Praxiteles

St. Macartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan by JJ McCarthy

Would anyone have a shot of the Rose Window from the inside? I expect that there should also be three Rose Windows here.

Thanks Ferg. I was just getting to St. Saviour’s, Dominic Street, Dublin but find it impossible to get anything of an inside view of the Rose WIndow. You would not have anything by any chance?

A detail of the Great West Rose by JJ McCarthy at Maynooth College Chapel

The president of Maynooth College responsible for the decoration of the College Chapel was Robert Browne who would also bring the building of Cobh Cathedral to completion.

The West Rose was installed in 1890. The glass was designed and made by the Lonodn firm of Lavers and Westlake. The window was the gift of Gerald Molloy, Rector of the Catholic University of Dublin; and of Denis Gargan, Vice- President of Maynooth.

A detail of the Great West Rose by JJ McCarthy at Maynooth College Chapel

The money ran out. Fortunately another example of a similar gallery at Monaghan Cathedral did have its statues installed.

JJ McCarthy’s West Rose Window at Maynooth College Chapel

St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork: The West Rose Window

@jungle wrote:

I think that remains to be seen. From next summer, Central Wings will have 10 flights a week into Cork with rumours of further expansion to come. So, we’d be looking at 14 scheduled flights.

Then a number of charter operators would also use the airbridge.

It is also necessary (although multiple airbridges is arguable necessary) if they are trying to attract a transatlantic operator.

The real key is to get Aer Lingus to start using it.

At the moment, the charge to use the airbridge is 66% higher than in Dublin. Airport management need to ask themselves whether the extra revenue obtained by getting Aer Lingus to use it would be worth dropping the price. Considering Aer Lingus are operating 12 flights a day* into Cork, the small amount of revenue lost from other airlines makes this a no-brainer for me.

*Although it is worth remembering that a number of these arrive/depart at similar times, so they couldn’t all use the same airbridge.

Airbridges seem to be a normal feature of every modern airport that I have gone through. Having just one at a newly build terminal in Cork is inexplicable and downright backward. At this rate of going, are they going to require all planes landing at Cork to have propellers?

@jungle wrote:

…..Airbridge. There’s only one there, the others are just the stumps of airbridges.

At the moment Centralwings and Malev are using it. Aer Lingus are in dispute with the airport over the cost. Most of the other airlines either can’t use it (e.g. Aer Arann) or won’t use it regardless of the cost (e.g. Ryanair).

Ah so! Then we have an equivalent to a frost-free highway in tropical Africa!! Dare I say a white elephant!!

Here is a review of QUinlan Terry’s architecture from Apollo (October 2006)

An evangelical architect

A richly illustrated survey of Quinlan Terry’s career makes John Martin Robinson wonder why this ardent classicist regards himself as a martyr of modernism when he is such a puritanical modernist himself.

Radical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry

David Watkin

Rizzoli £35/$60
ISBN 0 8478 2806 9

Above: Ferne Park, Dorset, by Quinlan Terry (b. 1934).

Above: the staircase hall in Terry’s Ionic Villa, London. Photos: Nick Carter

On reading this book about Quinlan Terry, the words about ‘a prophet in his own country’ come to mind. Highly esteemed in America, where he was the 2005 winner of the Richard H. Driehaus Prize, classical architecture’s highest honour, he has always been regarded at best with quizzical tolerance by a generally hostile English architectural establishment. Some of his best buildings have also been commissioned in the USA, including Merchants Square in Colonial Williamsburg; Highland Park, Texas; Pin Oak, Kentucky; and Latourette Farm, New Jersey. These will come as a revelation to those who only know his English work. Latourette Farm in particular is a singularly chaste Palladian villa that has a claim to be one of his best country houses, beautifully executed in Ketton stone from Northamptonshire.

