TS Eliot’s marriage in Hampstead and the ‘gloomy’ house ‘with long dark corridors’

The former Hampstead Register Office on Haverstock Hill where TS Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood were married in 1915 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the birthday of TS Eliot, who was born 136 years ago in St Louis, Missouri, on 26 September 1888. I was in Hampstead this week to discuss the launch of a book in London next week, and I found myself in an irresistible search for some of the connections in Hamstead with TS Eliot.

Thomas Stearns Eliot married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915 and they lived for two years with her parents in Compayne Gardens in West Hampstead.

Three of us met earlier this week at Hampstead Underground station, which was built in 1907 and is the deepest station on the London Underground network, and had lunch around the corner in Flask Walk – a narrow pedestrianised Regency street with antique shops and cafés.

It had been many years since I had spent any time in Hampstead, which is known for its bohemian and literary connections and for what is sometimes labelled dismissively as ‘Hampstead Liberalism’. ‘Hampstead Liberals’ are supposed to be a Guardian-reading North London subspecies of ‘Champagne Socialists’. In its obituary of Peter Jay on Tuesday, the Guardian referred to him being ‘born into the Hampstead Labour aristocracy.’

Certainly, during the Brexit referendum in 2016, it is said 75% or more in Hampstead voted to remain in the EU, so that alliterations sometimes invite comparisons between Hampstead and Hartlepool and Hull, post-industrial northern ‘red wall’ towns that voted to leave and turned from Labour to the Conservatives.

Hampstead has its coffee shops, an eclectic mix of restaurants and bars, Georgian and Regency architecture, antique shops, niche furniture outlets, colourful cobbled side-streets and centuries-old churches.

Hampstead also has many literary associations, with numerous plaques to writers from Agatha Christie to Edith Sitwell. John Keats lived in a Regency Villa beside Hampstead Heath now known as Keats House, where it is said he wrote ‘Ode To a Nightingale’ in the garden. George Orwell worked at a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead called Booklovers’ Corner around 1935-1936. John Betjeman wrote with affection about North London and his childhood in Hampstead and his feelings of ‘being safe in a world of trains and buttered toast.’

Evelyn Underhill, one of only 18 modern women whose lives are commemorated in the Church of England Calendar of Holy Days, is buried in the Additional Burial Ground of Hampstead Parish Church. Penelope Fitzgerald, Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer, lived in Hampstead and is buried in the churchyard.

The house at 3 Compayne Gardens where TS Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood lived after their marriage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The poet Thomas Stearns Eliot, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and a central figure in English literature, was married in Hampstead and lived in south Hampstead for about two years.

Eliot was born 136 years ago today, on 26 September 1888. He was a visiting student at Merton College, Oxford, when he met Vivienne Haigh-Wood, and they were married in Hampstead Registry office on Haverstock Hill with no formal announcement. They were both 26 and had known each other for just three months. The witnesses were Lucy Ely Thayer, a sister of the poet and publisher Scofield Thayer who introduced the couple, and Vivienne’s aunt, Lillia C Symes.

The couple moved in with her parents at 3 Compayne Gardens, an 1870s house in South Hampstead that Eliot found ‘rather gloomy, with long dark corridors.’ Her father, the artist Charles Haigh-Wood (1854-1927), inherited a property portfolio from his Irish-born mother Mary (Haigh) Wood, including the rental from a group of six houses on Haigh Terrace, between the Mariners’ Church and Upper George’s Street in Dún Laoghaire, and a seventh house on Upper George’s Street, on the corner with Haigh Terrace.

During Eliot’s two years in South Hampstead, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock was published in Chicago in 1915, although Eliot had written it four years earlier in 1911.

The actor and writer Edward Petherbridge has produced a short film, While the Music Lasts, about Eliot’s time in South Hampstead during World War I. He claims that during those two years the seeds were sown of The Waste Land. It was later published in 1922 and is one of Eliot’s most seminal works, his eulogy to culture in a world he felt had forgotten its roots.

Petherbridge’s film features a portrait of Eliot and some London street scenes by another former resident of South Hampstead, photographer Bill Brandt, whose work offers documentary of 20th century British life. The film also refers to the life of Mina Loy, the woman known as the ‘forgotten Modernist’, who grew up in Compayne Gardens.

The marriage was difficult, and ended in separation in 1933. Eliot said later: ‘To her the marriage brought no happiness … to me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.’ Vivienne died in 1947, and the story of their tumultuous marriage is told in the film Tom and Viv (1994).

Three years after their separation and 20 years after he had lived at Compayne Gardens, Eliot recalled Hampstead as one the ‘gloomy hills of London’. In Burnt Norton (1936), he speaks of

… the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Next year marks the 110th anniversary of Eliot’s marriage in Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915 and 60th anniversary of his death on 4 January 1965.

The Meade dynasty in Victorian Dublin and their family roots in Kilbreedy, Co Limerick

Mount Saint Michael at No 1 Ailesbury Road, Dublin, once the home of the Meade family and Saint Michael’s College

Patrick Comerford

The Meade family was among of the great building contractors and housing developers in Victorian Dublin, developing many of the houses in the Ballsbridge area, and involved in work on some of the great Gothic Revival churches designed by Pugin, Ashlin and McCarthy. But the family was politically successful, despite a close encounter with the Invincibles and the murders in the Phoenix Park in 1882, and became identified in a paradoxical way with Victorian philanthropy in Dublin and as the landlords of some of the worst tenement slums in the inner city.

This Dublin ‘dynasty’ of builders, developers and politicians traces its roots to Kilcornan, near Askeaton, Co Limerick, and to Michael Meade (1814-1886), who was a prominent building contractor from the late 1840s until he died in Dublin in the mid-1880s.

Michael Meade was born ca 1813/1814 in Kilbreedy, between Stonehall and Curraghchase, about 5 km east of Askeaton, Co Limerick. He first rained as a carpenter in the Kilcornan area before moving from Co Limerick to Dublin in his early 20s. In Dublin, he built up his own business, setting up a large sawing, planing and moulding mills in premises on Great Brunswick Street, now Pearse Street.

His business quickly earned a reputation for high-skilled work, and Meade worked from 178 Townsend Street (1847), 17 Westland Row (1853-1858), 152-159 Great Brunswick Street (1863), and 153-159 Great Brunswick Street from ca 1874 to ca 1883.

Over three or four decades, Meade and Sons built much of the area between Ballsbridge and Merrion Square. In the 1860s, Meade began developing Ailesbury Road, where he built Shrewsbury House, later the Belgian Embassy, and Mount Saint Michael, later Saint Michael’s College.

Mount Saint Michael, on the corner of Ailesbury Road and Merrion Road, was built ca 1868 became the Meade family home. It was said to have been modelled on Osborne, Queen Victoria’s house on the Isle of Wight.

Dún Laoghaire Town Hall, a fine example of the Venetian-style Victorian architecture, designed by JL Robinson and built by Michael Meade (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meade had taken his son Joseph Michael Meade into partnership by 1871, and around this time Michael Meade became a Justice of the Peace for Dublin.

The Meade family also built many Roman Catholic parish churches designed by Ashlin, Pugin and McCarthy. Their church contracts included the Augustinian Church of Saint Augustine and Saint John the Baptist, popularly known as ‘John’s Lane Church’ (Pugin and Ashlin, 1862-1874), described by John Ruskin as ‘a poem in stone’, and the church at Mount Argus, Harold’s Cross (McCarthy, 1866-1878), as well as Saint Patrick’s Church, Monkstown (1861), the Church of the Sacred Heart, Donnybrook (1864) and the Church of the Annunciation, Rathfarnham (Ashlin, 1879).

