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Funding a Roman Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Brendan Grimes
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Extract

… from many a hidden spring streams of riches shall burst forth.

In the period 1790 to 1847 more than two thousand Catholic churches were built in Ireland. The money to build these churches (and others later in the nineteenth century) came from affluent Catholics of the merchant, professional, and tenant-farming classes, a few aristocratic Catholics, members of the Catholic gentry, the poor of the parishes, and from members of other churches. Money was given by donations (often monthly or annually) from the affluent, and from the poor by weekly collections. Other important sources included bequests, fund-raising ventures such as raffles and concerts, and charity sermons. People from all social classes sometimes gave their time, skill, and labour towards the end of raising Catholic churches, without asking for payment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 52 , 2009 , pp. 147 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2009

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References

Notes

1 Meagher, William, Address to the Parishioners of SS Mary and Peter, Rathmines (Dublin, 1849), p. 15.Google Scholar

2 Larkin, Emmet, The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church in Pre-Famine Ireland (Washington and Dublin, 2006), p. 151.Google Scholar

3 DAT, ‘Receipts and expenditure from July 1832 to July 1836’.

4 The Metropolitan chapel began to be referred to as the Metropolitan church in the 1840s (when the portico was being erected). It was sometimes referred to as the Church of the Conception, and St Mary’s. It began to be called the Pro-Cathedral (the name commonly used today) sometime in the 1880s. Its official name, the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Ever Blessed Virgin, is rarely heard. In this article its common name, the Pro-Cathedral, is used. Pro-Cathedral means a temporary (i.e. pro tempore) cathedral, in other words, a church in use as a cathedral but without official cathedral designation.

5 With the establishment of the Board of National Education in Ireland in 1831 free schooling became available for children. The government provided grants which covered almost all the building costs and the salaries of teachers.

6 Brady, John, Catholics and Catholicism in the Eighteenth Century Press (Maynooth, 1965), p. 157 Google Scholar, quoting a report on a House of Commons debate reported in Faulkner’s Journal, 15 February 1774.

7 Quoted in O’Riordan, M., Catholicity and Progress in Ireland (London, 1905), p. 183.Google Scholar

8 Caulfield, Richard (ed.), The Council Book of the Corporation of the City of Cork from 1609 to 1643, and from 1690 to 1800 (Guildford, 1876), p. 311.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 474.

10 Ibid., p. 475.

11 Ibid., p. 535.

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14 Corish, , The Irish Catholic Experience, p. 152 Google Scholar. Daniel O’Connell founded the National Bank to give Catholics the opportunity to enter the banking world.

15 Anon, ., A Statement of the Penal Laws which Aggrieve the Catholics of Ireland: With Commentaries, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1812), p. 324.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 325.

17 Larkin, The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church, p. 2.

18 Ibid., p. 3.

19 DDA, Hamilton papers 37/5, undated letters from Lady Wellesley to Dr Hamilton from the period 1833-35.

20 Ibid., Myles J. Kelly to Dr Murray, 4 August 1843.

21 AL, ‘Annals of the Christian Brothers House’, p. 17. Both Brian and James Bolger had a professional relationship with the Brothers. Shortly after the Christian Brothers Institute was founded in 1802, Edmund Rice commissioned Brian Bolger to find a suitable site for their house in Dublin. A plot of ground was acquired in North Richmond Street in 1828 and shortly afterwards the house was built under the direction of James Bolger (‘Annals’, 1, 2 and 5).

22 DDA, Hamilton papers 37/1, legal opinion.

23 An Act for the Relief of His Majesty’s Roman Catholic Subjects 1829 (10 Geo. IV. C.7) is popularly known as the Catholic Emancipation Act.

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29 DDA, Hamilton papers 35/7, J. Duignan to Revd Dr Hamilton [1845].

