Camerford Avenue in Hollywood, the street that was supposed to be named Comerford Avenue

Comerford McLoughlin (1891-1945) was a publishing heir and a World War I battle hero … his grandfather gave his (misspelled) name to Camerford Avenue in Hollywood

Patrick Comerford

The wildfires in California have devastated large areas of Los Angeles and Hollywood in the past week or so and have dominated television news and newspaper reports in the US and around the world.

Many of the street names in Hollywood and Los Angeles in these reports have drawn my attention to the name of Camerford Avenue in Hollywood, and have reminded me that this street was originally supposed to be named Comerford Avenue, and how this is a misspelling.

The street is in a plush residential part in Los Angeles, just west of Paramount Pictures and close to Sunset Boulevard and the heart of old Hollywood. Many of the street names there, including Camerford Avenue, were created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by Senator Cornelius Cole in honour of the members of his extended family, including his grandson, Comerford McLoughlin (1891-1945).

The story of Comerford McLoughlin, Camerford Avenue and the street names of West Hollywood is the story of a family network in which the Comerford name continues for four or five generations, and that includes a senator who was a friend of Abraham Lincoln and who once owned much of Hollywood; a publishing empire that pioneered children’s books and colour printing; an artist’s wife who had been a ‘society girl’ but whose tragic death by suicide became a nationwide sensation; her daughter who became a princess through her marriage to a Russian exile; and a publishing executive with Time and Fortune magazines.

Senator Cornelius Cole named Camerford Avenue in Hollywood after his grandson Comerford McLoughlin

Senator Cornelius Cole (1822-1945) was the founder of Colegrove, and named the area after himself. As he subdivided and developed the area at the beginning of the 20th century, Cole decided to name many of the streets after members of his own family.

In 1902, Cole decided to name one of these streets after his grandson, Comerford McLoughlin (1891-1945). But it is not clear whether Granddad Cole did not know how to spell his own grandson’s name correctly or that the people who first put up the street signs got the spelling wrong. In either case, no-one every corrected the mistake, and Camerford Avenue, home to the stars, never became Comerford Avenue, as it was intended to be.

Senator Cornelius Cole was a New York lawyer. He was admitted to the bar in 1948 and moved to California in 1849 at the height of gold rush. He first practised law in San Francisco and then in Sacramento.

Cole was a friend of Abraham Lincoln and soon became involved in politics. He founded the California Republican Party, and served on the Republican National Committee (1856-1860). He was District Attorney (1859-1862), and moved to Santa Cruz in 1862.

In 1863, Cole became the commander of a Santa Cruz cavalry troop raised for the Union Army during the Civil War and he was commissioned as a captain. He was a member of the US Congress for one term (1863-1865) and of the US Senate for one term (1867-1873), and chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee (1871-1873).

As an attorney, Cole helped the brothers Henry and John Hancock secure their title to Rancho La Brea, and in payment received 483 acres of the ranch. He retired to his ranch in 1880, and in 1887, he began subdividing it as the town of Colegrove. The name was a reference to his own family name but also the family name of his wife Olive (1833-1918), which was also Colegrove.

Cornelius Cole intended to name Camerford Avenue in Hollywood after his grandson Comerford McLoughlin (Google Maps)

Cornelius Cole honoured many of his relatives with street names in Hollywood, including Gregory Avenue, named after his grandson, the artist Gregory Van Sicklin McLoughlin (1889-1954) and Camerford Avenue, which he intended to name after his 11-year-old grandson Comerford McLoughlin (1891-1945).

The town of Colegrove was annexed by the City of Los Angeles in 1909, and was renamed Hollywood. Some of Cole’s original street names were lost in renaming in the years that followed.

Olive Avenue, named after his wife, is now Romaine Street; Schuyler Avenue, named after one of his sons Schuyler Colfax Cole (1865-1926), is now La Mirada Avenue; Emelita Avenue, recalling his daughter Emma Cole Brown (1854-1926), became Lexington Avenue; while Townsend Street, named after Cole’s mother, is now Cahuenga Boulevard, the ‘heart of old Hollywood’, connecting Sunset Boulevard in the heart of old Hollywood to the Hollywood Hills and North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley.

On the other hand, many of Cole’s original street names have survived: Cole Street, Cole Avenue and Cole Place; Seward Street and Willoughby Avenue, for two more sons; Waring Avenue for Cole’s daughter Lucretia Cole Waring (1860-1953); Eleanor Avenue for his daughter-in-law and granddaughter; and the misspelled Camerford Avenue, as well as Barton Avenue and Gregory Avenue, named after his grandsons.

Oher original names that have survived from Cole’s naming system include El Centro Avenue, for the centre of his ranch; Lodi Place, for his hometown of Lodi in New York; and Hollywood’s famous Vine Street, for his vineyard.

Comerford McLoughlin (1891-1945) and his sister Cornelia in the 1920s … his grandfather gave his (misspelled) name to Camerford Avenue in Hollywood

Camerford Avenue in Hollywood, despite its incorrect spelling, was named in 1902 after one of Cole’s grandsons, Comerford McLoughlin (1891-1945), the second son of Cole’s daughter Cornelia (‘Nellie’), and his son-in-law, James Gregory McLoughlin (1860-1918).

Comerford McLoughlin was a publishing heir who was born in New York on 20 February 1891. As a lieutenant in World War I, he helped command the all-black 369th Infantry – the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ – and received the Distinguished Service Cross in 1923 for saving his men’s lives on the battlefield.

The citation said that while serving with 369th Infantry Regiment, 93d Division, American Expeditionary Forces, at Ripont, France, on 26 September 1918, Comerford McLoughlin was in command of a company during an assault on the enemy’s position. He ‘voluntarily exposed himself to a concentration of enemy machine-gun and artillery fire, made his way with great difficulty over rough and broken ground, and rescued his wounded battalion commander and his battalion adjutant and several wounded enlisted men, all of whom he carried to a dressing station, thus undoubtedly saving their lives.’ His ‘undaunted courage and devotion to duty’ inspired the men of his regiment ‘to great endeavours.’

Comerford McLoughlin lived in Rye, Westchester, New York. He drilled for oil around San Antonio, Texas, in the 1930s and returned to the US army during World War II, when he was posted to Germany. He died in the Bronx, New York, at the age of 54, on 20 August 1945, and was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, Greenburgh, Westchester. So far, I can find no records for any children of Comerford McLoughlin and his wife Catherine.

Gregory Avenue in Hollywood was similarly named by their grandfather after Comerford McLoughlin’s brother, Gregory Van Sicklin McLoughlin (1889-1954). Their sister, Cornelia Beekman Rylee (1893-1938), was the first woman in California to obtain a pilot’s license. But she missed out on having a Hollywood street named after her by her grandfather, and ‘Cornelia Street’, a track on Taylor Swift’s album Lover (2019) refers to a street in Greenwich Village, New York.

Gregory Avenue in Hollywood was named after Comerford McLoughlin’s brother, Gregory Van Sicklin McLoughlin

In the case of this family and the frequent use of the name Comerford is successive generations, so far I can only trace the use of use of the Comerford name in the McLoughlin family back to John Comerford McLoughlin (1827-1905), and can only trace the McLoughlin family back to his parents.

