Holy Trinity Church, also known as Father Mathew Memorial Church, is a Roman Catholic Gothic Revival church and friary on Fr. Mathew Quay, on the bank of the River Lee in Cork. It belongs to the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin and is the only church dedicated to Father Theobald Mathew.
The building’s listing in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage describes it as a “Regency Gothic-style church with Gothic-Revival portico”, and it is “one of the first large churches in the south of Ireland to be built in this style.” Construction of the church began in the early 1830s but stalled shortly before the Great Famine. It would only be completed in 1890, in time for the centenary of the birth of Fr. Mathew. The church features several noteworthy stained glass windows, including three by Harry Clarke’s studio and a large memorial to Daniel O’Connell.
Theobald Mathew (10 October 1790 – 8 December 1856) was an Irish Catholic priest and teetotalist reformer, popularly known as Father Mathew. He was born at Thomastown, near Golden, County Tipperary. He received his schooling in Kilkenny, then moved for a short time to Maynooth. From 1808 to 1814 he studied in Dublin, where in the latter year he was ordained to the priesthood. Having entered the Capuchin order, after a brief period of service at Kilkenny, he joined the mission in Cork.
Statues of Mathew stand on St. Patrick’s Street, Cork, by J. H. Foley (1864), and on O’Connell Street, Dublin, by Mary Redmond (1893). There is a Fr. Mathew Bridge in Limerick City, named after the temperance reformer when it was rebuilt between 1844 and 1846.
It was raining very heavy while I was waiting for the bus. When I got up from my seat to alight from the bus the lens detached from the body (I do not know how this could have happened as the lens had been on the body for three days and it was in constant use) I was lucky that the lens fell on to the seat so it was not damaged however a lot of dust managed to attach itself to the sensor. I had forgotten to attach the emergency strap to the lens.
St Finbarr’s Cemetery, which opened in 1868, is the largest cemetery in Ireland outside of Dublin. The keeper’s house (office) is inside the gate to the left. Inside the graveyard there are two small churches (Catholic and Protestant) that were built when the cemetery was first opened and were used for funeral services for a time.
Unlike older cemeteries, St. Finbarr’s was professionally laid out with numbered pathways and wide tree-lined avenues.
Among those buried at St. Finbarr’s Cemetery are hurler and Taoiseach Jack Lynch; the sculptor Seamus Murphy, the antiquarian Richard Rolt Brash who was among the first to decipher writing in the ancient Ogham writing style; the English composer Arnold Bax; and Cork’s first Lord Mayor Daniel Hegarty.
St. Finbarr’s contains one of the largest burial plots of Irish Republicans who died during the 1920s. There are also more recent burials of members of the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. This is known as the Cork Republican Plot, and among those buried there are former Lords Mayor of Cork Terence McSwiney and Tomás Mac Curtain, hunger striker Joseph Murphy. In the early hours of 17 March 1963, in protest at the unveiling later that day of a monument in the Republican Plot by President De Valera, IRA volunteers Desmond Swanton and Jeremiah Madden attempted to blow up the monument. However, during this attempt there was an explosion which killed Swanton and severely injured Madden (who lost an eye and a leg).
Other republicans who are buried at St. Finbarr’s, but not in the Republican Plot, include Flying Column leader Tom Barry, government minister J. J. Walsh and Dan “Sandow” O’Donovan. Commemorations of the 1916 Rising are held annually at the Republican Plot on Easter Sunday by various groups including Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, the Workers’ Party of Ireland and Republican Sinn Féin.
The “musicians’ corner” contains the graves of Aloys Fleischmann (Senior) and Aloys Fleischmann, and the composer Arnold Bax.
It also contains a mass grave containing the remains of 72 women who died at St. Vincent’s Magdalene Laundry on Peacock Lane in Cork.
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