Sacred Heart Church,
Ferrybank  

How the present Church came to be built: Sir H. P. T. Barrons Will

On September 12, 1900 Sir Henry Barron died  in Stuttgard at the age of seventy five and after a distinguished career in Her Majesty's Foreign Service. In his Will he left a generous bequest for Ferrybank Church far in excess of  what he had promised twenty five years earlier when he was trying to have a monument erected inside the old church to the memory of his father. Whether it was Bishop Moran's departure to Sydney or the desire to erect a more substantial monument to his family that brought the unexpected windfall to Ferrybank we do not know.   What we do know, however,  is that the publication of Sir Henry Barron's Will proved something of a 'gilt-edged sword' to Moran's successor in Ossory,  Dr. Abraham Brownrigg.

When Sir Henry Barron was in the throes of controversy with Doctor Moran over the erection of  a monument in honour of his father inside the church in Ferrybank he had already allocated in his Will the sum of £1,500 towards the rebuilding of the same church. When the Will was ultimately notified this sum had been increased to £9,000.  But there was a downside to it - there were strings attached in the form of conditions built into the Will. The relevant sections of the Will are contained  in Clauses 13 & 14 and read as follows:

13.       The sum of six thousand pounds is allotted to my Trustees for the erection and decoration of a new Catholic Church to be built on the site of the present church at Ferrybank adjoining the belfry which was erected by Eustace Barron and myself in 1867. My name is to be inscribed over the front door as the founder of the church. All the wall space on one side of the church  is to  be preserved for the insertion of  monumental tablets commemorative of the members of  my (the Ballyneal) branch of the Barron Family. The appropriation of this space is to be vested in my Irish heir. The church is to be of the Gothic style of architecture, harmonising with the existing belfry. Before undertaking this work the written sanction of the Catholic Bishop of that diocese is to be obtained for the erection of this church and of the adjoining mausoleum as directed in clause 14 of this Testament. If this sanction is withheld or coupled with conditions deemed by my Trustees to be unreasonable, they will erect the church and mausoleum or the mausoleum alone in some other place in the neighbourhood of Waterford but in such a manner as not to violate the Mortmain Acts.

14.       I allot the above sum of three thousand pounds to the erection of  a mausoleum commemorative of the Barron family (Ballyneal branch).  It is to be built abutting on or adjoining the church  directed to be built if possible at Ferrybank and to be connected with that church internally. I desire that a mural tablet of  black and white marbles shall be erected upon the inner wall of this mausoleum commemorative of myself. It is to bear an inscription in leaden so-called "indelible" letters recording the following events of my life:

Born 27th  December, 1824 at Belmont Park in the parish of Slieverue alias Killoteran.

            Attaché to her Majesty's Legations at Berne, Turin, Florence and Berlin.

Secretary to Her Majesty's Legations and Embassy at Lisbon, Bruxelles and Constantinople.

            Her Majesty's Minister-Resident to the King of Wurtemberg, October 1883.                           

The matter of  interpreting and executing the Will was entrusted to three Trustees whose "unanimous decision" was "binding absolutely and without appeal in all questions arising from (the) Will and on all persons interested therein. Any beneficiary attempting to controvert that decision by legal proceedings shall forfeit all interest under this ... Will".  (Clause 2).

Execution of the Barron Will:

The execution of the Will proved problematic. On January 1st, 1901, Garrard James & Wolfe, a London-based firm of solicitors wrote to Bishop Brownrigg  informing him of the contents of  the Barron Will and  indicating that "the Trustees have provisionally set aside securities to answer the two legacies, and are now considering taking the preliminary steps to comply with Sir Henry's wishes, but, before doing anything further in the matter, they desire to communicate with you in view to ascertaining (as is required by the Will) whether you, as the Bishop of the Diocese in which Ferrybank is situated, sanction the erection of the church and mausoleum at Ferrybank in accordance with the directions in the Will. The Trustees have not, of course, decided what architects they will employ, but, among Sir Henry's papers we have found a sketch and ground plan prepared to Messrs Pugin & Ashlin at the time, we believe, when the belfry referred to in Clause 12 was built in 1867, and probably they may think it well to employ those gentlemen. This sketch does not, however, contemplate the mausoleum".