John McLoughlin (1790-1870) was born in Ireland, and it appears his mother may have been a member of the Comerford family. He emigrated to New York, perhaps though Scotland. He was an unemployed coachmaker when he entered the New York publishing industry in March 1819. While working with the Sterling Iron Company, he met Robert Hoe, who manufactured printing presses. He became interested in printing and began working for the New York Times in 1827. He bought a used printing press and type in 1828 and set up his own business, writing and published McLoughlin’s Books for Children, a collection of semi-religious tracts.

McLoughlin formed a partnership with Robert H Elton, a wood engraver, in 1840 to publish toy books, comic almanacs, and valentines under the name Elton and Co.

John McLoughlin and his wife […] Swaine were the parents of:

1, John Comerford McLoughlin (1827-1905).
2, Edmund McLoughlin (1833-1889). He married Martha E Gouldy (1832-1897) and died in New York on 17 October 1889. They were the parents of one son, Edmund McLoughlin jr.

The elder son:

John Comerford McLoughlin (1827-1905) was born in New York on 29 November 1827. As John McLoughlin jr, he was an apprentice to the firm of Robert H Elton. When the senior partners for Elton and Company retired in 1850, the son took over the firm. He changed the company name to John McLoughlin, Successor to Elton & Co.

He obtained the printing blocks of Edward Dunigan, a successful New York toy book publisher, and reissued Dunigan’s titles as the ‘Uncle Frank’ series. The books contained stories of British origin, mostly from Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott. McLoughlin eventually became the leading publisher of brightly hand-coloured paper toy books as well as games, alphabet cards, and valentines.

The company moved after the original factory burned, John McLoughlin’s brother, Edmund, became a partner in 1855, and the company expanded. The McLoughlin brothers had opened the largest colour printing factory in the US by 1870, and they introduced American children to Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott and Walter Crane.

Edmund McLoughlin retired from the company in 1885 and died on 17 October 1889. John McLoughlin carried on the business with his sons, James Gregory and Charles. When John McLoughlin died in 1905, the firm the loss of his artistic and commercial leadership. His sons Charles and James Gregory took over the company. The company was sold to Milton Bradley, their chief competitor, in 1920. Today, McLoughlin books, games, Valentines, and other products are highly valued by collectors.

John Comerford McLoughlin married Ann Elizabeth Gregory (1835-1903). She was born on 24 January 1835 in Danbury, Connecticut, and died aged 68 on 15 May 1903 in New York; he died in New York aged 77 on 27 April 1905. They are buried in Wooster Cemetery, Danbury, Connecticut. They were the parents of at least three sons and four daughters, of whom three children survived into adulthood:

1, Susan McLoughlin (born 1849).
2, Thomas McLoughlin (born 1851).
3, Mary McLoughlin (born 1854).
4, James Gregory McLoughlin (1860-1918), of Philadelphia, of whom next.
5, Mary McLoughlin (1861-1887), of New York; she was born on 5 March 1861, and died aged 26 on 11 December 1887.
6, Charles Swaine McLoughlin (1863-1913), of New York; he was born on 6 July 1863, died aged 50 on 8 November 1913, and is buried in Wooster Cemetery, Danbury, Connecticut.
7, Katie McLoughlin (1870-1870), died in infancy.

The eldest surviving son was:

James Gregory McLoughlin (1860-1918), of Philadelphia. He was born on 28 March 1860 in Morrisania, a residential area in the Bronx, New York, and died aged 47 on 4 February 1918 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was described as a publishing heir when he married Cornelia Cole (1863-1932) in Los Angeles on 3 October 1888. She was a daughter of Senator Cornelius Cole (1822-1924) and Olive A (Colegrove) Cole (1833-1888), of Hollywood, California. She was born on 1 June 1863, in Santa Cruz, California, and died in Los Angeles aged 69 on 19 October 1932.

James and Cornelia McLoughlin are buried in Wooster Cemetery, Danbury, Connecticut. They were the parents of four children, two sons and two daughter, who grew up wealthy New Yorkers who could have peopled the novels of F Scott Fitzgerald:

1, Olive Cole McLoughlin (born 1885), named after her maternal grandmother.
2, Gregory Van Sicklin McLoughlin (1889-1954), of whom next.
3, Comerford McLoughlin (1891-1945), was born New York on 20 February 1891. He married Catherine […] before 1945. He gave his name to Camerford Avenue in Hollywood, but lived in Rye, Westchester, New York, and Manhattan. He died in the Bronx aged 54 on 20 August 1945, and was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery, Greenburgh, Westchester.
4, Cornelia Cole Beekman Rylee (1894-1938), was born in Manhattan, New York, on 22 February 1894.

Gregory McLoughlin and Edwina Whitehouse at their wedding in Rye, New York, on 11 June 1913

The elder son of James and Cornelia McLoughlin was:

Gregory Van Sicklin McLoughlin (1889-1954), a landscape and still-life artist. He was born in Santa Monica on 27 September 1889, and educated at Harvard. He married Edwina Worthington Whitehouse (1894-1923) in Rye, New York, on 11 June 1913. Edwina was born on 5 January 1894, a daughter of Edward Whitehouse (1866-1899) and Constance Josephine Cozzens Sewell (1872-1957). She was 19 when she married and she was described at the time as a ‘society girl’.

Ten years after her marriage, on 2 November 1923, Edwina shot herself dead in Mount Kisco, Westchester. She was still not 30 and was the mother of three young children aged 9, 7 and 5. She left notes suggesting that, as a devotee of the Theosophical Society, she hoped to advance toward Nirvana, and that she believed her husband and his art career would be better off without her.

The tragic circumstances of her suicide made sensational news nationwide. The headline in the New York Times on 4 November 1923 declared: ‘Artist’s Wife Dies In Religious Mania; Mrs McLoughlin, Student of Theosophy, Thought She Was a Burden to Her Husband.’

Edwina and Gregory McLoughlin were the parents of three children:

1, (Princess) Kathleen Comerford McLoughlin (1914-1999). She was born in Briarcliff, New York, on 18 September 1914. She married Prince Alexis Pavlovich Scherbatow (1910-2003), a history professor, in 1941 and became Princess Kathleen Comerford McLoughlin or Принцесса Щербатов Кэтлин (Комерфорд Маклейфлин). She died aged 85 on 5 December 1999 and is buried at Holy Trinity Orthodox Monastery, Jordanville, New York. She is the subject of a separate profile on the Comerford Family History site (26 June 2009).
2, Comerford Whitehouse McLoughlin (1916-1987), of whom next.
3, Cornelia Edwina Whitehouse McLoughlin (1918-2006). She was born on 10 October 1918 in Colorado Springs. She married Edgar Beach Van Winkle II (1916-2002) at Christ Episcopal Church in Rye, New York, on 12 January 1939. They were the parents of two children, including a daughter Edwina Whitehouse Van Winkle who married William Hall Lewis III in Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, on 13 March 1971. Edgar Beach Van Winkle died on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, on 31 July 2002; Cornelia died aged 87 on 15 August 2006 in Oxford, Connecticut.