Meade’s other works included the O’Connell Monument and Vault (1851-1869), Glasnevin Cemetery; the Gaeity Theatre, Dublin; Dún Laoghaire Town Hall (1878-1880), designed by John Loftus Robinson (ca 1848-1894) in the style of a Venetian palace; Saint Mary’s Psychiatric Hospital (1863-1866), Galway Road, Ennis, Co Clare; and Saint Colman’s Cathedral (Pugin and Ashlin, 1867-1878), Cobh, Co Cork.

Saint Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co Cork … built by Michael Meade in 1867-1878 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meade’s reputation survived the potential damage caused by the Phoenix Park murders on 6 May 1882, when the Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the Under Secretary, Thomas Henry Burke, were murdered in Dublin. The murders were carried out by the ‘Invincibles,’ a dissident Republican faction founded by James Carey (1845-1893), who had been a bricklayer in Meade’s building firm for 18 years.

Michael Meade married his first wife Mary Ann Ryan ca 1837/1838. They were parents of five children, four sons and a daughter:

1, Joseph Michael Meade (1839-1900), who inherited the major part of his father’s fortune and business interests.
2, Edward John Meade (1840-1907).
3, Michael Thomas Meade (1843-1885), who married twice: (1) Maria Gavin on 29 June 1869, and (2) Annie Hynes.
4, Bridget Meade (born 1845).
5, Daniel O’Connell Meade (1848-1930).

Michael Meade married his second wife Bridget Ashe in 1850. They were parents of four more sons:

6, David Peter Ashe Meade (1851-1877).
7, John Francis Meade (1852-1879).
8, Francis Bernard Meade (1856-1882), who lived in New York.
9, Thomas Patrick Meade (1858-1933), who lived in England.

Michael Meade died on 24 May 1886, aged 72. His second wife Bridget died on 28 July 1886, aged 65. They were buried in the family vault at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, which includes an image of Saint Michael standing guard over Michael Meade and his family.

Michael Meade’s eldest son, Joseph Michael Meade (1839-1900), continued the family’s business of building contractor. He was born in 1839, was educated at Trinity College Dublin, and by 1871 he was a partner in his father’s fast-expanding business, Meade & Son.

Kathleen Mary Meade was born in the Mansion House, Dublin, in 1891 when her father Joseph Meade was Lord Mayor of Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After his father’s death, Joseph Michael Meade continued to build up the family business until it employed about 900 men. He worked from 153-159 Great Brunswick Street from ca 1874 to ca 1883. He was one of the most significant builders in late Victorian Dublin, and his contracts included the masonry for the Loop Line railway, Bray Catholic church, the Convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor on the South Circular Road, and Guinness’s printing works.

Meade was a Parnellite Nationalist in politics. He was elected to Dublin Corporation on 25 November 1886 as the alderman for the Trinity Ward. He was High Sheriff of Dublin in 1889 and Lord Mayor of Dublin twice, in 1891 and 1892. Meade was awarded an honorary doctorate (LL.D) by Trinity College Dublin in 1892 and became a member of the Privy Council for Ireland in 1893.

Meade is credited with first putting forward the idea of inviting Queen Victoria to Ireland for a fourth visit to Ireland, which took place on 3-27 April 1900.

He was chairman of the Hibernian Bank, and a director of the London Liverpool & Globe Insurance Co, Boland’s Ltd, the Ocean Accident Guarantee Corporation and the Dublin Port and Docks Board. He was also president of the Dublin Master Builders’ Association in the 1890s.

Meade invested in tenement properties in Dublin, and when houses on Henrietta Street came on the market in the late 19th century, Meade acquired a number, with door cases and fireplace features removed from homes and sold at auction, while the physical spaces were subdivided, into tenements in which more than 70 people lived. The historian Bridget Hourican notes, ‘Nine tenement houses which he owned in Henrietta Street were then auctioned; these alone had provided him with a gross annual rental of £1,500.’

Meade was married twice. In 1870, he married his first wife, Katherine Josephine Carvill, a daughter of William Carvill of Rathgar House, Orwell Road, later the Bethany Home, and later the Orwell Lodge Nursing Home. Carvill was a builder and developer who built large parts of suburban Rathgar. In 1887, Meade married his second wife, Ada Louise Willis, a daughter of Dr Thomas Willis of Dublin.

Kate and Joseph Meade were the parents of one daughter:

1, Mary Josephine, who married Thomas C Ross on 8 June 1898.

Ada and Joseph Meade were the parents of four further children, three sons and a daughter:

2, Thomas George Meade, born 23 January 1888
3, Joseph Michael Meade, born 28 August 1889, a barrister in 1920
4, Kathleen Mary Meade, born in 1891 in the Mansion House, Dublin, when Joseph Meade was Lord Mayor of Dublin
5, Michael Meade, born 31 December 1895

John Joseph Meade invested heavily in the tenement properties in Henrietta Street, Dublin, when they came on the market in the late 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Joseph Meade lived at 153 Rathgar Road ca 1874-1875, at 19 Ailesbury Road (1883), and at Mount Saint Michael, Ailesbury Road, from ca 1896 until his death. He died at home, suddenly, on 14 July 1900, three months after Queen Victoria’s final visit to Ireland, which he had promoted. He was buried three days later at Glasnevin Cemetery, close to the O’Connell Memorial he was involved in building.

At the time of his death in 1900, Meade’s property was valued at £60,000, the vast majority of it invested in his Dublin tenement homes. As one of the principal proprietors of many of the worst tenement buildings in Dublin, he was condemned in the pages of James Connolly’s The Workers’ Republic. When the master painters of the city locked out some 800 employers in a dispute with the painters' union, Meade was condemned by name in Connolly’s paper, which declared ‘here then is a crucial case for trade unionism.’

The popular image of Meade is as an exploitative tenement landlord and as a ‘slum landlord’ during the Lockout times. But he was long dead by then, and the truth is more nuanced. His obituaries noted Meade’s significant philanthropy, while one voice in an inquiry in 1914 noted that he ‘practically reconstructed these houses inside and formed them into flats and provided them generally with sanitary accommodation.’

As for Mount Saint Michael, Joseph Meade’s home at No 1 Ailesbury Road, this was a substantial property, and it had 21 rooms in 1901, when it was the home of his widow Ada. In the 1940s, the house became Saint Michael’s College, Ailesbury Road.

When Meade acquired a number of houses in Henrietta Street, he removed doorcases and fireplaces and sold them at auction (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Biographical note:

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is the Church of Ireland priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale Group of Parishes, and has been living in Askeaton for the past five years.

This feature was first published in the current (2021) edition of ABC News, the annual magazine of Askeaton/Ballysteen Community Council Muinitgir na Tíre (pp 30-32), edited by Geraldine O’Brien and Teresa Wallace

Victorian villas in Dalkey, a pioneering medical discovery, and royal visits

Iniscorrig on Coliemore Road, Dalkey … built as a summer residence for Sir Dominic Corrigan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

On the way back from Bulloch Harbour and a walk through Dalkey Village last week, Coliemore Road was lined with a number of elegant houses looking out to Dalkey Island and the Irish Sea. These Victorian Villas were built in the 19th century as summer residence for prosperous people who found the new railway line allowed them to escape to the sea airs while they continued their professional practices in the city centre.

