Sacred Heart Church,
Ferrybank   

The Bishops and the Barrons

As  the stones of the old church in Ferrybank were being taken down Canon Carrigan was putting the finishing touches to his monumental history of the Diocese of Ossory.  According to Carrigan the work of demolishing the old church was already underway in the early Summer of 1903. The foundation stone for the present church was laid by Dr. Abraham Brownrigg on the 13th of April 1904. The church itself was completed in 1906.   A plaque located in the porch over the main entrance to the Church testifies to this:

            This church was erected by Sir Henry Page Turner Barron, Bart. to the honour and glory of God and in memory of his relations, deceased, 1906.

However,  it is the story and intrigue behind the plaque that makes for interesting reading. Carefully concealed behind this plaque and inscription lies a power struggle between successive bishops of Ossory and different members of the Barron family of Belmont Park. This struggle reached a new turning point when Sir Henry Page Turner Barron of Belmont Park died  on the 12th of September 1900 at Stuttgard after a distinguished career in Her Majesty's Foreign Service. In his last will and testament he left a bequest of £6,000 for the building of a new church in Ferrybank and £3,000 towards the building of a mausoleum adjoining it. It took more than three years to iron out the intricacies of the Barron Will and for the bishop to issue his sanction for the erection of the new church as required by the will.

However, long before the contents of the Barron Will became known relations between the benefactor and successive bishops of Ossory had been far from cordial.  Evidence of strained relations can be gleaned from correspondence dating back to Bishop Moran's time i.e. from c. 1875 onwards.

The Chapel of Ease becomes a Parish Church:

Even today the people of Ferrybank refer to their much loved church as the "chapel of ease". This was the regular ecclesiastical title applied to auxiliary or subordinate churches within a parish. Such churches were constructed specifically to meet the pastoral and spiritual needs of people at a time when the only form of transport was shanks mare.  Ferrybank remained the "chapel of ease" to Slieverue until it was constituted a parish in its own right by Most Rev. Dr. Peter Birch, Bishop of Ossory, in 1970. Father Michael McGrath, who had been appointed parish priest of  Slieverue in December 1964, succeeding the late Canon James Ryan, became its first parish priest.  In constituting Ferrybank an autonomous parish the late Dr. Birch was merely following ecclesiastical precedent. Until 1846 Slieverue and Glenmore had formed one parochial union (Carrigan, IV, p. 88). In that year the parish priest of Slieverue, Very Rev. Edward Walsh, became Bishop of Ossory. After his elevation to the episcopacy he separated Glenmore from Slieverue (Carrigan, IV, p. 212). Four years earlier, 1842, Mullinavat had been severed from Kilmacow (Carrigan, IV, 171).

The Old Church in Ferrybank:

On the site of the present church stood an old church which according to Carrigan had been completed about 1834 i.e. some 34 years after the completion of the mother church in Slieverue and within a few years of Daniel O'Connell winning Catholic Emancipation. Little is known of the shape or design of this original church but the Lease providing the site for its construction is still extant in the Diocesan Archives in Kilkenny.  The said Lease was entered into by John Congreve of Mount Congreve in the County of Waterford and the Most Rev. Dr. William Kinsella, Bishop of Ossory, on the 24 day of August 1830. The Lease sets down in detail the terms of the agreement. The location area-wise consisted of "two roods and nineteen perches plantation measure" and was situated in "the parish of Kilculliheen, Barony of Ida, County of Kilkenny and the Liberties of the City of  Waterford". It was entered into for a period of five hundred years and for the princely sum "of six pence sterling to be paid by two equal half-yearly payments on every twenty ninth day of September and twenty-fifth day of March".  It was entered into "upon the express condition and understanding, that the said demised premises be  used for no other purpose than that of public worship according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church and as a place of interment belonging to the chapel erected thereon". In the event of its being used for any other purposes than those specified, it would "revert and become the property of the said John Congreve".

The Lease itself contains an outline sketch of  a church building for the purpose of indicating the exact location on which the chapel was to be constructed. There is no indication as to the shape or specification of the church itself but it is almost certain that its location coincided more or less exactly with that of the present church. The need to re-locate those graves immediately adjoining the old church in order to make space for the new one would point in this direction.  Letters exchanged at the time between Bishop Brownrigg and his legal advisers would seem to confirm this. On the actual Lease Document the property to the right and rear of the church is designated as "lands occupied by R. Walsh"  while on the left were "lands occupied by St. Leger". In front of the church ran "the Ross Road" as it still does.

The Barrons of Belmount Park: who were they?