Edwina (Whitehouse) McLoughlin (1894-1923) with her children Kathleen Comerford McLoughlin (1914-1999), Comerford Whitehouse McLoughlin (1916-1987) and Cornelia Edwina McLoughlin (1918-1987) in a 1920s photograph

Gregory McLoughlin married his second wife Hope Patterson (1907-1983) in Manhattan on 5 May 1931. He died aged 64 in New York on 13 February 1954, and she died in Santa Monica on 29 April 1983. Although the censuses in 1940 and 1950 show Gregory and Hope living separately, her obituary named her as his widow. They were the parents of one daughter:

4, Hope McLoughlin, who died in 1997.

Gregory and his first wife Edwina are buried in Wooster Cemetery in Danbury, Connecticut. The Comerford name continued with their only son:

Comerford Whitehouse McLoughlin (1916-1987), of Southbury, Connecticut. He was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on 27 January 1916. He joined the staff of Time magazine in 1939. During World War II, he was a captain in the US army (1941-1945). He took part in the campaigns in Northern France, Rhineland, and Central Europe, and was decorated with the Bronze Star.

He was market merchandising manager with Fortune magazine. He retired from Time after 35 years with the organisation, and lived in retirement in Southbury, Connecticut.

He married Elizabeth Merrill (1918-1983), daughter of (Judge) Maurice P Merrill of Skowhegan, Maine, in 1942, and they were the parents of three children, including a daughter Cornelia Whitehouse McLoughlin, who married Stephen Edward Post in the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, Southbury, in 1977.

Comerford McLoughlin died at the Westerley Hospital, Rhode Island, on 26 June 1987.

Prince Alexis Pavlovich Scherbatow (1910-2003), a Russian exile and history professor, married Princess Kathleen Comerford McLoughlin (1914-1999) in 1941

As the sun sets on 2024, I look back on the past year, and wonder about a world that has Nowhere to go

The sun sets on 2024 … sunset at the harbour in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

As the sun sets on 2024, and as I look forward to the New Year and the promises of 2025, I find it helpful this evening to look back on the past year, with all its blessings, and at both the new and the missed opportunities.

The year began on a very low note, with two of us feeling sorry for ourselves and isolated with another round of Covid-19, with no opportunity and no inclination to ring in the New Year. Of course, we recovered, and it is good to reflect on what an interesting year this has been.

As well as visiting places throughout Ireland, north and south, and England, my travels this year brought me to France, Greece, the Netherlands, Singapore and Kuching in East Malaysia.

Presenting a church bell to Father Jeffry Renos Nawie, Saint Matthias Chapel and the people of Sinar Baru

We spent almost five weeks in Kuching (15 October to 18 November), staying for the first week in the Marian, a boutique hotel that had once been the diocesan guesthouse, and before that a school boarding house for a girls’ school and the home of the Ong family.

For the rest of our visit, we stayed for four weeks in Charlotte’s flat in Chinatown, in the heart of the old town of Kuching.

In the past, I have had many working visits to Japan, Korea, China and Hong Kong in East Asia, but this was my first time to visit south-east Asia.

The highlights of the those five weeks in Sarawak included an afternoon on Damai Beach on the shores of the South China Sea as Charlotte and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary, seeing the Orangutans in Semenggoh Nature Reserve south of Kuching, a morning at the Sarawak Cultural Village, and a day in BaKo National Park.

We crossed the river on sampans at night, took a river cruise at sunset, ate out with family members and friends, went swimming in the pool at the Marian, and learned about the work in Kuching of the Irish architect Denis Santry from Cork. We also visited many cathedrals, churches, mosques, a Sikh temple and Chinese or Taoist and Buddhist temples, a theological college and graveyards. I even went in search of the Jewish community of Kuching that never existed.

Father Jeffry Renos Nawie of Saint Augustine’s Church, Mambong, brought us on whistle-stop tours of up to 20 churches in the Diocese of Kuching, including the seven churches and chapels in his own mission district.

In a thank-offering to celebrate our first wedding anniversary, Charlotte and I presented a new church bell to Father Jeffry, Saint Matthias Chapel and the people of Sinar Baru.

There were two stopovers in Singapore in October and November. Because of flight cancellations and rerouting, we missed the first opportunity to stay over in Singapore. But on the return journey we stayed in the Chinatown district of Singapore, visited many of the major sites, and, of course, sought out the street art, took a boat trip on the river and sipped a Singapore Sling in Raffles Hotel.

Once again, I went in search of churches, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques and Hindu, Buddhist and Chinese temples. It was particularly interesting to see the influence of five key Irish figures on the layout, streets and architecture of Singapore: Sir Orfeur Cavenagh from Wexford, George Drumgoole Coleman from Drogheda, and Denis Santry and Denis Lane McSwiney, both from Cork, and William Cuppage from Dublin.

Early morning on Rue Saint Séverin, in the Latin Quarter of Paris, off the Boulevard Saint-Michel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

My optimum definition of visiting somewhere is staying overnight. Using that yardstick, I have slept in 15 different beds in the past 12 months – not counting the sleeps I tried to catch on two overnight flights between Paris and Singapore, but including an unexpected stay in an hotel at Schiphol Airport in October when our flight from Birmingham to Amsterdam was delayed, and we were rerouted through Paris.

My minimum definition of visiting somewhere is if my feet are on the ground and I stop over long enough to have coffee and something to eat. This means we were in Paris three times this year: a delayed honeymoon in Paris in February, and two very brief stop-overs at Charles de Gaulle Airport in October and November on the way to and from Singapore and Kuching.

Our visit to Paris earlier in the year was what in reality was a delayed honeymoon, just two months after our wedding at the end of last year.

It was my first time to travel on the Eurostar, and we stayed in the Hotel Europe-Saint-Séverin on Rue St Séverin. We were in the heart of the Latin Quarter, a few steps away from the Boulevard Saint-Michel and across the river from Notre Dame Cathedral, where the restoration work was still under way but near completion.

We went in search of stories about Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, I visited synagogues, churches and museums, and I found the house where Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky, one of the more influential Orthodox theologians, had lived in the 1940s and 1960s.

The olive groves on the hillsides between Piskopianó and Koutouloufári above Hersonissos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I returned to Greece in April, spending almost a week between Western Easter and Orthodox Easter in Rethymnon, where I stayed in the Brascos Hotel, overlooking the Municipal Gardens and close to the old town and the Venetian harbour. Since the mid-1980s, Rethymnon has been the nearest I have to any home town in Greece.

There was time for coffee, drinks, and even a long lingering lunch or two with old friends in Rethymnon, Platanias, Koutouloufari, Piskopiano, Iraklion and Panormos.

I had walks on the beaches and harbours in Rethymnon, Platanias, Hersonissos and Panrmos, it was exhilarating to stroll again in the hills and by the olive groves in Koutouloufari and Piskopiano. And I visited some favourite old churches and monasteries, browsed in the bookshops in the narrow streets of the old town, and watched the sunset behind the harbour and the Fortezza.

Looking across Dublin Bay from Blackrock to Howth Head during a summer visit to Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

There were six visits to Ireland this year, including five return visits to Dublin. They included three family visits in June, August and shortly before Christmas this month. I stayed over on those three visits, in the Harcourt Hotel on Harcourt Street (June), the Martello Hotel in Bray, Co Wicklow (August), and the Travelodge in Rathmines (December).

During the visit in August, we had opportunities too to see the Iveagh Gardens in detail and to visit Newman House and the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) on Saint Stephen’s Green.