They include houses such as Rockview, now on the market, Cliff Castle, recently sold, Inniscorig, built for a pioneer in Victorian medicine, and Queenstown Castle.

I have written in the past about Dakey’s mediaeval castles, but these romantic, castellated villas and mansions had no mediaeval historical background; instead, they were suburban statements of wealth by the post-Famine professional classes in Dublin.

Inniscorrig is one of these romantic mansions, with a spectacular and coastal position and its own private harbour. The working harbour is one of only two in private hands in Dublin and provides direct sea access.

Inside, there are sea views from all the principal rooms. The accommodation extends to 536 square metres, including a lodge house, and the grounds extend to 0.3 hectare (0.75 acre) along the shoreline, with panoramic coastal views that stretch from Dun Laoghaire over the bay to Howth Head, taking in the rocky seashore and Dalkey Island.

Brass plates in Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, commemorate Sir Dominic Corrigan and his family … he built Inniscorrig in 1847 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Inniscorrig was built in 1847 by the Dublin physician Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880), who first diagnosed the heart condition known as Corrigan’s Pulse.

Corrigan was born in Thomas Street, Dublin, on 2 December 1802, the son of a dealer in agricultural tools, and was educated in Saint Patrick's College, Maynooth. There he was inspired to study medicine by the physician in attendance, and spent several years as am apprentice to the local doctor, Edward Talbot O’Kelly.

Corrigan studied medicine in Dublin, later transferring to Edinburgh Medical School where he received his MD degree in 1825. He then returned to Dublin and set up a private practice, first at 11 Ormond Street, later at 12 Bachelor’s Walk, and from 1837 at 4 Merrion Square West.

His work with many of Dublin’s poorest people led to him specialising in diseases of the heart and lungs, and he was a hard-working physician throughout the Great Famine. He was also physician to Maynooth College, the Sick Poor Institute, the Charitable Infirmary Jervis Street (1830-1843) and the House of Industry Hospitals (1840-1866).

Corrigan’s application to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland was rejected in 1846. But he was appointed physician-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria in Ireland in 1847, and he received an honorary MD from Trinity College Dublin two years later.

Corrigan challenged the opposition he had faced in the RCPI by sitting the college's entrance exam with the newly qualified doctors in 1855. He became a fellow in 1856, and in 1859 was elected president, the first Roman Catholic to hold the position, and ge was re-elected president an unprecedented four times.

He was a member of the senate of the Queen’s University from the 1840s, and became its vice-chancellor in 1871. He was President of the Royal Zoological Society of Dublin, the Dublin Pathological Society, and the Dublin Pharmaceutical Society. He was a member of the board of Glasnevin Cemetery and a member of the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Committee.

He was given the title of a baronet, with the designation ‘of Cappagh and Inniscorrig’, in 1866, partly as a reward for his services as a Commissioner of Education. He was elected a Liberal MP for Dublin at a by-election in 1870. In Parliament, he actively campaigned for reforms in education in Ireland and the early release of Fenian prisoners. But his support for temperance and Sunday closing of pubs may have antagonised his constituents and he did not stand for re-election in 1874.

Corrigan married Joanna Woodlock, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and sister of the Bishop Bartholomew Woodlock of Ardagh, in 1827. They were the parents of six children, three girls and three boys. Their eldest son, Captain John Joseph Corrigan, died on 6 January 1866 aged 35 years and is buried in Melbourne, Australia. His grandson succeeded him as the second baronet.

Corrigan died at Merrion Square, Dublin, on 1 February 1880, and he is buried in the crypt of Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row. A statue of Corrigan by John Henry Foley stands in the Graves Hall of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland in Kildare Street, Dublin. The Corrigan Ward in Beaumont Hospital is named in his honour.

His title was inherited by his grandson, Sir John Joseph Corrigan (1859-1883), but he died at the age of 23 and with him the family title died too.

Sir Dominic Corrigan built Inniscorrig as his summer retreat in Dalkey in 1847. Later, it was the home of the architect John Joseph Robinson (1887-1965), the architect of Galway Cathedral, who made Inniscorrig his home from 1940 until his death in 1965. His father, John Loftus Robinson (ca 1848-1894), was the architect of Dun Laoghaire Town Hall.

Prominent guests at Inniscorrig included King Edward VII and King George V. Their visits are commemorated by a crown and star set in pebbles into the patio terraces on either side of the front door along with elaborate plasterwork motifs throughout. Corrigan himself is commemorated in a granite bust over the front door.

The interior plasterwork includes Tudor roses and mosaics, and there is a fifth bedroom in the tower. The Italianate gardens link the house and grounds, with arched granite statue niches either side of the front door combining with a series of Gothic arches. They protect a ‘secret garden’ and frame the views of the islands and the sea.

A decked terrace off the sea-front elevation leads to a lawn terrace and to the harbour terrace. Protected from westerly winds, this large harbour terrace provides a harbour-side sanctuary and an entertaining plaza. There is a tidal swimming pool and a boathouse, and the harbour includes a working winch, and boasts a separate.

When this Gothic Revival mansion went on sale in 2015, it was described as Dublin’s latest ‘most expensive home,’ with an asking price of €10.5 million. Inniscorrig sold after two years on the market.

Cliff Castle was once a popular venue for wedding receptions and 21st birthday parties (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Neighbouring Cliff Castle sold at auction for more than £2.5 million in 1999. It was built as a private residence in the 1840s, and was a popular hotel until the 1980s. It was run by the McGettigans and earlier by the Phelans of the Miami Showband.

Cliff Castle was known as a venue for wedding receptions and 21st birthday parties, and, during the 1960s for its afternoon tea dances.

It has a floor area of around 6,000 sq ft, and is now a five-bedroom family home. The internal features include a turret room with a roundel of stained-glass set high overhead in the domed ceiling.

Cliff Castle, with its battlement towers, stands on three-quarters of an acre with extensive water frontage, its own harbour and a large suntrap garden behind high walls.

Rockview stands on a quarter-acre site and is on the market (Photograph; Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Rockview is another Victorian home on Coliemore Road with a sea-front site of about a quarter of an acre with direct shoreline access.

Rockview is a five-bedroom house and is on the market through Sherry FitzGerald, with an asking price of €5.25 million.

Queenstown Castle is a castellated Victorian property further up Coliemore Road. It is no longer a private residence for a single family but has been converted into five apartments.

Queenstown Castle has been converted into five apartments (Photograph; Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Updated: 24 April 2021; thanks to Georgina Sweetnam for coredctions to the dates for John Robinson, father and son.

The Precentor of Limerick whose son was an SPG missionary in India

The Precentor’s stall in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

When a project looking at my predecessors as Precentors of Limerick was postponed some months ago due to the pandemic limits on public events, I thought it might still be interesting to continue looking at past precentors in a number of blog postings.

In earlier postings, I recalled some previous precentors who had been accused of ‘dissolute living’ or being a ‘notorious fornicator’ (Awly O Lonysigh), or who were killed in battle (Thomas Purcell). There were those who became bishops or archbishops: Denis O’Dea (Ossory), Richard Purcell (Ferns) and John Long (Armagh).