30 Ibid., L. Moore to Revd Dr Hamilton, 30 May 1846.

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33 Donnelly, N., A Short History of Some Dublin Parishes, pt III (Dublin, 1909-17), p. 114.Google Scholar

34 CDA, W. Foley to William Keane, 29 November 1870. Quoted in Ann Wilson, ‘Visions Materialised: The Building of St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh (1868-1917)’ (MA thesis, Department of History of Art and Design, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, 2002), p. 95.

35 Wilson, ‘Visions Materialised’, p. 96.

36 ICR, Cullen papers 1836-40, Archbishop Dr William Higgins to Dr Paul Cullen, 10 July 1838.

37 ICR, Cullen papers 1840-43, Archbishop Dr William Higgins to Dr Paul Cullen, 8 November 1841. ‘Indulgence’ in this sense means the remission of punishment due to sin.

38 DAT, Revd B. J. Russell, Liverpool, to Revd O’Loughlin, Dominican Convent, Cork, 16 May 1835.

39 DAT, printed circular dated 1 June 1835 addressed to the people of Britain.

40 DDA, Hamilton papers 37/1, Alicia Brown to Dr Hamilton, 24 August 1847.

41 Ibid., unsigned and undated document from the Benedictine Abbey at Jourre to Revd Dr Hamilton, postmarked 24 August 1847.

42 DDA, Hamilton papers 37/2, Richard Farrell to Revd Dr Hamilton, 15 May 1850. We do not know who Raphael was.

43 DDA, parish file for Halston Street, Very Revd Myles Ronan, The Parish of St Michan (Dublin, n.d.), unpaginated. George Bryan had his town house at 12 Henrietta Street, Dublin.

44 DDA, Hamilton papers 37/2, Lord Trimleston to Revd Dr Hamilton, 29 June 1849.

45 N. Donnelly, Dublin Parishes, pt XII, p. 100.

46 Casey, Christine, Dublin (Dublin, 2005), p. 56.Google ScholarPubMed

47 Catholic Directory 1841, p. 277. For brevity, Catholic Directory is used in the text to refer to the Complete Catholic Registry … for 1836, which was continued as [W.J.] Battersby’s Registry for the Catholic World (1846-57), as Battersby’s Catholic Directory (1858-64), as Catholic Directory of Ireland (1865-69) and as Irish Catholic Directory (1870 onwards).

48 Meagher, William, Five Engravings Descriptive of the New Church of Our Immaculate Lady of Refuge, Rathmines, with a Brief Account of its Origin and Progress (Dublin, 1855), p. 18.Google Scholar

49 Meyler, W. PP, Address to the Catholic Inhabitants of St Andrew’s, Westland Row (Dublin, 1859), pp. 5–6 Google Scholar. The names of subscribers were written into the ‘Green Book’ which was to be available for any parishioner to inspect. The ‘Green Book’ lists accounts from February 1832 and is still kept in St Andrew’s.

50 The author remembers as a child (in the early 1950s) a priest reading from the altar of a church in Co. Mayo the names of contributors and amounts given. Those he thought had not given enough were publicly chastised with caustic remarks.

51 Catholic Directory 1842, p. 276, quoted in Larkin, The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church, p. 173.

52 Catholic Directory 1844, p. 386. The final cost by 1859 was over £26,000.

53 St Nicholas of Myra, Dublin, ‘St Nicholas Without Baptisms 1824-1856’.

54 Catholic Directory 1846, p. 281.

55 J. K. L., [Rt Revd J. W. Doyle, Bishop [RC] of Kildare and Leighlin], A Vindication of the Religious and Civil Principles of the Irish Catholics in a Letter to his Excellency the Marquis Wellesley (Dublin, 1823), p. 40 Google Scholar. Bishop Doyle thought it might be a good thing for Catholic priests to be humbled by having to accept money from the poor.

56 O’Driscoll, John, Views of Ireland, Moral, Political, and Religious, 1 (London, 1823), p. 136.Google Scholar

57 DDA, Hamilton papers 36/6, printed report of a meeting of the parishioners of the Union of St Mary’s, St Thomas and St George, convened by public advertisement, and held in the Metropolitan church, Marlborough Street, on Sunday 9 July 1843.

