Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, Cork Independent, 8 July 2010

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 219)

Memories and Hidden Corners

 “I am influenced by the existence of an invisible world within nature where there are elusive processes, transformations and interactions of phenomenae. Inspiration is drawn from often overlooked, everyday environments, shadows, atmospheres, trails and hidden corners” (Lucey Dawe Lane, Fractals Exhibition, June 2010, Crawford College Art and Design)

A journey to the annual Crawford College of Art’s graduate exhibition offers the viewer new ways of not only seeing art but ways of seeing everyday and ordinary views one takes for granted. I feel that Lucey’s quote above sums up some of my own key feelings on St. Peter’s Church. There are many treasures to reflect on here, which the column has been investigating in the last number of weeks. However, I am also taken by the idea that the exploration of the hidden corners of heritage are as important as mainstream histories.

St. Peter’s Church is alive with images and Christian symbolism that informs my own experience of the space, how I photograph it, walk around it slowly and how even how I sit in the beautifully carved pews. Indeed, over the altar arch, the inscription invites one to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”. There is an enormous thread of beauty and nostalgia running through the building. The church is a place which grabs you, draws one in – it connects one to an ideology.

Light hitting the small brass plaques on the pews flicker names of people who sat there and tell of a past social order in operation within the pews – it reflects on a different age where the pews were a type of private property, for the exclusive use of specific individuals or families, or linked to particular properties. In a paper by Spencer Thomas in the Journal The Local Historian, published by the British Association for Local History in 2009, he notes that churches were not commonly furnished with permanent pews before the coming of the Protestant Reformation. The rise of the sermon as a central act of Christian worship, especially in Protestantism, made the pew an indispensable item of church furniture. Gradually the pews came into existence and in the period between 1600 and 1800, when everything was about social stature, pews were also used to distinguish between the various social classes. Classes of higher strata only had the opportunity to sit in the pews closest to the pulpit.

In St. Peter’s the brass plaques list the following: police, clergymen, officers of Ballincollig Gunpowder Mills and families such as the Pratts of Gawsworth, Pratts of Beechmount, Austins, Coopers, Chadwicks, and family members of Carrigrohane Lodge, Kitsboro, Rock Lodge, Rockrohan, Mount Desert, Roseanna, Carrigrohane Castle, Leemount and Parknamore.

A collection of plaques on the walls of the central part of the church illuminate other key names associated with the church and highlight the human memory within the building. One plaque remembers Robert Pratt, J.P. of Gawsworth, Carrigrohane (1835-1910). He was son of Major Henry Pratt, 58^th Regiment. The plaque was erected by his widow Anna Maria, daughter of Austin Cooper Chadwick of Damerville, Co. Tipperary. Another plaque recalls Richard Henderson Fetherstonhaugh, second son of Theobald Fetherstonhaugh of Newtown, Moate, Co.Westmeath, who died in 1902. Margaret was the wife of Captain William Harris who died in 1847, aged 51. The plaque was erected by her son John Harris.

Another inscription on a plaque highlights Lieutenant General Vere Hunt Bowles, Colonel of the Manchester Regiment who died at Patti in 1904. The plaque also highlights his wife Ellen Anne who died in 1911. It was put up to commemorate the twenty years the couple worshipped in the church under the ministry of Chancellor Dobbin.

Mary Hennessy of Millhouse Carrigrohane died in 1936. The plaque was erected by her son Sir Patrick Hennessey. Helena was the wife of Patrick Persse Fitzpatrick from Shrubs Co. Dublin. She died in 1821, aged 31. John Colthurst of Carrigrohane is also remembered. He is recorded as Lieutenant Colonel of the City of Cork Militia who died in 1839 aged 74 years.

On the baptismal font in the centre of the church, a brass plaque remembers Mary A. McGovern who died in 1937, aged 92 years. At the back of the church, a plaque on the wall immortalises Major John Doyle of the 72^nd Highlanders, who died in Ballincollig in 1853, aged 68. On the right hand side wall (facing the altar), Ebenezer Pike of Hertfordshire, formerly of Kilcrenagh, Carrigrohane, who died in 1931 is remembered. Perhaps, the most sentimental of plaques was erected by G. Dolmage, a surgeon of the 8^th K.R.I. Hussars in memory of his wife Julia, who died in Ballincollig in 1847, aged 29 years. He speaks through the plaque of his young wife being taken early from him, leaving children and leaving him an “afflicted husband”. However, this a hidden corner of St. Peter’s where this sad marker seems to highlight that even in the past, humanity was also important. This plaque for me is also powerful in animating, colouring and breathing further life into the physical human fabric and historical text of St. Peter’s sites as a site of memory within the Lee valley.

