The opening event of the Honan Chapel on 5 November 1916 was marked with great speeches and insights into the work involved in its construction from the funders to the craftsmen. There are so many beautiful features of the Honan Chapel and UCC over the years have published articles, online resources and a book edited by Virginia Teehan and Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, and held conferences on the beautiful building. Indeed, the next conference is on this Saturday 19 November in UCC (details at end of column).
The Honan Chapel is a national icon of Irish craftsmanship, some features of which I relate below and all warrant articles and multiple column inches in years to come. The erection of the chapel was entrusted to the well-known building firm of Messrs John Sisk and Son. The work was carried out under the superintendence of Mr Peter O’Flynn as Clerk of Works. John Sisk set up his construction business in 1859 and by the early twentieth century had an impressive record of work around the province of Munster, building schools, hotels, banks and 30 churches.
An open letter on 30 May 1916 in the Cork Examiner by the members of the Cork branch of Stonecutters’ Union of Ireland, recorded their appreciation to Sir John O’Connell for providing much needed employment to their members for close on two years and a much-needed stimulus to the stone cutting industry. They noted their pride in the distinctive national style of architecture and its construction in Cork limestone and marble, which meant the circulation of such a large sum of money in Cork at a time of difficult economic conditions.
Cork Examiner reviews of the building on the 6 November point to the beauty of the interior and that it may strike the visitor as very simple but to execute the ornamentation “required painstaking care and skill and possession of the artistic faculty as well”. The carving was carried out by workmen under Henry Emery, an architectural sculptor and decorator. Liverpool born Henry Emery was active across the country from the 1870s until the 1930s and had his practice in Dublin. He was apprenticed initially to the stone and marble works of Alfred P Sharp of 17 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin. Sharp was also a builder. Circa 1877 Henry Emery was placed in charge of the stone and wood-carving side of the business. He was taken into partnership by Sharp in the late 1890s.
The Honan Chapel interior adopted the most decorative features in Cormac’s famous Chapel at Cashel in the arcading. Hence the walls were painted in a simple white with grey tints by artificial colouring. In each of the capitals of the pillars nearest to each stained glass window, on which a coat of arms of one of the diocese of Munster is displayed, part of the same coat of arms is carved. The most effective use of the arcading was to use it as a framework to a beautiful series of Stations of the Cross made of the inlaid art technique opus sectile. The altar was built of the same white limestone of which the rest of the fabric was built. The tabernacle was also of limestone modelled in the form of an early Celtic reliquary. The door bears a beautiful enamel by Mr Oswald Reeves.
The series of stained glass windows of the Munster Saints from the eminent studios of Harry Clarke and Sarah Purser begin on the north wall of the nave near the chancel with the window in honour of the Patron Saint of the Diocese – St Finbarr. Then it runs to St Albert, the Patron Saint of Cashel, St Declan of Ardmore, St Ailbe of Emly, St Fachtna of Ross and St Munchin of Limerick. The first window on the south side is devoted to St Ita of Killeedy, St Colman of Cloyne, St Brendan the Navigator, St Gobnait of Ballyvourney, St Carthage of Lismore and St Flannan of Killaloe. The east window over the Altar shows the Redeemer, while the three lights over the west entrance bear the three great Irish saints, Patrick, Brigid and Columcille.
The altar-plate, the vestments, altar coverings, everything down to the seating accommodation is not only Irish in design, but Irish in workmanship. As far as possible local craftsmanship were employed. The vestments for use in the chapel was made at Messrs William Egan and Son’s factory in Cork. The same firm made the chalice and ciborium, both exceptionally fine specimens of silver and gilt. As an interesting aside, on 21 January 1916 Mr Barry M Egan principal of the firm of William Egan and Sons passed away at his residence, Carrig House, Tivoli. Born in Cork seventy-three years previously, Mr Egan came from a family that for generations had been connected with the trade and art of working with metals. At the early age of 12 years he entered upon his apprenticeship as a watchmaker, jeweller, and silversmith in his father’s workshop. From his earliest years his ambition was to revive the manufacture of silver plate for which Cork was so noted in the eighteenth century.
