In last week’s post I described a unique type of boat that was connected with Bantry, here in West Cork. Today we are also focussed on Bantry, but this time on architecture: the Public Library, which is one of the most unusual and innovative buildings from twentieth century Ireland.
Here is the building as we see it today. The header is a limited edition print, a collaboration between Dermot Harrington of Cook Architects and Robin Foley of Hurrah Hurrah celebrating the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the completion of Bantry Library in 1974. For me, the print captures perfectly the iconic graphic of this most unorthodox design.
The Library was conceived by Patrick McSweeney (above) – Cork County Architect between 1953 and 1975. He deserves a post of his own one day, as he was responsible for some outstanding buildings in the county. Two of his assistants in the Architect’s Department at the time were Brian Lalor and John Verling. Both had a hand in the genesis of the Library. Interestingly for us, McSweeney, Lalor and Verling were all living around Ballydehob in those days – it was a swinging village!
In the era before computers were universal in architects’ offices, everything was drawn by hand – or modelled. Brian recalls that Pat (McSweeney) called him into the office one day, handed him cardboard, tape and scissors, and instructed him to make a model of a building shaped like a Bronze Age dolmen. And he wanted it made in a hurry! It could well have been the one shown above – which still exists. Remarkably, although this model was made in the early 1960s, the building that resulted in the 1970s was very similar in form. Later, John Verling produced a balsa-wood model upon which the design production drawings were based:
That’s John Verling, above, with his model. He and his wife, Noelle, are the subjects of the current exhibition in the Ballydehob Arts Museum (click the link). Following are some of the design sketches carried out by Harry Wallace who was leading the team in County Hall, and detailed drawings of the building that eventually ensued.
Let’s look a bit further at the early concept work, especially that first model. It’s said that McSweeney was inspired by a ‘Dolmen’. In fact we would today call that type of early megalithic structure a ‘Wedge Tomb’ or a ‘Portal Tomb’. At its simplest, this is a large flat stone slab (or slabs) supported on vertical stone slabs: it was probably a burial chamber, perhaps with its opening facing the sunset at a particular solar event. The closest such tomb structure to Ballydehob is the one featured in Finola’s post today. I wonder if Pat McSweeney was aware of this local one? He would have certainly been aware of the striking example at Altar, further west on the Mizen Pensinsula.
Returning to the twentieth century, and the Bantry Library project, construction posed many problems, using techniques which might have been considered at the leading edge of architecture in its time and place. Across the sea similar experiments were taking place. I was at the centre of them! I completed my architectural education in the late 1960s and went to work for the Greater London Council. I saw going up around me on the South Bank of the Thames a development which included the Hayward Gallery (below): its design (described as ‘brutalist’), earned it the nomination of the ugliest building in Britain when it opened!
Larger in scale, this complex exhibits some of the features we see in Bantry: shutter-marked mass concrete, frameless glazing, bold overhanging roof planes… The Library roof cantilevers six metres in one part of the building.
The status of this building as an unique example of modernist architecture in Ireland has recently been recognised with a Heritage Council grant of over €250,000 to carry out refurbishments to some of the major elements.
. . . As Bantry Library approaches its 50th anniversary, we are committed to safeguarding this important building. As a protected structure within an Architectural Conservation Area, Cork County Council recognizes its responsibility to preserve and protect Bantry Library for future generations. The conservation works will take place during 2023, and we look forward to seeing the library restored to its former glory . . .
Tim Lucey, Chief Executive, Cork County Council
A Heritage Week talk was given by Dermot Harrington of Cook Architects at the Library (below). It was a most informative review of the building and its history.
Most of the original features of the building have survived in reasonable order. I was impressed with the ‘pipe lights’ which draw daylight down into the centre of the main room:
We also learned about the complexity of the building construction, and saw photographs of the steel reinforcement and board shuttering from fifty years ago:
Dermot Harrington pointed out that the building was effectively put together by only five men, under foreman Gerry O’Sullivan, who was just 27 years old. Neither he or any of the other crew had ever tackled anything like this before!
The Library is central to the life of the town, and still serves its original purpose. It’s eye-catching (perhaps sensational is a good word?) and very much alive and relevant. We look forward to the completion of the current works, and suitable festivities to mark the fiftieth birthday of this creative West Cork project.
