St Werburgh's Church
By Dr Michael O’NeillMedieval St. Werburgh’s
The parish church of St. Werburgh’s was the property of Holy Trinity Priory (Christ Church Cathedral) in 1179. Also in Werburgh Street was the earlier church of St. Martin. Its site is unknown and its relationship to St. Werburgh’s is unclear. The treasurer of St. Patrick’s Cathedral was given St. Martin’s as his ‘dignity’ in 1219, but he later had the advowsons of St. Werburgh’s. St. Martin’s was closed by 1341. In 1301 St. Werburgh’s was burnt, but it was soon rebuilt, with a new chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1346, when it also had altars/chapels to St. Martin and St. Catherine. It was re-roofed in c.1520. In spite of this in 1546 it was stated that the ‘tithes and oblations of this Rectory or Chapel are of no value, beyond the altarages, which are assigned to the Curate and the repair of the Chancel’. (MM, p39). By 1559 St. Mary del Dame was closed and its parish incorporated in that of St. Werburgh’s. Thus St. Werburgh’s became the parish of Dublin Castle. The church was ruinous by 1605 but was extensively repaired in 1607.(The references for the above paragraph are elegantly summarised in H.B. Clarke, Irish Historic Towns Atlas No. 11. Dublin. Part 1, to 1610, Dublin, 2000, p18).
The Curate, our Treasurer, Colette and Con help illustrate the history of the church facade
Archbishop Bulkeley’s Visitation in 1630 stated that ‘this church is in good repair and decent. Mr. Hoyle, Batchelor of Divinity, is curate there. There are 239 householders in that parish, all Protestant except 28 papist householders. The value of that is lx libri per annum’. (Arch. Hib., viii). One hundred years later, in the report on the State of Popery in 1731, no mass houses, priests or popish schools were to be found in St. Werburgh’s parish.
In the immediate post-Restoration period, (1662), a contract (between the churchwardens and Thomas Browne, bricklayer/mason) for the extensive repair of the walls and roof of the chancel of the church was worth £220 (Loeber, Architects, pp30-1).
The early eighteenth century
It is possible then that the description of the church in the early eighteenth century as dangerous from decay, ‘ruinous’, has an amount of special pleading on the part of the parishioners, who also claimed that it was too small. They were undoubtedly aware of the church building programme of Archbishop William King (1703-29) who ‘made a shift’ to have seventeen churches built or rebuilt, and have the same amount repaired. They were undoubtedly also aware of the 1711 Act for ‘Building… fifty new churches of stone and other proper materials, with Towers or Steeples to each of them’ in London.As early as 1713 Thomas Burgh had prepared a ‘Draught and Directions’ for its rebuilding. The parishioners (or rather churchwardens) appealed to King George I for a grant towards a new church. ‘In 1711 the Council Chamber, the Surveyor Generals Office and other departments in Essex Street were burnt down, and His Majesty handed over the site of these offices to the Vestry, which was sold by them for £2,000 to a merchant names Walter Davey’. (S.C. Hughes, The church of St. Werburgh, Dublin, 1889, pp.22-3).
‘An Act was also passed through the Irish Parliament in 1715, imposing a tax of ¼ for a year on all Head Parts in the Parish, and giving the Vestry power to levy further rates to the amount of £2,000, if necessary.
The Act of 1715 also appointed Commissioners for building the Church among whom were the Abp., the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Mayor, the Chief Justice of the Commons Pleas, the right honourable Robert Molesworth MP for Swords, afterwards viscount, the right hon, John Alen, MP, after viscount…’ (Hughes, 1889, pp.22-3).
Robert Molesworth provides the possibility of a link between the design of the church and the Italian architect Alessandro Galilei, but Archbishop King objected to his appointment, preferring Thomas Burgh’s design partly because it included a steeple. King described the scarcity of steeples in Dublin as being ‘like a Cow without horns’. (E. McParland, Public Architecture in Ireland 1680-1760, New Haven & London, 2001, pp44-7). In fact Burgh’s authorship is confirmed by the available documentary evidence (summarised by McParland, 2001, n.162, p.216).
The church was built between 1716-1719. According to Hughes, the building and fitting out cost around £8,000 which included £400 in legal fees and parliamentary expenses; £130 paid for a holding over the archway in front of the old church in Werburgh Street. The King’s grant: £2,000; tax on head rents £2,000; subscriptions including from the Corporation £2,100; sale of pews £600; and a parish rate £1,200. (Hughes, 1889, p.28).
The Façade
Despite the truncated façade (the steeple was removed in 1810 and the tower (and, perhaps, pedimented second storey) in 1836, and the (always) lack of a proper vista, the west front is impressive. This ‘canonical Italianate classicism’ must have been even more impressive in the 1720s. It is not clear whether Archbishop King and the Commissioners were unaware of or indifferent to the fact that Burgh had provided them with a Jesuit Roman façade. Even the consoles on the second storey, which in a Roman context hid the ends of the aisles of a basilican plan were reproduced here where there is simply a barn-church behind (and a very short narrower chancel).Whitelaw described the exterior before the removal of the steeple:
The first story, to which you ascend by a few steps, is ornamented by six Ionic pilasters, with their entablatures, a grand entrance in the Doric order, and two side doors, over which are the windows that light the staircase leading to the galleries: the second story is in the Corinthian order, crowned by a pediment, under which is a large window lighting the loft, whence an excellent set of bells are rung, which are placed immediately over it: here the steeple assumes a square form, enriched on each side by two composite pilasters, with their pedestals and entablatures, and in the centre a window, and over it a clock. The entablature is crowned with pedestal work surrounding the base of the spire, and on each of its angles supporting an urn: the spire, which in its appearance is extremely light and elegant, at some distance from its base, assumes the form of an octagon, and is entirely supported by eight rusticated columns of the composite order: a gilt ball and vane terminates the whole.
