An ambitious project will catalogue the Republic's Church of Ireland stained-glass windows, writes Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent
A pioneering project being conducted by the Church of Ireland, in conjunction with the Heritage Council, is now believed to be half-way towards completion. The project involves a diocese-by-diocese assessment in the Republic of the church's stained-glass windows, and is being carried out by the stained-glass historian, conservator, and photographer, Dr David Lawrence.
A mathematician by training, Lawrence had worked for 20 years on the conservation of 19th century stained-glass art from a base at Canterbury in England. His wife, Meg, is a well known stained-glass artist in the UK. For the past eight years they have lived with their three children in a valley in the hills of Radnorshire, "the most remote part of mid-Wales", where Meg has a studio.
The programme of cataloguing, photographing and researching the stained-glass windows is generating what has been described as an unprecedented body of artistic, cultural and historical information, and is helping to confirm the unique significance of religious art in Ireland.
According to Lawrence: "No similar comprehensive record of stained-glass has been undertaken anywhere before, and the Church of Ireland can now be seen as pioneers in this field."
Previous research on stained-glass in Ireland concentrated on work by Harry Clarke and by artists from the well-known Tower of Glass studio, of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement.
"This superb body of work certainly forms an important part of the present research, for example, the recent surveys have included magnificent windows by Harry Clarke at Gorey, Michael Healy at Castlecomer, Beatrice Elvery at Tullow and Evie Hone at Taney. However, the survey has also revealed a great wealth of previously unrecorded eccelesiastical art from 19th century English and German artists and studios, and it has become apparent that there are exceptionally fine examples of their work in Ireland," says Lawrence.
"It is particularly rewarding when fine windows are found in fine buildings and amongst the most important discoveries are windows in buildings by eminent architects of the Gothic Revival. That most intriguing and eccentric figure, William Burges, who built St Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork, also added a bay to Bunclody Church and designed three highly original and colourful windows for it.
Into his delightful little polychromatic church in its dramatic cliff-top setting at Ardamine, George Edmund Street, in 1860, put six striking early windows by Clayton & Bell.
"At Thomas Wyatt's noble church of Abbeyleix, there is a remarkable scheme of eight sensuous windows by Henry Holiday. George Ashlin's exquisite memorial churches at Myshall and Raheny, have comprehensive schemes of windows by James Powell & Sons and Heaton, Butler & Bayne," he says.
However, it is St Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork which has most impressed Lawrence. It has, he believes, "the most important collection of 19th century stained-glass in Ireland and possibly Europe". Assessment work at the cathedral alone took six weeks, while similar work at St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin had taken four weeks.
At each church, three very different activities are undertaken: art-historical, technical and photographic. The principal art-historical element is an essay describing and putting into context all the windows, artists and studios. The technical surveys consist of an examination and report on the condition of the windows. The photographic archive now runs to thousands of colour transparencies.
Currently, all the historical information, together with the colour images, is being stored in a computer database. The computer software to do this was specially written last year, with the major task of putting in all the facts and pictures being undertaken this year.
"When it is complete, those using the system will be able to retrieve information on any stained-glass window in the Church of Ireland [in the Republic\], including images of the churches and the windows. The searching method works like an internet browser, so that the user can search by any combination of fields, such as county, church, studio, artist, date or religious subject matter," Lawrence says.
His work began in the Church of Ireland Cork, Cloyne and Ross dioceses in 1991. It was decided there to conduct an assessement of the stained-glass windows in churches likely to become redundant. Dr Nicola Gordon Bowe, the stained-glass expert in Dublin, was unavailable to undertake the project, and suggested Lawrence for the task.
Lawrence intended to look at the windows in just 20 churches, but once work was underway word spread, and other parishes wanted to be included. In all, he saw about 80 churches in those dioceses. Dioceses elsewhere in the State became interested, and so far he has recorded the stained-glass in almost 300 churches and cathedrals throughout the Republic.
Lawrence's most recent work covered the dioceses of Cashel and Ossory, coinciding geographically with the south-eastern corner of the Republic, and also the dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough, covering the city and county of Dublin, as well as Co Wicklow. Immediate plans are to extend the work to include the dioceses of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh in 2004, and the dioceses of Limerick and Killaloe in 2005.
In 2000, the Representative Church Body of the Church of Ireland became involved, as did the Heritage Council for the first time. This assisted greatly with funding which is now running at an average of €25,000 a year.
Most of the glass dates from the 19th and early 20th centuries, with little from before 1810. This, he attributes to "a troubled history". Much of the glass from the 19th century came from England and Germany, and included "really significant achievements by major English architects of the Gothic Revival period". The Irish Arts and Crafts Movement provided most of the stained-glass used later, from around the turn of the 19th, and into the 20th century.
Lawrence also found most of the history surrounding the windows, and the buildings of which they are part, to be "very moving". Often their patronage of such windows was all that was left of families in an area, except, perhaps, a little church in the middle of what was once a demesne.
He mentions such a church at Clonbeg in the Glen of Aherlow, Co Tipperary. With its chandeliers, mosaics, stained-glass windows "the little church there could be an Oxford College chapel", he said. As far as he was concerned, the stained-glass windows were part of a wider heritage.
Much of the wealth of artifact and history which he has found in these places had never been recorded before. For example, in a church in Fethard on Sea in Co Wexford, he discovered that the church's font was 12th century Romanesque.
Inevitably, with such a project, a publisher is waiting in the wings to produce a book on Lawrence's work, when it is completed. He hopes that may be in 2006, at least where churches in the Republic are concerned. But there is uncertainty about what will happen with Church of Ireland churches located in Northern Ireland.
It is hoped the authorities there may yet come on board, as the Heritage Council did in the Republic, to assist with funding for such a project in the Northern dioceses, and thus completing the work for the entire island.