Sacred Mysteries: Out of the ashes, an artist in search of the essential

Telegraph

3 days ago

The fire that burnt down St Mel's Cathedral, Longford, in the early hours of Christmas Day 2009, was so intense that the limestone pillars each side of the nave spalled and cracked in the heat.
As with Notre-Dame in Paris, the effects of the fire were unexpected. The roof was destroyed and the floor fell through into the crypt. But a 19th-century painting on canvas of the Holy Family survived unscathed.
St Mel's Cathedral serves the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise. Both ancient foundations, Clonmacnoise was largely abandoned by the 13th century, and Ardagh had been ruinous since 1496, though the foundation stone for the cathedral at Longford was taken from the ruins. The dioceses were united in 1756.
The neo-classical cathedral of St Mel's at Longford, begun in 1840, was large enough to seat 1,100 people. The architect was John Benjamin Keane, who had designed Gardiner Street Church in Dublin. The completion of St Mel's was delayed by the Irish Famine. After the fire in 2009, with the economy rocky and unemployment high, it could not have been rebuilt had it not been insured. It reopened for worship five years later, for Christmas 2014.
The interior is white and light, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The most striking features are the 22 dark grey Ionic limestone columns dividing the nave from the aisles. Surviving from the old cathedral are two windows made in 1932 by the studio of Harry Clarke.
A pleasant surprise to me in the new cathedral are the 14 Stations of the Cross. Because these scenes from the Passion of Christ are, in many churches, products of the 19th century, an era of uneven artistic merit, I seldom find them things of beauty. But Bishop Colm O'Reilly, who set about the reconstruction of the cathedral that he had known all his life, got Ken Thompson, born in Cork in 1946, to carve the stations that were to replace the burnt wooden paintings.
Thompson had been influenced by the work of Eric Gill, and says of his own stations: 'The style of the carving is hieratic. My sympathies lie with early pre-Renaissance carving where the artist, in search of the essential, avoids over-realistic representation.'
The Bath stone panels for the stations are 55in high and 46in wide. The technique is of bas relief, with the figures raised 1½in from the background. The background is painted a light blue and the lettering picked out in a terracotta colour. The dished haloes of Jesus and the saints are gilded.
Each station is accompanied by a quotation from Scripture. 'The gestures of the figures in these panels are, in a sense, liturgical, acting out what has been prophesied about the Suffering Servant in the Old Testament.'
A detail in several panels is of green shoots springing to life. They are visible on the hill of Calvary through the door of the tomb in the 14th station, which bears the quotation: 'Why seek you the living among the dead?' It shows Jesus being laid on a stone slab by his disciples. 'This stone slab represents the altar on which Christ's eternal sacrifice is re-enacted in every Mass.'
An angel is shown coming from heaven bearing a plaque inscribed 'Gloria' – a memory of the Nativity, a record of what St John calls Jesus's glorification on the Cross, and a prophecy of the Resurrection. Above the door is carved Nika, 'Victor'.
I learnt about the new cathedral from a Sister of Mercy, Angela Bracken, who lives in Longford; otherwise I wouldn't have known of it.