Thank you to the Library for the information they provided and the display boards that are currently on show. Many of my illustrations are taken from these resources
I was around in London in the early sixties, and was definitely part of the swinging Flower Power scene: beatniks, Beatlemania, Carnaby Street, flowery shirts and ties (I’ve still got some of them – below – stashed away in my wardrobe!) – the regulation Afghan coat (and its distinctive smell) . . . What I miss most, perhaps, is the purple velvet flared trousers: sadly an expanding waistline quickly did away with them.
What is less well-known – in my generation at least – is the fact that there was a similar cultural phenomenon in one part of Ireland – our own West Cork! And it was centred on Ballydehob – that’s the main street, above. It’s a colourful village today – as it was then: well-suited to the cultural heritage which the artist community of the time imposed upon it. This building on the main street in those early days was particularly significant:
One of the artists who happened upon Ballydehob at that time lived on here to tell the tale (he still lives in the village and is still a working artist):
BREAKING NEWS: BALLYDEHOB IS DISCOVERED!
. . . During the early 1960s, a group of students at the Crawford School of Art in Cork, heard a rumour that something bizarre was happening in a village called Ballydehob. Here some vestige of Swinging London had taken up residence in a painted-up building called ‘The Flower House’. I was one of those students. We decided to investigate.
Since nobody owned a car, a parental vehicle must be ‘borrowed’. Somebody’s parent was away so this could be done without controversy. One of the know-it-all students announced that Ballydehob was in County Sligo and we would need money for petrol and have to camp when we got there. Nobody owned a tent. A forever-complaining student said that ‘He didn’t want to end up arrested as a vagrant and to have to sleep in a Garda station’. A few days later we left the Crawford en-route to County Sligo. Fortunately, a more astute student rummaged in the car as we were leaving the city for the West, found a road atlas and announced that Ballydehob was actually in County Cork, a mere two hours drive over the potholes. Tent-less or Garda station camping would not be required.
We arrived, we saw, we were astonished. Cork was then a darkly conservative place, ditto the Crawford and its staff members. What we found in Ballydehob was a house on the main street of the village with enormous flowers painted on the façade. It might have been in Chelsea or San Francisco. We entered to find a hive of creativity and alternative lifestyles. This was the world of women in flowing batik dresses, bearded men with bead necklaces and leather-thonged trousers. Even a cod-piece was observed. We sat in the café and drank coffee from the brownest of chipped brown ceramic mugs, ate inedible brownies and marvelled at the range of art and crafts being produced by this creative group.
This establishment, which seemed to have landed from another planet since the remainder of Main Street appeared to have experienced no visual or economic change from the images recorded in the black + white photographs of the 1900s, was run by two women, one German, the other English: Christa Reichel and Nora Golden. Here was a living example of William Morris’s dictum, ‘Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’.
Some ten years later, John and Noelle Verling (participants in that epic car journey) set up the Fergus Pottery in Dripsey outside Cork, later transferring it to Christa Reichel’s former premises in Gurteenakilla, Ballydehob, where it became a fixture of the creative community. A few years following, another member of the car-team, myself and Clair, came to stay with the Verlings, and also remained in the area, setting up an etching studio on the other side of Ballydehob.
Many of those who established the creative community of West Cork have died. Another generation has grown to maturity, further expanding the tradition of West Cork as a major and continuing centre of creative engagement in all of the arts, an epi-centre of delight. . .
BRIAN LALOR
That’s Brian, in his studio today. Just a few years ago – in 2018 – he and I decided that that creative time in the village needed to be properly celebrated, and we gathered around us like-minded enthusiasts, and opened up the Ballydehob Arts Museum, using a room kindly donated by those who had taken over the disused bank building, right in the centre of town:
That’s the inside of the Museum above: its first exhibition opened in the summer of 2018. We had another the following year, then Covid stopped us until last year, when we featured Ian + Lynn Wright. This year’s exhibition also features a ‘couple’ of working artists: The Verlings– Noelle + John.
John Verling was a contemporary of Brian Lalor (who has written the account above), and they both studied architecture and art in London and at the Crawford in Cork. Brian has penned for us his memories of sharing a studio in London with John Verling:
THE PERILS OF A SHARED STUDIO, LONDON, 1967
. . . During the late 1960s, John Verling and I, then students of architecture in London, shared a quite substantial studio in one of the leafier areas of Kensington. The building, a large brightly lit interior behind a row of decaying Victorian villas (it might originally have been a Victorian studio, we never discovered) had many more recent uses and the first task on gaining possession was to somehow manage to get rid of what had been left behind by earlier tenants; office furniture, old matresses, much unidentifiable plumbing apparatus and a stuffed fox whose pelt had been consumed by moths, were among the challenging contents.