There was the tragic story too of Robert Grave, who became Bishop of Ferns while remaining Precentor of Limerick, but – only weeks after his consecration – drowned with all his family in Dublin Bay as they made their way by sea to their new home in Wexford (read more HERE).

In the 17th century, two members of the Gough family were also appointed Precentors of Limerick. In all, three brothers in this family were priests in the Church of Ireland and two were priests in the Church of England, and the Rathkeale branch of the family was the ancestral line of one of Ireland’s most famous generals (read more HERE).

In the mid to late 18th century, two members of the Maunsell family were Precentors of Limerick: Richard Maunsell (1745-1747) and William Thomas Maunsell (1786-1781) (read more HERE).

They were related to Canon John Warburton who was, perhaps, the longest-ever holder of the office, being Precentor of Limerick for 60 years from 1818 until he died to 1878 (red more HERE).

Warburton’ successor, Canon Frederic Charles Hamilton, provides an interesting link with both this group of parishes, with the Mariner’s Church in Dún Laoghaire, which I was writing about earlier this month (see HERE), and with the Anglican mission agency SPG, now USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), of which I am a trustee.

Frederic Charles Hamilton (1824-1904) was probably a member of a family with earlier links with clerical life in the Diocese of Limerick: John Hamilton (1720-1767), originally from Co Monaghan, was in parish ministry in the diocese from 1753 to 1767, when he was the Vicar or Rector of a number of parishes in West Limerick, including Abbeyfeale, Kilbroderan and KIlcolman, and was also Vicar of Shanagolden shortly before he died.

Frederic Charles Hamilton was born in Gloucestershire in 1828, but his family later returned to Ireland, and he was educated at Trinity College Dublin before ordination.

His first appointment after ordination as a deacon was as Assistant Chaplain of the Mariners’ Church, Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) in 1851-1852, when the first chaplain was the Revd Richard Sinclair Brooke (1802-1882).

Canon Frederic Hamilton was the Rector of Saint John’s, Limerick, in 1869-1883 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Hamilton moved to Limerick later in 1855 when he was appointed a Vicar Choral of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, a position who would retain for the rest of his life, and was ordained priest in 1856.

He remained in the Diocese of Limerick for the next half century, and was curate of Saint Michael’s, Limerick (1859-1861), Vicar of Crecoragh (1861-1868), Vicar of Bruree (1868-1869), Rector of Saint John’s, Limerick (1869-1883), and finally Rector of Saint Michael’s, Limerick (1883-1904).

He was also Diocesan Registrar, and in the cathedral chapter he was Prebendary of Donaghmore (1861-1871), Prebendary of Saint Munchin’s (1871-1878), Precentor of Limerick (1878-1883), and then Archdeacon of Limerick (1883-1904) and Prebendary of Effin (1891-1901).

When he died on 4 June 1904, he was buried in the churchyard at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick.

Archdeacon Hamilton’s wife Emma (Cartmel) was the daughter of a priest in the Diocese of David’s in Wales. Their eldest son, the Revd George Frederick Hamilton (1868-1944), was born at Wellesley Lodge in Limerick on 28 July 1868, while they were living at the Vicarage in Bruree.

George Frederick Hamilton was ordained deacon by the Archbishop of Dublin in 1891 went to India immediately as a missionary with SPG and the Dublin University Mission in Hazaribagh, until 1904. While he was in India, he translated Saint Mark’s Gospel and a number of hymns into Hindi. On a return visit to Ireland, he was ordained priest by the Bishop of Ossory on behalf of the Bishop of Limerick in 1898.

George Frederick Hamilton returned to Ireland on his father’s death in 1904, and after parish ministry in the Diocese of Tuam from 1904 to 1923, he returned to the Diocese of Limerick in 1923 as priest-in-charge and then, from 1928 as Rector of Ballingarry in west Limerick, a parish that became part of the Rathkeale Group of Parishes in 1958.

He retired in 1931, and was living at 59 Palmerston Road, Rathmines, when he died on 11 July 1944.

Canon George Hamilton was in Ballingarry, Co Limerick in 1923-1931 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘A Bird in the Hand’: new street art by Juliette O’Brien in Dún Laoghaire

‘A Bird in the Hand’ … street art by Juliette O’Brien on Marine Road, Dún Laoghaire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Street art is always engaging, and is often surprising, popping up in unexpected places in urban settings and challenging us with images and to explore ideas that sometimes are far from the priorities of the moment.

During my recent visit to Dún Laoghaire, I was surprised by ‘A Bird in the Hand,’ an outstanding new artwork by Juliette O’Brien, a talented student at IADT, the Institute of Art, Design and Technology on Kill Avenue, Dún Laoghaire.

This piece by Juliette O’Brien is located on a box at Saint Michael’s Church on Marine Road, Dún Laoghaire, and she completed the work last August. It is sponsored by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Juliette O’Brien is a young student from Dublin in her early 20s. She is studying model-making in IADT, and says, ‘I am also developing my skills in painting, illustration and graphic design.’

She has worked on multiple projects for Dublin Canvas, including ‘Journey’ on the corner of Dolphin Road and Herberton Road, ‘Birds of a Feather’ on Davitt Road Terrace, Drimnagh, and another box on Adelaide Road. She has also worked on ‘The Birds’ with Juliette Viodé in the playground at Lower Gardiner Street flats, as well as ‘Tribal Quest,’ the mural in Avondale House in inner city Dublin.

‘I love creating colourful, thoughtful pieces and interacting with the public while I paint,’ she says.

Sadly, her first piece of public art, another box in Ringsend in 2017, no longer exists.

‘A Bird in the Hand’ … street art by Juliette O’Brien outside Saint Michael’s Church, Dún Laoghaire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Monkstown Castle stands on a prominent roadside site by a roundabout

Monkstown Castle stands on a prominent site by a large roundabout in suburban south Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Monkstown Castle is a landmark archaeological site in suburban south Dublin, standing in a nicely kept green area on a prominent site by a large roundabout near the village of Monkstown.

I visited the remains of the castle last week, after a few hours in Dún Laoghaire, while I was in Dublin for medical check-ups. The castle is in quite a striking location on the edge of the roundabout and the site must be a surprise for motorists when they first see it.

According to the Martyrology of Tallaght, Saint Mochonna founded Holmpatrick monastery on an island off Skerries. After a Viking raid in the year 798, some of the monks escaped and established a church at Carrickbrennan, south of Dublin, where they were protected by a local chieftain named Mac Gillamocholmog.

The monks dedicated their church to Saint Mochonna and farmed the land given to them by Mac Gillamocholmog.

The monastic foundation and lands at Monkstown and the grange of Carrickbrennan were granted to the Cistercian monks of Saint Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, in 1200. These Cistercian monks built their grange near the church, and a village grew up around it. Parts of their lands extended as far south as Bulloch Harbour, near Dalkey, where the monks built a fishing harbour.

Monkstown Castle was first built by the Cistercian monks of Saint Mary’s Abbey, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

For years, the monks were subject to attacks from the O’Toole and O’Byrne families who had taken refuge in the Wicklow mountains. By the 13th or 14th century, the Cistercians built a castle at Monkstown to administer and protect their lands and another castle at Bulloch Harbour to protect their fisheries.

Monkstown Castle originally consisted of three strong towers and thick walls surrounding a large house within. Two of the towers remain today but there is nothing left of the inner house. One of these fine towers and the gatehouse still survive.

