Rhabanus
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@THE_Chris wrote:
I see what caused all those problems.
Who designed the stained glass? Why all the hot colours? Do I sense anger here?
Iconoclasm all the way.
Not even a veil over the tabernacle!! For shame.
@Praxiteles wrote:
I honestly could not tell you what it supposed to be. This is the problem with esoteric art. It is al very meaningful but that meaning is not immediately communicated and has to be explicitated.
I am inclined to think that Holy Cross is on a process that will soon see it looking rather like what it did when Bartlett did his engravings in the 1840s.
Thanks for the Bartlett engraving. I quite admire the canopy surmounting the sedilia. Rather nice touch. Amazing that it survived the Reformation and all that.
Still, no one has explained the “space” beside the chapel with the tabernacle and lamp in it. What is this mess supposed to be anyway? What is that spikey thing, for example, with the luminescent depiction of a chalice in a pair of hands? What does it mean? What is it supposed to represent?
Who is running this establishment now?
@ake wrote:
The vandalism in Holycross]4456[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]4457[/ATTACH]What an ungodly mess! What, pray, is that chapel or “space” beside the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament? A broom closet without doors? An ecclesiastical skip?
Who is in charge here? Who bears responsibility for this rubbish heap? Is anyone being held to account?
WHAT A DUMP.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Borrisoleigh, Co. Tipperary by Walter Doolin (1892)
Perhaps James1852 might know something about the decoration of the apse and the other stencil work.
The interior of Sacred Heart would be all the more charming without (a) the cube of a butcher block down in front and (b) that ridiculous credence table surmounted by the ubiquitous, de rigueur plant. It’s like giving the Mona Lisa a snaggletooth and a sprig of heather in her hair. Why not a tartan kilt to boot? Hoot man!
Less certainly would have been more in this case: more to appreciate.
The butcher block can always be hauled off to a local barn as a work bench, sent gratis to the town’s butcher shop as an early Christmas gift, or simply relegated to the kitchen of the parish hall where it can serve as the centrepiece for some real commeuntiy-building and plenty of fellowship. Of course it just might make a suitable marker for the grave of Austin Flannery – whenever the Butcher of St Saviour’s Dublin should shuffle off this mortal coil.
@Praxiteles wrote:
St Mary’s Church, Nenagh, Co. Tipperary by Walter Doolin in 1894 and completed by G.C Ashlin in 1910. The glass is by Mayer of Munich, the brass is McGloughlin and the mosaic work by Oppenheimer. The altars are by William Malone. The church was built by the Cork firm of Sisk.
What a handsome church indeed – and such a glorious interior!
This is the very House of God and Gate of Heaven.
PLEASE don’t tell me they massacred that beautiful interior.
@Fearg wrote:
It seems to have just about survived:
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Please, someone, explain what we are seeing in this photo. It looks to these untrained eyes as though the relief of the Pieta was actually sawn down the middle and jammed up against a pillar or a wall.
It also appears as though the mensa of the altar to which the relief is fastened is topped with plants or some other trash or trumpery.
Or am I just imagining this?
@Praxiteles wrote:
This copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper was installed here in 1913 during a series of works designed to gothicize the interior of the building.
Its placement looks rather odd to Catholic eyes accustomed to seeing the very same relief on the facing of the altar below the mensa.
A photo of the window of St John above would have been of more interest, considering its similarity in style to those in the COI cathedral of St Fin Barre, Cork. Is it in fact the work of the same artist or atelier?
@james1852 wrote:
This is the photo of youghal with the spire, also i include a photo of the sanctuary in youghal following decoration by us in 1925, and the same view today with the murals intact and restored but without the stencilwork. It is similar to many churches where the actuall paintings remained but the stencilwork was obliterated. It never looks right as they are left hanging in mid-air with no embellishments.
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It strikes me as odd that although the statue of St Joseph is enshrined in a beautifully ornate Gothic niche, St Anne (or could it be Our Lady of Victory? Our Lady of the Christian Schools?) is standing on a plinth without a niche. Any idea where the statue of St Joseph and his Gothic niche ended up?
@james1852 wrote:
This is a photo of The Sacred Heart Church , Templemore CO. Tipperary .The murals and stencilwork in this church were completely restored by us a few years ago, and now exists as a great example of how all Irish churches once looked.
