‘The inner thoughts of many will be revealed, and a sword will pierce your own soul too’

The Presentation depicted in a window in the parish church in Murroe, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Tuesday 2 February 2021

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

10 a.m., The Festal Eucharist

The Readings: Malachi 3: 1-5; Psalm 24: 1-10; Luke 2: 22-40.

There is a link to the readings HERE

The Presentation window in Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Candlemas, comes 40 days after Christmas, and marks the end of the Christmas season.

This morning’s Gospel story (Luke 2: 22-40) recalls how the Virgin Mary presents the Christ-Child to the priests in the Temple in Jerusalem. And, because of the poverty of this family, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph bring two cheap doves or pigeons as their offering.

This is the last great festival of the Christmas cycle. As we bring our Christmas celebrations to a close, this day is a real pivotal point in the Christian year, for we now shift from the cradle to the cross, from Christmas to Passiontide – Ash Wednesday and Lent are just two weeks away.

Candlemas bridges the gap between Christmas and Lent. It links the joy of the Christmas candles with the hope of the Pascal candle at Easter. It invites us to move from celebration to reflection and preparation, and to think about the source of our hope, our inspiration, our enlightenment.

We have the contrast between the poverty of this family and the richly-endowed Temple; the young Joseph and Mary with their first-born child and the old Simeon and Anna who are probably childless; the provincial home in Nazareth and the urbane sophistication of Jerusalem; the glory of one nation, Israel, and light for all nations, the Gentiles; the birth of a child and the expectation of death; darkness and light; new birth and impending death.

So, Candlemas is a feast day with a ‘bitter-sweet’ nature. It calls for rejoicing with all in the Temple celebrating the hope and the promise that this new child brings. Yet Simeon speaks in prophetic words of the falling and rising of many and the sword that will pierce the Virgin Mary’s heart. His words remind us sharply that Christmas is meaningless without the Passion and Easter.

After two decades of the darkness of recession and austerity, the economists were trying to look for the light at the end of the tunnel only to find the country in economic paralysis for the past year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

For many of us, we moved long ago from a time of financial certainty that allowed us to celebrate easily to a time of reflection and uncertainty. Now the double-edged sword of ‘Brexit’ and Covid-19 leave the majority of people with new sets of anxieties and uncertainties.

The lights of Christmas and its celebrations, if they were ever turned on, are dim and distant now. By this Candlemas most people in Ireland continue to live their very ordinary days with uncertainty, trying to grasp for signs of hope, wondering how long we must remain in the dark.

How Mary must have wept in her heart as in today’s Gospel story the old man Simeon hands back her child and warns her that a sword would pierce her heart (Luke 2: 35).

How many mothers are weeping in their hearts and clinging onto the rock of faith just by the end of their fingertips as their hearts, their souls, are pierced by a sword?

Mothers who were forced to give up their babies in the so-called Mother-and-Baby homes and who have been distressed by the recent report and media reports and discussions?

Mothers who see their special needs children denied special needs assistants in our schools?

Mothers who see their children waiting, waiting too long, for care in our hospitals or to move from the uncertainty of hotel rooms or hostels to a house and a home?

Mothers who saw their graduate daughters and sons unable to find employment and have still not returned home?

Mothers whose silent weeping is not going to bring home their adult emigrant children and the grandchildren born in Australia or the US?

Mothers whose gay sons and lesbian daughters are beaten up on the streets just for the fun of it and are afraid if they come out that our Church can only offer tea and sympathy, at best, but moralising prejudice most of the time?

Mothers whose husbands are on low pay, on PUP or dismissed as mere statistics in the figures for poverty?

Mothers whose adult children are caught up in substance abuse and have lost all hope for the future – for a future?

Mothers and grandmothers who have not been able to hug their children and grandchildren for months because of the pandemic lockdown?

These mothers know what TS Eliot calls ‘the certain hour of maternal sorrow.’ Like the Prophet in his poem A Song for Simeon, they ‘Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.’ And they know too how true Simeon’s words are for them this morning: ‘and a sword will pierce your soul too.’

And in the midst of all this heartbreak, these mothers still cling on to the edge of the rock of faith by the edges of their fingernails. Wondering who hears their sobbing hearts and souls.