Saint Mary’s Abbey was dissolved at the dissolution of the monastic houses in 1539-1540, during the Tudor Reformation. Monkstown Castle was granted to Sir John Travers who came to Ireland from Cornwall. Travers was Master of the Ordnance and a Groom of the Chamber to the King.

The castle was confiscated when James Eustace, 3rd Viscount Baltinglass, fled after the Desmond rebellion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Sir John Travers lived at Monkstown Castle from 1557, and his other, many grants of land included Rathmore and part of Haynestown, near Naas, Tomogue, and estates in Co Carlow. He married Genet Preston of Gormanston, and when he died in 1562, he was buried in Carrickbrennan Graveyard, at the site of Saint Mochonna’s Church.

The castle later passed to James Eustace, 3rd Viscount Baltinglass, through his marriage to Sir John’s granddaughter, Mary Travers. In 1580, the castle was used as a rebel stronghold during the Desmond rebellion. When Eustace escaped and fled Ireland, Monkstown Castle was awarded to Sir Henry Wallop, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, proprietor of Enniscorthy Castle, Co Wexford, and ancestor of the Earls of Portsmouth.

Lord Baltinglass died in exile in Spain in 1585, and the castle and lands at Monkstown were returned to his widow Mary in 1589. By then, she had married her second husband, Sir Gerald Alymer of Donadea, Co Kildare, in 1587. When she died in 1610, Lady Aylmer left Monkstown Castle and her estates to Henry Chevers of Goat Castle, the second son of her sister Catherine and John Chevers.

Henry Chevers married Catherine, daughter of Sir Richard Fitzwilliam of Merrion, and they lived at Monkstown Castle with their four children, Walter, Thomas, Patrick and Margaret Chevers.

Monkstown Castle was bought in the late 17th century by Archbishop Michael Boyle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

When Henry Chevers died in 1640, Monkstown Castle and the surrounding lands were inherited by his eldest son, Walter Chevers. The Chevers family was forcibly removed from Monkstown in 1653 by the Cromwellian Commissioners, and transplanted to Killyan, Co Galway. Monkstown Castle was then granted to General Edmund Ludlow (1617-1692), Cromwell’s Master of the Horse in Ireland, and one of the signatories of the death warrant of Charles I.

At the Caroline Restoration in 1660, Ludlow fled into exile in Switzerland, and Walter Chevers was restored to his estate at Monkstown Castle. He lived there until he died on 20 December 1678, and he was buried at Monkstown.

Monkstown Castle was later bought by Michael Boyle (1609-1702), Bishop of Cork (1661-1663), Archbishop of Dublin (1663-1679) and Archbishop of Armagh (1679-1702). Boyle established the town of Blessington, Co Wicklow, and at his own expense built the parish church there. which he supplied with plate and bells.

Archbishop Boyle’s son, Murrough Boyle (1645-1718), 1st Viscount Blessington, was Constable of King John’s Castle, Limerick (1679-1692) and Governor of Limerick (1679-1692). He enlarged Monkstown Castle, making it one of the finest residences in Dublin at the time.

In the early 19th century, Monkstown Castle was the home of the Dublin Quaker merchant, James Pim.

A renewed search in Dun Laoghaire for links with TS Eliot’s in-laws

Haigh Terrace, between the Mariners’ Church and Upper George’s Street, Dún Laoghaire, provided the private income for TS Eliot’s first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

As I was preparing my Epiphany sermon for this morning, it was tempting, as in many previous years, to fall back on simply reading TS Eliot’s poem, ‘Journey of the Magi.’

In this poem, Eliot does not resort to the Epiphany tradition of referring to the magi as kings, nor does he give their number as three. The only number three refers to ‘three trees on the low sky,’ and the only concession to the tradition that the magi were kings is in his reference to ‘our places, these Kingdoms.’

I wonder, as he pondered ‘these Kingdoms’ while writing the first of his Ariel poems in 1927, whether Eliot was conscious of his wife Vivienne’s family connections with Kingstown. Kingstown had become Dún Laoghaire five years earlier in 1921, and the name of the harbour was changed only in 1924.

Was Eliot aware in the 1920s that the source of Vivienne Haigh-Wood’s private income was the rental from a group of six houses on Haigh Terrace, between the Mariners’ Church and Upper George’s Street, and a seventh house on Upper George’s Street, on the corner with Haigh Terrace?

When I was in Dublin last week for a medical check-up on my pulmonary sarcoidosis and an injection for my B12 deficiency, I decided to visit Dún Laoghaire and once again try to find out more about those connections.

Haigh Terrace is a cul-de-sac of six early Victorian houses, and it runs northward from Upper George’s Street, almost opposite McDonald’s, to the former Mariners’ Church.

No 1 and No 2 are separated by a laneway from the other houses on Haigh Terrace, and are shown in Griffith’s Valuation as owned by James Haigh, but with low values. Of these two houses, No 2 was Haigh’s office. The low value probably means that they were not complete at that time. Haigh also owned No 3, which was shown in Griffith’s Valuation at full value. This probably means that it was completed but not yet leased to a tenant.

James Haigh (1797-1878) was an engineer and a millwright, and he had many business interests. He is also shown as the lessor of a number of houses at Mount Haigh, just around the corner on Upper George’s Street.

On the west side of the end of Haigh Terrace there was once a stagnant pond that previously was a reservoir for storing fresh water for ships. The site is marked today by a modern fountain and water feature. On the east side at the end of Haigh Terrace, the former Mariners’ Church is now the National Maritime Museum.

No 1 and No 2 Haigh Terrace, with the spire of the Mariners’ Church, Dún Laoghaire, in the background (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

James Haigh’s daughter, Mary Haigh, was not in the conventional meaning, ‘an Anglo-Irish Protestant girl from Dublin with financial expectations,’ as Vivienne’s biographer Carole Seymour-Jones paints her. Nor is it possible that she was forced to ‘sail from Kingstown to Liverpool’ due to ‘the 1845 potato famine.’

In fact, Mary moved to England before the Famine, and was living with her father, James Haigh, in Paradise Street, Bury, in Lancashire, by 1841. She married Charles Wood, a gilder and picture framer from Bolton, in Bramham, near Wetherby, Leeds, in August 1850. She may have been related to the Revd Dr Benjamin Bentley Haigh (1803-1869), a Congregational minister at Tadcaster (1828-1845), and for 26 years headmaster of Bramham College, Yorkshire, and his son, Edward Haigh (1832-1911; MA, Cambridge), who was a schoolmaster in a boarding school in Bramham.

Mary was seven years younger than Charles, and by 1851 Mary and Charles had set up home in four rooms over a shop at 22 Fleet Street, Bury, in Lancashire, where six children were born in quick succession: Laura Annie (1851-1904), Sylvia (1852-1854), Charles (1854-1927), another son James Atkinson (1856-1865), Emily Spencer (1858-1919) and Sarah Ann (1860-1912).

Mary inherited her father’s seven semi-detached houses in Kingstown, along with Eglinton House, a substantial property rby, which gave eventually her family financial stability. Her inheritance from her father’s property portfolio in Kingstown allowed their only surviving son, Charles Haigh-Wood (1854-1927), to study at the Manchester Art College and the Royal Academy School in London.

As a boy, Charles was sent to nearby Bethel Sunday School in Henry Street, an independent Congregationalist chapel, and attended Bury Grammar School.

