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When it’s most famous son, Daniel O’Connell, was born on 7 August
1775,
Cahersiveen
was a tiny settlement of a few dwellings centered on his
parents’ farmhouse of Carhen. However, the growth of the town during
O’Connell’s lifetime and beyond was rapid as is recorded in this previous-
ly little-known panoramic view by Robert Lowe Stopford (1813-1898).
Much admired in his lifetime, this is one of the major works of the Cork-
based artist and as an invaluable record of
Cahersiveen
is an important
document of small town life in County Kerry. The prominence given to
the church - towering above the town like some medieval cathedral - is
wholly appropriate as it shows an idealized view of the Daniel O’Connell
Memorial Church, built to mark the centenary of The Liberator’s death.
Cahersiveen
’s development owed much to the new road along the
coast of Castlemaine bay and through the Iveragh Mountains to Va-
lencia Island. Looking back in 1837 when the town boasted 1,192
inhabitants, the great topographer Samuel Lewis noted that ‘in 1815
there were only five houses in the entire village, but within the last ten
years it has rapidly increased’. Lewis noted that the town consisted
then of one principal street stretching along the main road and of two
smaller streets branching from it at right angles, one of which leads
down to the quay, and the other to the upper road or old village of Ca-
hir, which consists only of mud cabins’. By contrast Lewis noted that
the houses on the new road were ‘neatly built and roofed with slate’.
Cahersiveen’s
chief trade was fishing which employed four hundred
people on a seasonal basis; the importation of timber, salt and iron
while oats and flour were exported from some mills to the east. Overall
Lewis judged that the town had a ‘lively and cheerful appearance’ and
that ‘great improvements had been made in the neighbourhood’.These
included an agency for transacting business with the National Bank of
Ireland, a pier and a small quay built in 1822, a national school and a
fever hospital and dispensary - the latter two institutions would soon
be overwhelmed as, in the decade after Lewis wrote, Cahersiveen was
devastated in the Great Famine. The Iveragh Peninsula was among
the worst hit areas of the country and the picture of prosperity - and
the church triumphant - that Stopford offers contrasts bitterly with
the short journey along the road, now known as the Paupers’ Road,
westward (leading from the town at the right hand side of the picture)
to the workhouse at
Bahaghs
is. As John Crowley writes in the Atlas
of the Great Irish Famine: ‘The poorest of the poor who travelled this
road at the height of the Famine must have been filled with fear and
trepidation. Their instinct for survival would have taken them here in
the hope that their admission would bring an end to the torment’.
Unfortunately the Inspector at the Workhouse was the particularly
brutal Colonel Clarke who saw his mission as ‘to chastise the poor’,
and an unknown number died and are buried at the nearby graveyard
at
Srugreana Abbey.
The artist Robert Lowe Stopford was born in Dublin but spent his
career in Cork, working as an art teacher and serving as a correspondent
for the Illustrated London News. He specialised in topographical views
of Cork and its surrounding picturesque sights such as Blackrock Castle
and Youghal Strand. He also ventured into surrounding counties exhib-
iting a view ‘from the Drawing Room - Lismore Castle’ at the Royal Hi-
bernian Academy in 1864 and also views of Killarney on two occasions.
Stopford painted other locations in Kerry sending views of Brandon and
Cahersiveen
Bridge to the RHA (1862 and 1858). Stopford kept an al-
bum of his topographical views which he used as part of his art teaching
programme in Cork but the present work is clearly not based on sketches
taken when he painted
Cahersiveen
Bridge in 1858 and he must have
revisited the South Kerry town a few years later as many of the most
prominent architectural features in the view were not yet built in 1858.
The Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks, for example, is the prominent
turreted building on the waterside at the end of the Bridge Street, guar-
ding access to the crossing.This was built after the 1867 Fenian uprising
(which started in the town) and was strategically important as it defen-
ded Valentia Island, the end point of the transatlantic telegraph cable.
The building - whose oriental appearance gave rise to the story that it had
originally been planned for India and the architect’s drawings were mixed
up - now houses
Cahersiveen
Heritage Centre.
Of course the other prominent building in Stopford’s view is the church
officially named for the Holy Cross, but known universally as the Daniel
O’Connell Memorial Church. It is the only church in Ireland with a lay
dedicatee. Plans had been laid to start the church to mark the centenary
of O’Connell’s birth so close by but construction took place between 1882
and 1909 to designs by George Ashlin.The church as erected is different
from Stopford’s view in several respects, but most dramatically in that
the spire was never built.There is a telling parallel in this with Stopford’s
view of Cobh - or Queenstown as was - showing St Colman’s domi-
nating the skyline complete with its spire although this was not added
until after the artist’s death (Crawford Art Gallery, Cork). Intriguingly,
Ashlin was again the lead architect at St Colman’s. It is possible that the
Cahersiveen
and Cobh works, showing the buildings as it was planned
they would look when complete, were commissioned as promotional ma-
terial in fundraising efforts in the United States. Certainly exterior and
interiors view of the O’Connell Memorial Church were exhibited in the
Columbian Exposition, in Chicago in 1897. Perhaps though the sheer
size and amount of anecdotal and extraneous material in the Cahirciveen
view argues against this.
The historical, social and commemorative interest of the work should
not obscure its power as a complex piece of landscape and topographical
painting. The mastery of the high vantage point; the control of mass-
ing, detail and palette make for a highly accomplished piece of landscape
painting.
A Panoramic View of Cahersiveen, County Kerry with the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church