So often it is difficult to hold on to hope when our hearts are breaking and are pierced. So often it is difficult to keep the lights of our hearts burning brightly when everything is gloomy and getting dark. But Simeon points out that the Christ Child does not hold out any selfish hope for any one individual or one family ... he is to be a light to the nations, to all of humanity.

And, as our leaders – political, social, economic and financial leaders – search in the dark for the hope that will bring light back into our lives, we can remind ourselves that this search will have no purpose and it will offer no glimmer of hope unless it seeks more than selfish profit. This search must seek the good of all, it must seek to bring hope and light to all, not just here, but to all people and to all nations.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Presentation depicted in a stained glass window in the Church of Saint Martin of Tours, Culmullen, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 2: 22-40 (NRSVA):

22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons.’

25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

29 ‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.’

33 And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed 35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed — and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him.

The Presentation depicted in a stained-glass window in the Church of SS Peter and Paul, Kilmallock, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Colour: White.

Bidding Prayer:

The traditional Bidding Prayer for Candlemas:

Dear friends, forty days ago we celebrated the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now we recall the day on which he was presented in the Temple, when he was offered to the Father and shown to his people.

As a sign of his coming among us, his mother was purified according to the custom of the time, and we now come to him for cleansing. In their old age Simeon and Anna recognised him as their Lord, as we today sing of his glory.

In this Eucharist, we celebrate both the joy of his coming and his searching judgement, looking back to the day of his birth and forward to the coming days of his passion.

So let us pray that we may know and share the light of Christ.

Penitential Kyries:

Lord God, mighty God,
you are the creator of the world.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Lord Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary,
you are the Prince of Peace.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Holy Spirit,
by your power the Word was made flesh
and came to dwell among us.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everliving God,
clothed in majesty,
whose beloved Son was this day presented in the temple
in the substance of our mortal nature:
May we be presented to you with pure and clean hearts,
by your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Introduction to the Peace:

In the tender mercy of our God
the dayspring from on high has broken upon us,
to give light to those who dwell in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (cf Luke 1: 78, 79)
(Common Worship, p. 306)

Preface:

And now we give you thanks
because, by appearing in the Temple,
he comes near to us in judgement;
the Word made flesh searches the hearts of all your people,
to bring to light the brightness of your splendour:
(Common Worship, p. 306)

Post Communion Prayer:

God, for whom we wait,
you fulfilled the hopes of Simeon and Anna,
who lived to welcome the Messiah.
Complete in us your perfect will,
that in Christ we may see your salvation,
for he is Lord for ever and ever.

Blessing:

Christ the Son of God, born of Mary,
fill you with his grace
to trust his promises and obey his will:

The Presentation depicted in a stained glass window in the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Saffron Walden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Intercessions:

In peace let us pray to the Lord.

By the mystery of the Word made flesh
Good Lord, deliver us.

By the birth in time of the timeless Son of God
Good Lord, deliver us.

By the baptism of the Son of God in the river Jordan
Good Lord, deliver us.

For the kingdoms of this world,
that they may become the Kingdom of our Lord and Christ
We pray to you, O Lord.

For your holy, catholic and apostolic Church,
that it may be one
We pray to you, O Lord.

For the witness of your faithful people,
that they may be lights in the world
We pray to you, O Lord.

For the poor, the persecuted, the sick and all who suffer;
that they may be relieved and protected
We pray to you, O Lord.

For the aged, for refugees and all in danger,
that they may be strengthened and defended
We pray to you, O Lord.

For those who walk in darkness and in the shadow of death,
that they may come to your eternal light
We pray to you, O Lord.

Father, source of light and life,
Grant the prayers of your faithful people,
and fill the world with your glory, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Presentation depicted in a window in Peterborough Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Hymns:

691, Faithful vigil ended (CD 39)
203, When candles are lighted on Candlemas day (CD 13)

A detail from the Presentation Window by the Harry Clarke Studio in Saint Flannan's Church, Killaloe, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

A small church in Westmeath is a reminder of bygone Victorian values and marriages

Coole Church in Co Westmeath was built in 1841 by the Dease family … Mary Elizabeth Dease married the future Earl of Gainsborough here in 1880 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

When Mary Elizabeth Dease married an English aristocrat and cousin of Queen Victoria in the little church in the small village of Coole, near Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, on 2 February 1880, few of the local farmers and villagers could have realised that this was one of the great fashionable and social weddings that marked the beginning of the decline of the Victorian era.

