Archive of the Month01 Mar 23

Additions to the RCB Library’s Architectural Drawings Website

By Dr Michael O’Neill

Introduction

The RCB Library has a significant collection of architectural drawings of churches and glebe houses from various parts of the country. There are some 70 sets of drawings (some 280 drawings including some written specifications), 28 of these sets are 20th century, mainly from the 1960s. The Archive of the Month for March is an exploration of the many ways that this collection has been expanded, paying particular attention to those found in parish collections.

Parish Collection

Searching through the parish collections in the RCB Library strong room yielded 73 parishes where there were architectural drawings and supporting documentation. This resulted in cataloguing 302 additional items on the online drawings website and 640 additional images. This is material which in addition to Registers (Baptisms, Marriages, Burials) Vestry Minute Books, Preachers’ Books, Account Books etc. which were in parish custody before being transferred to the Library for safekeeping and cataloguing to be available to readers and researchers.

This newly digitised and catalogued material complements that already on the website from the Portfolio collections and what follows here is a thematic treatment of some of the new material.

Windows

 There is surprisingly little material in the drawing collection relating to stained glass windows and their iconography. In many cases of course stained glass was introduced later into churches which had gothic revival style windows with stone mullions and stained glass replaced clear or patterned glass. An exception appears to be Castletownroche in Co. Cork, in Cloyne diocese, where the architect W.H. Hill designed a new window for the reception of stained–glass (see here). The design was a three–light lancet window with supermullions for a stained–glass composition created by Hubert McGoldrick of An Tur Gloine and dated 1921. The iconography represents the Crown of Life and is a memorial window to victory in the Great War and for Bunbury, Manseragh, Penrose–Welstead and Reeves (see here).

For Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, there is correspondence from 17 July 1970 to 29th April 1971 from Harry Clarke Stained Glass Limited Studio to Canon Stanley and Mrs. Kortright. To view this correspondence, please see the following link here and to view the stained–glass, see here).

Sites & Plans

A topographical map of the district assigned to the church of Frankfield erected by Samuel Lane in 1838 captures the rural area within the parish of St Fin Barre’s, now a built up suburb of Cork. A further detailed map of the church grounds of Frankfield also records a plan of the church designed by Thomas Deane and for which church we have no other drawings in the collection.

At Lucan a map and outline plan shows the situation of the church on a piece of ground conveyed to the parish in 1822 by the Minor Canons of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.

A sketch map of Killucan, Co. Westmeath and dated April 1799 (in fact a certified copy made in 1865) shows the church with west tower in relief, also the glebe house and offices (outbuildings), garden and lawn as well as the surrounding glebe land and its relation to the village of Killucan and fair green of the settlement. In fact by the time of the 1st Ordnance Survey maps of the 1830s a new glebe house had been built in the Meadowfield as identified on the 1799 map. Churches were sometimes re–sited, to be a focal point of a village or estate development. During the period of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners a pro–forma document was drawn up and published in 1839 to prevent spurious reasons for moving a church site. The Commissioners required assurances under a number of headings including (a) whether the old church was in ruin or merely dilapidated, (b) if inconveniently situated, in what respect, (c) was the new site central, or much more than the old site, (d) was new site of benefit to the parishioners, (e) was there proper conveyance of the new site in the Church Wardens and was a map prepared, and so on. The pro form a document included here related to the parish of Finglas in Dublin.

Seating

Plans which record assigned seating are not common. At Kiltoom, Co. Roscommon, a seating plan for 1839 shows a church floor with 12 box pews, six of which are assigned to local families including the incumbent’s family and six are designated as open. At Durrow, Co. Laois, a seating plan based on information from a Vestry Minute Book shows a church where all but two of 30 box pews are privately owned.

Decoration

An example of a striking decorative scheme is the one for Chapelizod, Co. Dublin by H. Sibthorpe & Sons from 1908. Here painting and stencils are used to decorate the chancel and east gable of nave instead of the more usual employment of a carved reredos continued as blind arcade on the lateral walls of the chancel. Here roundels run below a string course above which on the east gable are sentences from scripture on each side of the east window triplet. Crocketing and fleur–de–lys decorate the chance gable. Additionally the chancel arch soffit is decorated with figures. The nave gable has blind lancets with trefoil heads and a decorative band below the coving with roundels containing crosses and the Chr–Rho monogramme. If this scheme was ever executed it has since been painted over.

Specifications

Specifications for building a church are rare enough in the Portfolio collections but a number are included in the parish collections. In the case of Finglas, where the change of site was discussed above, the drawings for the church by Frederick Darley are now complemented with a detailed ten page specification for building and dated 17 July 1841. Other specifications for church building include pro–formas for Monkstown St John dating to 1858 and 1862. At Bailieborough, in addition to a sheet of drawings containing plan, elevations and sections, there is a three page specification by the architect William Farrell dated 19 July 1834 (see also here).

Glebe Houses

The parish collections yielded further glebe house (rectory) material in addition to that already catalogued from the Glebe House portfolio of drawings. A fine example is a set of drawings and specification for a glebe house at Thomastown, Co. Kildare by the architect Richard Robinson dating to 1823. As was the case of many early nineteenth–century glebe houses, there is a tight integration of house and offices (out–buildings). Additionally there is a certificate of completion from the Bishop of Kildare Charles Lindsay dated 12 December 1828. This document allowed the clergyman or his estate recover a portion of the cost of building the glebe house from his successor in the parish. In this case the incumbent Henry Hamilton expended £720 of which £450 was a gift and £120 was a loan from the Board of First Fruits. By way of contrast a 1986 specimen plan and elevation for a typical glebe house was produced by the architectural firm McDonnell & Dixon. An attractive suburban glebe house at Kilmainham was designed by the same firm in 1964, which can be viewed here. 

Conclusion

 While the parish collections represent only a small fraction of the drawings available on the website (there are currently over 8,800 items often with multiple images), an analysis of these recent additions perhaps gives some indication of the richness of the collection and possible avenues of research.

You can view the RCB Library’s Architectural Drawings website here. 

About the author

Dr Michael O’Neill is an architectural historian and digital archivist. He has digitised and web–published the extensive architectural drawing collections in the RCB Library. A book length study of the architecture of the church of Ireland will be published shortly.