We were in Belfast for two nights in September, when we were invited to a family celebration near Templepatrick, Co Antrim.

A school reunion in September involved lunch in Peploe’s restaurant on Saint Stephen’s when about 30 or more of us who left school at Gormanston, Co Meath, after the Leaving Certificate exams in 1969. It was surprising to see so many of us still looking hale and hearty in our early-to-mid 70s. But that lunch in September and a business meeting in October were flying visits, literally, flying into Dublin in the morning, and back to Birmingham late in the evening.

My family visit to Dublin shortly before Christmas was also an opportunity to hear about the current campaign to protect Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, from plans by Saint Mary’s College to develop its rugby and cricket facilities in the square.

Walking by the river and through Christchurch Meadows in Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I have been living in Stony Stratford, on the northern edges of Milton Keynes, for almost three years, and it offers me many opportunities to explore neighbouring cities, towns and countryside, to return to parts of England I have known for most of my life, and to see some new parts of England that I am only beginning to explore on my ‘escapades’.

I was in Norwich for the first time this year, when we stayed there in March while visiting an old friend. This was also an opportunity to visit Norwich Cathedral, the house and church associated with Julian of Norwich, and some of the places associated with Quaker history.

I was in Oxford for hospital tests towards the end of the year, but there were visits to Oxford throughout the year, to meet an old friend from India who is an Orthodox priest and theologian, to visit the exhibition ‘Kafka, Making of an Icon’ in the Weston Library, for the Corpus Christi procession from the Chapel of Pusey House to Saint Barnabas, Jericho, to see Holman Hunt’s ‘Light of the World’ in the Chapel of Keble College and visit other churches and chapels, to follow parts of the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ trail, for long lingering pub lunches in the King’s Arms with friends, and time to browse in bookshops, especially Blackwells.

There were walks through Christchurch Meadows, by the Cherwell and the Isis and by the boathouses, and to search for the oldest and longest-established coffee house in Europe.

I was back in Cambridge three times this year – twice on the way to and from the USPG conference in High Leigh, and again in November for the seminar and celebrations in Westminster College marking the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. During those visits I also had the opportunity drop in again to Sidney Sussex College.

There have been days in London amd short ‘escapades’ to Aston, Beachampton, Bedford, Blisworth, Eaton Socon and Eaton Ford, Hampstead, Handsworth, Hoddesdon, Lamport, Leicester, Loughton, Northampton, Roade, St Neots, and Woughton-on-the-Green, there were forays in search of the traditional coffee houses that give their names to streets in Coffee Hall in Milton Keynes, and there was another visit to the museum at Bletchley Park.

Each time I see Comberford and Comberford Hall between Tamworth and Lichfield I recall old family stories (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I was in Lichfield and Tamworth throughout the year. In Lichfield, I attended the mid-day Eucharist and Choral Evensong in the cathedral, had lunch in the Hedgehog and went for long walks along Cross in Hand Lane, through Beacon Park and by Minster Pool and Stowe Pool.

In Tamworth, there were return visits to the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Collegiate Church and the Moat House, the former Comberford family home on Lichfield Street, and I was invited by the Tamworth and District Civic Society to deliver a lecture in April on the Wyatt architectural dynasty.

Each time I pass Comberford and Comberford Hall on the train between Tamworth and Lichfield, I continue to be filled with warm feelings and to recall past family stories.

However, one visit to Lichfield and Tamworth almost became a catastrophe when I lost my phone on the train. I never recovered it, and trying to recover contacts and update passwords and accounts remains a Sisyphean task even months later.

My researches on Comberford and Comerford links continued throughout the year. I was in Aston, near Birmingham, not only to visit the home of Aston Villa at Villa Park, but also to visit Aston Hall and to visit Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church to see an unusual Comberford family monument.

There were Comberford connections to explore closer to home too, at Stoke Bruerne in Northamptonshire and the neighbouring village of Shutlanger, where the house now known as the Monastery in Shutlanger was the main house on the Parles and Comberford estate in that part of Northamptonshire in the 15th and 16th centuries.

‘The Mother and Child’ sculpture by Glynn Williams in a courtyard in Milton Keynes University Hospital (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The year began wrapped up in bed with two of us feeling very sorry for ourselved during yet another attack of Covid-19. But my major health concerns this year included monitoring my continuing recovery from a stroke almost three years ago, and monitoring the symptoms of my pulmonary sarcoidosis and a severe deficiency of Vitamin B-12.

I returned to Milton Keynes University Hospital on 18 March to remember the second anniversary of my stroke in March 2022. There were seven other visits to the hospital in Milton Keynes, in March, June, twice in July, August, October and November, for respiratory and cardiac tests and CT scans, and further tests in the Whitehouse Health Centre near Milton Keynes in October and the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, earlier this month.

I have yet another respiratory or lung test in Milton Keynes Hospital later this week.

I moved from High Street, Wexford, 50 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

This has been a year of milestone anniversaries in my life story, some of which have been a delight and pleasure, but some of which I have not responded to with the grace and generosity that I ought to expect even of myself:

It is 55 years since I finished school at Gormanston College (1969).

It is 50 years since I left Wexford and the Wexford People and moved to Dublin and The Irish Times in 1974 and got married the first time in Dublin.

It has been 45 years since I was student in Japan, based in Tokyo for a full term in 1979 on a fellowship from Journalistes en Europe and Nihon Shimbun Kyokai, and with the support of Douglas Gageby, editor of The Irish Times.

It has been 45 since years since I became involved in re-founding the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and as chair of Irish CND.

It has been 40 years since Mercier Press published my first book, Do You Want to Do for NATO? (1984).

It has been 40 years aince completing a Post-Graduate Diploma in Ecumenical Theology at the Irish School of Ecumenics and Trinity College Dublin in 1984, and beginning the BD course at the Kimmage Manor and the Pontifical University Maynooth.

It is 35 years since my elder son was born in 1989.

It has been 30 years since I was appointed Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times in 1994, and 30 years since I was commissioned in Christ Church Cathedral as a diocesan reader in the Church of Ireland.

It has been 25 years since I began training for ordination at the Church of Ireland Theological College (now CITI) in 1999.

It has been 20 years since my father died in December 2004.

It is 15 years since I stood down as chair of the Dublin University Far East Mission in 2009.

It has been 10 years since my mother died in May 2014.

The former Bea House on Pembroke Park … memories of student days at the Irish School of Ecumenics 40 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I am still waiting for Permission to Officiate (PTO) in the Diocese of Oxford. It is a difficult and at times heart-breaking process, and more difficult in the major Church seasons such as Easter and Christmas, and as I look forward to the 25th anniversary of my ordination as deacon in 2000.

But the local clergy in the Milton Keynes deanery have gone out of their way to welcome me to chapter meetings in the past year in local churches and parishes, including Bletchley, Shenley, Shenley Church End, Wavenden and Wolverton.

I continue to sing with the bass line in the parish choir in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Giles, Stony Stratford. We rehearse each Wednesday, sing at the Parish Eucharist most Sundays, and we have also sung in All Saints’ Church, Calverton.

I attended the Cathedral Eucharist in Saint Thomas’s Cathedral each Sunday while we were staying in Kuching. During those five weeks, I visited the two cathedrals in Kuching and countless churches throughout the Diocese of Kuching.