It is a story that is interwoven intimately with the stories I told last week of the elopement of Lady Blanche Noel and her Irish-born music tutor Thomas Murphy in 1870, the wedding of Sir Henry Bellingham and Lady Constance Noel in 1874, and the grand society wedding of Ida Bellingham and the Marquis of Bute at Bellingham Castle in 1905.

Last Sunday [7 August 2016], three of us visited Longford to see the renovation and restoration of Saint Mel’s Cathedral. On our way back to Dublin, we stopped at Coole, where Mary Elizabeth Dease was married, and Turbotstown House, her family home at Coole on the road between Edgeworthstown and Castlepollard, about 12 miles north-west of Mullingar.

Mary Elizabeth Dease was married in her home church in 1880. It did not have the status of a parish church, but was a ‘chapel of ease’ built to serve her father’s estate, Turbotstown House, and the neighbouring shopkeepers, publicans, villagers, tenant farmers and estate workers.

It was a status symbol in the late 18th and early 19th century for the large estates in neighbouring counties of Meath and Westmeath to have their own estate churches at the castle gates. Following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Dease family of Turbotstown was not going to be outdone by their neighbours, such as the Pakenhams, Earls of Longford, who lived nearby at Tullynally Castle, the O’Reillys and Nugents of Ballinlough Castle, and the Levinge family of Knockdrin Castle.

A plaque to the Dease family in Coole Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The Dease family lived at Turbotstown and the Coole area from before 1272, and claimed to be descended from the Celtic royal family of the Decies in Co Waterford who had migrated to Meath and Westmeath, with Saint Declan of Ardmore as their patron saint. They held on to their estates throughout the Penal Laws although they were Roman Catholics. The family included famed scholars, soldiers, priests and bishops. Thomas Dease, who was a founding member of the Irish College in Paris, later became Bishop of Meath (1621-1652). The present Turbotstown House occupies the site of an earlier castle marked on the Downe Survey Map of the area (1654-1656). In the following century, Dr William Dease was a founding member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin in 1784.

As the fourth son in a large family, Garrett Dease may not have expected to inherit Turbotstown, but a series of coincidences, including a fall from a horse and a childless marriage, the family estates passed to him in 1771. He married into the family of Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh, and eventually when he died in 1790 Turbotstown House and the Coole estate were inherited by his son, Gerald Dease (1790-1854).

Gerald Dease probably brought the architect Francis Johnson (1760-1829) to Coole to redesign and rebuild Turbotstown House sometime after 1810. Johnson also designed the GPO in Dublin, the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle and the Armagh Observatory. He was working nearby at Tullynally Castle at the time and so became involved in designing Turbotstown House too. The central rotunda is a device that Johnston included in a number of his designs for country houses at this stage of his career.

The main part of the house was built or rebuilt in 1810-1840, so work continued long after Johnson’s death. Turbotstown House is set back from the road in extensive mature grounds with a substantial complex of outbuildings to the rear and the west, the remains of a walled garden to the west and the main entrance gates and the remains of a gate lodge to the south.

This 19th-century country house is built in a Greek Revival style and retains its early character and form. It is a detached, three-bay two-storey country house, with a projecting single-bay entrance front with a raised parapet over it and a single-bay cut limestone tetra-style Greek Ionic entrance porch at the centre of the main façade. Above the entrance porch there is a central Wyatt window on the first floor.

With the restoration of Turbotstown Castle completed, Gerald Dease set about building a church on land he donated.

Inside the church built in Coole in 1841 by Gerald Dease (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The church Gerald Deasebuilt in Coole in 1841 is set back from the road, and is typical of the plain, T-plan chapels built in great numbers in the Irish countryside at the time of Catholic Emancipation (1829).

However, its design has slightly higher quality details, probably because of the patronage of the Dease Family. The round and segmental-headed openings are in contrast to the usual lancet or point-arched openings in churches of the same era in Co Westmeath and give the church a vaguely classical appearance.