And what remains is impressive including the broken entablature of the ionic order of paired and single pilasters and the Doric order of the entrance, with its open topped segmental pediment. The skull and crossbones and hourglass and wings decorating the metopes of the frieze represents a different ecclesiology to that of an otherwise borrowed Roman catholic façade. The pistol loops at either side (between the Doric columns and Ionic pilasters) (a feature also to be found in St. Mark’s) reminds us that Burgh was also a soldier.
Towers would always present problems to the early Classicists, it amounted to attempting to attach a gothic feature to a different architectural dispensation. At St. Werburgh’s we have the intriguing possibility (at least on paper) of two different solutions to this problem. The Brooking view of 1728 depicts an octagonal tower with a wooden copula, while the Pool and Cash view is square below and a spire over (as described by Whitelaw above). S.C. Hughes implies or suggests that the wooden copula was destroyed and the octagonal tower was damaged by the devastating fire of 1754 (see below), and that the tower, square on plan with the spire are later (post-fire) work. The essence of the problem is that Brooking’s drawing pre-dates the contract for building the stonework of the tower by a year. Kenneth Severns has argued from the evidence of a view of the tower from Upper Castle Yard by Joseph Tudor which he dated to 1753, which depicts essentially the square tower of Pool and Cash without the steeple (which we know is later in any case). (K. Severns, ‘A new perspective on Georgian building practice: The rebuilding of St Werburg’s church, Dublin’, Irish Georgian Society, Vol.XXXV, 1992-3, pp.3-16).
The Fire and Rebuilding
As mentioned above a devastating fire on the 6th and 7th of November 1754 consumed the roof structure of the building and destroyed the interior woodwork and furnishings. The masonry walls survived and the fire may or may not have damaged the tower.
A new building committee was set up and on 21st May 1756 ‘agreed that Mr. Jarratt be appointed supervisor of the works’… by the end of the month the committee had ‘viewed a plan for a vaulted ceiling, produced by Mr. Jarratt and approved the same’.Stonecutting: Richard Morgan; Slating: Thomas Kelly; for plastering and rendering the roof: George Robinson; Sashing: William Goodwin added the sashing contract to the one he had already received (roofing contract); Glazing: Paul Smith.
Late March 1757, the committee ‘ordered that Mr. Jarratt lay before this committee a plan of the inside work of the church’… conformed to a harmonious overall design. On 6th April the building committee ‘received an estimate from Mr. Goodwin for the inside carpenter’s work’.
On 18th July 1758 Jarratt drew up an estimate for the chancel, pulpit, and reading desk, which the committee approved and directed Goodwin to execute. Jarratt also received from George Robinsom an estimate for ‘stucco work to be done at the communion table’, and on 20th September the committee accepted Michael McGuire’s proposal for stucco work ‘agreeable to Mr. Jarratt’s plan’.
A double or triple decker pulpit and reading desk was also executed by Goodwin.
On the 31st June 1759 services resumed. (The above is summarised from Kenneth Severens, pp3-8).
Freddie O’Dwyer has recently argued that Mr. Joseph Jarratt was the controlling architect and, as St. Werburgh’s was essentially the Chapel Royal, he was paid out of the public purse. (Frederick O’ Dwyer, ‘Making Connections in Georgian Ireland’, Irish Georgian Society, Vol.XXXVIII, 1996-7, pp.10-11).
The Interior
The interior of St. Werburgh’s is a wonderful example of an early Georgian auditory church, with galleries around three sides and a liturgically restrained chancel. The gallery, supported on Roman Doric pilasters, is not an intrusion but an integral part of the building, dividing the ground floor level into nave and aisles, with the baroque organ and choir over the west end.The side walls of the chancel have an Ionic order over rusticated ashlar (in wood). The urns over the entablature and the stucco work perhaps acting as a restraining classicism to the Eucharistic symbols of wine and sheaf of wheat and the ‘glory’ and dove over the reredos.
Until the 1870s the chancel was less prominent as a large double-decker pulpit with reading desk under it ‘completely concealed the chancel’ (Hughes, 1889, p.42). The existing more altar-centred arrangement took place in 1877, when the parish was united with that of St. John, the high square pews were remodelled (to what we have today on the ground floor) by the architect [William] Welland. The pulpit came from the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle, designed by Francis Johnson and executed by Richard Stewart. It is eminently suited to an auditory church where the preacher can address both the ground level and the galleries.
Conclusion
When one considers the antipathy of the nineteenth century ecclesiologists and gothic revivalists to the Georgian church and its furnishings, such a pristine example at St. Werburgh’s needs to be cherished by us all.Appendix: Furnishings
Further Reading
Clarke, H.B., Irish Historic Towns Atlas No. 11. Dublin. Part 1, to 1610 (Dublin 2000)
Hughes, S.C., The church of St. Werburgh, Dublin, 1889.
McParland, E., Public Architecture in Ireland 1680-1760, New Haven & London, 2001.
O’ Dwyer, F., ‘Making Connections in Georgian Ireland’, Irish Georgian Society, Vol.XXXVIII, 1996-7, pp.10-11.
Severns, K., ‘A new perspective on Georgian building practice: The rebuilding of St Werburg’s church, Dublin’, Irish Georgian Society, Vol.XXXV, 1992-3, pp.3-16.