This wasn’t the post I planned to write for today, but it’s the one, in the end , I felt I wanted to do more than any other. It would have been Robert’s birthday on Wednesday (March 5) and somehow a contemplative post filled with beautiful images (many of which he helped me to process), and set to sublime music, was calling out to me. Watch it on YouTube for the best experience. I hope you enjoy it.
One way to think about a piece of stained glass is that, for the artist, light serves as the canvas, while glass is the medium. Additional materials may include glass paint, acid, and other treatments used to enhance the design or respond to the context of the window or panel. Throughout the ages, stained glass has surrounded us—adorning churches and public spaces—yet we don’t often pause to look beyond its surface. We admire the light it casts without considering the artist’s hand, the vision, and the craftsmanship that bring it to life. I have tried to do that in this quirky set of photos. I wandered though my (embarrassingly) huge archive and chose the ones that spoke to me. As I look at what I have chosen I see I am drawn to abstractions and faces – a duality that Robert the sociable architect would approve of.
This photo of us was taken ten years ago. The music is Ave Maria Stella by the late great Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. It’s available here, and is used with permission.
This week I experienced, in Virtual Reality, what is was to belong to a Flying Column during the Irish War of Independence. With the men, I crawled through a West Cork field, gun at the ready, alert for any sign of the British army or the Black and Tans.
Or, at least, that’s what it felt like, and I must admit to a slight pounding of the heart as we were crouched behind that stone wall. In reality, I was on a swivel chair in the old Uillinn coffee shop, now repurposed as a VR theatre, wearing a VR headset. The Sean Keating painting that this experience is based on is the iconic Men of the South and you can read all about it here.
Kathleen was ruined financially by all her support for the cause. Letters of support for her pension application were fulsome in praise of her work and her commitment. She was awarded a grade E pension in 1939. She died, here in 1945, aged 50. She had not married and had no children, and all memory of her gradually disappeared from Ballydehob. When Karen went looking for the house she had lived in, it seemed nobody could remember the heroic Kathleen O’Connell who had once lived here.
How wrong we were! Memory of Kathleen was far from dead. A relative of hers recently contacted Karen and on Friday afternoon we spent several hours with him and his charming grandson, rediscovering Kathleen from a man in whose family her memory was still fully alive. (He didn’t want his photo in the blog post, although Neven, the grandson, was happy to be in it.)
The first thing he showed us was her grave, at the historic Abbey Graveyard in Bantry. It contained many family members, including Kathleen. Our guide had knowledge of everyone in the grave and how they were related, and told us that there were probably more people in the plot than commemorated on the headstone. The grave looks out over the sea at Bantry.
Next, he brought us to the cabin belonging to her Uncle Pat where she sheltered men on the run. It’s located in the hills behind Ballydehob, down several lonely boreens and across a couple of (very muddy) fields. The cabin, now roofless, still stands and still has the wonderful oak mantle across the open fireplace.
We marvelled that Kathleen was doing all this on her bicycle – it’s several kilometres above Ballydehob and about 100 metres above sea level. And of course few of the roads would have been paved at that time. Our guide told us that she was totally and passionately committed to the cause, and that, since she was an only child, she carried her parents along with her. It was really they who underwrote all the expenses she incurred in her work.
In the family, it was understood that she had been engaged to a man who was a member of a Flying Column – just like one of the Men of the South, but that he had been shot. We could only wonder at the trauma and distress she had experienced. She left for America in 1925, but returned to live in Ballydehob, and her father eventually outlived her.
Our final mementoes of Kathleen were particularly poignant. Surviving in the family were two of her books, school books we think, in which she had written her name.
Each was very British – a reminder to us all what the standard school fare was at the time when we were members of the British Empire.
I have located a copy of the Royal Prince Reader (1910) on EBay – in Rajastan! A further reminder that empire was promoted through children’s literature as much as through military occupation.
Somehow these two books, her own possessions, brought Kathleen to life as nothing else could have done. We imagined her devouring these stories in school, and her gradual disillusion as she matured with what the Empire stood for.
It is an immense comfort to know that she is not forgotten after all.
I’ve had the most marvellous Muskerry weekend! Muskerry (pronounced Muss-cree), or Múscraí as it is more properly spelled in Irish, encompasses a large area in west Cork and much of it is Irish speaking. This weekend my two destinations were Ballingeary and Inchigeelagh. We didn’t stop at Gougane Barra on the way this time, but can’t resist including this photo to remind you of the stunning scenery there.