There have been visits to Christ Church, Oxford, Lichfield Cathedral, Southwark Cathedral, Saint Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, St Alban’s Cathedral, Leicester Cathedral, the two cathedrals in Norwich, the cathedrals in Rethymnon and Iraklion in Crete, the two cathedrals in Dublin, Christ Church and Saint Patrick’s, the two cathedrals in Kuching, Saint Thomas’s and Saint Joseph’s, and the two cathedrals in Singapore, Saint Andrew’s and the Good Shepherd.

Although I am no longer a trustee of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), I continue to be involved in its work, and deaw on the USPG prayer diary in my own online prayer diary each morning. I took part in the annual conference of USPG in High Leigh, near Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, in July, when I was invited to lead the intercessions at the Eucharist on the closing day, and attended the annual founders’ day celebrations for USPG and SPCK in Saint Alban’s Church, Holborn, earlier in the year.

I watched the new iconostasis being put in place in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford, where I have been warmly welcomed at the Good Friday and Easter liturgies and other celebrations, as well as numerous coffee mornings.

As well as churches, cathedrals and synagogues, there have been visits to mosques in England, Kuching and Singapore, and to Buddhist, Chinese or Taoist, Hindu, Jain and Sikh temples.

I took part in the Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at the MK Rose in Campbell Park, Milton Keynes, and the Hiroshima Day commemorations at the Japanese Peace Pagoda by Willen Lake, and attended the Kol Nidre Service at Yom Kippur and the Chanukah party last weekend in our local synagogue.

Sunday afternoon by the beach at Bako in Sarawak looking out at the South China Sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

During the summer months, Charlotte organised a street party, so we all got to know each other better as neighbours in Church Mews and White Horse Lane.

Living off the High Street in Stony Stratford for almost three years now, I miss being close to the sea, and opportunities to walk on a beach or by the sea. But during one visit to Dublin there were opportunities for walks by the shore in both Blackrock and Bray; there were walks on the beaches in Rethymnon, Platanias and Panormos and by the harbours in Rethymnon and Iraklion in Crete; and walks on the beaches in Sarawak in Bako National Park and by the South China Sea at Damai Beach Resort.

There were walks by the Ouse in Stony Stratford, Bedford and St Neots, the Cam in Cambridge, the Cherwell and the Isis or Thames and the boat clubs in Oxford, the Thames in London, the Liffey in Dublin, the Seine in Paris and by the rivers in Kuching and Singapore; there were strolls by Willen Lake in Milton Keynes and the Balancing Lakes near Wolverton; I had canal-side walks in Great Linford, Stoke Bruerne and Wolverton; there were boat trips on the canal in Stoke Bruerne, on the rivers in Kuching and Singapore and in Bako National Park in Sarawak; and there was time to enjoy the regatta and Dragon Boat races in Kuching.

Although I walk 3-5 km a day, I remain a couch potato when it comes to sports. But I was an enthusiastic television fan of the Irish rugby team, of the Irish and English rowers in the Olympics and the Cambridge crew in the boat race, enjoyed the spectacular opening and closing ceremonies at the Paris Olympics, enjoyed the Euros 2024, and kept up-to-date with results for Aston Villa, the Leinster rugby team and the Wexford hurlers.

A walk by the canal near Great Linford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I continue to contribute to books, write papers and reviews for journals and magazines, and some of my photographs have been published too in books, magazines – and even in one calendar for next year.

My publications in 2024 included the Προλογος (‘Foreword’) in Ελληνικα Δημοτικα Τραγουδια, Greek Folk Songs by Panos Karagiorgos, (Thessaloniki, Εκδοτικος Οικος Κ & Μ Σταμουλη); a paper on ‘The Lamport Crucifix’ and photographs in 50 Years of the Lamport Hall Preservation Trust, edited by Catriona Finlayson (Lamport, 2024); a short description of ‘Bourke’s House’ in Denis O’Shaughnessy’s The Story of Athlunkard Street, 1824-2024 (Limerick, 2024), which has run to three printings and has sold out each time; the ‘Foreword’ and a photograph in Rod Smith’s Clancarty – the high times and humble of a noble Irish family (Tauranga, New Zealand: Eyeglass Press); and a small, six-page pamphlet with Sarah Friedman, Milton Keynes & District Reform Synagogue: an introduction, with six of my photographs.

I wrote a paper on Saint Patrick for Conversations, a new journal edited by Bernard Treacy and published by Dominican Publications in Dublin; and wrote a book review for The Journal of Malankara Orthodox Theological Studies, published by the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Kerala, India.

There were features and photographs about Bishop Richard Rawle, a 19th century Vicar of Tamworth and SPG-supported Bishop in Trinidad, and about the stained glass artist William Wailes in Tamworth Heritage Magazine; a photograph of Bryce House illustrating February 2025, in ‘Garnish Island Calendar 2025’ produced for a school, Glengarriff, Co Cork; and a photograph in The Liberty, a local newspaper in Dublin. I also continue to write occasionally for The Irish Times.

We visited Lamport Hall in rural Northamptonshire for the launch of Catriona Finlayson’s lavishly illustrated 50 Years of the Lamport Hall Preservation Trust, and met many of the other contributors to the publication.

I was supposed to launch Rod Smith’s book, Clancarty – the high times and humble of a noble Irish family, on the history of the Trench family in London in October. But, in my haste to get to London on time, I boarded the wrong train at Milton Keynes, and ended up instead in Crewe. A return train was never going to get me back to London on time. My embarrassment was redeemed in part, I hope, by recording what I had planned to say first on the train and later when I got back to Stony Stratford, and posting both recordings on YouTube.

I felt so sorry for Rod Smith, who had travelled all the way from New Zealand for the book launch, and we had met in Hampstead a few days earlier to plan what I was going to say. I could only hope the other book launch in Ballinasloe was less of a disaster.

I continue to blog about twice a day, with a prayer diary each morning and a second posting later in the day.

Thoughts shared for the launch of Rod Smith’s book ‘Clancarty – the high times and humble of a noble Irish family’ in London (Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I continue to serve as a trustee of the Retreat, a local almshouse off the High Street in Stony Stratford, and took part in a training day for almshouse trustees in Birmingham.

Throughout the year I have been involved in the Town Centre Working Group, a committee of Stony Stratford Town Council and successfully completing a commission for a public sculpture for Stony Stratford. In the course of that project, I have visited and photographed public sculptures already in situ in Stony Stratford, Wolverton, the campus of the Open University in Milton Keynes and in the grounds of Tamworth Castle.

It was a duty and a privilege to vote in this year’s local and general elections in May and July. I canvassed on the day of the general election and while I am pleased with the election results, including the results in Milton Keynes and Lichfield, I am concerned about the rise of Farage and Reform as part of the rise of the far-right across Europe and North America.

I was in Dublin to vote in the European elections, but this year’s general election in Ireland is probably the first I have not been able to vote in. From a distance, I was sorry to see my old friend Brendan Howlin retire from politics, I was delighted to see George Lawlor, former Mayor of Wexford, elected to the Dail, and I could breathe a sigh of relief that the expected upsurge in support for Sinn Fein was never realised.


