samuel j

@THE_Chris wrote:

It a general thing everywhere. People dont like cleaning churches. They say its either the priests or sacristans job.

In a small country parish I was in recently, there were 100 people on average going to church. The First Holy Communion was coming up so they asked for some volunteers (out of the 100 normal churchgoers and the 50-60 extra for the first communion) to help clean up the church one night.

Four people turned up.

People say “The priests & sacristans are being paid, they should do it”. When in reality its neither the priests nor sacristans JOB to do it. Even though those two usually end up doing it. Sometimes a priest turns up, sometimes not, leaving the entire job to the sacristan and the 4-odd people.

IIRC the sacristans job is officially to do with the altar and the sacristy. Even in a small church, they arent officially required to clean and tidy the main part of the church, even thoug they usually do.

Maybe things in Cobh will jostle round a bit after the usual ‘Inter-Parish-Priestly-shuffle” thats going on there soon!

You are right to is hard to get volunteers and with dwindling mass attendees, this will most likely get worse.
We could talk forever on the reasons but fair to say if you cannot get people even attending masses then chances of getting volunteers will be 10 times worse. In Cobhs case, I feel that much of this apparent apathy is only symtomatic of the general feeling and mis-trust the people have of those in office. They have after all been lied to, cheated (in that funds they donate are not/have not been wisely..to put it mildly) etc.
Now combine these factors with the overall Churchs handling of various scandals throughout Ireland and you are on a very slippery sloop. Its sad, its unfortunate but its reality….
Over the last few years when every day another scandal hit the papers, it most certainly was not a time
for a bull headed Bishop to blast away at plans that the majority were against and many for that matter were looking closely at their own relationship with the Church as a whole. What is did suggest was a Diocese and the powers therein, totally out of touch with reality. You may not agree but all of these events were of course going to have fallout….. and alas those in office have exasberated this fallout with their ill advised plans.
Now we see the early results…. The Cathedral crying out for maintenance and/or basic cleaning, a mangement team that have steered the whole process aground, no money being released and a laity just fed up.

@Praxiteles wrote:

The Diocese of Cloyne has just published its Diocesan Directory for 2007 and provides the list of those serving on the Cloyne Historic Churches Advisory Committee. We are told that this committee has been established in “compliance with Planning Act 2000 (sic) without mentioning section or number of the act.

The following are those presently sitting on the Cloyne HACK:

1. Canon Séan Cotter, aged c.70 parish priest of Charleville.
2. Sr. Cabrini Delahunty, aged c. 80, retired lecturer in psychology at UCC.
3. Rev. Robert Forde, aged 82, retired parish priest of Milford.
4. Mr. Dick Haslam, aged c. 80, retired County manager for Limerick (1970-1988).
5. Mr. John Lynch, an architect based in Donoughmore and responsible for the wreckage of the interior and the palladian sancturay of Killavullen church and for its refitting in a style of blank buddhist anonymity.
6. Fr. Daniel Murphy, aged c.38, a liturgical “expert” who recommended the whole scale destruction of the interior of St. Colman’s Cathedral in a discredited document entitled Liturgical Requirements.
7. Mr. Peter Murray, aged 51,director of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork.
8. Mons. Denis Reidy, aged 71, parish priest of Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork, and eminence grise behind the whole escapade to wreck Cobh Cathedral .
9. Canon John Terry, aged 72, parish priest of Kanturk, Co. Cork who is not known for his regular contributions to Appollo but acts as “chairperson” of the Cloyne HACK.
10. Mr. Alex White, aged c. 70, an architect better known for having built, among other things, some holiday cottages in West Cork.

Apart from Sr. Cabrini Delahunty and Mr. Peter Murray, none of these people lives in Cobh.
Mr. Dick Haslam and Mr. Alex White live in Cork -outside of the diocese of Cloyne.

Clearly, with a very singular exception, we are dealing with a committee that would have rivalled the gerentocracy of post Maoist China!

A few elder lemons there alright, no wonder they unanimously endorsed the plan for the Cathedral wreckage as they may well have been in dotage. Are you sure its not the Cloyne Pre-historic Derisory Committee

@Gianlorenzo wrote:

A bit of local news. Some local ladies recently asked for volunteers to help in cleaning the Baptistry and the Mortuary Chapel and the responses ranged from:
That is the priests’ job to ‘I wouldn’t like to step on anyone’s toes’.
The people of Cobh do love their Cathedral but like everything else here, it is a matter of “someone else’s business”. They have supported the Restoration project very generously, and since the proposed re-ordering they have transferred that support to the Friends of St. Colmans and have been more than generous, but when it comes to actually doing something it is an attitude of “hands off”.
Donations by their nature are anonymous, showing up in the Cathedral and tidying up, is a little too public!!!!!
What a shame.:(

I don’t agree, for more years than i wish to remember, the weekly collections are gathered and correct me if i’m wrong, were well supported or at least until the congregation learned of the non listening bishops intentions.

