The Catholic cathedrals of Ireland: take a look at these architectural gems of the Emerald Isle
Michael Hodges • August 25, 2024
In 1850 the Catholic hierarchy of England and Wales was restored by Rome; Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman issued his vainglorious pastoral letter written from “outside the Flaminian Gate of Rome” announcing his appointment as Archbishop of Westminster. In it he announced “the restoration of Roman Catholic England to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament”. Three years later, St John Henry Newman gave his famous “Second Spring” sermon at Oscott:
“O Mary, my hope, O Mother undefiled, fulfil to us the promise of this Spring. A second temple rises on the ruins of the old. Canterbury has gone its way, and York is gone, and Durham is gone and Winchester is gone. It was sore to part with them. We clung to the vision of past greatness, and would not believe it could come to nought; but the Church in England has died, and the Church lives again. Westminster and Nottingham, Beverley and Hexham, Northampton and Shrewsbury, if the world lasts, shall be names as musical to the ear, as stirring to the heart, as the glories that we have lost…”
The situation in Ireland was similar, but not identical. Rome had not ceased to appoint bishops to the ancient sees of Ireland as it had in England. The old medieval cathedrals, however, never nearly as grand as their English counterparts, became the preserve of the Protestant Church of Ireland. The political background is important. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, inter alia, allowed Catholic churches to have spires and towers.
Irish Catholics were determined to emphasise their newly-won right to build grand cathedrals. A number of upper-class Irish converts were attracted to Rome through the Oxford Movement, and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland continued to be a festering issue before it was finally enacted by Gladstone in 1869. The magnificent Church of Ireland Cathedral of St Finbar, Cork, was commissioned from William Burges as an architectural riposte.
Ireland as a whole has 27 Catholic cathedrals, although some dioceses are currently in the process of being merged. The following are, in chronological order, architecturally the most important.
Work began on St Mary’s Metropolitan Chapel, Dublin, now known as the Pro-Cathedral, in 1816. It was intended to be the most important Catholic church in Ireland. The cramped site of the building detracts from its appearance but the basilican classical interior is splendid, with its great internal colonnade of 22 fluted columns. Carlow, Cork and Newry cathedrals were however built in pre-Puginian Gothic. (AWN Pugin’s influential Contrasts was published in 1836.)
The Cathedral Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Tuam was founded in 1827 by Archbishop Oliver Kelly and consecrated by Archbishop John MacHale a decade later. It is a fine example of Early Gothic Revival designed by Dominic Madden. In 1979 its baldacchino, transept altars, pulpit and altar rails were removed.
The Gothic Revival Cathedral Church of St Patrick, Armagh, was started in 1840 by JJ McCarthy and completed by George Ashlin. It is situated on a rival hill to its Church of Ireland counterpart and dominated by the twin spires of the west front. It suffered a horrendous restoration in 1977-82; Jeremy Williams, in his Architecture in Ireland 1837-1921, published in 1994, noted that it was done “in an attempt to express the liturgical trends of 20 years before; it appears, however, to revive the worship of the Druids whom St Patrick had supplanted.” The high altar, pulpit, and rood screen all went. Fortunately, some of the painted and mosaic decoration survives, and the sanctuary was to some extent restored in 2003.
St Mel’s Cathedral, Longford (iStock).
St Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, the finest of Ireland’s Neoclassical cathedrals, was also commenced in 1840. It was designed by JB Keane; the plan is cruciform with Ionic colonnades. Pugin denounced it as “a wretched compound of pagan and Protestant architecture”. It suffered a terrible fire on Christmas Day 2009 but was rebuilt at a cost of £30 million, reopening on Christmas Eve 2014. The beautiful new stone Stations of the Cross were sculpted by Ken Thompson (cf Our Most Holy Redeemer and St Thomas More, Chelsea, London).
Work started on Pugin’s great Cathedral Church of St Mary, Killarney, County Kerry in 1842 and was completed in 1850. It was built in a masterful Early English style as a tribute to Salisbury Cathedral. The tower and spire were added by George Ashlin after Pugin’s death. The cathedral suffered a controversial reordering in the early 1970s by the subsequently disgraced Bishop Eamonn Casey; the chapel of the Catholic Earls of Kenmare, founders of the cathedral, was stripped and its contents sold on the pavement outside.
St Mary’s, Kilkenny (iStock).
In 1843 work also started on the Cathedral Church of St Aidan, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, again by Pugin. It was his largest church in Ireland and is modelled on Tintern Abbey. Its central tower and spire dominate the town. The interior was never completed to his requirements and he said that “the Hottentots” would have treated his cathedral better than the Irish bishops.
The Gothic Revival Cathedral Church of St Mary, Kilkenny was commenced in 1843 by William Deane Butler and completed in 1857. The decoration of the interior was given to Earley and Powell; the murals in the chancel are by Westlake. It remained a remarkably complete High Victorian interior until the mid-1970s, when Bishop Peter Birch instituted a campaign to conform to the liturgical standards of the previous decade. In fact, while many of his diocesan churches suffered horribly, the cathedral was let off reasonably lightly.
The convert 3rd Earl of Dunraven was responsible for bringing over the English Protestant architect Philip Charles Hardwick to construct the Cathedral Church of St John, Limerick from 1856-61 in Early English style. The interior is made inventive and moving through his mastery of light. The high rood screen survives intact, as do the pulpit and the altar rails. The cathedral has survived reordering relatively unscathed, in spite of the horrific record of the Diocese of Limerick in removing Victorian fittings in its churches.
St Mary’s is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ossory. It is situated on James’s Street, Kilkenny, Ireland (iStock).
The Cathedral Church of Saint Colman, a Roman Catholic Cathedral sits in a prominent position in the Port of Cobh, Ireland (iStock).
The Cathedral Church of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo, was built in 1867 by the English architect George Goldie in German Romanesque style. The limestone exterior is harsh. The interior is capacious, seating 4,000. The 67 windows by Lobin of Tours are very French; the high altar with its baldacchino has survived.
The foundation stone of the magnificent neo-Gothic Cathedral Church of St Colman, Cobh (previously Queenstown), County Cork, was laid on 30 September 1868 by the firm of (EW) Pugin & (George) Ashlin. With its spire the cathedral has a beautiful silhouette and stands in a dominant position overlooking the harbour, out of which the SS Titanic steamed on 11 April 1912. The high altar (and other altars) have a wealth of figurative sculpture. Cobh is the only Irish Catholic Victorian cathedral to have totally survived post-Vatican II iconoclasm, and that required both the intervention of Rome and local legal action.
The Cathedral Church of Ss Eunan and Columba, Letterkenny, in County Donegal, was the last Gothic Revival cathedral to be built in Ireland. The architect was William Hague, and work commenced in 1891. The style is architecturally orthodox; architecture, stained glass, frescoes and mosaics are orchestrated into triumphant unison. The high altar, throne, pulpit and communion rail were all spared in the 1985 reordering.
The Irish medieval cathedrals – Armagh, Dublin (both Christ Church and St Patrick’s), Killaloe, Limerick and others – may have, in Newman’s words, “gone”, but the buildings listed above are worthy successors, in spite of certain more recent unhappy alterations.
Photo: Saint Patrick’s Catholic Cathedral of Armagh (iStock).
This article appears in the Summer Special July/August 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.