St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh (Roman Catholic)

The present Catholic St. Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, Northern Ireland was built to replace the medieval Cathedral, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, which has been retained by the Church of Ireland since the Protestant Reformation.

It is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland. The Cathedral stands on a hill, as does its Protestant counterpart, and has twin spires. [http://www.saintpatrickcentre.com/stpatspictures/full/StPatricksRCCathedralArmagh3.jpg]

Architects

This is a most curious example of a very important building which changes both architect, and architectural style, half way up the walls. The bottom half was designed in 1838, in the English Perpendicular Gothic style, by Thomas Duff of Newry; the top half designed in 1853, in the French Decorated Gothic style, by J. J. McCarthy of Dublin. And just to complicate matters, the interior decor, applied to the conflicting structures of these two architects, is in part to the 1904 designs of Ashlin & Coleman of Dublin, in part to the 1972 designs of McCormick, Tracey and Mullarkey of Derry. [http://www.asaz58.dsl.pipex.com/cath_int.jpg] [http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/williamcrolly.jpg]

ite

Archbishop William Crolly (1835-1849) negotiated the current site for the Catholic Cathedral of St. Patrick in Armagh from the Earl of Dartrey. The original architect was Thomas J. Duff of Newry. Galloway suggests that his success at the Roman Catholic cathedral of St. Patrick and St. Colman in Newry, dedicated in 1829, "probably led to the commission to design the cathedral at Armagh". Unlike his former partner, Thomas Jackson, Duff was himself a Roman Catholic. According to the 1905 Guide, in Duff's lifetime "34 feet of the walls were built for £26,000, Dr. Crolly himself personally supervising the work with the assistance of several foremen".

Construction and fundraising

The work of construction lasted from St. Patrick's Day 1840, when the foundation stone was blessed and laid, with occasional intermissions until the year 1904 when the solemn ceremony of consecration took place. One of the longest gaps in construction took place during the years of the Great Famine. With the dreadful spectre of hunger and disease stalking the land, Cathedral funds were understandably diverted to the more pressing cause of famine relief. Indeed the cholera disease claimed the Primate himself and in 1849 his body was interred , at his own request, under the sanctuary of his unfinished Cathedral. Duff himself died in 1848; it was only in 1853 that a new Building Committee settled with his widow for £100 cash down, and the return of all drawings and papers relating to the commission.

Work under the new architect did not actually begin until 1854. Primate Joseph Dixon (1852-1866) declared Easter Monday 1854, 'Resumption Monday'. Financial contributions for the Cathedral came from across the Atlantic and to raise extra funds Dr. Dixon took the step, rare in those days, of organising a great Bazaar.

'The First Bazaar' of 1865 became a household word in Armagh, not alone for its material success (over £7,000 was raised, a remarkable sum for the times), but also for the unique character of some of the prizes. Pope Pius IX sent a beautiful ivory carving of Raphael's 'Madonna Di Foligno'.

The Emperor of Austria sent a table of rare inlaid work specially designed for the occasion, while Napoleon II chose from the Tuileries Staterooms two magnificent vases of Old Sevrés. An interesting relic of the Bazaar is the grandfather clock now standing in the Cathedral sacristy. This was a prize which has never been claimed.

Completion

The famous Irish neo-Gothic architect, J. J. McCarthy, was appointed to complete the work. He proposed a different design. The original plan had proposed a perpendicular Gothic church. However, since the original plan of Duff had been adopted for Armagh, an architectural renaissance had taken place and there was a growing tendency to favour a return to purer styles of which perpendicular Gothic was seen as a decadent modification. What McCarthy drew up was a continuation design in the old fourteenth century style of decorated Gothic.

McCarthy had attacked Duff's work in the "Irish Catholic Magazine" in 1847, but he was stuck with the ground-plan, as the walls had reached the tops of the aisle windows, but without tracery. "He completely changed the appearance of Duff's design by getting rid of the pinnacles on the buttresses, the battlemented parapets on nave and aisles, and by making the pitch of the roof steeper" (Sheehy); also by introducing flowing tracery and numerous carved details. Maurice Craig comments, dryly, "Characteristically, he altered the style from Perpendicular to Decorated, so that the spectator must support the absurdity of "fourteenth-century" works standing on top of "sixteenth-century" (except for the tracery which was harmonised); but in most ways it is a very successful building". It was dedicated in 1873.