Honan Chapel Symposium, Saturday 19 November, Aula Maxima, UCC, 9.15am-6pm, programme and registration at niamh.mundow@ucc.ie
Cork 1916, A Year Examined by Kieran McCarthy & Suzanne Kirwan is now available in Cork bookshops.
Captions:
870a. Honan Chapel, UCC, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
870b. Section of mosaic of floor of chapel, entitled the River of Life (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
The Honan Chapel celebrates its centenary this week. It opened officially on 5 November 1916. It is unique of its kind and John O’Connell, solicitor and distributor of Isabelle Honan’s will lavished much care as well as imagination on the church’s construction and fitting out (see last week’s column). John O’Connell was a great expert on ecclesiastical archaeology. He wrote many books and papers including “The Honan Hostel Chapel”, which can be read in local studies in Cork City Library. He also gave the site of the Turners Cross Schools in 1932 to Bishop Daniel Cohalan. He was also a descendent of Daniel O’Connell; hence the place name connections to Daniel O’Connell in Turners Cross.
On 18 May 1915, the foundation stone of the Honan Chapel was blessed and laid by the Bishop of Cork Dr Thomas Alphonsus O’Callaghan, and work progressed steadily on it. The new chapel was intended to be a real work of art. The architect James F McMullen planned a very beautiful structure in the Hiberno-Romanesque style, a style, which prevailed nine centuries previously. The Irish Architectural Archive in their Dictionary of Irish Architects denotes that architect and civil engineer James Finbarre McMullen (1859-1933) was born in 1859. He was the youngest son of Barry McMullen, a well-known Cork builder. After attending St Vincent’s School, James entered the arts faculty of Queen’s College, Cork, in 1875. At some stage he evidently decided to take up engineering as a career and served an apprenticeship with his elder brother Michael Joseph. In 1882 he exhibited a design entitled ‘What the Farm Labourers require’ at the Irish Exhibition of Arts & Manufactures, Dublin. He opened his own office in Cork c.1886.
James McMullen’s practice was a varied one, including ecclesiastical, hospital, industrial, commercial and domestic work, primarily in the city and county of Cork. He was architect to the South Infirmary, Cork, for some thirty years and was appointed local engineer and valuer for the Cork Junction Railway in 1904. Some of his largest and best known works apart from the Honan Chapel included Marina Flour Mills on Victoria Quay (1890-92), the Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital on Western Road (1895-97), the Fr Mathew Pavilion Museum at the Cork International Exhibition (1902), additions to the sanctuary for the Capuchin Fathers at Holy Trinity Church (1906) and the restoration after destruction by fire of Castle Freke House (with architect, Kaye-Parry & Ross) in 1910-12.
In addition to running a successful practice, James McMullen played an active part in the life of the community, devoting much time to city hospital work. Living in Trabeg in Douglas, he was appointed a magistrate for the borough of Cork in 1903 and High Sheriff in 1908. In 1910 the honour of Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great was conferred on him by Pope Pius X. According to his obituary in the Irish Builder, he acted as City Engineer for Cork for some years. He died in 1933, leaving an estate valued at £23,729. He had married Margaretta, daughter of J T Murphy, of Macroom, in 1907. His son James carried on the practice.
The Honan Chapel is based on the most famous Irish church of Hiberno Romaneque style that of Cormac’s Chapel on the Rock of Cashel. It was not the first Cork Chapel to adapt its design in the early twentieth century. St Finbarr’s Oratory in Gougane Barra, opened in 1902 and its architect Samuel Hynes was also inspired by Cormac’s Chapel. Cashel constitutes the most famous architectural assemblage to survive from Medieval Ireland. The entire summit of the Rock has a very complex mix of ideas about history, architecture, public space and meaning. The place is tied to a sacred history – the legend of St Patrick converting the Munster Gaelic kings of old. The information panels at Cormac’s Chapel detail that it was begun in 1127 and consecrated in 1134. At that time, Cormac’s Chapel was a political statement. The act of building it was a political act asserting identity. On the eve of Church reform, architecture became a form of dialogue of contestation. King Cormac MacCarthy, founder of the Chapel at Cashel, was a supporter and patron of the reform movement. The chapel was deemed a metaphor for his kingship, and religious interests and attached to influences of the renaissance in the way of life of the church.