Conversation among acquaintances in our local, the Norland Arms, evoked interest from other drinkers, an English sculptor and a South African photographer who asked could they share the space and, very willingly offered a down payment on the rent. This was agreed and not long afterwards the studio became operational, with both John and myself busy creating in our new-found haven, with only the occasional appearance of our fellow tenants. John was at that point concentrating on elegant photomontages as well as complex drawings of Portobello costermongers and was extremely productive, while I was engaged in a substantial series of elaborate and brightly coloured timber constructions enhanced by scaffold clamps, in a latter-day Bauhaus manner. Time passed, various local artists called to view the work and admire the space. We were exhibiting successfully and the studio became in W H Auden’s phrase, ‘the cave of making’. Our fellow studio members failed to turn up and when occasionally encountered in the Norland, expressed embarrassment in being behind with the rent while offering a contribution to ‘keep their name in the pot’. This was an extremely satisfactory situation with individuals happy to subsidise the rent but too busy to actually attend the studio.
A chance encounter in the Norland brought another hopeful artist to our acquaintance, David O’Doherty, Dublin painter, he worked at the international telephone exchange. He came, he admired the studio, and invited himself to join. Fatally, we agreed. An accomplished portrait painter, he often had a sitter posed, but seemed happy to work on, undisturbed by the other occupants. Our new tenant was affable, expansive, a storyteller. He became a permanent fixture. Suddenly we realised that we were entertaining a cuckoo in our midst. O’Doherty had moved in permanently, camp bed, small stove on which there was always a fry-up in progress, an endless stream of visitors, large canvasses propped against the wall, and the catastrophic revelation of his other occupation; he was a keen traditional musician, devoted to the Uillinn pipes. Suddenly the space, ample for John and myself to pursue our work, had begun to feel like a home for the demented.
Gradually it became apparent that our studio, which a year before had been, in the midst of the city’s turmoil, as quiet and remote as a stylite’s pillar, had metamorphosed into Picadilly Circus with noise, air pollution and crowd control issues. The dream of having a secure place in which to create had floundered on the fatal choice of an individual whose concept of an ideal workplace was perilously close to Francis Bacon’s taste for irredeemable chaos. I bailed out, John lasted a little longer. And the completed series of brightly coloured scaffold-clamp constructions, what of them? Occasionally I received reports of their travels. Before he emigrated to Boston, O’Doherty sold them to a construction company and they were later spotted decorating the foyer of a social welfare office in Amsterdam. After that only blessed silence . . .
BRIAN LALOR
Noelle Verling (above) studied ceramics at Hammersmith College of Art. She and John met and married and – when they moved back to Ireland in 1971 – John & Noelle Verling established the Fergus Pottery in Dripsey in 1971 with Noelle as potter. She produced a wide range of domestic ware at Dripsey. When they moved in 1973 to Ballydehob to take over Christa Reichel’s studio, they adapted Reichel’s press-moulds and Gurteenakilla pottery stamp for their own work and from then on, traded as Gurteenakilla Pottery and latterly as Brushfire.
. . . The Verlings loved the windswept West Cork landscape and felt moved to record a disappearing environment. John’s paintings often depicted the doors, windows and walls of decaying buildings, repositories for the memories of past inhabitants, long gone. The windswept thorn tree is a familiar motif which connects John Verling with West Cork: the tree became his icon and frequently appeared in his paintings and on his ceramic work . . .
Alison Ospina – West Cork Inspires 2011
This is a rare photograph of John working on one of his favourite subjects: the gnarled thorn tree suffering from the ravages of harsh West Cork gales. Among the architectural work he undertook voluntarily was the reordering of the east end of St Bridget’s Catholic Church in Ballydehob. This was a major work.
. . . The gold fish hand drawn in the background of the altar and the depiction of one fish swimming against the shoal continues to evoke admiration from locals and visitors alike. He also designed the two ‘windswept thorn’ stained glass windows and etched the brass surround of the tabernacle. The Altar slab, composed of a vast monolith like the capstone of a dolmen, is a distinguished piece of sculpture and a tribute to his imaginative capacity . . .