Ballingeary was Saturday and our destination was the village hall, for the last night of the original ceoldráma (musical), Gobnait! This production is by the same team who mounted An Tuairin Dubh a couple of years ago and I was dying to see their new musical. I wasn’t disappointed!
The story tells of the legend of St Gobnait, who travels from the Aran Islands to Ballyvourney – she knows she will have reached the “site of her resurrection” when she sees nine white deer (below). Patron saint of smiths and beekeepers, stories abound and are kept alive with an annual pilgrimage. We have written about Gobnait several times. Here’s a link to a post from only last year, one of the last posts that Robert wrote, in fact.
But to really understand how St Gobnait journeyed to Ballyvourney, you must read Amanda’s 3 part post (Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3) where she traces her peregrination from the Aran Islands to Ballyvourney, stopping along the way to lend her name to churches and holy wells. This is followed by a summary of her life and work in Ballyvourney.
The Musical – it’s an opera, really, told the story very dramatically and with great liveliness and enthusiasm from the cast. The singing was lovely and there was lots of interesting choreography and stage settings – the Sulán River, for example, was very effectively rendered by means of moving actors and a huge gauze sheet (below). The words were projected as sur-titles, so even though my Irish is not a strong as I would wish, I could follow along with no problem.
It seems like the whole village of Ballingeary was involved – from those directing us to parking to those at the desks and tea-counter, everyone from miles around was joining in the fun and the effort. The hall was packed, as it has been every night, and we delivered a standing ovation at the end of the evening – so well deserved.
I loved how Gobnait’s costume in the second half was based on Seamus Murphy’s famlous statue of her at her holy well in Ballyvourney.
Having gone home and slept, I got in the car again this morning for another trip to Múscraí – this time to Inchigeelagh and to one of my favourite West Cork churches. Before I tell you about the trip, here are two reasons I like this church. The first is this little gem of St Oliver Plunkett. It’s the work of Kevin Kelly, of the Abbey Studios – and my photograph of it features on the front cover of a book! I haven’t got my copy of the book yet – it’s on its way.
The purpose of my trip was to attend a mass in memory of Eileen Ryan. Eileen died in Zimbabwe, aged only 38, in 1983. and each year since, her husband Ken makes the journey from Dublin to attend the mass. Ken, a friend from the stained glass world (he’s the Chairman of Abbey Stained Glass Studios), had invited me to attend, since I live ‘nearby.’ I am so glad I did.
Y’know, you forget how life is lived and celebrated in rural Ireland – the ritual, followed by the release, the laughter, and food and the friendliness. As a total stranger, I was included in all of that – we were singing in a pub an hour after the mass ended, and eating delicious soup and brown bread and cake in a family member’s house an hour after that. I felt like I had made new friends – and have already promised to give a stained glass talk at their annual festival next year.
WordPress, to my dismay, has now labelled all the content on this blog as ‘by Finola’. This is due to the necessity, for various reasons, of adjusting ‘ownership’ and management parameters. It’s a bit heartbreaking, though, as it’s no longer easily discernible which of the posts (approx half of the 1,132 posts so far) were written by Robert. So every now and then I thought it would be good to highlight one of his older posts. So here is his wonderful account, written originally in 2014, and titled In Search of Ghosts, of the spirits that haunt Brow Head.
Lonely and wild – Brow Head is the most southerly point on the mainland of Ireland. There are ghosts here: ghosts of ancient people who created the stone monuments, perhaps 5000 years ago, that are now inundated by every tide in the bay at Ballynaule below this Irish ‘Lands End’; ghosts of early farmers who began to lay out field boundaries criss-crossing this windswept promontory; ghosts of the defenders of an empire who feared a French invasion that never happened; ghosts of the prospectors who sunk two shafts – now barely protected by rusting wire – during the nineteenth century copper mining era; and, lastly, ghosts of the pioneers of our own digital age, represented in the brooding ruins that crown the hilltop here above West Cork’s remotest village, Crookhaven.*
Brow Head – haunt of ghosts
Napoleon setting his sights on the British Empire 1804 (Charles Motte)
Facing up to Napoleon: Brow Head Signal Tower, built in 1804 in anticipation of a French invasion
We can be very specific about one ghost: Guglielmo Marconi – born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874 to Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian country gentleman, and Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland. The Jamesons were and are renowned distillers of Irish Whiskey. It’s reasonable to say that Marconi was an ‘Irish Italian’, and that heritage was reinforced when in 1905 he married Beatrice O’Brien, daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin. Marconi’s fame is that he pioneered the commercial application of electromagnetic waves – or Radio.
