Strawberry Hill in Kildare and Leighlin - Killenard

This Church was completed by the great Fr. Terence O'Connell, one of the great builders of Kildare and Leighlin, who was the Administrator of Carlow Cathedral who brought it to completion, and who built the Churches of Emo and Portarlington in the same Parish as Killenard. It tells a tale of two phases. It wants to be a classical building. The facade is in a classical idiom. The windows are round-headed, albiet that the wooden tracery introduces the pointed arch. However, the original fittings are generally strawberry hill. It says something for Catholic interior décor that the organ case is the best remaining feature in a whimsical gothick.

The sanctuary wall evokes its near contemporary in Johnstownbridge. In both we have a recessed calvary. It's interesting to speculate that Fr. O'Connell and Fr. Treacey, who were both church-building pastors, shared ideas, or lifted them, from each other. Although the tracery in Killenard is of the most elementary and the roof plasterwork is rustic, the common feature of the 'forest' of pillars, and the niched pillars, is more masculine and forceful in Killenard.

The Church is a frequent wedding venue, more, perhaps, for its proximity to 'The Heritage' Golf and Country Club than its architecture but it retains several features that merit for it, among not very intense competition, one of the prettiest Churches in the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin.

Strawberry Hill in Kildare and Leighlin - Staplestown

You may have considered, having looked at the first few posts of this series, that Strawberry Hill Gothick in Kildare and Leighlin is confined to the Sanctuary wall. If so, well spotted. The delicate and elaborate tracery required for the Gothick was ill-adapted to the means of the Irish country parish. Another example of this confinement of the Gothick is the Parish Church of St. Benignus, Staplestown, Co. Kildare. In Staplestown, the confinement of the Gothick goes even further. In the examples in this series so far, the fabric of the Church has been in a more virile Gothic but here, as you can see from the stained glass, and the clear glass, windows, the basic form of the Church (and basic is the word) is a rounded roman classical style. I've been accused of ignoring crude eclecticism in this series. I intend to continue to overlook it, except to say that I don't think the effect is altogether unpleasing, once you can overlook modern reordering.

Strangely, Bishop Comerford makes no mention of this Church in Vol. 2 of his Collections relating to the Dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin, although it would have been in the Parish of Clane at the time. However, the Church is reputedly c. 1790, which would make it one of the oldest Churches still in use in the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. Certainly, it is depicted on an 1838 Ordinance Survey map.

The Kildare County Council Village Design Statement describes it thus: "Detached five-bay Catholic Church, built c.1840. Remaining historic fabric includes cut-stone bellcote, cast-iron rainwater goods stone window sills, timber sash windows with fanlight heads. The full-height interior open roof and Hindu Gothic style plasterwork reredos to altar with marble altar fittings and cast-iron gateway and railings are also notable.

"Saint Benignus's Catholic Church is a fine, church that is composed on a simple plan with simple elevations. The church retains much of its original aspect and many original features and materials remain in situ."

Mind you the fate of Kildare's physical heritage is just as safe in the hands of the folks who invented "Hindu Gothic" as it is in the hands of the folks who brought us the no less accurate "re-ordering in line with the directives of Vatican II"!!!

Strawberry Hill in Kildare and Leighlin - Johnstownbridge

It's our Catholic heritage and we want it preserved!

Strawberry Hill in Kildare and Leighlin - Ballon

Readers of CHRISTVS REGNAT may remember an extract from Bishop Bossuet's Histoire des variations des églises protestantes, where he wrote: "heresy, however old, is always in itself a novelty; to better retain their title of novelty, innovates daily and daily changes its doctrine." Bishop Bossuet might be a bit stumped if he visited some Parishes in Ireland, where the local Catholic Church, whether it is centuries old or decades old, has had makeover after makeover within living memory, while the local Anglican edifice has kept what is beautiful and ancient.

The Anglican church of Aghade in the Parish of Ballon retains many fine interior features including splendid apse decoration and a communion rail.

The Catholic Parish Church of Ballon is dedicated to Ss. Peter and Paul. Their images are to be found in the Strawberry Hill Gothic wooden reredos that has been mercifully retained. For the rest, frankly, I just don't get it...