The course of stone in Cormac’s Chapel was so correctly laid, that the joints escaped the eye so that it seems the whole wall is composed of a single block. The impact of such a church building was not seen before. Archaeologist Tadgh O’Keeffe in his book Romanesque Ireland, Architecture and Ideology in the Twelfth Century (2003) highlights that the architects of the Romanesque style were also occupied with great master-pieces. Sculptors and architects were moulded by European Art. The idea existed that Romanesque had form and meaning and thus became fashionable and sophisticated. Cormac’s Chapel as a memorial relied on the permanent qualities of architecture, scale, mass, spacing, proportion, utmost simplicity, and memory. These latter ideas also imbue the Honan Chapel and make it stand out as architectural structure of beauty.
Honan Chapel Symposium, Saturday 19 November, Aula Maxima, UCC, 9.15am-6pm, programme and registration at niamh.mundow@ucc.ie
Cork 1916, A Year Examined by Kieran McCarthy & Suzanne Kirwan is now available in Cork bookshops.
Captions:
869a. James F McMullen, architect of the Honan Chapel, UCC (source: Pike’s Contemporary Biographies)
869b. Interior of Cormac’s Chapel, Rock of Cashel, inspiration for Honan Chapel (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
This week, a delegation from the Cologne-Cork Sister City committee visited Cork and were guided around the city with Cllr Kieran McCarthy as part of twinning activities with Cork. The 45 strong delegation arrived here on the Roald Amundsen tall ship from Cherbourg. It docked on the city’s quays for a number of days with support from the Port of Cork and Cork City Council. The tall ship is no stranger to Cork and is a training ship for those who wish to train in aspects of sailing. The tall ship, originally, named Vilm, is a German steel-ship built at the Elbe River in 1952. Having worked in different area, she was refitted in 1992 to 1993 as a brig – two masted square-rigged sailing ship, and now serves as sail training ship. During summer she usually operates in the Baltic Sea, and usually embarks for journeys to farther destinations for winter, including several-Atlantic crossings.
Cllr McCarthy on his walking tour outlined the history of the port, the harbour and the development of the city upon a set of estuarine marshes. He highlighted the history of Cork City Hall, streets such as the South Mall and St Patrick’s Street, and bringing them on top of the ramparts of Elizabeth Fort. During the tour, member of Cologne City Council discussed their interest in developing a twinning project for the upcoming 30th anniversary of the twinning. In previous years, Cork and Cologne have has success in school exchange programmes, council swop officer schemes and environment, artist and enterprise programmes.
Cllr McCarthy noted; “the twinning with Cologne has brought not just the title of twinning but connected Cork into the EU Continent. I am very impressed by the energy put into the twinning arrangement on the Cologne side. Interestingly both cities have aspects in common – for example the colours of Cork and Cologne are red and white; St Finbarre’s Cathedral was inspired by the beautiful Cologne Cathedral. As we approach the 30th anniversary in two years time, I think there is really great scope to secure more opportunities between the two cities. Every year, Cork City Council has a twinning grant schemes and there is scope within these schemes and outside these schemes for entrepreneurs, cultural creatives and sporting groups to explore possibilities and connections with North West Germany. Any ideas can be emailed to myself or written to the chair of the International Relations Committee.
Remembering 1916: Honan Chapel Celebrates its Centenary
One hundred years ago this week on 5 November 1916, the amazing architectural structure of St Finbarr’s Chapel at UCC or the Honan Chapel had its official opening. The Cork Examiner noted in its editorial the day after the opening the thought and work that went into planning its construction; “the provision of a chapel out of the Miss Isabella Honan Trust Fund was a happy thought on the part of Sir John O’Connell, her executor [of her will], who is himself a lover of Celtic art…it is only right to say that Sir John O’Connell took the utmost pains that everything in connection with the building of the chapel, materials, equipment, as well the carving and stained glass, should be the work of Irish artists”.
