Praxiteles
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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 interior 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.
The Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne, Cork.
Here we see the remains of G. Pain’s plaster gothic vault of the nave built in 1828:
Holy Trinity, Cork City.
Commissioned by Fr. Theobald Matthew, the temperance apostle, from George Pain in 1825, the foundation stone was laid on 10 October 1832. Lack of funds hampered the building of the church which was consecrated only in 1850. The exterior was finished to George Pain’s original plan only in 1890-1891 in time for the centenary of Fr. Matthew’s brith.
One of the early gothic revival churches in Cork, its interior was savagely gutted in the 1980s and saw the removal of practically all of it 19th. century fittings and furnishings.
And here is another example of the early gothi revival: St. Malachy’s, Belfast, built 1841-1844 and designed by Thomas Jackson, a pupil of Thomas Duff. It has an elaborate fan vaulted ceiling – but I have been unable to find a picture of it. C.E.B. Brett says the following of the church:
A splendid building by any standards. The site was acquired by Dr. Denvir in 1839, and was originally proposed as the site for a Roman Catholic cathedral for Belfast. An architectural competition was held; there were 14 entries; that of Thomas Jackson was chosen. His design clearly owes a good deal to the original design of his former partner, Thomas Duff of Newry, for Armagh Cathedral. The church was consecrated by the primate, Dr. Crolly, in 1844. The central tower seems to have been added later – it does not appear in the engraving of 1848. See O’Laverty, ‘History of the Diocese of Down and Connor’, Vol II, pp 424-427; and ‘Buildings of Belfast’, p. 23: “The finest late-Georgian building in Belfast is St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church in Alfred Street, completed in 1844 by Thomas Jackson. It is a superb example of Sir-Walter-Scottery at its most romantic. The exterior, though of rather dingy brick, is fine and dignified, soaring upwards in cruciform to lofty turrets and an oak tower (from which the spire was removed, with advantage; it is said because the tolling of the great bell in it interfered with the satisfactory maturing of the whiskey in Messrs. Dunville’s adjacent distillery). The interior is enchanting: it is as though a wedding-cake had been turned inside-out, so creamy, lacy and frothy is the plasterwork. The ceiling is fan-vaulted in imitation of Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey. The high altar is placed in one of the short arms of the cross to make more space – an extremely unusual departure from the traditional arrangement. Altar, reredos and pulpit are all pale and delightful. The altarpiece is by one of the Piccioni family, refugees to Belfast from Austrian Italy.”
Thanks James 1852. This is an interesting detail for the catalogue of destruction that has gone on here!
John Hogan’s 1839 monument to JKL [ James (Doyle), Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1786-1834] in Carlow Cathedral
And this is what it has been reduced to:
The gutting that took placed here saw:
1. the demolition of the entire altar rauil which, like Cobh, spanned the transepts and nave;
2. the disappearance of the pulpit
3. The stencil work and fresco work have been painted over
4. The ridiculous screen behind the altar serves no liturgical purpose and obscures t6he window
5, The Choir Stalls are gone
6. The dictinction between nave and sanctuary has been collapsed
7. The steps to the High Altar eliminated
The list could go on…..Here we have an example of one of the first Cathedrals to be built in the gothic revival style in Ireland, Thomas Cobden’s Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady in Carlow, completed in 1833:
From Lewis’ Topography of Ireland (1837) on St. Mary’s Church, Buttevant, Co. Cork:
The new chapel at Buttevant, commenced in 1831, is now nearly completed; the estimated expense was £3000, of which £600 was granted on loan by the Board of Public Works, and the remainder raised by subscription, through the unwearied exertions of the Rev. C. Buckley, P.P., towards which Lord Doneraile contributed £30, and also presented the site. It is a very handsome structure of hewn limestone, in the later English style, consisting of a nave and transept, between which, on each side, rises a square embattled tower crowned with richly crocketed pinnacles; the walls are strengthened with buttresses at the angles and between the windows of the nave, terminating in crocketed pinnacles above an embattled parapet carried round the building; and the gables of the transept are surmounted by Maltese crosses, beneath which, on each side, is a cinquefoiled niche resting on a projecting corbel. The nave is lighted by a range of three windows of two lights ornamented in cinquefoil, with a quatre-foiled circle in the crown of the arch; and the transept is lighted at each end by a noble window of five lights, 26 feet high, and elaborately enriched with tracery: the tower on the east side was a detached watch-tower belonging to the abbey, erected by one of the Earls of Desmond for the protection of the brethren in times of violence, and incorporated with the present building
And here is the point about surface texture as made by A.W. N. Pugin in his True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture of 1841.
A better surface is obtained by using small irregular stones rather than large cut stones – as was the practice with any classical building of the 1830s.
Some more shots of St. Mary’s Church, Buttevant, Co. Cork, an important example of the gothic revival style in its early phase.
And here is view of the south side of the church. It is interesting to note that while fine cut stone is used on the north and west facades, probably for econimic reasons smaller irregular stone was used on the south and east facades. Clearly, this was a matter of aesthetics for georgian classicism still dictated cut stone as the norm in 1832. Not until Pugin’s True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture published in 1841 was it realized that smaller irregular stone was more in keeping with the medieval norm and gave a better wall texture. The contrast between the cut stone and the irregular stone can be seen at the meeting of the west and south elevations while the comparison between the gothic revival and the genuine medieval can be made with the south elevation and the tower.
Also of interest is the tower on the south side. This is the remains of a medieval tower house that was incorporated into the building of the 1832 church exemplifing a principle insisted on by August Reichensperger in his Fingerzeige auf dem Gebeit der kirchlichen Kunst of 1854 whereby medieval vestiges should not be demolished but incorporated into revival buildings and, if necessary, given a new function. In this case, medieval tower house becomes revival bell tower.
The tracery in the south window seems to be influenced by the that in the east window of Chester Cathedral.
And this is what happened to the interior in the 1970s:
The High Altar was demolished; the pulpit atomized; the stencil decorations painted over;
@THE_Chris wrote:
How did they manage to keep a straight face putting THAT carpet down?
A good question…someone lost the run of himself and must think he is the Pope!
Here is a picture of the glaring red (should have been green) carpet in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Kilkenny:
@Fearg wrote:
Spec of that new organ available here: http://www.iol.ie/~rod/organ/specs/kilkenny/cath_stmary.html looks like a right box of whistles. Just noticed that about the gallery, horrible.
I agree with Prax, whilst the new stuff is awful, I think its preferable to what happened in Monaghan which also looks like a spaceship/bathroom showroom, but with ALL the original furnishings trashed. In fact, its probably also better than the situation in Newry, where the orignal material was hacked to pieces and randomly put back together. At least in Kilkenny, a full restoration would quite easily be possible.
Ah, I see the new organ was installed in 1981 – just around the time the wreck job was done!
@Fearg wrote:
Spec of that new organ available here: http://www.iol.ie/~rod/organ/specs/kilkenny/cath_stmary.html looks like a right box of whistles. Just noticed that about the gallery, horrible.
I agree with Prax, whilst the new stuff is awful, I think its preferable to what happened in Monaghan which also looks like a spaceship/bathroom showroom, but with ALL the original furnishings trashed. In fact, its probably also better than the situation in Newry, where the orignal material was hacked to pieces and randomly put back together. At least in Kilkenny, a full restoration would quite easily be possible.
And restoration there will be: and sooner, I suspect, rather than later!