Marconi – wishful thinking!
At the age of twenty one, Marconi was able to demonstrate to his father how, without any visible physical link (without wires), he could transmit dots and dashes through the rooms of their home in Pontecchio. “…When I started my first experiments with Hertzian waves…” he is quoted as saying, “…I could scarcely believe it is possible that their application to useful purposes could have escaped the notice of eminent scientists…” His parents used their influence to help him travel to England to meet the Engineer-in-Chief of the British Post Office with the result that in 1896 Marconi obtained the first ever patent in wireless telegraphy.
Signal Station at Poldhu, Cornwall, 1914
Marconi’s ambitions started in a room in Italy: by December 1901 he was able to send messages from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St John’s, Newfoundland, a distance of 2100 miles – an historic achievement. In his attempts to bridge the Atlantic with Radio waves he had explored the west coasts of Britain and Ireland for suitable telegraphic locations. One of his destinations was Crookhaven, which he visited many times – using the Flying Snail en route!
The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Station at Brow Head – exactly 100 years ago
Brow Head was one of a number of transmitting stations set up by Marconi and it got off to a flying start soon after opening in 1901 when, in the presence of Marconi himself, Morse signals were received from Poldhu, 225 miles away. The fact that the Atlantic gap was conquered only a few months after this shows the rapid pace of developments at that time.
Calling America…
The village of Crookhaven had long been the first and last port of call for ships going between Northern European ports and America. Over the centuries ships stocked up here with provisions before tackling the open sea. Because of this, the major shipping lines had agents here. Reuters and Lloyds had flag-signalling and semaphore equipment on Brow Head to communicate with the maritime traffic, superseded by the telegraph station. At the end of the 19th Century it was said that “…you could cross the harbour on the decks of boats…” Up to 700 people are reputed to have lived in the area at that time: now, Crookhaven has a permanent population of no more than 40. An article written by one of the telegraph operators in 1911 summarises:
…As Crookhaven is the first station with which the homeward bound American liners communicate it is naturally a busy station. By the aid of wireless all arrangements are made for the arrival of the ships, the landing and entraining of the passengers and mails, whilst hundreds of private messages to and from passengers are dealt with. Messages are also received from the Fastnet Lighthouse, which is fitted with wireless, reporting the passing of sailing ships and steamers. These messages are sent by vessels not fitted with wireless by means of signals to the Fastnet, thence by wireless to Crookhaven, whence they are forwarded to Lloyds and to the owners of the vessels…
Engraving by Mary Francis Cusack, 1875
We have some first hand accounts of the workings of the signal station in its heyday from the handwritten log books of Arthur Nottage – for many years landlord of the Welcome Inn at Crookhaven – who died aged 90 in 1974. In 1904 he arrived in West Cork (from England) to work on a shift basis with one other man as Marconi telegrapher at Brow Head. Until 1914 he operated the Morse code apparatus with a salary – generous for the time – of £1 per week.
Arthur Nottage of Crookhaven
A hundred years ago telegraphy had advanced to such a stage that it was no longer necessary for stations to operate close to the shipping lanes, and small, isolated sites such as Brow Head were closed down. Legend has it that in 1922 the Irregulars destroyed the buildings during the Civil War.
Becoming archaeology: the ruins on Brow Head today
Finola and I have both been inspired by the landscape and atmosphere of this Atlantic frontier. It’s a place we will return to. All West Cork landscapes are impressive, but this is a place apart. If you want to feel at the end of the world, walk here: you won’t meet many others, even in the height of the visitor season. Perhaps that’s because it’s haunted – but in the best possible way. Like so much of Ireland the world has come here – a mark has been made – memories have been left behind. Now, you hear the ghosts in the ever-present currents of wind and surf.
Base of Marconi’s mast at Brow Head
*I am grateful to Michael Sexton and the Mizen Journal (Number 3 1995) for many fascinating items on the Crookhaven Telegraph Station not recorded elsewhere.