The church has a two-bay nave and single-bay transepts to the east and the west (liturgical north and south). It is built of coursed rubble limestone over a chamfered dressed limestone plinth, with flush dressed limestone quoins to the corners.

There is a projecting cut-stone string course to the north (liturgical west) gable of the nave, and a cut-stone date plaque to the north face of the west transept. The segmental-headed openings to the east and west sides of the nave have dressed limestone surrounds and stained glass windows.

The main window in Coole Church commemorates the Dease family of Turbotstown House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The round-headed opening to the nave gable has flush dressed stone surrounds and a stained glass window, with a round opening over the gable that has a chamfered limestone surround. The segmental-headed door-cases have flush dressed limestone surrounds and the replacement timber glazed doors have concrete canopies overhead.

The church was extensively renovated around 1976 by the parish priest at the time, Father Patrick Fagan. The pitched natural slate roofs, which were re-slated during those renovations, have over-hanging eaves with a wrought-iron cross finial above the entrance gable at the north or liturgical west end. The church remains an appealing small-scale mid-19th church, and retains its early character to the exterior despite extensive alterations in the 1970s.

When Gerald Dease died in 1854, Turbotstown House and the Coole estate were inherited by his eldest son, James Arthur Dease (1826-1874). James married Charlotte Jerningham, a cousin of Lord Stafford, and they had a large family of 12 children, 10 daughters and two sons.

James was only 48 when he died in 1874, and he never lived to see the wedding in the church in Coole on 2 February 1880 of his eldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth Dease (1855-1937), who married Charles Francis Noel (1856-1916), then known as Viscount Campden.

Charles was a brother of Lady Constance Noel, who married Sir Henry Bellingham of Bellingham Castle, Co Louth, in 1874, and of Lady Blanche Noel, who scandalised her father in 1870 when she eloped with her Irish-born music tutor, Thomas Murphy. When he married Mary Dease in Coole it was his second marriage: his first wife, Augusta Berkeley, had died at the birth of a daughter, Lady Agnes Noel, in 1877.

So this was the third Irish marriage among the Noel siblings. Their mother, the former Lady Ida Hay, had been a bridesmaid in 1840 when her cousin Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, and Mary Elizabeth’s parents-in-law caused a sensation when, at the height of the Tractarian Movement, they joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1850.

A year and a half after the wedding in Coole, the bride’s father-in-law, Charles George Noel, 2nd Earl of Gainsborough, died on 13 August 1881, and Mary Dease became the Countess of Gainsborough as her husband succeeded to his family titles as 3rd Earl of Gainsborough. They lived at Exton Hall in Rutland, where Exton Park was the largest estate in England’s smallest county.

The Saint Matilda window in Coole Church commemorates Matilda (Maud) Naish (née Dease) and her family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Mary Dease had nine younger sisters, including four who became nuns: Ida Mary (died 1930), Elizabeth Mary (died 1951), Mabel Mary (died 1939), and Kathleen Mary Dease (died 1936); two other sisters never married: Anna Marie, who died an infant in 1872, and Teresa, who died in 1924. The other three sisters who married were: Matilda Mary (Maud), who in 1884 married John Joseph Naish (1841-1890) of Ballycullen House, Askeaton, Co Limerick and Lord Chancellor of Ireland; Madeline Mary, who married Charles Liddell in 1894; and Alice Mary Dease, who married Philip Charles Chichester in 1915.

One of these unmarried sisters, Teresa Dease, continued living in Coole. There in 1905 she opened a school to train young girls as domestic servants. She later closed the school and on the same site started Saint Joseph’s Hospital for physically disabled boys in 1916.

The plaque in Culmullen Church commemorating Maurice James Dease VC (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Meanwhile, when the future Lady Gainsborough’s father, James Arthur Dease, had died in 1874, his estates were inherited by her young brother, his elder son, Major Gerald Dease (1854-1934), who was then only a 19-year-old.