58 PF, ‘Scritture riferite nei congressi — Irlanda’, vol. XVIII, ff. 262-63, quoted in Larkin, Emmet, Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism (Washington and Dublin, 1984), p. 17.Google Scholar

59 DDA, Pro-cathedral box 38/10, Report of the committee for building the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Chapel, given at a well-attended meeting of the citizens of Dublin, held in the New Buildings on the 11 June 1821, the Most Revd Dr Troy in the chair.

60 Doyle, James Warren, Letters on the State of Ireland (Dublin, 1825), p. 61.Google Scholar

61 O’Driscoll, Views of Ireland, 1, p. 136.

62 Freeman’s Journal, 15 November 1825.

63 DDA, Hamilton papers, 36/3, Hon. Gonville Ffrench to Revd Dr Hamilton, 6 November 1840.

64 Freeman’s Journal, 24, 25 and 26 November 1825.

65 Catholic Directory 1860, p. 209.

66 DAT, ‘Receipts and expenditure from July 1832 to July 1836’. This is a three-page report listing donations of £1 and upwards, giving the names, in most cases the addresses, and in some cases the occupations of the donors. Based on this information an estimate was made of the proportion of money donated by non-Catholics.

67 Cork Southern Reporter, 29 June 1839.

68 Tyrrell, Dolores, ‘The Parish Church of Saints Mary and Peter, Arklow’, in Arklow Historical Society Journal (1985), p. 53 Google Scholar. During the rebellion of 1798 the old parish church in Arklow was burnt down and the parish priest Revd William Ryan was murdered soon afterwards in his family home in Johnstown.

69 Catholic Luminary, no. 1, 20 June 1840, p. 7.

70 Meyler, W. PP, Address to the Catholic Inhabitants of St Andrew’s, Westland Row (Dublin, 1859), p. 6.Google Scholar

71 Catholic Penny Magazine, 2:59, 28 March 1835, p. 167.

72 N. Donnelly, Dublin Parishes, pt III, p. 109. A memorial tablet in the church to Mrs Barbara Verschoyle (1753-1837) informs us: ‘She [Mrs Verschoyle] was the chief means of this sacred edifice being erected by the liberality of her attached friend and patron the last Richard Lord Viscount Fitswilliam for the accomodation [sic] of his Roman Catholic tenants of this part of his estate’.

73 De Breffny, Brian and Mott, George, The Churches and Abbeys of Ireland (London, 1976), p. 154.Google Scholar

74 Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 23-27 August 1788.

75 Ronan, Myles V., An Apostle of Catholic Dublin: Father Henry Young (Dublin, 1944), p. 26.Google Scholar

76 Donnelly, N., Dublin Parishes, pt XIV, p. 60 Google Scholar.

77 Ibid., p. 63.

78 The Howth family belonged to a group known as Old English. The Old English were the descendants of the first English settlers in Ireland. They were loyal to England but did not accept the Reformed Church, but instead continuing (for the most part) to adhere to Roman Catholicism.

79 ICR, Cullen papers 1845-48, Bishop C. Denvier, Belfast, to Dr Cullen, Rome, 19 February 1844.

80 ICR, Silke catalogue 8 Pre-Cullen, Lord Fingall, Killeen Castle, to Archbishop Rich. O’Reilly, 1 November 1791. He is probably referring to St Peter’s (demolished), designed by Francis Johnston, and begun in the early 1790s.

81 Bowden, Charles Topham, A Tour Through Ireland (Dublin, 1791), p. 124.Google Scholar

82 Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, 1:8 (23 February 1841), p. 122.

83 Ibid., p. 122.

84 The Irish Church Act 1869 provided for the disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Church of Ireland from 1 January 1871.