Harry did several wonderful St Brigid windows, and included Brigid as a saint in larger scenes. There are also Brigid windows attributed to him that he actually didn’t do, but that’s a blog for another time. Today I want to give you a flavour of his take on Brigid, because this was a saint that must have been especially meaningful to him – his mother was a Brigid!
Brigid (sometimes given as Bridget) MacGonigal was born in Sligo and married Joshua Clarke, then an up-and-coming church decorator in Dublin and they had four children. Harry, their third child arrived in 1889. Brigid was never strong and died in Bray in August 1903, leaving her family bereft. Harry was 14 and that year marked the end of his schooling at Belvedere as he and his older brother Walter joined the family business to help run it. Harry was a sensitive child and it is likely that he missed and mourned his mother for many years. He also inherited her weak lungs and struggled, as she did, with his health.
I will start with the place that launched Harry’s career, the Honan Chapel at University College Cork (I’ll finish with the one that is on my lead photo). And in fact it is his first windows for that Chapel – a three light, depicting Brigid, Patrick and Columcille, our three Patron Saints. This window is over the entrance, facing west, which, with Harry’s preference for dark colours and some internal lighting issues in the chapel, makes it hard to photograph.
Harry had completed a detailed sketch design for this window in 1914 (Nicole Gordon Bowe has an image of that design in her magnificent The Life and Work of Harry Clarke) and the window was made in 1915. There are a few differences between the sketch design and the finished window, but on the whole, the window is true to Harry’s original vision for it. His notes for the window refer to
Top: The Angel with the cloth of heaven forming background
The Figure: With emblems – the church, the inextinguishable spiritual lamp – the calf and the oak.
The Base: Are four angels carrying the prayers, prophesies, miracles and charities of St Brigid, also are shown the five lilies – she has been called the Mary of Ireland and these lilies symbolise the five provinces of Ireland over which she held spiritual control.
The cloth of heaven has been imagined as fronds in deeps reds, while St Brigid is shown as mature, wise and compassionate. She is holding a church which looks a lot like St Kevin’s Kitchen in Glendalough. In her other hand is a brown oak leaf, threaded through her fingers. The calf peers out from her right side. As befits a Mary of the Gael, she wears a deep blue robe.
The predella (lowest section, above) shows four angels, but what they are carrying are torches – a reference to the spiritual lamp and the fire associated with Brigid. The symbols of the five provinces, recognisably lilies in the sketch design, have changed to another flower I can’t name. Note the tiny details, though – the crucifixion scene in the borders on the left and the right. The other detail to note here is that the fingers, of Brigid and the angels are ‘normal’ – Harry has not yet developed his signature long tapering fingers and pointed sleeves (among the idiosyncratic elements he called his “gadgets’).
His next Brigid (above) was for the Nativity window in Castletownsend – I have written about that window extensively here so pop over and have a browse if you fancy. The Castletownsend Brigid, done in 1918, looks quite similar to the Honan Brigid and has the same oak leaf entwined in her fingers. The difference is that she is carrying the sacred lamp, has the Harry Clarke fingers, and is spelled S Bridget – the English version rather than the Irish Naomh Brighid of the Honan. [For non-Irish speaking readers – the small dot on top of consonants in Irish is now normally rendered as H – as in Briġid is now Brighid.]
The next two windows, Terenure (above and below, details) from 1920 and Cloughjordan from 1924, show Brigid among a host of other saints. In Terenure the subject of the large window is The Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Cross by Irish Saints, and this is a large, three-light window behind the main altar. The saints are not all easy to identify, despite having their names in their haloes, but first and foremost among them are Patrick on the left and Brigid on the right.
Brigid is dressed in a blue robe which drapes on the ground around her, and has a golden trim to her sleeves.
In St Michael and St John’s Church in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, the theme of the large, five-light, window is The Ascension with Irish Saints and St Michael and St James. Gordon Bowe designates this one a Harry Clarke (B). That means that this window was initially conceived and designed by him but executed by his studio under his close supervision. This is the first window we have come across, in this series, that is not wholly Harry’s own work, and this is a measure of how busy the Studios had become with Harry at the helm.