To be continued…

Captions:

547a. Murphy family plot in graveyard of St Peter’s Church, Carrigrohane (pictures: Kieran McCarthy)

547b. Detail of pew head, interior of St. Peter’s Church

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, Cork Independent

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 218)

A Caretaker of the Past

I have made the journey so many times to the local studies section of Cork City Library. The journey through the reference section to the top floor brings one up a quiet stairwell brings one into the haven where anything to do with Cork is kept. I have always being amazed at the multiple cabinets in the local history room. In these cabinets, the books reveal layers upon layers of insights into Cork life. In many of these books, attempts are made to explain and understand Cork, it’s very soul and identity.

Not everything is documented and there have been times when I have to dig deep into newpapers or even the index of the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. The Journal is an impressive treasure trove of historical facts that seeks to protect in a sense the region’s past.

Within the early days of this journal, the name Robert Day emerges as a principal caretaker of Cork’s past. He was the grandfather of the noted writer and lithographer Robert Gibbings, whose career the column last week briefly outlined. Robert is buried in the burial ground of St. Peter’s Church, Carrigrohane. Dr. Philip G. Lee’s obituary of Robert Day in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society in 1914 reveals another side to Cork’s heritage, those who mind it and their motivations. Robert Day (1836-1914) was a caretaker of Cork’s past.

Born in 1836, Robert was involved in his family’s extensive addler business together with a sports shop well known to Cork anglers on St Patrick’s Street. He was married to Rebecca Scott in 1857. Rebecca belonged to the Scott family who had an extensive ironmongery business in King Street (now McCurtain Street). They had four daughters and four sons.

During his lifetime, he developed an interest in Irish archaeology and seemed to become a well-rounded academic specialising in Irish antiquities. He amassed a unique and comprehensive museum of antiquities, from the Stone age, the early Iron Age and the Medieval period, down to the late eighteenth century, which included a collection of the insignia connected with the Irish volunteers of 1782. At historical meetings he showed some of his collection to other members.

Reputedly, Robert was a man of quiet disposition but with a strong character. He investigated and questioned the objects in his collection whilst listening to the opinions of other interested parties and professionals. He also generously loaned portions of his great collection to various exhibitions, notably to the Irish Exhibition, London and to the Chicago Exhibition.

On his death, an enormous collection of Irish Archaeological artefacts were auctioned off in 1915. They later turned up in the collections of John Hunt in Limerick, Walter J. Verschoyle-Campbell, as well as in those of the Birmingham Archaeological Society, the Louth Archaeological Society, the Ulster Museum and the National Museum of Ireland. An ongoing project at the Department of Archaeology, University College Cork is seeking to trace items from this auction.

Robert Day was also past president of the Cork Literary and Scientific Society. He was Trustee of the Cork Savings Bank and of the South Charitable Infirmary, member of the Royal Irish Academy, Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, and member of many other learned associations at home and abroad and was one of the governors of the Commercial Buildings, Cork.

As a President of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society from 1894 to 1914, he strove to keep the organisation and its work to the highest possible standard. As editor of its Journal, it is apparent, he sought to publish material that was meticulously researched and there is a sense the material was in danger of being lost if not published. He contributed much to the Journal between 1892 and 1911. In his own myriad of articles in the journals he seemed to have an interest in a number of topics but a clear focus at least can be seen on the history of the Irish volunteers of 1798, the use of metals – bronze and gold in Irish prehistory as well as Cork silver. He detailed the work of fellow antiquarians, contemporary and from decades previously. He edited the society’s reprint of Charles Smith’s History of Cork, which he annotated from the manuscripts of antiquarians Thomas Crofton Croker and Richard Caulfield.

Robert also had an interest in photography and was one of the first to take a camera into Cork City and around its region to capture various scenes of early photographs date from the 1860s. They are atmospheric and depict a Cork which in many ways has disappeared. The pictures are now part of the Day collection which also has photographs by his son William Tottenham Day 1874-1965 and grandson Alec 1902-1980.

The work of Robert Day for me represents the enormous collections that exist in the public realm. However perhaps Robert’s work is also a quest to understand and explain the unknown and to harness it in a contemporary world. In addition, he is part of a distinct set of local historians that have set a precedent in the research and preservation of Cork’s local history.

To be continued…

Captions:

546a. Picture of Robert Day (source: Journal of Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 1914)

546b. Advertisement for Robert Day & Son in 1919 (source Cork: Its Trade and Commerce)