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James1852!
CONGRATULATIONS on an absolutely stunning restoration of The Sacred Heart Church! This work is first-rate.
I am delighted that now at last folks can point to an exemplification of murals and stencilwork characteristic of the neoGothic ideal.
A pity that the stencilwork in the Youghal chapel was not restored along with the medallions and lateral icons.
I hope that someone is doing a book on your firm’s projects. Now is the time to get this kind of book published. Please let us know your publishing plans.
@Praxiteles wrote:
St Mary’s Church, Youghal, built in 1796.
Note that the cross surmounting the pinnacle next the west tower is identical to that on the central pinnacle of the Buttevant church.
@Fearg wrote:
St Eugene’s, Derry:
And a similar view today:
[ATTACH]4365[/ATTACH]
Thanks, Fearg! Good hunting on EBay!
As for the early photograph:
Gone today are the magnificent pulpit and its tester overhead.
No great loss in the disappearance of the lithograph of the Holy Family and the portrait of the bishop hanging to the viewer’s right of the Epistle side of the sanctuary.
Note the harmonious proportion of the sanctuary neatly girded by the communion rail.
Glorious east window!In the new arrangement:
Those insufferably tatty banners are crying out to be ripped down and laid to rest upon the ash-heap of history.
The thrust stage and the bulky-block in the centre constitute an unsightly embolism.
Don’t proportion and symmetry play any role in the formation of today’s Irish architects? Are they all ‘angry young men’?
I suppose St Eugene’s got off rather lightly, given the devastation wreaked on Armagh and Kilkenny.
Even so, the loss is sad enough.@james1852 wrote:
The stencilwork and paintings in carlow were removed many years ago.They were replaced with several individual murals of saints all around the sanctuary walls. These came from the Harry Clarke studio. I have some photos which I will post soon. These murals however were also torn from the walls in the 70’s. So this latest destruction is the third time this church has been interfered with.
I am looking this moment at an undated photograph of carlow after the stencilwork had been removed but before the high altar was wrecked and pulpit removed. I look forward to seeing your photos posted soon.
@Praxiteles wrote:
John Hogan’s 1839 monument to JKL [ James (Doyle), Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1786-1834] in Carlow Cathedral
were a comparable monument to be erected today to one of today’s Irish church leaders, I daresay the prelate would be in an adversarial position with regard to the personification of the Irish Church. She’d likely be crowned alright – but with that harp. It might look more like the thirteenth station (in background) than the sculpted group in the foreground.
I suppose, though, that the most telling monuments of today’s prelates and high-ranking clerics are the very renovated churches which they themselves perpetrated ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
Read Ozymandias to get the full picture.
Praxiteles wrote: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]
Utterly ghastly. A mini-putt golf course? Look at all that clutter.
No, no – By George, I’ve got it! It’s a stage set:
The powder blue suggests the boudoir of Henry Higgins’ mother in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.
No?Oh Guinevere!! Not the wedding scene from Camelot!
@Praxiteles wrote:
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]
What happened to the Maltese crosses that once surmounted the gables of the transept?
Does this description mean that the medieval tower was actually renovated to match the new one on the north side of the church? Was the medieval watch-tower of the abbey ever altered to match the newer tower ‘crowned with richly crocketed pinnacles’?
No one has answered my question about the female (?) figure to the viewers’ right of the central stained glass window. Who is it: St Brigid? Another Irish saint? Who?
As for the window in the east wall. I can identify four of the five figures.
From viewer’s left to right:
A sainted Western bishop with book: St Augustine? Nicholas? Ambrose? Colman?
The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Sacred Heart of Jesus
St Joseph
St Francis of Assisi.I think that an opportunity was missed here. There could have been an impressive Christ Throned in Majesty higher up in the window and flanked by Saints and angels directing their gaze towards the Son of God in the central panel. The current arrangement, by contrast, suggests discrete models selected from a catalogue rather than playing roles in a much greater ensemble. Each saint seems to have nothing to do with anything else around, including the adjacent panel. The colours don’t seem to harmonize either. I can see using them in separate windows along a nave, but they don’t seem to fit well together in the current arrangement. Much wasted space higher up. Again, lack of a central theme/mystery. For a much more interesting scene in an English neo-Gothic apsidal window (likewise based on York minster) see St Michael’s Cathedral, Toronto, Ontario. In that case the scene is a Calvary with plenty of movement vertically and horizontally.