Tracing one's family roots is never easy. It is particularly taxing and difficult if one happens to bear the name 'Barron' or 'Baron'. As the latter spelling suggests the designation was more a feudal title than a name. Several Anglo-Irish families would seem to have appropriated this title as their surname through the centuries.  Among the more noted families to do so were the Geraldines of Kilkenny, descendants of Maurice Fitzgerald (+1177) who led the second band of Norman invaders to Ireland to assist Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster, regain that kingdom from which he had been driven by Roderick 0' Connor, King of Ireland.

In due course the Fitzgerald clan (or 'Barrons' as they would be subsequently known) split into different branches and occupied vast tracts of land in county Kilkenny. Among those who lost their estates in the county of Kilkenny by forfeiture, consequent upon the political movements of the seventeenth century, were seven gentlemen  by the name of Fitzgerald.  Those who possessed the largest estates had their principal seats at Brownsfort, Gurteens, and Burnchurch  respectively. The Gurteens branch of the family would seem to have been the less significant.  Father Stephen Barron, Ord. Cist., relying on a  detailed genealogical table of the Barron Family which he inherited from Percy Eustace Barron, Esq., formerly of Belmont Park, traces the Belmont Park Barrons back to the Barrons of Fahagh, Co. Waterford.  But a chronicler called 0'Donovan whom Burtchaell refers to as 'no mean authority upon Kilkenny families' probably sums up best the difficulty of tracing the roots of the Barrons of Belmont Park. Writing in 1839 0'Donovan says "Henry Winston Barron, M.P., is the supposed representative of this ancient family, but as his family have sprung up into respectability at a comparatively recent period their pedigree is unknown or uncertain, and it is now perhaps impossible to show how, i.e. whether legitimately or illegitimately, they descend from the Barons of Burnchurch".   

But whatever dispute there might be about the pedigree and origins of the Barrons of Belmont Park their immense material well-being and religious devotion were beyond doubt. Like their ancestors the Fitzgeralds they too were fervent in their faith and religious devotion. That devotion extended to acts of extraordinary generosity when it came to building churches and schools. One of the principal beneficiaries of the Barron largesse were the people of Ferrybank.  

The first reference of this largesse with reference to Ferrybank that I have been able to locate is to be found in  The Waterford News , September 3rd, 1926. In its column on Waterford, a century earlier it carries an interesting insert from The Clonmel Advertiser,  August 23, 1826:

            Henry W. Barron, Esq. has given £20  in cash and £30 worth of stones towards the erection of a Roman Catholic Chapel at Ferrybank, near Waterford.

 It is probable that the matter of a chapel in Ferrybank had for some time been the subject of discussion prior to the Lease being entered into, and that the Barron family were key players in promoting the idea.

The 1867 Tower and Belfry:

The entrance to the present church is through the tower which supports a very elegant Gothic spire or belfry. This structure predates the present church by about forty  years. It was added on to the original church in 1867. Architecturally Gothic, it was "built in front of a small Grecian chapel" (Moran to Cullen, 21 May 1876)  Aesthetically it must have appeared at odds with the humble Grecian chapel adjacent to it. Bishop Moran would later describe it in less than complimentary terms - it was "nothing more than a sepulchral mausoleum of the Barrons" (Ibid).  In a robust reply to his uncle, Cardinal Cullen of Dublin, he dismisses the whole tower project as "simply ridiculous and was only allowed in consequence of promises made of re-erecting the church in the same Gothic style" (Ibid.).  It was little wonder then  that  the people of Ferrybank saw it more as a monument to the Barrons than as a positive contribution to the existing building.

Yet the pre-existence of the tower probably proved crucial when it came to designing and adding the present church.  Though built about forty years apart the benefactor of both tower and church was one and the same person - Henry or H.P.T. Barron.  Both were designed by the same firm of architects, Pugin and Ashlin. When H. P. T. Barron died in 1900 he left among his private papers the sketch of the church that would be re-worked and ultimately adopted. Bishop Moran was already aware of the existence of such plans in 1876 but they were destined to remain on the architects drawing board for several more years. Before the church would be built much controversy would ensue between the Barron family and successive bishops of Ossory. The commemorative plaque bearing the coat of arms of the Barron Family and its accompanying inscription located over the main door as one enters the porch was destined to become the subject of acrimonious exchanges between the Barron Family and Doctor Moran, Bishop of Ossory. The inscription reads as follows:

            This tower has been erected to the honour of God & of the Sacred Heart of  Jesus by Henry Page Turner Barron & Eustace Barron of Mexico; also in memory of their relatives deceased, 1867.