Kieran’s Our City, Our Town article,
Cork Independent, 8 April 2010
In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 207)
A Place for Us
Next week I present a lecture to the Cork Adult Education Council annual lunchtime lecture series entitled In Search of Gougane Barra: History and Memory (Crawford Art Gallery, Wednesday, 14 April, 2010, 1pm). It has been great to revisit the memories at the beginning of the valley. In particular I am quite taken by the late nineteenth century renewal of Gougane Barra by Fr Patrick Hurley. In 1872 the Bishop of Cork Rev. Dr William Delaney, Bishop of Cork wished to raise the profile of the pilgrimage island in Gougane Barra. He paid a visit to the Carthusian monks in the Chartreuse Mountains, to the north of the city of Grenoble in France His visit aimed to get some of the monks to settle in Gougane Barra.
It perhaps can be speculated that Bishop Delany saw similarities in terms of sacred characteristics between the remote sites of Chartreuse and Gougane. Four of the Carthusian monks came the next year to see Gougane Barra but abandoned the idea. However, their advent had one result – the leasing of the island on 29 January 1873 at a nominal rent of one shilling from Mr Townsend, Uncle of a Captain Townsend, the proprietor, to the Catholic Bishop of Cork Bishop William Delany and Parish Priest of Inchigeela, Fr Jeremiah Holland (as evidenced through documents in the Diocese of Cork & Ross Archives).
Fr Patrick Hurley, who accompanied Dr. Delany in his visit to the Grand Chartreuse, was appointed parish priest of the surrounding parish of Gougane Barra in 1888. This appointment was made in May 1888 on the death of Fr Jeremiah Holland. Fr Patrick Hurley’s obituary in The Cork Examiner, on 26 June 1908 and in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland for 1909 reveals a learned man with a strong intellect. In particular he had a passion and an interest in the power of education in helping the less well off and in ideas of heritage management and harnessing those ideas for the good of the society. Born in 1841 in Eniskeane, near Bandon, Co. Cork, Fr Hurley certainly would have had experienced the ravages of the Famine in rural Ireland. He received his early education in the Diocesan Seminary in Cork and completed his course in the Irish College in Paris and he was ordained in 1865 at the age of 24.
After ordination, he was appointed to Schull, Co. Cork for a short time but was transferred in 1867 to Kilbrittain, Co. Cork and in 1869 he was appointed to Blackrock, Co. Cork. After spending six years in Blackrock, Fr Hurley was transferred to SS Mary and Anne’s North Cathedral, Cork City – He was elected as chaplain to Bishop Delany.
During his late thirties, Fr Hurley also developed an interest in the history of the Diocese of Cork and Ross. He published a number of articles in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record concerning Cork Bishops and their lives – namely Robert Barry, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, 1647-1662 and Dr Patrick Comerford, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, 1629-1652.
Two years after the death of Bishop Delany, Fr Hurley was involved in securing Gougane Barra for the Diocese of Cork in 1888. Subsequently he was sent to Gougane Barra by the new Bishop O’Callaghan to administer in that area of West Cork. Fr Hurley’s continued interest in antiquities is reflected in the fact he became a member of the Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland in 1890 and in time became honorary local secretary for County Cork.
Fr Hurley also became a committee member and a contributor of articles (1892 & 1896) to the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. In his first contribution to the first volume of the journal series he admits to having been engaged in collecting materials, which might serve to unveil the past history of the Diocese of Cork.
Fr Hurley also highlights his early work at Gougane Barra in managing the area’s heritage. In Fr Hurley’s commentary (1892) in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society he notes that the trees had become decayed and the walls of the enclosure in Gougane Barra, where tradition had it that St Finbarr had his cell were in a very dilapidated state. Fr. Hurley had the walls repaired, new stations of the cross in terracotta erected and also the cross restored where it formerly stood. He also engaged in the design of a new oratory which brought new meanings to the landscape of Gougane Barra.
Fr Hurley’s obituary of 1908 in the Cork Examiner also acknowledges him as a staunch advocate of the Irish language movement. He noted that on his arrival he found the language on the point of going. In an attempt to encourage the use of the Irish language in schools, Fr. Hurley made the acquaintance of Rev. Richard O’Daly, a priest of a diocese of Goulbourne, Australia. In the summer of 1903 Fr Daly invited Irish scholars to Ballingeary from several parts of Ireland. This was the start of the Irish college in the region. It was found the accommodation at Gougane Barra was too limited and it was arranged to have the Irish college opened in Ballingeary.
More at Kieran’s lecture: In Search of Gougane Barra, History and Memory, Kieran McCarthy, Crawford Art Gallery, Wednesday 14 April, 2010, 1-2pm
Captions:
534a. Pilgrims at Gougane Barra, c.1900 (picture: Cork City Library)
534b.Tomb of Fr. Denis O’Mahony; He established the present cells on the pilgrimage island in the early eighteenth century (picture: Kieran McCarthy).