The rents from the semi-detached houses in Ireland made a substantial difference to the family fortunes. They made it possible for Charles Wood to sign the 999-year lease on a house at 14 Albion Place for £780, and for Charles and Mary to send their promising son to Manchester Art College, where he won several prizes.

Charles left Bury in 1873 to attend the Royal Academy School in London. At some stage, he decided to combine his parents’ surnames as Haigh Wood – later hyphenated as Haigh-Wood – perhaps when his mother Mary inherited her father’s Irish properties in 1878.

Charles Haigh-Wood inherited his mother’s property when she died, as well as the family home at 14 Albion Place in Bury. He was an artist and a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, but his inheritance from the Haigh family made him a landlord and provided him with a substantial private income.

Charles Haigh-Wood married Rose Esther Robinson (1860-1941) from London, and their first child, Vivienne, was born on 28 May 1888 in Bury while they had returned there for an exhibition of his paintings.

Vivienne was registered at birth as Vivienne Haigh, although as an adult she called herself Haigh-Wood. Her father, Charles Haigh-Wood, used his income from the houses on Haigh Terrace to move his family to Hampstead, by then a fashionable part of north London. They settled at 3 Compayne Gardens around 1891, and Vivienne’s brother Maurice was born there in 1896.

The rentals from Haigh Terrace provided financial stability for the Haigh and Haigh-Wood families (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Although her family was financially secure, Vivienne’s biographer, Carole Seymour-Jones, says she was ashamed of her connection to Lancashire, perceived as working-class, and was left with a sense of inferiority that made her self-conscious and snobbish, especially when mixing with TS Eliot’s aristocratic London friends.

She described the Haigh and Wood families in a letter to her brother-in-law, Henry Ware Eliot, as ‘the most dreadful people really; very, very rich manufacturing people; so provincial.’ She made no reference to her grandmother’s Irish background.

Vivienne was committed to an asylum in 1938, five years after TS Eliot deserted her, and by then she was a lonely, distraught figure. Shunned by literary London, she was the ‘neurotic’ wife Eliot had left behind.

However, in Painted Shadow (2002), Carole Seymour-Jones gives a voice to the woman who, for 17 years, had shared a unique literary partnership with Eliot but who was scapegoated for the failure of the marriage and all but obliterated from literary records.

Vivienne would wrote in her diary: ‘You who in later years will read these very words of mine will be able to trace a true history of this epoch.’ She believed – as did Virginia Woolf – that she was Eliot’s muse. Yet Vivienne knew the secrets of his separate and secret life.

Out of this emotional turbulence came one of the most important English poems of the 20th century, ‘The Waste Land,’ which Carole Seymour-Jones argues cannot be fully understood without reference to the relationship of the poet and his first wife, who had family roots in Haigh Terrace in Kingstown or Dún Laoghaire.

Haigh Terrace runs from Upper George’s Street in Dún Laoghaire to the former Mariners’ Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The former Mariners’ Church is part of Dun Laoghaire’s naval and maritime history

The former Mariners’ Church, a former Church of Ireland parish church, on Haigh Terrace, Dún Laoghaire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

The National Maritime Museum of Ireland is housed in the Mariners’ Church, a former Church of Ireland parish church on Haigh Terrace in the centre of Dún Laoghaire.

The church was built by subscriptions for a new church for seafarers, with an opening donation in 1836 of £1,000 for the endowment as the ‘Protestant Episcopal Mariners’ Church at Kingstown Harbour.’

Dún Laoghaire was then known as Kingstown, and as the town and harbour grew in importance in the first decades of the 19th century, the Church of Ireland realised the need for a church for naval officers, sailors and mariners.

The church was designed by the architect Joseph Welland (1798-1860), and at first, the church just had a nave and transepts. Welland was the architect for the Board of First Fruits and later the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. While he was working with John Bowden and the Board of First Fruits, Welland shared some of Bowden’s works, including include Saint Philip and Saint James Church, Booterstown, and Saint Stephen’s Church, Mount Street, both of which Welland completed after Bowden died in 1821.

Welland’s many other churches include North Strand Church, Zion Church, Rathgar, and Saint James’s Church, James’ Street, Dublin; Saint Mary’s Church, Enniscorthy, and Christ Church, Gorey, Co Wexford; Saint Peter’s Church, Bandon, Saint Thomas’s Church, Dugort, Achill Island, Saint Patrick’s Church, Kenmare, Saint Mary’s Church, Nenagh, Saint Michael’s Church, Waterville, Saint John the Baptist Church, Valentia Island, and Ballingarry Church and Saint James’s Church, Nantenan, Co Limerick.

Welland’s younger son, William Joseph Welland (1832-1895), was also a church architect and worked for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, while his elder son, Thomas James Welland (1830-1907), became a curate in the Mariners’ Church (1858-1862) and later Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore (1892-1907).

The Mariners’ Church was consecrated on 25 June 1843 and it was assigned a parochial district as a chapel of ease in Monkstown Parish in 1845.

The Mariners’ Church was designed by the architect Joseph Welland, and at first just had a nave and transepts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Revd Richard Sinclair Brooke (1802-1882) was the first chaplain or incumbent of the Mariners’ Church (1836-1862). He described the church as ‘large and gaunt and lofty and ugly, a satire on taste, a libel of all ecclesiastical rule, mocking at proportion and symmetry.’

Members of the Royal Navy attended Sunday services in the Mariners’ Church, and those in detention were seated in the ‘Prisoners’ Dock’ or special enclosed pews.

Brooke married Anna Stopford, daughter of the Revd Dr Joseph Stopford of Conwal, Co Donegal. In 1857, Brooke’s daughter Anna married his former curate, Thomas Welland, later Bishop of Down and Connor.

Brooke was also the father of the Revd Stopford Augustus Brooke (1832-1916), who was a royal chaplain to Queen Victoria and later became a Unitarian. Stopford Brooke is also known for his version of ‘Silent Night.’

Brooke moved to the Diocese of Ely in in 1862 and was succeeded at the Mariners’ Church as chaplain by the Revd Samuel Allen Windle from the Diocese of Lichfield. Windle was chaplain until 1875, and during his time the Mariners’ Church was improved in 1862-1867, with the addition of the spire and lancet windows.

The original austerity of Welland’s work was enlivened by Raffles Brown, who added the unusual spire in 1865. After several fund-raising efforts by the parishioners, much-needed renovations were carried out in 1870.

Windle became Vicar of Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire, in 1875. His son, Sir Bertram Windle, was president of Queen’s College Cork.

Windle was succeeded at the Mariners’ Church by the Revd William Edward Burroughs, who was the Rector in 1876-1895. A former curate of Saint Michael’s, Limerick, during his time further work was carried out on the church in 1884, including the addition of the chancel.

This work was designed by the architect Sir Thomas Drew (1838-1910) and was carried out by Bolton of Rathmines. During this work, however, a fatal accident took place on 10 September 1884. Scaffolding collapsed while two men were plastering the ceiling, 50 ft (15.2 metres) above ground. One plasterer, Hemp, died soon afterwards; the other was seriously injured. The church reopened on 14 October 1884.

Raffles Brown added the unusual spire in 1865 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Burroughs was the Select Preacher in Trinity College, Dublin, in 1894, but he moved to London the following year, and was the Central Secretary of the mission agency CMS in 1895-1901. He was later a vicar in Plymouth and a canon of Exeter Cathedral before he died in 1931. His son, Edward Arthur Burroughs (1882-1934), was Dean of Bristol (1922-1926) and Bishop of Ripon (1926-1931).

