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Re Richard Hurley’s “job” on St. Mary’s Oratory in Maynooth, one can say that the standard milking-stool-inspired tuffets have mercifully been replaced by a more conventional chair redolent of influences ranging from provincial English regency dining chair to the more domestic kitchen chair. As for the “president’s” chair and its accompanying stools, it is not clear to me where the inspiration for this amalgam comes from – though I think I saw something reminiscent of it in an animated version of Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It is very interesting to note in this picture that none of the chairs has a kneeler to accomodate anyone who might wish to kneel down. It was perhaps to this phenomenon that Kieron Wood was referring to in an article published on 4 November 2005 in the Sunday Business Post. Apparently, unlawful disciplinary measures are taken against those in the Maynooth Menge who refuse to be socialized into Volk by resorting to such anti-social and psychotic behaviour as kneeling down. Clearly, it is no accident that the chapel is designed and laid out in a fashiion that is contrary to the current (post Vatican II) liturgical norms for the celebration of the Mass and disturbing because of some of the underlying concepts of liturgy as socialization whose sinister origins are to be found in German writers of the inter-war period – which should immediately counsel caution. How far is it from Volksgeist to corporate or aggragate or communal liturgy – none of which concepts makes even a fleeting appearance in Vatican II’s Sacroscantum Concilium ?
The reason for the enormous organ case in St. Mary’s Oratory, a relatively small space, is beyond me. ALso, placing the organ against the east wall obscures one of the more charming archictectural elements of the original chapel – namely, an enormous, simple, plain wall pierced only once by a tiny squat doorway.
Attachment 1 is a view of the Chapel as originally dcorated.
Attachment 2 is a view of the Chapel following the 1966 reordering (note the size of the organ)References to Galway milking stools as sources of inspiration for modern neo-Celtic Revival handiwork are serioulsy explained in Virginia Teehan and Eilzabeth Wincott-Heckett’s monograph [img]The%20Honan%20Chapel:%20A%20golden%20Vision[/img]. We are told: ” A number of items of furnture by the Dublin sculptor (sic) Imogen Stuart were added following Vatican II. Designed and made in 1986-1987, these include a massive oak altar carved in relief with the Four Evangelists, now placed in the middle of the moasic floor in front of the sanctuary; ….an oak president’s chair adapted from the three-legged cottage chair of Connemara with a high back terminating in a celtic cross. [a number of items] were supplied to cater for the popularity of the chapel as a wedding venue. A bride’s chair and kneeler and a groom’s chair and kneeler, the symobolism of their design being explained on labels under the seats”.
If this is the best or only inspiration that neo-Celtic Revival can come up with, would someone please mercifully put it out of its misery.
The thing of beauty in the flesh:
Why such should be necessary is incomprehensible when one notices a perfectly adequate sedilia, designed to accomodate the usage of the Roman Rite, on the south wall of the sanctuary. It even has cushions to encourage the faint hearted!
I do like those coyishly suggestive old-fashioned milking stools. I understand that a peculiar Galway version of the milking stool was used in the presbyterium of the Honan Chapel – the last very degenerate outcrop of the once vibrant Celtic Revival.
Re: posting 251: Carlow College, Eucharist Room
Richard Hurley describes the creation of the Eucharist Room in his book Irish Church Architecture in the era of Vatican II as follows: “The nerve centre of the institute [for Pastoral Liturgy] comprised a plan of four spaces – gathering area, the Eucharist Room, the Blessed Sacrament Chapel and the Vesting Room. The gathering room was of great importance in the scheme of things. It would provide a place of welcome, a place of assembly before and after the liturgy and also a place to enjoy the hospitality of the institute. The Eucharist Room is entered directly off the gathering area along a narrow “mall” partially two storeys high and containing an open-string staircase. The Eucharist Room is spacious and light -filled; it was the great room of the house….the layout of the room is orientated towards an informal antiphonal gathering surrounding a central area focused on the altar. This was a development of the idea of the family gathering around the table. WIthin this group the chief celebrant sat at one end of the axis with the altar and the ambo placed at the other side of the altar, on axis facing up the room. The surrounding stools provide an informal seating arrangement for the assembly. Everything in the room is a shade of white – wall, floor, ceiling, light fittings and carpet…The ambience of the room was intended to provide fertile soil for the growth of spiritual freedom. The limitations of the materials used also contained the inner intention, that to radiate the Spirit of Freedom. There was no “sanctuary” in the Eucharist Room in Carlow, only an expression of ritual space and the integration of everyone who participate in it”.