Bishop Brownrigg now found himself in something of a bind - £6,000 for the building of a new church in Ferrybank provided he could meet the terms of the Will or at least satisfy the Trustees to that effect. The appropriation of one of the walls of the church by the Barron family for the purpose of erecting commemorative tablets constituted major stumbling blocks. The inclusion of  a  mausoleum  abutting on or adjoining the church and connected to it internally complicated matters even further. £3,000 had been allocated for this part of the project. It was now a matter of getting around the terms of the Will in order not to let slip such a  large sum of money.  It was an offer no bishop could afford to let slip through his hands.  In addition, there were other compelling reasons for not spurning such an offer - it made good structural, aesthetic and economic sense. The erection of the tower in 1867 had in the words of Bishop Brownrigg's predecessor, Doctor Moran,  presented  "an  anomaly unique in the diocese" because of "the different style of architecture in the porch and the little church itself". Furthermore, "the front wall of the church (had) been seriously damaged by the erection of the tower, the result being that a portion of the church suffered considerably from damp" ( Moran to H. Barron, 12 June 1876). Financially the people of Ferrybank could not have afforded little at the time. They could ill-afford to miss out on a bonanza of £9,000.

Social, Religious and Economic Conditions in  "the little village" in 1900:

There is little reason for believing that things would have changed significantly on the economic and social front from what they had been a quarter of a century earlier.  In his efforts to woo the Holy Faith Sisters to Ferrybank, Dr. Moran, writing to their Foundress Margaret Aylward in 1876,  gives a vivid description of  the fabric of  village life at the time:

            the poor people at Ferrybank require some spiritual care and training as badly as any in the whole diocese. The husbands are, for the most part engaged in the harbour or on the railway and mothers are terribly negligent in sending their children to school. Indeed, I don't know any part of Ireland where a convent would do more good than (for) these poor people (Moran to Aylward, 5 August 1876).

In the end it was the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary  (RSHMs) who came in 1879 at the invitation of Father Dunphy, the then Administrator of the parish. The financial arrangement finally agreed to between the Bishop, the parish and the Sisters gives a good idea of what people were able to afford at the time. The original arrangement was for the parish to provide the "poor schools"  with the Motherhouse contributing £3,000 towards the building of the convent and the parish coming up with the balance. The architects estimate for the convent project was £4,250. The raising of the additional £1,250 was more than the parish could bear at the time. Mother Superior in France suggested running "a lottery or a bazaar" but Father Dunphy, the Administrator of the parish of Slieverue, lamented that "the people were tired of them" and that the Bishop of Waterford would never permit any fundraising for the RSHMs in his city since he would think it "in opposition to his Ursuline convent" (Dunphy to M. Ste. Croix, 7 February 1878). Eventually the Sisters agreed to bear the full cost of building the convent and to pay an annual rent of £48-8-0 to the diocese for the six and one half acres leased to them.

The foundation stone for the convent was laid by Doctor Moran in 1878. Sometime later the bishop commented to his friend, Msgr. Thomas Kirby, Rector of the Irish College in Rome:

            There is now a large population there, mostly fishermen and those connected with the line of railway. I think it is the most abandoned part of this diocese and that it stands in the most need of some awakening of the spirit of practical piety. We will have a mission for them, conducted by Redemptorists in June. The nuns will afterwards keep alive their fervour and make them, I trust, everyday better (Moran to Kirby, 2 April 1878).

Jack Burtchaell in a talk entitled "Ferrybank in 1900"  given under the auspices of Eigse Sliabh Rua in November 1995 paints a similar picture of social deprivation. In 1901 the population of the village was 853 people most of whom earned a living on the docks or on the railway. Typical occupations were that of labourer, dressmaker, domestic servant, ships carpenter, tailor and publican etc. John Fleming of Mount Misery (now the site of Jurys Hotel) was the only farmer in Ferrybank at the time.

These social and economic conditions made it all the more imperative for the Bishop to do business if at all possible with the Trustees of the Barron Estate. The church building now being proposed would be simply out of the question but for the Barron bequest. Its elegant cut-stone exterior, its splendid stained-glass windows coupled with its overall architectural harmony and proportion would have made it the envy of many. It certainly contrasted sharply with the mother-church in Slieverue and those of neighbouring parishes.