Some of Dublin's finest old Georgian churches are falling into disrepair, so perhaps it's now time for the State to take an interest, writes Peter Thompson
Observant Dubliners will have noticed a change in the city's skyline recently. After 24 years, the scaffolding surrounding the tower of the former St George's Church in Hardwicke Place, off Dorset St, the masterpiece of the architect Francis Johnston, is being replaced.
The List 1 building, one of the most important in the architectural heritage of the capital, was bought just before Christmas last year by Eugene O'Connor, a property developer who has successfully restored a similar, although smaller, building at Duleek, Co Meath. What he now intends doing with St George's is unclear; he declined to comment about his plans for the property to The Irish Times.
O'Connor's intervention came after a sorry time for St George's. Sold after de-consecration by the Church of Ireland in 1990, it subsequently fell into semi-dereliction in various owners' hands before the latest developments. By 2004, Dublin City Council (DCC), fearing that pieces of stone would start falling on pedestrians, was issuing Dangerous Buildings Orders on the most recent owners, who then put it up for sale.
The plight of St George's after its closure for worship epitomises the problems of an essential part of this country's built heritage, places of worship that are significant buildings in their own right which have faced, or face, redundancy. In St George's case, it was neglected until it became dangerous, its magnificent interior stripped for pub furniture during the mid-1990s. Its particularly beautiful carved oak pulpit was split up into pieces, ending up in a Temple Bar pub in a mockery of its previous life as a platform for holy scripture.
The problem of what to do with such buildings is once again arising. St Stephen's on Mount Street Crescent (beloved of Dubliners as "the Peppercannister Church" because of its distinctive cupola), St Werburgh's on Werburgh Street, St Michan's on Church Street with its medieval vaults and St Audoen's (Church of Ireland) on High Street all struggle on today, but with tiny, if very committed, congregations. For reasons of expense, all but St Michan's (which has a steady tourist-related revenue on account of its vaults, one of the sights on Dublin's tourist trail) are open only briefly for services on Sundays and otherwise occasionally, thus limiting further the opportunities for Dubliners, and others, to view their beautiful interiors.
IT SHOULD BE emphasised that none of these churches is threatened with immediate closure. Fortunately, in the Church of Ireland - and this is a problem which mostly affects the Church of Ireland, which, for historic reasons has found itself the inheritor of the Georgian churches of Dublin - the problem is alleviated somewhat by the resources available to the church from the sale of other church buildings, and the rent it can command from church-related properties within the canals.
Thus, St Ann's in Dawson Street, another beautiful Georgian survivor, which has found a new life as a centre of worship connected to the city's commercial life, benefits from being able to rent out the adjoining former rectory building, known as Bective House, to business firms. Similarly, St Werburgh's benefitted from the sale of the former St Andrew's Church in Suffolk Street, the money from the investment of which helps to keep its doors open.
However, the upkeep of St Werburgh's - the most beautiful of all Dublin Georgian churches, according to architectural historian Maurice Craig - has become "a huge problem", says Canon David Pierpoint, rector of the Christ Church Cathedral group of inner-city parishes. The ceiling needs to be completely re-plastered and its windows are rotting.
St Stephen's on Mount Street Crescent may be on the point of closure, he says, although its rector, Canon Thomas Haskins, says that, just yet, "the Church (of Ireland) doesn't want to go down that road", although he acknowledges that it lacks the good fortune imposed by geography and a surviving property to rent which St Ann's enjoys in Dawson Street.
St Michan's and St Audoen's (the latter the oldest centre of worship in Dublin) survive at least partly because members of the congregations, who now live in far-flung suburbs, still worship there.
It should be noted that the Catholic Church also has some problems in this area. The famous St Paul's on Arran Quay, familiar to readers of Joyce, was closed for some years too, but has found a (perhaps temporary) new life as a centre for the San Egidio community, and, during Lent, for Romanian Orthodox services each Thursday evening.
Another beautiful former Catholic church, St Michael's and St James's, owned by Temple Bar Properties, is used as a rehearsal, performance and exhibition space.
It is a tenuous survival, paradoxically made more difficult by new regulations designed to help conserve our built heritage. "The cost of keeping a heritage building is climbing and climbing," says Canon Haskins.
In St Werburgh's, the present window glass dating from 1824 must be used in any window frame replacement. Understandable, but it increases the cost.
There are signs, however, that the authorities, or at least some of them, are waking up to the problems posed by the possible closure of buildings of this kind. Following an initiative taken by Cllr Emer Costello (Labour) at DCC last year, the council has declared it an objective in the current Development Plan (approved in February) "to initiate a study to determine the most appropriate new uses and innovative ways of securing the future of redundant places of worship".
THE HISTORIC CHURCHES of Dublin also have a friend in the city architect, Jim Barrett, who says he is very concerned about their future. What happened to St George's focused a lot of our attentions, says Barrett, and he is hoping to generate a debate on the issues involved.
Mooting the idea of State involvement, Barrett says DCC will be talking to the planners "looking at what is done elsewhere, and that we may well be making a submission to the Government on this issue".
Fionnuala Lynch, of the Heritage Council, says it has €1.2 million to spend on buildings at risk this year. This has to be spread out over about 300-350 applications each year. Allowing for rejections, this means that the average grant is between €20,000 and €40,000. "We have to be fairly ruthless," she says. "The only thing we can look at realistically is [ the restoration of] the roof [ in each case]." Also, the council has to work only on a year-by-year basis; it can't give the multi-year funding which would allow for a major restoration project.
In the case of St George's, for instance, immediate remedial work on the stonework only of the building was estimated to cost about £900,000 (€1.5 million today) by a firm of consultant engineers, Barrett Mahoney, in 2001. Clearly the present grant allocations are nowhere near enough to deal with the long-term conservation of buildings such as St George's or St Werburgh's.
One of the places to which Barrett and his colleagues might look is the UK, where, in recent decades, there has been relevant work carried out by such groups as the Scottish Redundant Churches' Trust; the Churches' Conservation Trust (CCT), for ex-Church of England churches in England; and the Historic Chapels' Trust, for non-Church of England churches in England and Wales.
In the case of the CCT, for example, when a church of significant architectural merit is being considered for closure, a report is prepared on the quality of the church and its contents, and "other ecclesiastical and secular organisations which may have an interest" in it are consulted, according to the CCT's website (www.visitchurches.org.uk).
An example of the renewal such an attitude can bring is that of a late 18th-century disused church in Bristol now housing "the country's leading circus school". Another example is St Peter's Kirk in the Orkney Islands, rescued from derelection in the 1990s, and now a venue for concerts and even the occasional wedding.
A VITAL ELEMENT OF such renewal has been the involvement of local volunteers as wardens and guides for visitors; it is known that residents of the Hardwicke Street area and of North Great George's Street are concerned about the future of St George's.
Each of these organisations in the UK receives at least some support, indirectly, from government, either through the Heritage Council in England and Wales, from Historic Scotland north of the border, or from the Lottery.
Is this the way we need to go? Echoing the position of the city architect, Canon John Crawford of the Church of Ireland, author of the recently-published The Church of Ireland in Victorian Dublin, states that "there should be some function in law about this".
In any event, what happened to St George's, and before it to other fine churches such as St Mary's in Mary Street, surely should not be allowed to happen again.