Special thanks to Geoff Greenham for giving us this superb photo of St Bridget’s Church, Ballydehob.
The sign for the Brush Fire Ceramics Pottery, created by Noelle and John. They successfully produced a large number of individual pieces, crafted and fired by Noelle, and decorated by John.
John Verling died in 2009. Noelle Verling is living in West Cork and has been extremely helpful in providing material and information for this exhibition. Without her we would have been unable to fully present this story.
That’s John Verling in the picture above having his legs plastered by Ian Wright: this was part of a publicity stunt for the visit of a large group of West Cork artists to Zurich in 1985. John is also singing a folk song! You can read more about that particular enterprise here.
The Ballydehob Arts Museum is grateful to the town’s Community Council for providing the accommodation for the Museum. BAM is: Brian Lalor, Robert Harris, Sarah and Stephen Canty. Their combined knowledge and practical experience has ensured that our ambitions for this – our fourth exhibition – are fully realised.
Exhibition opens Jazz Festival Weekend in Bank House: Thursday 27 April @ 5pm, then Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May: 11am – 4pm. It will open with the Tourism Centre from June to September 2023
Finola and I went to a workshop on creative fused-and-painted glass. It was wonderful! We were guinea-pigs in that the glass artist – Angela Brady– was keen to try running an event and we were privileged to be invited, joining our friends Brian and Clair Lalor.
Top: that’s Angela introducing us to the medium of glass and showing us some of her own work. Centre: she’s encouraging Brian to turn his artist’s mind to the possibilities of the material. Above: Angela Brady and Robin Mallalieu (who are also architects) have taken over the former Brush Fire Pottery, just outside Ballydehob. This was the home and workplace of dynamic artists John and Noelle Verling, who bought the Gurteenakilla premises in 1973 and lived and worked there for very many years. John died in 2009 and Noelle now lives not too far away. To spend the workshop day in such hallowed surroundings added to the ambience, and could only have inspired us in our artistic endeavours!
Back in the 1960s – the heyday of the Ballydehob Artists’ community – the pottery at Gurteenakilla was established by Christa Reichel who – together with her partner Nora Golden – went on to set up the Flower House on the main street in the village as a gallery and meeting place for the artists. They painted the vivid facade of the Flower House (the photo below dates from 1963, and is reproduced with the permission of Andrew Street): similar decorations were applied to the Brush Fire studio, where they survived and are now being restored by Angela and Robin.
Below the Flower House picture is Nora Golden outside the studio at Gurteenakilla; and here are pics of Robin painting the studio building, and Angela’s restoration of the Reichel / Golden decorations. But back to the job in hand: in these venerable surroundings we learned how to cut glass, paint on it and prepare pieces for the kiln. We all had our own ideas: Finola and I decided to paint glass tiles with ancient motifs: Rock Art from Ireland and Scandinavia, some thousands of years old. Brian chose to use cut glass to enhance one of his exquisite sketches, while Clair was perhaps the most ambitious, planning a flower from cut pieces of glass which would require two sessions in the kiln to allow it to be ‘slumped’ to a three-dimensional shape. My view is that all the pieces were equally successful in their execution (but I am prejudiced!)
Top: Angela instructs Finola in the technique of cutting glass shapes, although Finola chose to use glass paint to reproduce some of her own Rock Art images traced during her studies in the 1970s. Above: Clair cuts and assembles a flower shape.
Top: my own pieces: on the left are attendants pushing the sun across the sky, while on the right is a ship carrying souls to the land of the Gods under a potent sun. All these Bronze Age images are found in Norway. Above, Brian working on his cut-glass sketch.
Artists at work in the studio – and the kiln room at Brush Fire. Before going in the kiln, we laminated our pieces with additional glass, to provide a stable background and – in some instances – colour. The firing is carried out overnight at a temperature of at least 760 degrees C. During that time the glass fuses and – hopefully – does not crack.. Angela was firing some of her own pieces at the same time: if you went to the West Cork Createsexhibition in Skibbereen during August of this year you would have seen many examples of Angela’s brilliant work, together with the work of other artists using glass as a medium.
