which was not accurately understood by the builder. It cost £300. It also has a handsome and well executed altar piece ( a Crucifixion) by a young and promising artist (O’Keefe) which cost £30″.

The description here can only refer to the internal decoration of the church in Fermoy as £300 seems far too little to build a church of these dimensions (especially when Charleville church which was begun in 1812 cost £4,000 -explained in terms of inflation brought on the French wars).

Also, the altar referred to cannot have been a gothic altar as such would not have had a altar picture of the crucifixion as described. Clearly, we are dealing here with a classical altar piece of a kind associated with the work of Brother Augustine O’Riordan. It would seem that this altar was removed in the further gothicization of the church in 1842 which saw an extension to the east and the installation of an east window. This altar was again replaced in 1867 by Pugin and Ashlin’s gothicization of the exterior. The final development here was the replacement of the wooden altar rails with a marbel set in 1916 and the construction of Seamus Murphy’s marbel pulpit in c. 1930.

Regrettably, there is no sign of O’Keef’e’s Crucifixion; Pugin and Ashlin’s altar of 1867 has been well and truly pulverized; and, worst of all, Seamus Murphy’s pulpit was vandalistically demolished in the first wave of suicidal iconoclasm in the 1970s (Praxiteles understands that some of the panels from the pulpit may be in storage with the local family who comissioned the pulpit).

George Payne’s gothicization of the interior of St. Patrick’s, Fermoy, c. 1828 is exactly contemporaneous with his provision of a very similar gothic interior to the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne in Cork (1828) following a fire there in 1822.

The building and decoration of St. Patrick’s, Fermoy, was undertaken by the Rev. Dr. Barry who had been educated in Rome and was parish priest of Fermoy 1772 to 1840.