Isabella Honan of 26, Sidney Place, had died on 8 August 1913. Her obituary in the local newspapers recorded that she had belonged to an old Cork family, which had long been associated with charitable organisations in the city. The Honan Home (founded as a charitable trust in 1896 to host 12 aged and impoverished men) and the extension of St Patrick’s Church, were well known monuments of the religious and charitable zeal of her brother, Matthew Honan. Isabella herself had given £10,000 for scholarships to University College Cork. On her death, Isabella left a personal estate valued at £153,331 8s 5 ½ d. The distribution of her will was granted to John Robert O’Connell, of 24, Kildare Street, Dublin. Over 22 charitable organisations in Cork were allocated monies in her will ranging from £500 to £1,500. All were delighted with their funding and they sent several letters to editors of newspapers giving further insight into their work but also respect for the Honan Family. Trust funds representing the residue of her other brother’s Robert estate, totalling £40,000, were also granted to John O’Connell to distribute at his discretion to charitable purposes.
In an open public later to President Bertram Windle, UCC on the Cork Examiner on 6 April 1914, John O’Connell expressed concern that the Honan Hostel called St Anthony’s Hall, under the General Order of Friars Minor would sever their connection. The hostel was the house of residence for students at University College, Cork. It has been initially established in 1884 for Protestant students attending the college but began to house Catholics from 1909 onwards. John O’Connell in 1914 wrote about reconstituting it under new management; “it occurred to me that the reconstitution of this hostel, under a permanent Catholic Governing Body, would be of an immense benefit to the Church, and to the entire Catholic population of Munster, and one which would have been peculiarly pleasing to Miss Honan herself”. His idea was that the business side of the institution and the discipline of the students should be looked after by a warden, who for obvious reasons, should be a married man. He also noted that part of his scheme should be a proper chapel “suitable to the dignity of a university, with a chaplain resident in the Hostel, responsible for the spiritual welfare of its inmates, and provided for by endowment”. Bishop of Cork O’Callaghan agreed to John O’Connell’s requests for a governing body and a chapel.
As a further contribution, John O’Connell arranged to allocate to University College, Cork, a sum of £3,000 for the completion of a Biological Institute, dealing with the subjects of botany, agriculture, zoology, and geology. He was convinced that the training in agriculture afforded by UCC to the students of Munster would be rendered “more efficient and successful”. He also asked that St Anthony’s Hall should be called the Honan Hostel and that the Biological Institute in future should be known as “The Honan Biological Institute”.
John O’Connell was the driver of the Honan Bequests. In his obituary in the Cork Examiner on 29 December 1943, it was noted that he was born in Dublin on 12 February 1868, and was educated at Belvedere College and Trinity College, Dublin. He was admitted a solicitor (Ireland) in 1889 and was head of the firm of Thomas F O’Connell and son solicitors, Dublin. He was knighted in 1914 and in 1924 was made Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Pius XI. During his lifetime he was a member of the Senate of the University of Dublin, member of the Governing Body of UCC, a fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland and Vice President of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. In 1901 he married Miss Mary Scally of Dublin and following her death he sold his house at Killiney, Co Dublin, and spent some time with the Benedictine Monks. He decided to become a secular priest and was ordained for the Diocese of Westminster.
John O’Connell was a great expert on ecclesiastical archaeology. The Honan Chapel is unique of its kind and John lavished much care as well as imagination on its erection and fitting out. He wrote many books and papers including “The Honan Hostel Chapel”, which can be read in local studies in Cork City Library.
Honan Chapel Symposium, Saturday 19 November, Aula Maxima, UCC, 9.15am-6pm, programme and registration at niamh.mundow@ucc.ie
Cork 1916, A Year Examined by Kieran McCarthy & Suzanne Kirwan is now available in Cork bookshops.
Captions:
868a. Honan memorial, St. Finbarre’s Cemetery; the back stained glass window of the memorial needs to be urgently fixed (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
“I have been really disappointed by the rumours of a potential rates rise. I agree with the remarks of the Cork Chamber that Cork traders are being squeezed enough for more tax related money which they just don’t have. I have said before strongly in the Council Chamber that the City Council going forward is starved of staff and starved of money. Its rates base has also been decreasing. Due to staffing shortages, more and more the Council has had to outsource its services, hence the high level of consultancy fees. This Council is being cornered by government. Local Government is not respected enough in the country. The powers that we have been given to raise revenue for the city is no where near what revenue this city needs to be the second city or a counter settlement to Dublin.
