This Side of Heaven
It was one of the more singular Anglican Communion Services we have attended. Amidst dustsheets and below scaffolding, a breeze blowing up the nave from the open door, Canon Mark Gardner resolutely led the congregation of five in worship on the Third Sunday in Lent. Dublin’s oldest Protestant church was mid restoration by the Office of Public Works but that didn’t stop Godly business as usual. John Bunyan’s To Be a Pilgrim never sounded so good. Now reduced to a chapel, the Canon explained afterwards, in medieval times, “St Audeon’s was larger than Christ Church Cathedral next door in medieval times.”
A wedge of land set back one block to the south of the River Liffey contains St Audeon’s Church of Ireland Church and St Audeon’s Catholic Church. Remnants of Dublin City Walls stand to the rear of the churches; the Catholic Presbytery to the front. A millennium of built heritage on a site measuring 180 metres at its widest. A thankfully small carpark outside the Catholic church portico, a park and herb garden fill the remainder of the land.
St Audeon’s Catholic Church is the supermodel of buildings: looks good from any angle. Paris has Louis-Hippolyte Lebas’ Notre Dame de Lorette (beautifully newly restored in that French manner somehow retaining the patina) of 1823 to 1836. Decades later comes George Ashlin’s equally photogenic architecture. Masterful reworkings of the classical temple front. Both are Corinthian tetrastyle.
Behind the south facing façade of the Catholic church the gradient slopes steeply downwards away from busy High Street to quiet Cook Street and with every metre drop, the architecture emerges from its Classical carapace to reveal a forerunner to Brutalist minimalism. In contrast to the decorated entrance front, the plain sides and rear are mainly windowless except for the clerestory. Only a granite string course relieves the vast expanses of limestone resembling impenetrable cliff faces. The permanence of the architecture is tempered by a temporary looking timber gallery perilously protruding over St Audeon’s Terrace to the east.
Patrick Byrne (circa 1782 to 1864) who was an architect for the Wide Streets Commissioners of Dublin designed the cruciform plan block of the Catholic church in 1841. Cast iron columns support the ground floor to reduce the weight of masonry on this sloping site. The portico was added at the end of the 19th century by George Ashlin (1837 to 1921), a pupil of Edward Welby Pugin (1834 to 1875). George entered professional partnerships with the architectural dynasty and even married Mary Pugin (1844 to 1933), the daughter of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 to 1852). During his long career he designed around 60 churches.
It’s now the Polish Catholic Church of Dublin. We went to Mass one Saturday evening last winter. The very fine neoclassical interior with its wealth of design, craftmanship and materials is distracting. Behind that blank exterior are plastered walls decorated with ground floor blind arches and first floor niches separated by double height Corinthian pilasters. Below the clerestory lunettes is a heavy dentilled entablature. The powerful interior architecture continues overhead. A coffered barrel vaulted ceiling covers the nave. A vast ceiling rosette radiates over the crossing in front of the marbled based reredos which has paired polished granite Ionic columns supporting a pediment.
The square plan presbytery – three bays wide by three bays deep by three storeys high – was also designed by Patrick Byrne and was built after the other two buildings (although predating the portico) while granite detailing visually links it to the Catholic church. Roundheaded ground floor windows, flat headed first floor windows and segmental headed top floor windows give a wonderful sense of order.
The Protestant church is included in Dublin A Grand Tour illustrated by Jacqueline O’Brien and written by Desmond Guinness (1994), “The importance of St Audeon’s is attested to by the successive efforts over the years to ensure its survival. The Office of Public Works is at present engaged in routine restoration work, pointing the stonework in the ruined part which is now in their care. With the building of apartments in the vicinity the congregation is on the increase again.” Not so much of late.
“St Audeon’s is the only surviving medieval church in Dublin as well as being the city’s oldest parish church in continuous use. It was built within the City Walls, probably by the men of Bristol who had been granted the City of Dublin by Henry II in 1172. It replaced an earlier church on the site said to have been dedicated to St Columba. St Audeon, who died in 686 AD, was Bishop of Rouen and is the patron saint of that city. In northern France there are many churches dedicated to him, besides a chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, and, significantly, a church in Bristol.”
“The nave dates from 1190 and is the only part of the church that is still roofed. As the population of Dublin grew, a chancel was added to the east in 1300, with a sanctuary beyond. Beside the nave and parallel to it is the Guild Chapel of St Anne, added in 1431. In 1455 the Portlester Chapel was added to the south side of the chancel and named after Sir Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, Chancellor and Treasurer of Ireland. The tower dates from the 17th century.” A sign attached to the ground floor exterior claims the tower is 15th century and the porch doorway is late 12th century. The gloriously talented Jacqueline O’Brien (1927 to 2016) once gave us some photography tips in a letter, long lost.
The Hearth Rolls of the 1660s prove St Audeon’s Parish was a fashionable area. St Audeon’s was the church of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of Dublin. However by the 18th century the area started to decline and depopulate. Henrietta Street to the north of the Liffey and St Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square to the southeast would become the more desirable addresses. In 1773 the Portlester Chapel, south aisle of the nave and the chancel were unroofed followed by St Anne’s Chapel in 1820. Six years later the tower was remodelled by Henry Aaron Baker and in 1848 the remaining church was restored by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland. A visitors’ centre was carved out of the reroofed St Anne’s Chapel in 1999.
The urban island of St Audeon’s must hold the most ecumenical architecture in Ireland: a Protestant church and a Catholic church sharing a saint and a party wall.