The second son, Edmund Fitzlaurence Dease (1856-1934), who wrote the History of The Westmeath Hunt (1898), married Kate Murray from the Cork distillery family. Their son, Lieutenant Maurice James Dease (1889-1914), was educated at Stonyhurst College, the Jesuit public school in Lancashire. He was killed in one of the first battles of World War I, the Battle of Mons in Belgium on 23 August 1914, while providing cover to allow his comrades to escape to safety. He was not yet 25, and he became the first person to be awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for bravery in World War I.

Maurice James Dease was buried at Saint Symphorien Military cemetery, 2 km east of Mons. He is commemorated by a cenotaph in the church grounds in Coole, and on a plaque in the Church of Saint Martin of Tours in Culmullen, Co Meath. He was also named on a bronze plaque inside the church in Coole, but this was removed during Father Fagan’s renovations in the 1970s.

His father and uncle survived him for 20 years, until 1934. Although Maurice Dease had a sister who married, there was no male heir in the Dease family, and Turbotstown House and the Coole estate were sold in 1926. That year, Mary Dease’s husband, Charles Francis Noel, 3rd Earl of Gainsborough, died at the age of 70, and he was buried in a large tomb erected by his wife in the Noel family’s private chapel at Exton Hall, dedicated to Saint Thomas of Canterbury.

Lady Gainsborough continued to live at Exton Park in Rutland. When she died at the age of 82 on 17 November 1937, she was buried with him. The inscription on her tomb says: ‘Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God. She who scatters the seed of happiness around verily shall it be flowering in her heart.”

Nearby in the crypt of the chapel, are the tombs of her sister-in-law, the tragic Lady Blanche Elizabeth Mary Annunciata Murphy (1845-1881), and her parents-in-law, Charles Noel (1818-1881), and the former Lady Ida Hay (1820-1867), Queen Victoria’s cousin and bridesmaid.

The Dease family had managed to hold on to their lands and privileges in Co Westmeath, surviving the changes of the Reformation, the Cromwellian era, the Battle of the Boyne, the Penal Laws and the Great Famine. But the Victorian and Edwardian eras had come to a close, and the events of World War I and the Easter Rising 1916 had irreversibly changed the social order in both England and Ireland. The presence of the Dease family in Co Westmeath had come to an end after seven centuries.

The school founded by Lady Gainsborough’s sister, Teresa Dease, closed in 1981 and is now in ruins. But a banner proclaims that the church, built by the Dease family in 1841, is celebrating its 175th anniversary in 2016. Inside the church is a late mediaeval font that was once located in the neighbouring Church of Ireland parish church, and that was donated when Saint Nicholas’s Church closed.

● When the church was built in Coole by the Dease family in 1841, it was named Saint Mary’s. It was still known as Saint Mary’s when Mary Dease was married there in 1880. However, the banner on the church celebrating the 175th anniversary of its building names it as the Church of the Immaculate Conception, a dogma not declared by the Roman Catholic Church until 1854, 13 years after the church was built.

The Saint Teresa window in Coole Church commemorates Teresa Dease (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Back on the Pugin trail at a wedding in a Gothic Revival church in Co Meath

The Church of Saint Martin of Tours in Culmullen, Co Meath … designed by William Hague

Patrick Comerford

Later today I am taking part in a wedding in the Roman Catholic parish church in Culmullen, near Dunshaughlin, Co Meath.

The church in Culmullen is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours and was renovated in 1989, but dates back to last quarter of the 19th century.

This is a single-cell Gothic Revival church designed in 1876 by the architect William Hague (1840–1899), a protégé of AWN Pugin.

Hague was active as a church architect in Ireland throughout the mid and late 19th century, working mainly from his offices at 50 Dawson Street, Dublin.

Hague was born in Co Cavan, the son of William Hague, a builder from Butlersbirdge who moved town Cavan town in 1838. William Hague jr designed several churches in Ireland, many in the French Gothic style. He was a pupil of Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860), the English architect who designed the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

Hague spent four years in Barry’s office, and after practising briefly as an architect in Cavan he opened an office at 175 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, in 1861. Later he was invited to supervise the completion of the unfinished church of Saint Augustine and Saint John in Thomas Street (John’s Lane), Dublin, begun by Pugin’s son, Edward Pugin, and George Coppinger Ashlin in 1862.

