WHEN WB Yeats wished he had the heavens’ embroidered cloths to spread under the feet of his beloved he can hardly have imagined that Waterford City Council would one day intend to do something of the kind. Unlike Yeats, Waterford need not spread only dreams: in its new €10 million museum strategy unveiled recently by Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar, a unique collection of Medieval embroidered cloth-of-gold vestments is to be housed in the city’s newest building, where a glass pavement will allow the public to walk right over them.
The coincidences of history have been kind to Waterford, and, supported by Fáilte Ireland, the city is realigning its major tourism attractions under the slogan of a thousand years in a thousand paces. The renowned Waterford Treasures Museum at the Granary, opened in 1996, has been outgrown by the mounting accumulation of actual treasures. The scheme devised by director of museums Eamonn McEneaney and his staff involves the distribution of this hoard among three linked sites, beginning at Reginald’s Tower on the waterside where the Vikings first moored their boats. (The Granary itself becomes WIT’s School of Architecture from September.)
Leo Varadkar’s visit launched the Georgian element, located in the Bishop’s Palace which, designed by John Roberts, has been refurbished to 18th-century elegance by conservation architect John O’Connell. The palace, naturally enough, stands adjacent to Christ Church cathedral, whose ancient footprint is the actual site at which the marriage of Strongbow and Aoife took place, arguably the most significant union in Ireland’s history. The Church of Ireland cathedral is not at all a museum but fits convincingly into the overall plans.
In another instance of Waterford’s happy consanguinity, the cathedral too was designed by John Roberts in 1774 to replace the older church and enough of almost eerie archaic presences linger to rival the serene and florid spaces beyond its spectacular suspended organ. Roberts also designed the Catholic cathedral in the city; with 21 children he needed all the work he could get, and Waterford must be grateful for his virility.
It was during the demolition of the old cathedral in 1773 that the High Mass vestments were discovered and now, after 10 years of conservation by Cliodna Devitt, they are ready for exhibition. The only complete collection of pre-Reformation vestments surviving in Northern Europe, these are mentioned first in a will of 1481 by John Collyn, Dean of Christ Church. They remained the property of the cathedral through various transactions over the next 200 years until, with Cromwell’s siege of Waterford in 1649, they were hidden with other cathedral valuables in the Christ church vaults. So well hidden, in fact, that when those who knew their sanctuary died, their whereabouts remained unknown until Roberts and his men began their demolition work.
In another twist of the tale, Richard Chenevix, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, then offered the vestments to the Catholic Dean Thomas Hussey, later Bishop of Waterford and first president of Maynooth College. Since then the Benedictine copes, chasuble, tunicle, stoles, maniples and dalmatic have remained the property of the Catholic bishops of Waterford and Lismore; their fabric of Italian cloth of gold worked with brocaded velvet is embellished with embroidered panels depicting biblical sequences of exquisite workmanship and detail.
In McEneaney’s guidebook to the Waterford Treasures, Cliodna Devitt explains that the velvet came from a Florentine loom circa 1480; the panels, or orphreys, showing scenes from both Old and New Testaments are stitched with silver-gilt metal threads and coloured silks, the arched ogive frames in gold thread laid on string and parchment padding. The vestments also represent figures and events from medieval tradition and literature including the mystery plays; so comprehensive is the imagery that in what is called the Magi cope both Melchizedek and the Queen of Sheba, sumptuously gowned, coiffed and, in the case of soldiers, armed and helmeted, are included as side-shows to the central scene of adoration.
There is so much to be shown and told about this magnificent group that a new setting is to be created for them and other medieval pieces. “New”, in Waterford’s terms, is relative, for city architect Rupert Maddock with his colleague Barthos Rojowska and their team have designed an exhibition building to sit above the excavated 13th-century Choristers’ Hall and 15th-century wine cellars which fill the space between the Bishop’s Palace and Reginald’s Tower. Incorporating the undercrofts by inserting a glass pavement and borrowing from Yeats, its title of “The Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths”, work on this project begins almost as soon as the Minister departs so that before long the Waterford Experience will reflect the city’s extraordinary fusion of archaeology, architecture and enchantment.