Archivists visit Gormantown Church

A group of religious art experts who are in the process of cataloguing the art and artifacts in all the churches of the Dublin Diocese paid a visit to St Joseph's Church in Gormanstown last week as part of their project. The building is a chapel of ease to Kilcullen Parish.



The trio -- Fr Pat Dowling, Dr Eileen Kane, and Canon Jim Randles -- had previously carried out a similar survey on the parish church, in 2001. There are in all some 250 churches in the Diocese, and the group hopes to be finished next May.

"We do a full inventory of the items in the churches and we record everything that is of value," says Fr Pat Dowling, whose job is to photograph the objects. "They include stained glass windows, chalices, and carvings ... and even the church itself from an architectural value. Then we do a brochure of the items, which we send back to the relevant parish."

The idea is initially that there is a record of everything, and in the process the group have also on a number of occasions been able to alert a parish that they had something of value that they were not aware of.

"We haven't discovered Caravaggios, but we've come near it," says Fr Dowling. "One picture we discovered we advised the parish priest to lend to the National Library, because he'd never have been able to pay the insurance."

The recording of the items is detailed. A chalice, for instance, will be photographed, have its dimensions measured and noted along with its weight. Any inscriptions and hallmarks will also be documented.

"It is a process that has already proved its worth," Fr Dowling says. "For instance, there was an occasion when a set of canvas Stations of the Cross was stolen from Baldoyle Church. The canvases were cut from their frames. But we had photographs of them, which we gave to the Garda, and they subsequently got a tip-off and found them. They had been very carefully rolled and were protected in lengths of Wavin pipe. If we hadn't the records, they might never have been found."

All three members of the group are now retired from their full-time work -- Dr Kane retired from the Department of History of Art in University College Dublin in 2001, and Canon Randles joined the project in 1991.

"We started it in 1981," Dr Kane recalls. "It does seem a long time ago, but we had to set the whole thing up and do a pilot project. And at the time each of us had full 'day jobs'. Now we have more time, and we're moving quite quickly in the last few years."

Fr Dowling used to have a strong link with Kilcullen Drama Group many decades ago when he was a priest in Castledermot. About the same time he also provided the new Bridge magazine committee with their first printing press, which he had used in producing a similar magazine in his own parish.

Brian Byrne.