As in Terenure, Brigid is here as one of the Irish saints. She is depicted as very young, wide-eyed, and carrying a church which now looks more medieval than Romanesque (neither would have been appropriate to her era) and is probably a nod to the Cathedral in Kildare.
And so we come to the last Brigid that Harry ever did*. It is from the famous and controversial Geneva window, now in the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami. If you have not yet seen the marvellous documentary that Ardall O’Hanlon has made about this, I highly recommend you do. It’s available on the RTE Player as of this time of writing. The Brigid panel is among the less controversial images in the whole window. It’s based on a play by Lady Gregory called The Story Brought by Brigit. According to Marie T Mullan in her lovely book,Exiled from Ireland: Harry Clarke’s Geneva Window,
The play is a passion play, but it is based on the legend, popular in Ireland and Scotland, that St Brigit was present at the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. Brigit mingles with the crowds from the time of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem until after his death. She is a foreigner, observing and commenting. She tells people she is Jesus’s foster mother and brought Mary and Jesus to Ireland to escape Herod. . . The icon of Christ Crucified is a the vesica, a shape used often in art for a picture within a picture, and has the traditional beaded frame. Brigit is absorbed in the icon.
Note Brigid’s golden scapular and elaborate headdress. Also the stylised butterfly and the little woodland creatures in the scene.
I think that’s a good place to stop. Harry did another Brigid, for the Oblate Fathers in north Dublin’s Belcamp Hall. This is a sorry tale in which the buildings, once left by the priests were subject to appalling vandalism and the windows are in storage, and haven’t been seen for years. This is tragic.
* Thanks to my friend Jack Zagar for the Photos of the Geneva Window.
I’ve been without power for half a day and without internet (aaaargh!) for the last few days, finally restored last night. So this is a brief post and of course it has to be about the weather. This is what Storm Éowin (a character from Tolkien, apparently) looked like as it barrelled towards us across the Atlantic last Thursday night, packing winds of 147kmh.
Screenshot
The whole country came to a standstill and I lay awake listening to the tiles rattle on the roof and various ominous crashings and bangings and thinking about my PV panels and how secure they are. I need not have worried – Éowin roared over us and did less damage around here than our most ferocious one ever, Storm Darwin. I hunkered down on Friday, boiling water on the wood stove – and even had neighbours over for coffee!
Some parts of the country got very badly hit indeed and are still without power and are coping with the damage, so we were comparatively lucky. And now it’s Sunday and Storm Herminia is hitting us – although inexplicably it’s also called Storm Hugo on the Met Éireann website, with a yellow warning already in place. To show you what it looks like outside, I am reposting a stop-motion video we made several years ago of how the weather sweeps across our view. This is a thirty minute session of Irish weather coming in to Roaringwater Bay compressed to thirty seconds, each frame being shot a second apart.
And now I will re-post the results of Storm Darwin – so far the worst storm we have experienced in our time here. The rest of this post dates from 2014:
Storm Darwin, 2014
By Rossbrin Cove, after Storm Darwin
We looked back recently and counted the number of posts both of us have done on the subject of the weather, and decided not to do any more on pain of boring our readership to death. But this week Met Eireann issued a rare Code Red warning and their direst predictions came true. The Southwest of Ireland was pounded by hurricane force winds, the like of which many people had never experienced before. Storm Darwin wreaked havoc in our corner of the world.
We were lucky! Our power was off for several hours, but our house is set up so we can still stay warm, run water, and cook. We lost a few more trees, including two that fell over the road, blocking access. Our terrific landscaper, Thomas, chainsawed them off so that at least cars could get by. Trees that came down in our neighbour’s property severed our telephone cable and we have been told that it could be ten days before this is fixed – so we have no landline and no internet. We use our cell phones to connect whenever we can in cafes in town or in friends’ houses, but reception has been spotty all week due to storm damage.
We’re almost out of trees now in the haggard
Many of our neighbours have not been so fortunate and are still without power. For some this can also mean no water and no way to cook. The County Council has issued a warning to boil drinking water amid fears that water supplies have been contaminated. All over the countryside crews are out clearing away trees and restoring cables. Two young men were swept to their deaths by huge waves on the north side of the Sheep’s Head. Another man, part of a telephone repair crew, has died while working on the high wires. Roads and towns flooded although this time the storm surges did not coincide with high spring tides so the water damage was not as bad as it had been earlier in the year.
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