In the year Saint Martin’s Church was built in Culmullen, Hague married Anne Frances Daly, the daughter of a Dublin solicitor, Vesey Daly of Eccles Street. They were married in Saint Michan’s Church, Dublin, on 26 April 1876, and they had two sons, William Vesey Hague, the writer and philosopher, and Joseph Patrick Clifford Hague, and two daughters.

Hague had a flourishing practice, particularly as a prolific designer of Roman Catholic churches, designing or altering 40 to 50 throughout Ireland. He was the architect to Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Armagh, in the 1880s and 1890s. When he went to Rome to select marbles for the cathedral, he had a private meeting with Pope Leo XIII, who “imposed upon him an injunction to make such choice as would be worthy of the Cathedral of Saint Patrick’s See.”

Saint Martin’s Church in Culmullen, which was dedicated on 1 September 1878, was built by Hall and Son. The church is a good example of Gothic Revival church architecture. It is worth looking out for is the use of structural polychromy throughout the exterior which adds textural contrast with the rock-faced limestone. The conical bell tower and stained glass give artistic effect.

The church is built of rock-faced limestone with polychrome brick detailing and string courses. It has a pitched two-tone natural slate roof, with decorative terracotta ridge tiles and cast-iron rainwater goods.

There is a five-bay nave with pointed-arched stained glass windows, some in pairs, and stone sills. The windows are by Early and Powell, who worked in many of the Pugin and Gothic Revival churches in Ireland.

The gable-fronted west porch has a pointed-arch door opening with brick surrounds and a pair of timber doors.

The bell tower is designed on a rectangular plan with conical slate spire, and is topped with a cast-iron weather vane, attached to the west at the junction of the nave and the chancel.

There is a single-bay chancel to the north with a gable-fronted sacristy attached to the west. Three lancet windows illustrating the life story of Saint Martin of Tours light the chancel and the nave is lit by three lancet windows above five smaller lights, all with brick surrounds.

Both the nave and chancel gables are surmounted with carved stone crosses. The marble altar was designed by Neill and Co, and the octagonal font is said to be late mediaeval.

The roof is supported on king post trusses with diagonal struts.

The site of the church is enhanced by the cast-iron gates and railings and the graveyard to the rear. There are limestone gate piers with cast-iron gates and cast-iron railings on the limestone boundary wall, and a graveyard to the east.

Hague designed churches, convents, colleges, schools and town halls throughout Ireland. He completed Saint Macartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan, after the death of JJ McCarthy, often known as the “Irish Pugin,” and was responsible for the spire, the tower and the interior of McCarthy’s chapel at Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, which were completed after his death in 1905.

He completed the interior of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Monasterevin, Co Kildare, in 1880, when Bishop Michael Comerford was the parish priest. He also designed many of the buildings at Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and Saint Eunan’s Cathedral, Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

Hague’s acceptance of commissions was ecumenical in scope. His many other works include the Archbishop’s Palace, Drumcondra, Dublin; Belturbet Presbyterian Church, Co Cavan; Cavan Methodist Church; the Protestant Hall, Cavan; Saint Aidan’s Church, Butlersbridge, Co Cavan; Saint Bridget’s Church, Killeshandra, Co Cavan; Saint John’s Church (Church of Ireland), Cloverhill, Butlersbirdge, Co Cavan; Saint Patrick’s Church, Ballybay, Co Monaghan; Saint Patrick’s Church, Trim, Co Meath; Saint Patrick’s College, Cavan; the Town Halls in Carlow and Sligo; Waterside Presbyterian Church, Derry; and the Westenra Arms Hotel, Monaghan.

Hague had become a Justice of the Peace (JP) for Co Cavan by 1885. He died of pneumonia at his house at 21 Upper Mount Street, Dublin, on 22 March 1899 and was buried at Glasnevin Cemetery three days later.

He worked from: 175 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, and Cavan (1861-1872); 44 Westland Row and Cavan (1872-1877); 44 Westland Row (1879); 40 Dawson Street, Dublin (1879-1881); 62 Dawson Street (1881-1887); and 50 Dawson Street (1888-1899). He lived at 21 Upper Mount Street, and Kilnacrott House, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan.

After his death, his former student and managing assistant, Thomas Francis McNamara (1867-1947), took over most of his work under the business name of Hague & McNamara.