Later rectors of the Mariners’ Church included John Lindsey Darling (1895-1911); Canon Herbert Brownlow Kennedy (1912-1921), later Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (1921-1938), and general secretary of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland – during his time, the church was vested in the Representative Church Body in 1917; and Canon Albert Edward Hughes (1922-1923).

Before moving to the Mariners’ Church, Hughes had been the Rector of Rathfarnham (1917-1920) and chaplain to the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1920-1921). He moved to Christ Church, Leeson Park, and was later Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh (1939-1950).

His successor, Canon George Ashton Chamberlain, a former editor of the Church of Ireland Gazette (1919-1924), was the last Rector of the Mariners’ Church (1924-1959). The Mariners’ Church was grouped with Christ Church, Dún Laoghaire, in 1959, and the Rector of Christ Church became the rector of the group.

The church could seat 1,400 people and the Deed of Trust stated that one third of the seating was to accommodate the families of those in the seafaring, coastguard and revenue services.

For generations, the Mariners’ Church was the principal Church of Ireland church in Dún Laoghaire. It depended for its upkeep to a large extent on voluntary subscriptions, donations, bequests and fundraising efforts. The World War I Memorial in the church records the names of people connected with the church who died in the Great War.

However, the congregation of the Mariners’ Church dwindled in the mid-20th century, and the church closed for worship after a final service on 2 April 1972. A new chapel named in honour of Saint Columba was dedicated in the south transept of Christ Church, Dún Laoghaire, on 8 June 1975. The altar in that chapel is from the Mariners’ Church.

Meanwhile, shortly after the church closed, a lease was signed by the Church of Ireland and the Maritime Institute in 1974. The National Maritime Museum of Ireland was opened by President Patrick Hillery in 1978. The Institute bought the building in 2007. Renovations in 2011 included improvements to the roof, interior, and electrical systems.

The Mariners’ Church closed for worship after a final service on 2 April 1972 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Christ Church, the former Bethel Chapel that became Dún Laoghaire’s parish church

Christ Church, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, was originally built in 1836 as the Bethel Episcopal Free Chapel in Kingstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Christ Church, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, was originally built in 1836 as the Bethel Episcopal Free Chapel. It was a trustee church, built on the initiative of the Revd William Burgh, later the Revd Dr William de Burgh (1801-1866). It was given official standing in its trust deeds on 12 April 1838.

A few years later, the Mariners’ Church was built nearby on Haigh Terrace as a trustee church in 1843 to serve sailors and mariners in the growing port and harbour of Kingstown.

William Burgh had been a curate in Wicklow (1825) and was the chaplain at Saint Augustine’s, the former chapel of the former women’s ‘penitentiary’ on Dublin’s North Circular Road (1826-1847), when he was appointed the first chaplain of the Bethel Chapel or Church in 1836.

Two of William Burgh’s brothers were also in holy orders: the Very Revd Thomas de Burgh, Dean of Cloyne; and Canon Walter de Burgh (1790-1850) of Naas, Co Kildare. Another brother was the ancestor of Sir Eric de Burgh of Bargy Castle, Co Wexford, grandfather of the singer-songwriter Chris de Burgh.

William Burgh left the Bethel Chapel in 1839 and left Dublin in 1847 when he went to Scotland in 1847 as rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church, Glasgow – later to be replaced by Saint Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral.

A year later, William and other family members who lived at Oldtown, near Naas, assumed the ‘de Burgh’ spelling of the family name in 1848. As William de Burgh, he returned to Dublin in 1850 as the first chaplain of Saint John’s Church, Sandymount (1850-1864).

Saint John’s was a trustee church built at the expense of the Herbert family, and has stood firmly in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. While he was at Saint John’s, William de Burgh was twice the Donnellan Lecturer in Trinity College Dublin (1852, 1862). Later, he was the Rector of Arboe, Co Tyrone, in the Diocese of Armagh (1864-1866). When he died in 1866, he was buried in the de Burgh family vault in Naas. His 18 children included Maurice Thomas de Burgh, Archdeacon of Kildare, and Hubert de Burgh, a chaplain in the Crimean War.

The Revd Dr William de Burgh, first chaplain of the Bethesda Chapel in Kingstown (Photograph © National Library of Ireland)

Meanwhile, William de Burgh was succeeded at the Bethel Chapel by the Revd James White (1839-1843). Those who followed him reflected a variety of styles of churchmanship.

The Revd Dr Edward Busteed Moeran (1843-1857) was also Professor of Moral Philosophy in TCD (1852-1857), and he later became Rector of Taney and then Dean of Down.

The Revd Frederick James Lewis Dowling (1858-1866) later became chaplain of the Bethesda Chapel (1866-1874), Rector of Dalkey (1874-1878), and Assistant Secretary of the militant Irish Church Missions.

Canon Latham Coddington Warren (1867-1878) was in his mid-30s when he came to the Bethel Chapel, and in little more than a decade he had transformed it into a new parish church for Kingstown, which had become a burgeoning new town with the development of the port and harbour, the arrival of the railway, and its own town council.

The former Bethel Chapel became a Church of Ireland parish church in 1869, and was renamed Christ Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The former Bethel Chapel became a Church of Ireland parish church in 1869, and was renamed Christ Church. The building was remodelled in Gothic style by John McCurdy, who rebuilt the former Bethel Church in 1869-1871, and the tower was added by William Mansfield Mitchell in 1883.

McCurdy’s alterations in rebuilding the former Bethel Church, including the addition of transepts and a chapel, were so extensive that it may almost be considered a completely new building.

McCurdy’s plans were selected in 1867, and tenders were invited in October 1869. The church reopened on 24 August 1871 and was consecrated on 21 November 1871. Although the initial estimate for the project was £2,000, but the eventual cost was about £3,500.

The Dublin-born architect and civil engineer John McCurdy (1824-1885) received his professional training in the office of Frederick Darley, architect to Trinity College Dublin. He succeeded Benjamin Holebrook as clerk of works at TCD in 1850 at a salary of £25 a quarter.

After the new museum was built in TCD in 1855, McCurdy became ‘inspector of new buildings’ at a quarterly salary of £28, and also received fees as superintending architect. He then became the official college architect, a post he held until he died in 1885.

McCurdy formed a partnership with William Mansfield Mitchell in 1872, and they practised from Leinster Street as McCurdy & Mitchell until 1882, when his only business address was at the Office of Works, TCD.

McCurdy died at 61 at Elsinore, Dalkey, on 12 September 1885 and was buried at Deansgrange. He was survived by his widow, Lucy Heinekey (1836-1928) and their daughter Agatha Mary (1858-1927) married Adam S Findlater.

McCurdy was architect to the Commissioners for Education of Royal and Endowed Schools in 1873-1883, and to the Benchers of King’s Inns, and a member of Blackrock Town Commissioners (1864-1875).

His pupils and assistants included James Joseph Farrall, Edward Kavanagh, William Kaye-Parry, Albert Edward Murray and Frederick William Stokes. He was a member of the Architectural Association of Ireland; a Fellow of the (FRIAI) and vice-president (1868-1874) and president (1874-1885); and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA).