The City Council has a good working relationship with the Cork Business Association and Cork Chamber and the latter have consistently asked the Council to work with them to market the city centre more. This has been pursued more and more in what I describe as a piecemeal plan in very recent years. The city centre action plan (CORE) is really only beginning its work. We need to roll out more effective marketing strategies and parking regimes to get people back into to support the city. The council have also never really countered the business strategies of the suburban shopping malls and has not begun really to challenge the growing eCommerce market. We have not evolved to how retail is changing. I am gutted to see shops whereby sales are taking place all year and it’s not just ten per cent off but fifty per cent off and more. How is someone supposed to do business if they are in sale mode all year?
The city has nearly 30 festivals at this stage and over 110 days of festivals. This is one example to get people into the city. This momentum needs to be built upon and a better partnership established between the arts and business. For some festivals it really works, and for many partnership doesn’t exist. Look at how a small city like Galway harnesses its culture. Cork has 3-4 times Galway’s cultural prowess.
Ireland’s second city deserves to be better financed. It can’t always be take-take from the Council and traders. I acknowledge fully that the city has the Government investment for the Event Centre, which will transform the economy of the city but it is realistically probably at least five years away from being opened. So many businesses are down to survival of the fittest. There is also no one standing up for Local Government financial issues in Dáil Éireann and to critique it fairly. Cork City Council are on our own. What annoys me even more is how much potential this city has to develop business retail opportunities and to lead the region forward.
Continuing on from last week’s column on the work of Fr Aengus MacSweeney, who lectured during 1916 across the city on the poverty conditions within the city’s slums – during his fieldwork, he found that that the total weekly income of 354 of the 1,010 families he studied did not exceed 19s.
Of those earning under 19s per week, Fr MacSweeney described vast poverty; “All the persons living in these houses were miserable looking; the grown people had starvation written on their faces, while the children, and strangely enough the very young, were almost naked. The rooms of these tenements were dark, with evidence of decay in every part of them, and as poverty was telling its tale on the countenances of the inmates, neglect and the evident and absolute disregard of the landlord were registered on the walls, the windows, the doors, the staircases, of the houses themselves. Personally I do not think that you could find more poverty and so great neglect in any place, and confined to so small an area, as existed in this row of tenement houses”.
To get a further idea of the standard of poverty for the 354 families in Fr MacSweeney’s study, he detailed five examples from his notes taken during his investigation. His first example was a labourer who was married with ten children – all living in two rooms and a kitchen and who paid rent of 2/6. There were six other families in this house. There was one water tap and one water closet for all. The family was very poor with two daughters and son working but their wages were small. His second example was a widow – who lived by charing or cleaning, had three children to support and paid 5/6 for a small house, which was kept clean and tidy. His third example was a porter – badly paid, his wages were increased by contributions from relatives, and has five children. His fourth example was a quay labourer – married, and who had two children and paid 3/- rent; his house was clean and tidy. His fifth example was an army pensioner – he could not get work, was married, had seven children; the rent was 5/-; his family was very poor.
As for clothing of his impoverished class, Fr MacSweeney noted “threadbare rags”. The clothing of most of the people was sufficient enough to protect them against the changing conditions of the seasons; “These families live in one constant struggle, from weekend to weekend, striving to make ends meet. Living just above that state of poverty that stings deeply and tends to demoralise its victims…they were living from hand to mouth and ever standing dangerously near the abyss of extreme poverty”.
Fr MacSweeney visited a lane off one of the city’s public thoroughfares, and close to the city centre. He described a square that had the appearance of decay. It was nothing more than a narrow lane leading from one street to another. It contained fourteen or fifteen houses, all of which were tenements. Those houses were badly constructed and dirt and neglect had given them that decaying look they had from the outside. As for the interiors, the houses with few exceptions were ill-kept to the last degree; the entrance to each house was through a small hall with two rooms at either side which were dark and small, and as, far as Fr MacSweeney could judge, impossible to keep clean, for the floors were damp and saturated looking. At the end of the hall was a narrow stairs leading to the rooms above, of which there were six, all equally small equally dirty, and equally foul smelling. There was a small yard, about 10 feet by 6 in size in size. There was a small yard, about 10 feet by six feet in size, with one water closet and one water tap, which do duty for the whole house. Each house had at least four families, and some of these were larger than the average. In one of these tenements there were seven families occupying eight rooms.