A fine marble monument in the nave to the Parish Priest who built the Church reads:

Sacred to the memory of REV. JOHN KEHOE P.P. Ballon and Rathoe, born in parish of Bagnalstown, 2nd October 1815, after a year's preparatory study in Carlow College, he, in 1837, entered Maynooth, from which, after a conspicuously distinguished career, he was promoted to the Sacred Priesthood, in the year 1844. His first mission was the Curacy of Clonaslea, next, that of Arles, whence he was transferred, in 1849, to Ballon, where, although, meantime, offered high preferments, he chose to live and toil as Curate for twenty further years. On resignation of REV. Wm. Kinsella P.P. in 1869, he was appointed pastor of the parish, to the temporal as well as spiritual welfare of whose people, he had devoted all the vigour and earnestness of his earlier years. His kindness to the poor, and his zeal for God's glory, should ever be held in cherished remembrance by those, amongst whom to spend himself in unceasing exertion, was but a labour of love. After a most exemplary and useful life he calmly resigned his sinless soul to his Creator on July 21st A.D. 1883. May he rest in peace. Amen.

A monument in the Gospel Transcept reads:

THIS MONUMENT has been erected by Mr. Patrick Conran in memory of his Brother, the very Revd. Jas. Conran, formerly Vicar capitular of the Diocese of Kildare & Leighlin, & for 23 years P.P. of Ballon & Rathoe. He departed this life the 9th of August 1825, in the 67th year of his age.













It was our Catholic heritage. Why couldn't they leave it alone?

Strawberry Hill in Kildare and Leighlin - Ballyroan

This Church almost made it into 'The ones that got away' because, as you can see from the shot of the plans below, it was recently proposed to 're-arrange' the Church but, despite having been happily held up by the planning authorities, the re-ordering went ahead. If this Church could run it should have run faster!

When I visited the Church there was a mesh over the ceiling but there is a fine plasterwork ceiling there somewhere, probably a worthy match of the eastern wall, which is in a fine 'Strawberry Hill Gothic'. Once I have completed the series on the ones that got away, I intend to look at the ones that didn't, beginning with those that have 'Strawberry Hill' features.

By Strawberry Hill Gothic I understand a style of decoration established by Horace Walpole at his London residence of that name. Walpole wrote in 1794 that "every true Goth must perceive more the works of fancy than imitation" about his house, for which Walpole coigned the word 'gloomth' (as in warmth) that typifies 'the gothic' as a literary genre, which he also pioneered through his novel The Castle of Otranto, that established 'the gothic novel' as a primary prose form for a generation and which continues to resonate in our own day.

As an architectural form, Strawberry Hill Gothic (often spelled with a 'k' to distinguish it from the other forms of neo-gothic architecture) is a flamboyant and decorative gothic in the architectural sense of those words, broadly based upon the English perpendicular, even to the extent that the triforium is completely absent.

Without denigrating the form, it strikes me as more superficial and decorative in the romantic sense of picturesque, in contrast to the more archaeological methods of Ruskin and Pugin the elder, and the total immersion of the Arts and Crafts and pre-Raphaelite movements. Strawberry Hill Gothic aims for sensual effect rather than the material and social change that the Gothic Revival would later espouse. There is no clear transition from the Palladian to the Gothick, in that classicists such as Robert Adam and Charles Barry were equally comfortable providing decoration in either for a demanding patron and can be seen as a form of the roccoco.

The decorative effect of the spandrel, the thinner mullion, the ogee and the pendent are used to maximum effect. As an easier medium for delicate and complicated decoration and, I think, as typical of the style, wood is more common in this 'gothick' than in other forms of gothic. Thus we see on the eastern wall at Ballyroan a riot of wooden decoration and also in the nave windows. The form of the wooden mullions here can also be in Churches in various parts of the Diocese where those windows have been retained. For example, they can still be seen in the Church of the Assumption in nearby Vicarstown and older images of St. Conleth's in Newbridge show the same form in the windows of the nave, well into the 20th cent.





















It was our Catholic heritage. Why couldn't they leave it alone?