The tabernacle in Buttevant, although central, is utterly dwarfed in the current melange.
Would enjoy seeing a view of the interior when it was still being used as a church.
Any pics out there?@Luzarches wrote:
A news conference is being held on Tuesday, the 13th of March at 11:30am, where there will be a press conference on the presentation of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation of Pope Benedict, Sacramentum Caritatis.
It will be interesting to see whether this long-awaited document will have any ramifications for sacred architecture, whether we might find that the Irish and British Catholic conception of the liturgical ‘mainstream’ is drifting leftwards at a dramatic tilt?
Thanks, Luzarches!
Any tips as to what we can expect to read in the post-synodal exhortation?
I hope it will start to address in an effective way the need to plumb the depths of the sacred liturgy instead of prolonging the rollercoaster-ride of constant innovation. Stop the ride! I wanna get off! Just point me in the direction of the carousel. Ah! I hear the sound of the calliope even now ….@Praxiteles wrote:
And this is what happened to the interior in the 1970s:
The High Altar was demolished]http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~grannyapple/IRELAND/stmaryschurchinterior.jpg[/IMG]
Can anyone identify the awful things above the statues on the wall of the sanctuary? They seem to have been painted on recently, but then perhaps they are the only survivors of the brutalist spray-job that obliterated the stencilling. Either way, they look odd in their present state.
Has anyone there heard of PROPORTION?By the way, I presume that the figure to the viewer’s left of the East window is St Patrick. Who, may I ask is the figure on the viewer’s right? St Brigid? I can’t see the image very well, so I cannot discern the hagiographical attributes in that depiction.
Who or what designed the garage-type lamps hanging from the ceiling? What a step back towards the Cromagnon.
The ceiling is of interest. Has anyone a picture of the full ceiling?
Were there at anytime lamps hanging from the bosses on the central rib of the ceiling?
Carefully comparing the old and the new external photographs of the “decorated” side of the church, it strikes me that the pinnacle crosses have been switched round. What might have been the reason for this? Any insights?
Was the medieval belltower ever surmounted with crotchets and crinellations? I am having difficulty picturing precisely how the bell had been attached or mounted in the old tower. Any photos?
Is there a photo of the interior before Cranmer’s henchmen got at it?
@Elipandus wrote:
A propos of early Irish Neo-Gothic exemplars I offer the attached for your consideration: St. Mary’s, Buttevant, Co. Cork built by Charles Cottrell (of Hanover St., Cork) 1832-1836.
Graceful, proportionate massing, evoking York minster’s west facade, sans towers.
Until recently such beauty was considered humanly possible and worthy of the sacrifice of a few prelates’ new all-wheel-drive Porsches. Elas
A rather handsome, solid building, the church at Buttevant. The integration of the medieval tower is very good. I have difficulty, though, thinking of it as a bell tower, since the Gothic tower looks much more like a bell tower.
Has anyone a photo of the interior before the gutting and cheapening process?
GregF’s comments earlier about the moronic idiot seem to apply here as well.
@Fearg wrote:
St Saviour’s in Dublin now has a very similarly garish red carpet as well.. someone must have gotten a good deal on the off cuts!
Perhaps Victorian bordellos are on the rise in Ireland. Legion of Mary must be slacking off.
Pugin would have designed proper rugs for church – none of this wall-to-wall trash.
O tempora! O mores!
@ake wrote:
Appalling, utterly appalling. Who are these architectural sadists?
All the more appalling when one considers the economic depression of the 1930s and the expense that must have been lavished on the stencilling and other features.
By contrast, the 1980s devastation demonstrates the sacrifice of Cain – leftovers and done on the cheap; reducing the House of God to a shack.
Note the ironic touch: the sacristan has placed a green dust cover over the plywood altar, so as to keep the linen altar cloth nice and clean when Mass is celebrated. As if, amidst the sacrilegious devastation wreaked here, it matters very much about the altar cloth.
Some amateur artist went mad with those plaster statues.
It’s rather frightening to think what a few feet of wall-to-wall carpet and whitewash can accomplish. Even St Joseph has had his share of whitewash applied, and quite liberally too!
Where are the culprits today? This world? The next world? Australia? Florida?