A morning with the orangutans in Semenggoh Wildlife Centre (Patrick Comerford, 2024)

On the overnight flight from Paris to Singapore in October, I found it difficult to sleep and kept my eye on the flight path. It was interesting how many conflict zones had to be avoided: Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Israel, the West Bank, Yemen, many parts of the Gulf, Afghanistan … It made the map more interesting, but may have added up to an extra hour to the flight time, and made me more acutely aware of how fragile the world is.

Of course, I am deeply concerned about the continuing aggressive war Russia is waging in Ukraine and the conflicts being fought on so many fronts in the Middle East – in Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Of course, I am deeply concerned about the plight of refugees the world seems to have forgotten trying to cross the Mediterranean and the Channel and living in hellish conditions in northern France, on Greek islands, and in so many places across the world.

Of course, I am worried about the real threat Nigel Farage and his party could still pose to democracy in Britain, and about the rise of the far throughout Europe.

Of course, I am worried about the rise in antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny, remembering that January 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps, and that the coming year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

And, of course, I am worried about the damage that is going to be wreaked not only in the US but across the globe during another four years of a Trump presidency, with Elon Musk pulling the strings as the puppet master, and what this could mean for the world economy, for democracy, for human rights, the climate change, for fundamental justice, decency and honesty in the public sphere.

There is no Planet B, as one campaign slogan reminds us. There is Nowehere else to go.

During our visit to Norwich earlier this year, we had dinner one evening in the small town of Acle on the Norfolk Broads. But it was too late in the evening to think of going to Great Yarmouth 8 or 9 miles to the east for a walk by the sea.

There is a marshy area by the River Bure about three miles from Acle that was once known as Nowhere or No-Where. The villagers of Acle had salt-pans there to produce salt and in 1861 there were four inhabited houses in Nowehere and 16 residents. Originally, Nowhere was an extra-parochial liberty, until it was formally incorporated into Acle parish in 1862.

The name Nowhere no longer appears in maps and gazetteers, so I cannot say that this year I actually visited Nowehere. But then, there’s nowhere in Nowhere to have a coffee, and certainly nowhere there to stay overnight.

Happy New Year

Taking leave of 2024 and looking forward to 2025 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Coming to terms with memories of my father, Stephen Comerford, 20 years after he died

Stephen Edward Comerford (1918-2004) died 20 years ago in December 2004 (Photograph: Comerford family collection)

Patrick Comerford

When death comes at Christmas-tide to a family it has a searing impact that can never be erased or forgotten. The death of my eldest brother, Stephen Comerford, at the age of 24, 54 years ago, just a week before Christmas on 18 December 1970, had an emotional impact on my parents that I can never forget. They had celebated their 25th wedding anniversary just three months earlier.

Steve’s death came just four days after my father’s 52nd birthday, which may have compounded my parents’ grief.

This week has also marked the 20th anniversary of the death of my father, Stephen Edward Comerford (1918-2004), who died shortly after Christmas 20 years ago.

My father was born on 14 December 1918 at 7 Swanville Place, Rathmines, a neat end-of-terrace house off Lower Rathmines Road, behind the Stella Cinema and close to Leinster Square, Leinster Road and Rathmines Town Hall.

Stephen was the youngest in a large family, with a half-sister and two half-brothers (one already deceased) and two older brothers and an older sister. He was named Stephen both because he was born so close to Christmas Day and Saint Stephen’s Day (26 September) and also after his father, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921).

Stephen Edward Comerford was born on 14 December 1918 at 7 Swanville Terrace, Rathmines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

My grandfather was also born close to Christmas Day and Saint Stephen’s Day, on 28 December 1867, at 7 Redmond’s Hill, between Camden Street, Wexford Street and Aungier Street, Dublin, and he was baptised soon after in Saint Andrew’s Church. Later, he lived on Upper Beechwood Avenue and at Old Mountpleasant in Ranelagh, before moving to Rathmines.

My grandfather was in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during World War I, but was sent home in May 1916 – in the days immediately after the Easter Rising in Dublin – after contracting malaria in Thessaloniki. That malaria eventually killed him, and he died shortly after my father’s second birthday, on 21 January 1921.

My father grew up without any real memories of his own father, and spent his childhood years first in Rathmines and then in Ashdale Park, Terenure. As he was growing up, he was close to both his mother’s family, the Lynders family in Portrane, north Co Dublin, and to his Comerford cousins in the Clanbrassil Street and ‘Little Jerusalem’ area of Dublin, between Clanbrassil Street and Camden Street.

2 Old Mountpleasant, Ranelagh, where my grandfather lived before moving to Rathmines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

He went to school in Dublin, and throughout his childhood days was familiar with the narrow streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’. There his childhood friends included the Levitas brothers, who lived on Longwood Avenue and Warren Street in Portobello, and whose family attended the Lennox Street synagogue, one of the many small synagogues in the area.

One Saturday evening in the mid-1920s, the synagogue almost went up in smoke. It was not, however, attempted arson. Four boys had been anxious to bring the Sabbath to a speedy conclusion in order to resume playing on the street. So they came back into the synagogue to hastily say the final prayers, and accidentally knocked over a candle that set a cloth alight. Fortunately, it was quickly extinguished. The ‘culprits’ were three brothers – Max, Maurice and Sol Levitas – and Chaim Herzog. The Levitas brothers later became heroes of the Battle of Cable Street in the East End of London in 1936; the fourth boy was Chaim Herzog – the Chief Rabbi’s son and a future President of Israel.

Other childhood and school friends and contemporaries who he shared memories of with me included Dr Kevin O’Flanagan (191-2006) who played both rugby and soccer for Ireland, Johnny Carey (1919-1995), also an Irish international footballer, the actor Jack MacGowran (1918-1973), the writer Cornelius Ryan (1920-1974), former Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave (1920-2017), and the RAF flying ace and war hero Paddy Finnucane (1920-1942).

During those schooldays, my father also travelled by boat to Italy, in what turned out to be a lengthy odyssey for the Boy Scouts he was part of, and in adulthood he continued to recall how the ship had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and stopped off in Spain.

When he left school, he began a career in the insurance sector with the London and Lancashire, first working as an insurance clerk at the London and Lancashire office on College Green, Dublin. In those years immediately prior to the outbreak of World War II, he also become actively involved in An Óige, the Irish Youth Hostel Association, founded in 1931 by Thekla Beere, Shane Bodkin and Terry Trench.

The founders of An Óige were inspired by the success of the Youth Hostel Association in England, founded the previous year, and the Jugendherbergen in Germany, and were motivated by inter-war efforts to promote peace among young people on these islands and in Germany. My father had a particular interest in An Óige’s early youth hostels at Lough Dan, near Roundwood, and in Glencree, Co Wicklow. He was also a keen rugby player.

At the outbreak of World War II, the 11 Cavalry Squadron LDF (Local Defence Forces), later the 11 Cavalry (FCA) Regiment, was formed, with Captain JN Farrell forming a Cyclist Squadron based in McKee Barracks with of cyclists from Dublin clubs. Shortly after, my father joinned the 42nd (An Oige) Cyclist Squadron when it was formed. It was led by Aidan Pender, later editor of the Evening Herald and the Irish Independent, and alongside my father the other members included his childhood friend George Kerr, a journalist and later assistant news editor of the Irish Press, Brendan O’Shea, Sean O’Briain, Jim Dillon and Stan O’Grady.