If the bishop is up to his arse in debt due to his grandiose schemes and now has little will or funds left for maintenance, cleaning and lighting… you cannot blame the people of Cobh.

do you now want people to pay or have paid willingly to the upkeep of the church and now by way of no harm clean it themselves too…… no it is not the prients job, but it is his job to manage it and administer publically donated funds correctly.

Don’t come blaming the people of Cobh, blame the management. If they can’t manage move on…piss or get off the pot……

I just have to wonder….what kind of eejits spend millions on renovation and then let it fall into disrepair… or do they think the congregation will fork out again in 8 or 10 years by which time another major renovation will be needed. Its senseless….I can recall people donating, sponsoring a slate..you name name and for what to let it all go downhill thereafter……

There are times I would reckon the OPW would do a better job of maintaining it than these so called guardians…

Reaction from the Palace to complaints about lack of Maintenance !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@Praxiteles wrote:

Feels more like Cassandra….

Excellent….

I know where I can get my hands on a wooden boat but horse..not so readily available.. so maybe you’ll be okay… have done many a voyage around the coast but to call it an Odyssey would be stretching it….
there again if Magoo takes up boating and starts wearing a toga we could be in deep water.

@Praxiteles wrote:

BUt the exterior of the Cathedral is mainly granite and lime-stone

Today I passed the Cathredral and with the dampness of today the algae growth (if that is what it is) is much more pronounced. The North does not get much light so it looks very bad. I cannot say what was or wasn’t used as a cleaning agent in the Granite but it is far to say that much of what was thought in granite being tougher and less prone to cleaning damage, is now found to not be exactly true. The cleaning in past may now have the effect of patchy re-soiling. The whole area is quite complex

some interesting bumf from Scotland on web : http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/schools/mcrg/migran.htm

and http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/stone98/stone98.htm

“At the risk of appearing pseudo-intellectual “

Nemo propheta in patria sua ……. heeeheeeee

@Praxiteles wrote:

At the risk of appearing pseudo-intellectual for it, Praxiteles wishes to raise the question of slime – ecological slime that is!

The architect in charge of the external restoration of Cobh Cathedral was Mr. Denis Slattery.

Some interesting bits fomr the heritgecouncils website
“Stone Work in Irish Churches
David Slattery
Introduction
There is no doubt that the church buildings in this country embody the finest collection of carved stone that any group of buildings does and that collection of stone doesn’t simply only extend to the exteriors of the buildings but to the interiors as well. The quality of the carving in many areas is so fine and so particular that even if money were available it would be very difficult to match it today and the costs involved now in attempting to complete repairs or replacement to the standards which were achieved in eighteenth and nineteenth century church buildings is extremely difficult.

Structural Problems
The first and most important thing in addressing any sort of stone problems in a building is to ascertain whether they are structural and whether there is likely to be some form of structural failure before you attempt to go and repair the building. If it is going to fall down there isn’t much point in spending a lot of money carrying out repairs. If there is structural movement and if that structural movement appears to be active and dynamic, the first priority to investigate. It is worth noting that in looking at a church, particularly a church with a spiral tower, that the level of damage which you see at ground level may not in any way reflect the level of damage which occurs at higher levels and particularly the level that occurs on the areas where the prevailing wind and rain is hitting the building. It is very unwise to make assumptions from the ground as to the condition of the building.

Problems Caused by Atmospheric Pollution
All types of stone can be severely affected by atmospheric pollution, causing the stone to deteriorate.

St. John’s Church in Sandymount Dublin was built is the nineteenth century in local granite and an imported limestone from France. The limestone is used in all the areas of carving as softer stones are often used where the areas are going to be highly carved. This stone has undergone massive deterioration and is simply crumbling away. In the rubble granite walls the pointing had eroded around these stones. Many of them are very small and as a result of the erosion the actual stones themselves were dropping out of the wall.

One of the most famous Georgian churches in Dublin is St. George’s, Hardwicke Place, which was constructed of a mixed granite, Portland stone and imported limestone. The Portland stone has been used in all of the areas of carvings, the capitals, the columns. There have been enormous problems with the tower and they relate to the methods of construction with the use of ferrous metal and also atmospheric pollution. Even the granite has eroded significantly and the level of erosion of pointing and bedding has led to settlement in the stone and has caused structural failure.

St. Catherine’s Church, Dublin is constructed almost entirely in granite. As a result of atmospheric pollution and lack of maintenance, this very fine exterior is now in a very seriously eroded condition.