Christ Church was rebuilt by John McCurdy, William Mansfield Mitchell and James Beckett in 1869-1887 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

William Mansfield Mitchell (1842-1910) added a new tower to Christ Church in 1883-1887 and carried out other works at a cost of about £1,600. The former Vicarage was removed to allow for an extension of the church by 40 ft. The gallery was removed, windows were lowered, and a fine window was put in at the west end. The pews were shortened, and a new aisle was provided in the nave. Mitchell also presented a stone reading desk.

Mitchell was born in Dublin, a son of George Mitchell, confectioner, of Grafton Street. He was educated at the Wesleyan School, Dublin, and Nutgrove School, Rathfarnham. He was a pupil in the office of Deane, Son & Woodward, and set up his own practice at 33 Dawson Street in 1867.

He joined McCurdy in 1872 in a partnership that lasted until 1882, when McCurdy decided to concentrate on his work with TCD. Mitchell practised on his own until 1905, when he took his two sons into partnership as WM Mitchell & Sons.

Mitchell was architect to the Board of the South Dublin Union, architect to the Commissioners for Royal Schools and Endowed Schools. He was a member of the AAI, and vice-president (1873-1874) and president (1874-1876); FRIAI and president (1904-1907); FRIBA; and a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. He died at 67 on 12 March 1910, was buried at Mount Jerome.

James Beckett (1841-1915), the principal builder involved in Christ Church, was a master builder. He formed the family building business J & W Beckett with his brother William Beckett. The members of this extended family included the writer Samuel Beckett.

The parochial hall at Christ Church was designed by Sir Thomas Drew (1838-1910), who gave his services as an architect free. It was built in 1876 by the Dublin builder Thomas Pemberton.

The parochial hall at Christ Church was designed by Sir Thomas Drew (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Meanwhile, the new parish had a secure place in the newly-disestablished Church of Ireland. Warren moved on from Christ Church to Saint George’s Church in Dublin in 1878, and later became Rector of Clonmel (1883-1910), Co Tipperary, Treasurer of Waterford (1883-1900), Archdeacon of Lismore (1896-1912), and a prebendary of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

Warren was succeeded in Christ Church by the Revd Henry Edward Noyes (1878-1888), later chaplain at the British Embassy in Paris. Later rectors included Canon John Paterson Smyth (1889-1902), who later became also Professor of Pastoral Theology in TCD (1902-1907) and Archdeacon of Montreal; Canon John Pim (1903-1932); Noble Holton Hamilton (1932-1939), later Dean of Waterford (1950-1967); and Canon Alexander William Reid Camier (1939-1953).

Christ Church, Dun Laoghaire, and the Mariners’ Church were grouped in 1959, when the Rector of Christ Church, the Revd Fergus William Day (1954-1967), became the incumbent of the group. Fergus Day followed Noble Hamilton as Dean of Waterford (1967-1979).

While Canon Robert Charles Armstrong (1967-1994), a lifelong supporter of USPG, was rector, the Mariners’ Church was closed after a final service on 2 April 1972. A chapel dedicated to Saint Columba, with the altar from altar from the Mariners’ Church, opened in the south transept of Christ Church on 8 June 1975.

Canon Victor George Stacey was rector of Dun Laoghaire from 1995 until he was elected Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in 2012. Dean Stacey retired in 2016 and died last week (30 December 2020). The present Rector of Dún Laoghaire is the Revd Ása Björk Ólafsdóttir.

Winter sunshine reflected in the rose window in Christ Church, Dún Laoghaire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A Victorian gate lodge has been restored in park in Dún Laoghaire

The redbrick Victorian gate lodge at the entrance to the People’s Park in Dún Laoghaire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

During my walk around Dún Laoghaire earlier this week, my imagination was caught particularly by the redbrick Victorian gate lodge at the entrance to the People’s Park on the edge of the town centre, between Glasthule and the seafront.

The People’s Park is a short stroll from Dún Laoghaire harbour and it is popular with local people and visitors alike. It first opened to the public in 1890, and the park retains many examples of late Victorian architecture, including the Gate Lodge, the tearooms, fountains, and a bandstand with original gaslight standards.

The 2 ha park was developed near the end of the 19th century by the Kingstown town commissioners in the formal Victorian style, with wrought iron railings, stone walls, large gates and a typical Victorian bandstand. The new park, on the site of a former quarry and an earlier Martello tower, opened on 29 September 1890.

The park was planned and designed by the architect John Loftus Robinson assisted by William George Strype (1847-1898), the Kingstown township engineer. The park development involved many contractors, including George Dixon, who built the Gate Lodge for £700 18s 11d.

The People’s Park was commissioned, designed and opened by John Loftus Robinson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The architect John Loftus Robinson (1848-1894) was born in Dublin, the son of John Joseph Robinson (1819-1895) and Mary Theresa Robinson. His father owned a tailoring and drapery business at 13 College Green, Dublin, in the 1850s; he later lived in Booterstown and was a member of Blackrock Town Commissioners.

John Loftus Robinson received his architectural training in the office of Edward Henry Carson. From an early stage, he was interested in sketching and drawing mediaeval English and Irish architecture, and many of his drawings were published in The Architect.

Robinson had his own office by 1872 at 198 Great Brunswick Street, where he continued to practise until he died in 1894. He was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and also exhibited at the Dublin Exhibition of Arts (1872), the Irish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures (1882), and the Cork Industrial Exhibition (1883).

Robinson’s commissions were mainly for Roman Catholic churches and religious houses in the Dublin area, though he did some commercial and domestic work. He collaborated with Thomas Henry Longfield in the mid-1870s, but never had a business partner. However, his pupils and assistants included Joseph Kelly Freeman, George Luke O’Connor and Samuel Reddy.

Robinson played an active part in public life, and he represented Trinity Ward on Dublin City Council. An ‘ardent Parnellite,’ he was an active member of the National Liberal Club in London and was secretary to the Nationalist Party on Dublin Corporation. He also chaired Kingstown Township Commissioners for many years, and as chair was largely responsible for the creation of the People’s Park.

Robinson was a keen amateur photographer, and for 15 years he accompanied the London Architectural Association excursions as the honorary photographer, when he ‘was the life and soul of these excursions,’ and he organised the excursion to Ireland in 1888.

He was a member of the Architectural Association of Ireland, and honorary secretary (1873-1875), a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI), a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (FRSAI).

Robinson died of typhoid fever on 12 October 1894. His funeral in Glasnevin Cemetery was attended by Archbishop Walsh, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, several MPs, and members of Dublin Corporation, the Royal Hibernian Academy, and ‘nearly every leading architect in Dublin.’ When he died, George Luke O’Connor carried on his practice.

His widow, Mary Thomasina Josephine (née Ryan), died 1908 at the age of 57. His son, John Joseph Robinson, was also an architect.

The restrained Victorian layout of the People’s Park was compromised over the years, with the proliferation of new pathways and other introductions. Because the site had once been a quarry, the poor ground conditions caused subsidence and the fabric of some buildings was damaged.

But in recent years, the park has been restored faithfully to its original layout, re-establishing the main north-south axis that connects and highlights the main features, including the fountains, the bandstand and the tearooms, as well as the perennial borders and the manicured lawns.

The Pavilion, where we had coffee, and the Gate Lodge form the gateway to the park from George’s Street. Both buildings have received substantial underpinning, restoration and sensitive extensions to bring them into the 21st century as quality park facilities. The attractive Victorian gate lodge, once a gardener’s residence, is now used as offices.

The Gate Lodge, with its original brickwork, has been restored sensitively in recent years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)