So, O’Neill was chosen simply because he “did” the Pro-Cathedral. If true, it speaks volumes for the glitteratti lined up to make the big decision.
Also completed the rebuilding of St. Bridget’s, Kildare. Also worked on Iveagh House, Farmleigh,Glencairn, Ashford Castle, Parknasilla, anglican churches in Ballybunion, Killarney, Durrow Mullingar.
I was talking about posting # 6 re removal of railings around the pro- Cathedral. What I was saying was simply that when you remove them, you inevitably attract the less poite elements of society to shelter in you portico and surrounds. When these congregate, they have a tendency to creste a mess which has to be cleaned every morning. The example of St. Peter’s Drogheda was merely to illustrate the point. The problem with the Drogheda perron now completely exposed to West St. has escalated ot the point that it may become necessary to remove the shrines in front of the Church to avoid further valdalism of same. Apart from the practical question of the railings in front of the Pro Cathedral, it might not be a bad idea to investigate their historical provenance before demolishing them – especially in view the discovery of the High Altar’s provenance subsequent to its total demolition.
Influenced by Dominikus Boehm (1880-1955), Rudolf Schwarz (1897-1961) and Emil Steffann (1899-1968), Church architecture in Germany was marked by a radical simplification of form and of space while in post-was Grmany saw the dominance of stark spatial areas characterised by naked materials. Not only Le Corbusier (1857-1965) worked in this tradition but also, in a certain sense, Mario Botta who built the only Cathedral of the period.
In the German post war period, building material was made available in the form of surplus army stock, including huts, which seem to have had a peculiar infuence on post war Church design.
Emil Steffann, Sankt Bonifatius, Luebeck 1952.
ibid. interior
Remember what happended to St. Peter’s in Drogheda when the railings were removed from from the West Street front? Another stupid proposal by Cathal O’Neill who will not be around to collect the detritus every morning.
Some examples of the work of Dominikus Boehm, who is seen as a large influence on the Irish modernist movement:
Dettingen, St. Peter und Paul (1922)
Mainz, Christkoenigkirche (1926)
Interior
Another example of Rudolf Sacrwrz’s work: Heilige Familie built in 1960:
Dueren, St. Anna
Essen, St. Antonius
Frankfurt, St Michael
Linz, St Teresia
I think that posting # 251 should be seen in conjunction with posting # 255 (interior view of Corpus Christi, Aachen). We begin to see influences and prototypes behind all those spartan white walls.