Of course, Terry has always had strong supporters among his fellow countrymen, including the Prince of Wales, who has supplied a foreword to this book, and Professor David Watkin, the author. The Prince’s admiration for Terry is based on his respect for the consistency with which Terry has made architectural classicism a lifetime’s study, and the way he has developed opportunities to test historical precedents in his present-day practice. Professor Watkin’s support has been long-standing, and some of Terry’s major English commissions owe something to his promotion, notably the introduction to Cambridge and resultant library and college buildings. In his brilliant, if combative, introduction to this book, Watkin explains the reasons why he considers Terry the ‘single most distinguished and prolific architect at work in the classical tradition in either Britain or the United States’. These can be summed up as mastery of the grammar of classical architecture, sensitivity to place and history, love of ornament, and above all a supreme command of the technicalities of traditional building construction. Even his enemies cannot deny that Terry gets the best out of his builders. His stonework, carving, brickwork, mortar, joinery and mouldings all achieve near-18th-century standards of perfection.

This is one of many things that he derived from his old master, Raymond Erith, for whom he went to work in 1962, becoming a partner in his practice in 1966. Another is his brilliant draughtsmanship: reproductions of drawings by him, as well as the glorious photographs, by Nick Carter, make this handsome book a visual feast. From Erith, too, Quinlan Terry derived his strong belief in the continuity inherent in the classical tradition.

The one thing that Terry did not inherit from his master was his architectural style. Whereas Erith worked in a quirky, original, austere, rather puritanical Soanic architectural language, Terry’s work is more Palladian, with baroque grace notes, and can be very rich indeed when the budget stretches to it. The photographs of the interiors of a house in Knightsbridge or some of the Regent’s Park villas are not for those who prefer a diet of dry toast and Malvern Water. Erith used to joke to his pupil: ‘I am a Puritan, you are a Jesuit, and there, but for the grace of me, go you.’ This human joy in ornament can be seen already in Erith’s last work, Kings Walden Bury, the harbinger of the country-house revival (it was built in 1968-71), which shows the strong influence of Terry’s hand.

The book is an enjoyable read, not least because of its author’s robust attack on the ‘religion of modernism’, which he compares to the Taliban: ‘a puritanical religion, so iconoclastic that it permits no reference whatever to the forms, materials or methods of construction of traditional, classical, or vernacular language. It demands such total commitment that no one can opt out of it without fear of being labelled a cultural, intellectual and social outcast.’

This accurately reflects Terry’s own views. However, it is one of the aspects of Terry the architect that some people find disturbing. He has seen his life and career as a continuous and solitary battle against the modernist architectural establishment. But this was his personal choice. He could have practised classical architecture happily, basking in the respect and gratitude of cultivated and educated clients, without the aura of a gloomy Old Testament prophet. Competent classical architects in different parts of the country have done so perfectly contendedly during the past 60 years, from Francis Johnson in Yorkshire to Philip Jebb in Berkshire or William Bertram in Bath. Terry, and his buildings, might have been happier if he had.

The fascinating thing about Terry the architect is that he is at heart a modernist who has chosen to use the classical language, in place of that of Gropius or Le Corbusier. His Hampstead upbringing, and training as a modern architect have dictated his whole career and outlook. He started out designing flat-roofed glazed buildings, such as the 1960s school extensions (now demolished) at Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, before he ‘saw the light’ and went to work for Erith.

Many late-20th-century classical and traditionalist architects are also conscientious restorers of old buildings. This is not the case with Terry. He has no time for bits of historic fabric and materials per se, or the archaeological evolution of buildings, patina and age; in this he differs from many contemporary English traditionalist architects. This is a modernist outlook, and is demonstrated in his work by his radically contrasting extensions to historic buildings (Brentwood Cathedral), his drastic re-ordering of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, London, or the replacement of a genuine Georgian terrace in Baker Street with new buildings of his own design. In all this, he is comparable with arch-modernists such as Michael Manser or Owen Luder. He is, in fact, a born-again Evangelical rather than a Jesuit.

Thank God, however, that he did choose the classical language. His buildings are beautiful and deservedly popular, as the photographs in this book demonstrate. Crossing the bridge at Richmond and looking at his riverside development, with its perfectly cut stone, high-quality brickwork, good proportions, learned classical references and gilded finials and weather vanes glinting in the sun, raises the spirits in a way that no other post-war ‘comprehensive development’ in London does. Who cares if it is all a façade to open-plan offices? It looks marvellous, and so does this book.

John Martin Robinson is the author of The Regency Country House: From the Archives of ‘Country Life’, published by Aurum Press earlier this year.