85 Donnelly, N., Dublin Parishes, pt XVI, p. 128 Google Scholar.

86 Theobald Mathew (1790-1856) was a remarkably good preacher who devoted much of his energy (with considerable success) to the temperance movement from 1834 until his death.

87 Murphy, Ignatius, ‘Building a Church in 19th Century Ireland’, in The Other Clare: Journal of the Shannon Historical Archaeological Society, 11 (April 1978), p. 22.Google Scholar

88 de Latocnaye, Joseph de Bougrenet, Ramble Through Ireland, 1 (Dublin, 1798), p. 38 Google Scholar. Mr Kirwan was a Catholic priest who converted to Anglicanism.

89 Catholic Directory 1842, p. 394.

90 Morrissey, Thomas, As One Sent: Peter Kenney SJ 1779-1841 (Dublin and Washington, 1996), p. 395.Google Scholar

91 Miley, John, Sermon Delivered by the Very Rev. Dr. Miley, in St. Audoen’s Parochial Chapel, Bridge-street, 24th August, 1841 (Dublin, 1841).Google Scholar

92 Catholic Directory 1842, p. 415. The church referred to is almost certainly St Patrick’s Pro-Cathedral which was begun in 1837 to the design of Thomas Duff (c. 1805-48).

93 Murphy, ‘Building a Church in 19th Century Ireland’, p. 25.

94 Freeman’s Journal, 23 January 1845.

95 Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1840.

96 DDA, Pro-cathedral box 38/10, Account book 1803, p. 5.

97 FL, loose papers relating to Adam and Eve’s, 1890-99, C.77, Walter Doolin to Revd Clement A. Hyland, 13 December 1889.

98 Donnelly, N., Roman Catholics. State and Condition of R.C. Chapels in Dublin, Both Secular and Regular, A.D. 1769 (Dublin, 1904), p. 33.Google Scholar

99 Cork Southern Reporter, 20 August 1836. The Dominicans recorded their gratitude to Kearns Deane on a stone plaque which is in the porch of the church.

100 Donnelly, N., Dublin Parishes, pt III, p. 115 Google Scholar.

101 Tyrrell, Dolores, ‘The Parish Church of Saints Mary and Peter, Arklow’, in Arklow Historical Society Journal 1985, p. 53.Google Scholar

102 DDA, Troy 1818, Denis Linehan to the Most Revd Dr Troy, 6 May 1818; Messrs Baker and McCartney, 6 May 1818 to ditto; John Curran to ditto, 13 May 1818.

103 DDA, Hamilton papers 36/7, William Hughes to Dr Hamilton, 16 October 1844.

104 DDA, Hamilton papers 36/7, William Hughes to Dr Hamilton, 10 March 1845.

105 Ibid., Patrick Boylan, 102 Grafton Street, to Dr Murray, 2 October 1846.

106 DDA, Hamilton papers 37/2, circular letter from Dr Meagher, Rathmines, 30 August 1849.

107 Morrissey, As One Sent, p. 225.

108 A glimpse into an unusual source comes from local tradition in Westport, Co. Mayo, and concerns Father Peter Ward from Westport who was born about 1760 into a family of prosperous Catholics. He was probably educated in France, and he served in the Peninsular War as Napoleon’s chaplain. He returned from the war with enough money to fund the building of churches in Mayo at Aughagower, Cushlough, and possibly Drummin. He also brought home three portrait paintings: Napoleon, Marie-Louise (Napoleon’s second wife), and Marshal Ney (John Mulloy to Brendan Grimes, 19 November 2002).

109 IJA, ‘Account book for the building supplies and craftsmen’s fees for the building of Saint Francis Xavier’, cm/Gard 38.

110 DAT, printed paper entitled ‘New Dominican church of St. Mary, Pope’s Quay’, outlining receipts and expenditure from July 1832 to July 1836.

111 Larkin, The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church, pp. 151-57.

112 DAT, Printed circular dated 1 June 1835 addressed to the people of Britain.