WIth regard to Rudolf Schwarz (1897-1961), the following entry in the Kirchenlexikon is interesting for what it has to say about Schwarz’s ideas about the transition from Crowd to People to People of God and the joining of Community and Altar; the relationship of architecture and liturgy; and the articulation of ecclesiastical architecture:
http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/s/s1/schwarz_r.shtml
An example of his work: the Corpus Christi Church in Aachen:
The Corpus Christi interior:
As an example of the work of the Lutheran architect Otto Bartning, a close collaborator of Gropius, I enclose images of Bartning’s work in Dresden-Loebtau and links for further biographical and professional information:
Before:
After:
Interior:
Further information on Otto Bartning:
http://www.das-neue-dresden.de/friedenskirche_otto-bartning_1949.html
http://www.ev-gescher.de/ueberuns/022ae3961a079ea18/022ae3961b114510b/
In his preface to Richard Hurley’s book Irish Architecture in the age of Vatican II (Dominican Publications,2001), Arthur Gibney traces the roots of ecclesiastical architecture in Ireland during the last half of the 20th. century to a number of sources. Among them, he mentions a symposium on church design organized by the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland held in 1955 and to the establishment of the Church Exhibition Committe in 1956. This committee organized two important exhibitions: Eglises de France Reconstruites and Modern Churches in Germany, respectively held in 1957 and 1962. Not surprisingly, both France and Germany had seen much rebuilding work after the war. Two further sources for modern church architecture in Ireland identified by Gibney are the Irish Episcopal Commission for Liturgy and the National Advisory Commitee on Sacred Art and Architecture. Among the first members of the latter were: J.G. McGarry, Professor of Homoletics in Maynooth, Austin Flannery, OP, and prominent architects such as Wilfrid Cantwell, Andrew Devane, Liam McCormack and Richard Hurley -examples of whose reordering work have already been seen above. In the same preface, Gibney writes: “…Richard Hurley has been closely involved with the promotion of avant-guard ideas on church design since the 1960s and has an established reputaton as a lecturer and writer on sacred art and architecture”. Gibney further writes: “His [Richard Hurley’s] work in older monumental churches in the 1990s reveals a sensitivity to historic spaces which has been sadly lacking in the modern liturgical interventions of the past”. As an exemplification of this last assertion, Gibney suggests that “the refurbishment of the Honan Chapel in U.C.C. complements its architectural qualities”. Again he claims: “The complex task of refurbishment of Cork Cathedral (of St. Mary and St. Anne) in 1995 combines a sensitive re-ordering of liturgical functions with a dramatic recovery of the spacial and architectural language of an important monument”.
Behind the modernist movement in Ireland lay the figures of French and German architects such as Auguste Perret, Otto Bartning, Rudlf Schwartz and Dominikus Boehm. Investigation of these may well throw light on the devastation practised on Ireland’s non too extensive heritag of ecclesiastical buildings and explain why much of the work carried out on Irish churches in the past forth years could easily leave the impression that during the Second World War Ireland was as heavily bombed as Dresden.This space does not conform to the liturgical norms of the Institutio Generalis Romani Missalis and is consequently unsitable for the celebration of the Mass. Indeed, it is no more than room which has no specifically religious, let alone Christian or Catholic , articulation. It is a prime example of what sacred architecture is not and at total variance with the tradition of Christian architecture accumulated since the Edict of Milam of 312. Its only interesting architectural features are the sash windows.
I would regard it as highly foolish of R. Hurley to have attempted anything like an antiphonal church arrangement in Maynooth of all places where he simply begs uncomplimentary contrast with JJ McCarthy’s great Choir Chapel disposed in a true antiphonal fashion and architecturally articulating all of the main spaces to be included in a Catholic church -with the exception of the nave, which the circumstances of Maynooth College did not require. When one looks at the faux antiphonal pastiche and at the poor quality conception of the the furnishings of St. Mary’s Oratory, one begins to realize that one is facing a true example of a misbegotten and malformed Bauhaus offspring (their unremembering hearts and heads, base born products of base beds ). The “explosion” of colour surrounding the tabernacle, for example, dwarfs into sham insignificance when one beholds the exquisite kaleidescope of colours of the glass in the lancet windows above and at either side of Kim En Joong’s magnum horrendum, especially when seen in the declining light of a summer’s afternoon. Clearly, neither the form or content of the tabernacle surround has any Christian significance whatsoever and could pass equally well, indeed better, in the departure lounge of a suburban bus depot. Was the provision of panelling along the northand south walls of the chapel a conscious effort to emulate the panelling in the College Chapel? If so, I am afraid that all it serves to illustrate is the sad decline in Irish architecture and craftsmanship over the past century for it is but a shodow of JJ McCarthy and the magnificent wood carving of the Monan Brothers from Dundalk to say nothing of the almost total intellectual demise of the Catholic Church in Ireland – even in those sciences which one would consider essential for the adequate execution of its mission. Truly, St. Mary’s Oratory is a symbol but not, I am afraid, of what is officially propagandized.