Some of these men had been friends and neighbours since schooldays, many remained lifelong friends, and George Kerr became my ‘uncle’ and ‘foster father’. Their regimental symbol was Pegasus, and a Pegasus trophy remained on my father’s sideboard for many years.

At the end of World War II, all members of the LDF became the new Forsa Cosanta Aituil (FCA), and the new 11 Cyclist Regiment was renamed the 11 Cavalry Regiment FCA. Many of the 11 Cyclists were commissioned almost immediately, and the FCA was integrated into the regular army structures. Stephen was promoted but turned down the offer of a full-time army commission, and continued to work in the insurance sector. In the days immediately after the war, he and my mother Ellen (Murphy), a civil servant from Millstreet, Co Cork, were married in Blackrock, Co Dublin, on 8 September 1945. They had met while she was staying in a bed-sit in the home of his half-brother Arthur Comerford on Rathgar Road.

They first lived on Putland Road, Bray, but spent much of their life in houses on Lower Kimmage Road in Harold’s Cross, and in Rathfarnham Wood, and were the parents of six children. At one time in 1950, he drove to Rome with a group of friends – I think they included George Kerr, his first cousin Patrick ‘Sonny’ Linders, and (perhaps), his brother-in-law Michael Murphy – stopping along the way in Paris, Milan, Bologna and Florence.

Back in Dublin, he continued to work with London and Lancashire, specialising in fire insurance, and becoming an insurance surveyor. London and Lancashire merged in 1960 with Royal Insurance, Britain’s largest insurance group, which became a takeover by Royal Insurance in 1962, and now part of Royal Sun Alliance. His work took him throughout Ireland and regularly to London and Liverpool.

He was also an active trade unionist, becoming a branch chair in the Guild of Insurance Officials (GIO), a union founded in 1919 – both his father and grandfather before him had also been active trade unionists. The union affiliated to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Confederation of Insurance Trade Unions, and became the Union of Insurance Staffs in 1969. The following year, it merged with the Association of Scientific, Technical and Management Staffs (ASTMS), and after various mergers and amalgamations was absorbed into Unite.

His colleagues when he was a union activist in the 1960s included Noel Harris, who was also active in the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement and who died in 2014; and Clive Jenkins (1926-1999), who once described his recreation in Who’s Who as ‘organising the middle classes’ and who was instrumental in getting Neil Kinnock nominated to the leadership of the Labour Party.

There were union conferences in seaside towns like Scarborough, Blackpool, Skegnesss or Brighton, and on one union or business trip to England he brought me back my first transistor radio so I could listen to Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg. Little could I, his union colleagues or his friends have imagined how my father’s political views would take a different direction in his later years.

He took advantage of his office locations on College Green and Dame Street to give the children in his family prime viewing positions for the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin. Family holidays during summer months involved what seemed like long weeks in Kilcoole, Bettystown and Termonfeckin, on the east coast and close to golf courses – rugby had given way to a passion for golf, and he was active in the Castle Golf Club in Rathfarnham, where he seemed to spend much of his weekends and where he always seemed to win a turkey each Christmas.

My brother Steve and I joked that he had chosen to send us to school in Gormanston in the hope that as adults we would play golf with him – neither of us did. He tried to encourage me to play rugby, and I have memories of him teaching me to row on Lough Ramor in Virginia in 1967. That summer he listened with pride to broadcasts during the Six-Day War featuring his childhood friend Chaim Herzog, who was just two months older than him.

He passed on his enthusiasm for youth hostelling, and I hitch-hiked throughout England Ireland in my late teens. He never managed to persuade me to join the scouts or the FCA, but his GIO was the first union I joined after I left school. I remained an active and committed union member all my working life, in the National Union of Journalists and then the Irish Federation of University Teachers.

Former colleagues told me he paid the price for his union activism when he was denied opportunities for promotion and advancing his career. He was an insurance surveyor with Royal Insurance until he took early retirement at the age of 55 in 1974. But he continued to work as a surveyor with Donal O Buachalla and Company on Merrion Square, Dublin, where he became a director and the company secretary.

Stephen Comerford was a surveyor with Donal O Buachalla and Company on Merrion Square, Dublin, and the company secretary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

He encouraged me to train as a chartered surveyor – although those hopes produced as much fruit as his hopes that I might play golf with him. My relationship with him as a child and as a teenager were difficult and usually fraught, though perhaps I was less than kind when I wrote about these memories a few years ago.

His boyhood voyage by ship through the Mediterranean may have given him a lifelong love of travel, visiting France, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and the US, though I failed to persuade him to visit Greece with me. He found it difficult to understand why I never continued as a chartered surveyor and instead became a journalist, first with the Wexford People and then with The Irish Times. Although his close friends George Kerr and Aidan Pender and other members of his family were journalists too, he regarded journalism as too ‘arty’. He never acknowledged my successes in The Irish Times, even when I was appointed Foreign Desk Editor, and he would constantly ask when I was ever going to get a ‘real day job’.

In a similar vein, he was critical of my high-profile involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s, although that may have been where his sympathies lay in the late 1950s or early 1960s. It was hurtful that he never came to my graduations, conferrings or book launches, or to milestone family events. In his final days, there was one glint of acknowledgement when I shared with him my research on Comerford family history and genealogy, and his family gathered to celebrate my parents 50th wedding anniversary in their home in Rathfarnham in 1995.

Many years later, the Royal Insurance building on College Green was acquired by Trinity College Dublin, and in my academic career I had mixed emotions when it came to attending MTh course management meetings in what probably were his offices 40 or 50 years earlier.

Stephen Edward Comerford died suddenly at the age of 86 from a rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurism at his home in Rathfarnham Wood this week 20 years ago, a few days after spending Christmas 2004 in Cork. He is buried in Bohernabreena Cemetery, Co Dublin.

His gravestone says he died on 27 December 2004, but his death notice in The Irish Times says he died on 28 December 2004 – 137 years to the day since the birth of his own father in 1867. He never knew his own father, and 20 years later I wonder whether I really knew him.

My father spent his teenage and early adult years in Ashdale Park, Terenure (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Tracing James Comerford, whose miniature portrait was painted shortly before his marriage in 1829

The miniature portrait of James Comerford (ca 1829) by François Theodore Rochard, in the Lady Cohen Collection at Kenwood House

Patrick Comerford

I recently came across a miniature portrait of James Comerford, dating from ca 1829, by the French miniaturist François Theodore Rochard and now in the Lady Cohen Collection at Kenwood House in Hampstead.

The miniature is a watercolour on ivory, and shows a young James Comerford with short curling brown hair, wearing a dark blue coat and top coat, checked cravat, with spy glass and fob seals, an ivy draped urn to his and right, a sunset sky.

The reverse of James Comerford’s portrait is inscribed in a later hand with the identification of James Comerford as the sitter, together with the information that he married ‘Ann Birrell’. An associated miniature of Ann Birrell by Rochard is fully signed by the artist and inscribed with his Howland Street address and the date 7 February 1829.

In an age before photography – and long before ‘selfies’ – these portable images served as intimate tokens of love and friendship or as reminders of lost, absent or deceased loved ones.