Statuary on church buildings is also affected by atmospheric pollution. With the costs involved in attempting to repair statues or recarve them, statues are being removed from the parapets and the cornices of church buildings. However, these statues are important and if they can possibly be left in place, they should be. Often when visiting a church, a statue is found that was on the roof, and is taken down and simply left in decayed condition.

Cleaning of Stone
There is a lot of talk about the pros and cons of cleaning buildings, but there is no doubt that in the case of certain types of stone, the crust of dirt that has built up on the surface, inhibits the porosity and breathing capacity of the stone, thus causing a hard skin to form on the surface. As a result the stone deteriorates further, so in situations like this it is very important to clean buildings.

On St. Coleman’s Cathedral, Cobh we used nebula sprays to clean the limestone and it was a very successful method, as it caused no damage to the stone and the only thing that had to be watched very carefully was that saturation did not occur. This limestone has a very low porousity, so it has the ability to take the water through the joints and not absorb it into the body of the stone as most porous materials have. So care must be taken to ensure that the building itself doesn’t become saturated as part of the cleaning process. We also used nebula sprays in St. Coleman’s on the statuary and on the King’s Inns in Dublin to break down the heavy crusts on the stone. These were just nebula sprays of water used on timers which were immensely successful and it is not a costly way of cleaning buildings.

The other methodology which we have used quite extensively in cleaning stone is poultice cleaning. Again it is a method which does not cause any damage to stonework and is appropriate where statuary or highly carved stone is involved, so it was used on the entrance to University Church in Dublin.

Repairs
In many instances it is not simply a case of dealing with the problems which a building has by its nature, its location and the materials which are contained in it, but also dealing with repairs that were carried out in the past, and attempting to repair repairs.

Cleaning trials should be carried out to match new stone with old because it is very difficult to carry out repairs to a building which has not been not cleaned. In St. Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street in Dublin, where granite has been replaced with new stone, the window sill has been replaced, but unfortunately whoever went to the trouble of working the stone, shaping it and getting it into place, omitted to attempt to try match it with the surrounding material.

There have been examples here and many examples in Britain in recent years where slating was seen to show signs of deterioration within a matter of years of its replacement. St. Coleman’s Cathedral had a lovely greenish slate on the roof which was replaced with a Vermont Evergreen slate which is a very beautiful and a very good slate and so far so good, nothing has happened to it, and it has a very good geological pedigree. The other important consideration is that as a green slate it is comparatively inexpensive when you compare it to Westmoon slate which is probably the best known green slate and is an expensive building material which is also very difficult to obtain.

Problems Caused by Ferrous Metal
The other great problem with many nineteenth century church buildings is the use of ferrous metal to tie the stones together. The main problem with St. George’s Church itself is caused by this. The stone work itself is in fairly good condition, but the ferrous cramps and ties which were used to tie the building together are rusting and expanding. Ferrous metal can expand to seven times its original volume during a rusting process so the level of damage can be very considerable. This is one of the major problems that we faced in the restoration of the Custom House. A further example is the Rates Office in Dublin, which has recently undergone repair work and again the presence of cramps and dowels within the stone has caused the major problem with the building rather than the actual decay of the stone. Ferrous metal decay is an insidious problem: it’s almost like saying your teeth are fine but your gums will have to come out, because if the iron is there, it’s going to continue to cause the damage but it has a structural role.

Problems Found in the Interiors of Churches
The problems with deterioration of stone don’t simply extend to the exteriors of the churches, they can be found in the interiors, for example, the marble panelling in the apse of St. Coleman’s where there is a great problem with rising ground water which has salts in it. As the salts crystallise on the surface of the stone work, they can cause astonishing damage and the Cathedral has some very fine marble and alabaster. This salt formation is doing very considerable levels of damage to it, and it is a very difficult and complex problem to remedy. A large quantity of alabaster in the upper regions is suffering from the salt damage. In the baptistery the build-up of salt behind marble which has a lower porosity is actually forcing the pieces of marble off the walls and you can see the edges of the marble there which are being pushed off the wall by the build up of salt behind.

Contractors
It is vitally important to employ well informed people to carry out work, and that certainly carries as far as the contractors and specialist contractors who are involved in work to churches.

David Slattery
David Slattery is an architect, historic buildings consultant and a Council Member of the RIAI. He works in conservation, restoration and evaluation of eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings in Ireland. He lectures in conservation procedures at schools of architecture and institutions involved in conservation training in Ireland and the United Kingdom. His particular area of expertise is in conservation of stonework and masonry walling. He is a member of the Standing Committee on Architecture of the Heritage Council.”