In another tenement house Fr MacSweeney he found a family of thirteen persons – father, mother, and eleven children whose ages ranged between four and seventeen – all living in two rooms and a “hole called a kitchen”. There were four other families in the same house, one room being occupied by a married couple, the remaining five rooms by three families with children; he calculated five persons to each of these three families – a total of thirty people living in eight rooms, and for sanitary accommodation having one water tap and one closet.
In a third tenement house, it was three stories high, and contained about eight rooms. Fr MacSweeney described that families who occupied more than one room in these five or six tenements were certainly in the minority, and yet there were numbers of children about which pointed to overcrowding, and to a very serious extent too. Here a father and mother and six children occupied one room in which they slept and worked and took their meals and washed. In addition to the overcrowding, there was extreme poverty accompanied by extreme neglect and dirt. Behind each tenement was a miserable yard bestrewn with all kinds of refuse, with one water closet and one water tap for each house.
Cork 1916, A Year Examined by Kieran McCarthy & Suzanne Kirwan is now available in Cork bookshops.
Captions:
867a. 867a. North Cathedral area c.1910, one of the centres of slums in Cork City (source: Cork City Library)
867b. Map of slum laneways off Barrack Street, 1900 (source: Cork City Library)
Historian and Independent Councillor Kieran McCarthy has expressed disappointment that the development of Elizabeth Fort as a tourist product will not progress in the short term. Fáilte Ireland have expressed a disinterest in funding an interpretative centre at the fort, stating that other forts in the harbour will represent the Cork region’s history of fortifications. Cllr McCarthy noted at the last Cork City Council meeting to management that leaving Elizabeth Fort undeveloped comprises a series of missed opportunities – “we have spent four to five years developing a plan for the fort – this is the most prominent landmark in the city region after Shandon. It is unique in Ireland to have an Elizabethan Fort still standing in an inner city space. The fort is the flagship project for the South Parish Local Area Plan. The re-opening of the ramparts, thanks to the OPW, has helped to inspire re-generation on the street and put a pep in the work of planners trying to get landlords of empty properties on Barrack Street to develop them.
Cllr McCarthy continued; “The re-opening of the fort has sent out a message that long term vacancy and dereliction on Barrack Street will not be tolerated. This message will now be diluted due to lack of investment. The fort should be the tourist structure to tell the early origins story of Ireland’s southern capital from the Vikings to nineteenth century industrialist housing– it heads up a suite of historical sites in the local area – from Red Abbey to the 250-year old South Chapel, the new Nano Nagle Community Project to the story of Friar’s Walk and the Cork Improved Dwellings Company houses such as Evergreen Buildings. It is becoming more and more clear that Cork City is being squeezed out of campaigns of the Wild Atlantic Way and Ireland’s Ancient East. It is disheartening to see the lack of reference to Cork City in the website of Ireland’s Ancient East”. Cllr McCarthy has called on City Council officials to engage with Fáilte Ireland to put Ireland’s second city back firmly on the Irish tourist map; “New plans for Elizabeth Fort also need to be put together as soon as possible, so we can start preparing plan b to secure the fort’s future”.
Cllr Kieran McCarthy has welcomed the update by the management of Cork City Council that phase one of the Blackrock Pier Development is on track to be finished by December of this year. Funding for phase 2 is still being sought, which is the development of the car park and pier area itself. Cork City Council has now written to the National Transport Authority for continued funding of phase 2. It is expected that a decision on same will be made around the end of November and a report will be made to Council. If the funding application is successful the current contractor will commence construction on phase 2 in January 2017. Cllr McCarthy noted to the Chief Executive: “Phase 1 has been pursued quickly but with alot of patience asked of residents, business and the community association; it’s not a short term patience but long term in terms of twenty years or more waiting for this project. We are so close in completing what is a fantastic plan and one which all can be proud of; the tram track lines have reminded us all of the great heritage, Blackrock has. We need to finish what we started and not just stop in December”.