The miniature of James Comerford was part of the Lady Cohen Collection, featuring 65 miniatures by some of the leading artists of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was given to English Heritage through the Cultural Gift scheme of Arts Council England’s. Bryony Cohen is the wife of the retired High Court Judge, Sir Jonathan Lionel Cohen.

Louise Cooling, the English Heritage curator at Kenwood, said the collection was of outstanding art historical importance. The miniatures are mostly watercolour on ivory, and the miniatures include a double portrait of Mrs Wadham Wyndham and her sister Miss Slade by Andrew Robertson, a late miniature by Jeremiah Meyer, and a work by the last great Scottish miniaturist Robert Thorburn (1818-1885).

The heyday of the portrait miniature coincides with the time when Kenwood was home to the first three Earls of Mansfield and their families. For example, over eight years William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, commissioned 13 miniature copies of his portrait by Joshua Reynolds. ‘A large number of the miniatures commissioned by people who lived at Kenwood are lost, having likely been given away as gifts,’ Louise Cooling says.

The French miniaturist François Theodore Rochard (1798-1857) moved to London ca 1820, joining his brother who was already living there. Rochard was a popular portrait painter specialising in miniatures and in water colours and won two silver medals from the new Society of British Artists in 1823. He retired after his marriage in 1850 and he died in London on 31 October 1857.

His brother, Simon Jacques Rochard (1788-1872), was a painter of portrait miniatures in France, England and Brussels. He was only 20 when he painted a portrait of the Empress Joséphine for Napoleon and later other portraits of the imperial family. After Napoleon’s return from Elba in 1815, he was drafted into the army but fled to Brussels. There he received commissions to paint miniatures, including at least one of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

Shortly after this, he moved to London, and there he painted numerous miniatures of leading society figures such as Princess Charlotte (1766-1828).

Kenwood House is a stately home on the north fringes of Hampstead Heath. The house was built in the late 17th century and was remodelled in the 18th century for William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, by Robert Adam. The house and part of the grounds were bought by Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, in 1925 and donated to the nation. It is now owned by London County Council and a popular visitor attraction, and holds a significant number of historic paintings and art works, including 63 Old Master paintings, while the gardens have sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Eugène Dodeigne.

James Comerford (1720-1808) and Anne (Langton) Comerford were pained by John Comerford (1720-1808) in 1794 and 1797 (Comerford family collection)

But I was curious to know the identity of this James Comerford whose portrait was painted in 1829 by the fashionable portraitist François Theodore Rochard, along with his future wife who is named at Kenwood in the catalogue of the Lady Cohen Collection as ‘Ann Birrell’.

My attention was drawn to this portrait last week as I was trying to trace an English artist in the 1950s who signed his work BP Comerford, and found myself researching the work and career of the artist Charles William (Bill) Comerford (1905-1961).

I am familiar with the work of the Irish miniaturist John Comerford (1770-1832), and some of his works are also the collection of miniatures in Kenwood House. John Comerford was a regular guest at the Langton House in the Butterslip, Kilkenny, of James Comerford (1720-1808) and Anne (Langton) Comerford, and painted miniature portraits of each of them in 1794 and again in 1797.

He probably also painted their nephew, James Comerford (1775-1825) of Newtownbarry (Bunclody), my great-great-grandfather, and James Comerford’s eldest son, Richard Comerford (1796-1848) of Newtownbarry, my great-grandfather’s eldest brother.

Richard Comerford (1796-1848) of Newtownbarry (left) and his uncle James Comerford (1775-1825, right) may have been painted by John Comerford ( Comerford family collection)

However, although they sat for John Comerford, neither James Comerford of Kilkenny nor James Comerford of Newtownbarry is the subject of the miniature portrait of James Comerford painted by Rochard in 1829 – both were dead by then.

I am now confident, however, that the sitter for Rochard’s portrait in 1829 was the Victorian book collector, antiquarian and notary James Comerford (1807-1881), who was married in 1829. This James Comerford was born at Holborn on 7 November 1807, in Castle Street, now Furnival Street, Holborn, and was baptised in Saint Andrew’s Church, Holborn, in March 1808.

He first practised as a notary public in partnership with TS Girdler as Comerford and Company at 27 Change Alley, Cornhill, London, from December 1827. Later, he practised from premises at 7 Tokenhouse Yard, Lothbury. James Comerford was also a magistrate or Justice of the Peace (JP), secretary to the Society of Public Notaries of London (1833), and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians (FSA, 1840).

He married 19-year-old Sarah Anne Bissett, daughter of Captain James Bissett, in Wilmington, Sussex, on 16 July 1828. So ‘Ann Birrell’ may be a misreading of Sarah Anne Bissett’s name in handwriting, and their portraits may have been commissioned in 1828, rather than 1829, in advance of their wedding.

Family tradition says that in his younger days James was something of a rake, who took fencing lessons from a fencing master, Henry Angelo, and fought a duel with a man named Atwood over his future wife. The adventurous and rakish spirit continued after their wedding, when Sarah and James Comerford took their honeymoon during the Belgian/Dutch civil war.

Sarah Anne Bissett was born in 1809, the daughter of a sea captain who died in the American war in 1812. Her eldest sister, Anna Maria Bissett, married the Revd Robert Philip Blake (1801-1841) curate of Wilmington, Sussex, and Stoke, near Guildford, at the time of Sarah’s wedding. He drowned at Niton, Isle of Wight, while swimming with his son, later the Revd Professor John Frederick Blake (1839-1906), lecturer in Comparative Anatomy, Charing Cross Hospital, London and Professor of Natural Science, University College Nottingham.

Between 1829 and 1851, James Comerford and his family were living at 7 Saint Andrew’s Place, Regent’s Park, London. By 1872, James Comerford was living in Framfield, Sussex.

Sarah and James Comerford were the parents of two sons and a daughter: James William Comerford (1829-1917), Charles Frederick Comerford (born 1831), and Emily Sarah (1842-1909), who married Henry Burchett in 1858 and later married the Revd Hamilton Brand.

James Comerford was a book collector and antiquarian. He built on his father’s earlier book collection, and amassed a library that included a large collection of county histories, local topographies and books of Catholic religious piety. He died on 8 March 1881 in the last cholera epidemic in London, and has many living descendants.

James Comerford’s bookplates have become collectors’ items … they perpetuate the claims of the Comerford family in Ireland to descent from the Comberford family of Staffordshire

After his death, his son, Colonel James William Comerford (1829-1917), sold his library and antiquarian collection at a Sotheby’s auction on 16-20 November 1881. His books occasionally come back on the market, but more often they are valued for his heraldic bookplates with the motto So Ho Ho Dea Ne, than as antique books.

The most notable object of antiquarian interest in James Comerford’s private collection was the ‘Bosworth Crucifix.’ This 15th century bronze processional crucifix, measuring 585 mm x 280 mm, is now in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

The Bosworth Crucifix is said to have been dug up on the Field of Bosworth in Leicestershire around the year 1778, and came into the possession of the Comerford family around the year 1810.

I have still to see Rochard’s portrait of James Comerford’s wife Sarah Anne Bissett or ‘Ann Birrell’.

The Bosworth Crucifix … the most notable antiquarian item in James Comerford’s private collection, now in the collection of the Society of Antiquarians