The sacristy, synod hall, grand entrance, gates and sacristan's lodge were built later (Galloway says, sexton's lodge and gateway in 1887, sacristy and synod hall between 1894 and 1897), to the designs of William Hague, and he was "engaged on the designs for the great rood screen behind the high altar when he died in March, 1899. Mr. Hague's work was taken up by Mr. McNamara of Dublin who subsequently superintended the designing and building of the rood screen, the beautiful Celtic tracery of the mosaic passages and floors, and the complex heating and ventilating system". Further very extensive interior work was undertaken between 1900 and 1905 for Archbishop Logue to the designs of Ashlin & Coleman of Dublin. The cathedral was re-consecrated in 1903. A great deal of this excellent work has been removed. [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/images/photos/coarmagh/armagh/armaghccath2.jpg]

Re-ordering

This was justified at the time on the grounds that "the fine character of the interior was marred by the later introduction of screens, elaborate altar rails and pulpit": and what the architects set out to achieve was "a return to J.J. McCarthy's original concept ... They recommended a simplification of the interior, which would also add a greater formality to ceremony". If these were the objectives, few people think they have been successfully achieved.

The new fittings already appear dated, and are utterly incongruous. "Neither the quality of the replacements nor the skill of the craftsmanship can disguise the total alienation of the new work from the spirit and meaning that was McCarthy's ecclesiological and architectural inspiration. In this setting, these modern intrusions appear dispassionate and irrelevant" (UAHS, 1992).

Jeanne Sheehy acidly records "the replacement ... of a fine late Gothic revival chancel with chunks of granite and a tabernacle that looks like a microwave".

It is hard to divine why the church in Ireland has proved to be so much more insensitive in such matters than in most other countries. [http://freespace.virgin.net/mp.hearth/ArmaghRC_int.jpeg]

Circa 1980, Ashlin's original sanctuary was all but destroyed by an already liturgically dated effort by Liam McCormack. Casualties of the iconoclasm include Cesare Aureli high altars, Beakey's pulpit, the rood screen, M. Dorey's choir stalls, and the 1875 Telford organ.

The Armagh archdiocese also caused uproar in the early 1980s when it gutted the cathedral, removing its marble high altar, tow side altars with their respective reredoses, pulpit and rails. The revamped cathedral was described by a local artist as “a cross between an airport foyer and a shopping mall”.

Armagh Cathedral was reordered again in 2002-2003, replacing the tabernacle with the archbishop’s throne. The move caused uproar among parishioners, who wanted the tabernacle to stay in a central place of worship. Some even said the church was replacing God with man, but the archdiocese defended its decision to reorder the sanctuary.

The renovation works also involved the restoration of a number of the brass screens removed in 1980 which were welded together to form a rather incongrous screen in front of McCarthy's lady chapel reredos; the laying of modern tiling to the entire sanctuary area and the addition of a new Tabernacle in the Sacred Heart Chapel designed by Ashlin and Coleman in c.1904. The finished sanctuary area, whilst an improvement on its rather sparse predecessor, is not entirely satisfactory, the profusion of polished brass and pastel coloured tiles somewhat at variance with the older scheme in which it was placed. A much more successful restoration was carried out in Hague's Synod Hall which had its stencilled decoration replaced.

Mass is said every day in the cathedral. Weekday mass is held Mondays to Saturdays at 10:00am. On Saturday evenings, there is a Vigil Mass for Sunday at 7:00pm. On Sundays, Mass is celebrated at 9:00am, 11:00am & 5:30pm. On Holydays mass is celebrated at 9:00am and 11:00am. Confessions are usually heard before and after the Saturday evening vigil mass.

Bibliograhy

*"Buildings of Co. Armagh" by C. E. B. Brett, published by the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society in 1999

*"St. Patricks Cathedral, Armagh". Tomas Ó Fiaich. The Irish Heritage Series: 58, Eason & Sons Ltd, Dublin, 1987.

External links

* [http://www.niox.co.uk/galleria/search.php?criteria=armagh Xpressions of Armagh] - an interactive galleria which comprises assorted images of Armagh architecture such as St. Patrick's Cathedral.
* [http://uk.encarta.msn.com/media_121644694/St_Patrick's_Catholic_Cathedral_Armagh.html St. Patrick's Catholic Cathedral, Armagh] Encarta article
* [http://www.simonknott.co.uk/northarmaghcathrc.htm Photographs of the Cathedral]
* [http://homepage.tinet.ie/~jbhall/1857_armagh_cathedral.htm List of Canadian subscribers to the construction]