In Angela’s studio are many reminders of past times. John and Noelle Verling specialised in fish imagery – here’s the Brush Fire Ceramics sign that they made back in the day (above – since presented by Noelle to the Ballydehob Arts Museum), while above that is one of Angela’s glass pieces which pays due respect to her predecessors at Brush Fire. Below is a quirky example of Angela’s experimentation: she collected some interestingly shaped bottles from the recycling centre, and fused them together in the kiln:
The following day, Angela took our pieces out of the kiln once it had cooled, and washed them (above). Then we assembled at Nead an Iolair for the reveal. Thank you to Robin for the photos. Clair’s work had to be refired to allow it to ‘slump’, so that was unveiled later on.
Pieces (top to bottom) by Brian, Finola and myself. And – to finish as we started – Clair’s magnificent flower – before and after the second firing! Thank you to Angela for enabling each one of us to experience this most satisfying process. We would all like to take part again another day – and expand our new-found skills!
My first visit to Ballydehob wasn’t until around 1990. I remember being struck by how busy a place it was then – I only wish my memories from nearly 30 years ago were clearer. I now know, of course, that this vibrant little community has a history of being a cosmopolitan creative hub of the arts going right back to the middle of the last century. It’s a fascinating story, and Ballydehob is celebrating it by establishing an Arts Museum and permanent collection, with the first exhibition opening this week in Bank House: please come!
Above: two batiks by Nora Golden. Left – The Rock of the Rings (rock art at Ballybane West) and right – detail from a work depicting Loughcrew-type passage grave art. Nora and her partner, Christa Reichel were early arrivals on the arts scene in Ballydehob. In the 1960s Christa bought a farmhouse and set up the region’s first studio pottery in Gurteenakilla then, with Nora, opened the ‘Flower House’ in the centre of the town: you can see it illustrated in the exhibition flyer at the bottom of this post. All this is well documented in the excellent book by Alison Ospina (herself a talented furniture maker) ‘West Cork Inspires’ (Stobart Davies, 2011).
These denizens of 1970s Ballydehob are not a Heavy Metal band (to my knowledge) but in fact four important artists who had settled here: John Verling – artist, ceramicist and architect, Pat Connor – ceramic sculptor, Brian Lalor – artist, writer and printmaker, and David Chechovich – watercolourist. They are wearing the uniform of the time. Here’s Brian Lalor in his studio today (photo by Finola) – you can certainly see the similarity . . .
Brian still lives near Ballydehob, and is the mastermind and Curator of the new collection. And, if you can begin to see it all fitting together, John Verling (on the left in the exhibition poster above) took over the Gurteenakilla Pottery with his wife Noelle and together they produced striking ceramics, examples of which are in the header photograph.
Gurteenakilla is lived in today by Angela Brady, an artist who works with fused glass. She is also an architect. And – she’s performing the most important task of opening the first exhibition in our new Arts Museum on Friday. Finola wrote about Angela and other artists who contributed to the 7 Hands show on the pier in Ballydehob two years ago: have a look at her post and see if you recognise any other names.
Beautiful stoneware goblets by Pat Connor, who is well represented in the collection. His maker’s mark is a memorable graphic. Another well known West Cork ceramicist represented here is Leda May, who with her husband Bob found Ballydehob in the late 1960s when they were invited by Christa Reichel to set up a pottery behind her own shop. Leda is still working in the area today, producing very fine painted porcelain ware (an example of which is shown below).
Above, from the exhibition – two earthenware mugs by Etain Hickey and Jim Turner, Rossmore Pottery 1983 and two Raku lustreware pieces by Jim Turner 1982. There are more stories to be told – to add to Alison’s comprehensive volume: the rise and fall of the Cork Craftsmans Guild, establishing the West Cork Arts Centre, exhibitions in far-flung places including Zurich, enigmatic repousee work – as yet we can’t trace its history . . . But all that is for another day, once the Ballydehob Arts Museum (BAM) is under way.
Below, posters by Brian Lalor and Repousee work by Shirley Day.
So here’s yet another reason to come to West Cork! This ‘taster’ exhibition starts on 10 August and continues through Heritage Week and Ballydehob’s Summer Festival until 26 August. We have to commend our Community Council in Ballydehob who are giving us the space in Bank House – right in the town centre (the former AIB Bank building) which they acquired for the permanent enjoyment of the local community. Also we have benefitted from Cork County Council who have given us a grant under the Creative Ireland Programme to help get the whole project off the ground. And most of all we have to thank local people who have freely donated pieces for the permanent collection – all will be acknowledged when the Museum is up and running.
Bohemians in Ballydehob! opens at 6pm on Friday 10th August at Bank House, Ballydehob
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