TIMES PAST: Former Bishop's Palace now demolished
There can be nothing so infuriating to the researcher than to find the landmark you have been investigating has long since gone the way of the Dodo. It does happen and, when it does, that discovery you have made may have to remain an imaginary image, unless there is a picture or a good description to support its appearance.
In 1877, the Rev William Alexander Reynell, BD, incumbent of St John’s, Cloverhill (Kilmore), was over in London where he met his friend Wharton Jones, the editor of a fine book on the Life of Bishop William Bedell. Wharton Jones had dug up a manuscript in the British Museum composed from the blessed pen of the Vicar of Killesher in about 1730.
Kilmore
That September, Reynell had the extracts he recorded published in the Cavan Weekly News. They give an excellent account of Lough Erne and the famed ‘seats’ of the upper echelons of society who inhabited its shores. But for the historian in us there is an interesting account of an earlier and since demolished Bishop’s Palace at Kilmore, that belonged to the Church of Ireland. The astute Reverend gentleman tells the paper: ‘As that mansion has long since passed away, this description may prove acceptable to your readers.’
Indeed, it is highly informative and must be of great importance to those who record the past that we have accounts like this.
In those far off days, wrote the Rev Reynell, it was Bishop Edward Witenhall who managed his flock in the Diocese of Kilmore from 1699 to 1714, thereafter succeeded by Dr Timothy Godwin, from 1714 to 1727, and subsequently followed by Dr Josiah Hort in 1727. For the curious, the record held in the British Museum had the reference: (4436: Transactions of the Royal Society).
The first extract informs us that ‘at the distance of a small mile from the upper end of this Lough (Erne), on the very ridge of one of these small hills, stands exalted the Episcopal seat of Kilmore. Tho’ it be a single seat, without any town or village adjoining, it makes a specious appearance.’
Immediately, we may suppose that, architecturally, this possibly may have been an imposing property. We may well wonder about the building and why it eloped the local landscape.
Reynell continues with a description of how the house looked, nestled amongst the surrounding settings.
He wrote, ‘the house is long, and lofty, and capacious, about 100 feet in length and 40 in width. It has two fronts - the entrance is by the east side. The front is a large square court, the south side of which is formed by the Church, the west by the house, the north, by a wall enclosure, thro’ which passes the avenue, planted on each side; from the east side, which seems open, there is a descent by several steps into a spacious gravelled terrace covered with spreading fig trees, pears of the choicest kind, and stone fruit; the other side adorned with pyramids of box, yew, and holly; from this terrace descend steeply the gardens, replenished with various kinds of trees, roots and pulse; they are divided into several quarters, and the whole enclosed by a high stone wall. Below the gardens lye, as an eye-sore, an irregular bog, full of pits’ made by ‘the late Bishop, Dr Goodwin.’
However, Reynell continues, that the then Bishop in 1730 (Josiah Hort) had ‘levelled the whole bog, and by grass seeds reformed it into a beautiful meadow, for verdure and agreeableness not inferior to a parterre; the canal is completed, being about 500 yards in length, and in the middle is widened into a basin of 100 yards over’, adding that, ‘from the canal a plantation of trees is carried on as an avenue to the tops of the little hills beyond it; by which improvement, that which was naturally a nuisance is reformed so as to become the principal beauty and ornament of this front.’
Bedell’s trees
Reyenell’s notes point out that ‘at the south angle of the churchyard, within a small wall’d enclosure, are deposited in a vault the remains of the good and great Bishop Bedell, over which is raised a tombstone, with his arms and this modest inscription: “Guliemi Bodell, Quondam Episcopi, Kilmorensis Depositum.”
In 1730, Bishop Hort began ‘repairing the injuries’ Bedell’s ‘venerable tomb’ had ‘suffered by time!’
More on Reynell
Reverend William Alexander Reynell, BD, was rector of St John’s, Cloverhill (Kilmore) 1873–77. His appointment to the position came shortly after his aunt Mary Anne Sanderson of Cloverhill wrote to the Bishop.
Dr Jonathan Cherry’s book, ‘Cloverhill: A Church of Ireland parish in County Cavan, c. 1720-2010’, contains an account of her request, stating, ‘I, Mary Anne Sanderson true and undoubted patron of the incumbency of the church and parish of St John’s in the county of Cavan and in your lordship’s dioceses of Kilmore… thereof, do hereby present unto you the Reverend William Alexander Reynell, clerk, Master of Arts of Trinity College Dublin humbly requesting that you will be pleased to admit the said Reverend William Alexander Reynell to the said Church and Parish.’
Canon J.B. Leslie’s ‘Clergy of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh,’ tells us that Reynell on his retirement from active ministry spent his remaining years engaged in study and was a frequent visitor to the Dublin Records Office and Libraries, turning his fine intellect towards matters of an antiquarian and genealogical nature.
In fact, he was responsible for drawing up calendars of ‘the First Fruit Returns’ and ‘most of the Irish Diocesan Registers’, which act as duplicates since the destruction of the original records. Historians around the world who are interested in such matters can now be content that at least we have Reynell’s many transcripts, which fill in the gaps from records that were otherwise destroyed.
The RCB Library in Dublin hold records on Reynell where some of his work can be explored. In October 2021, the RCB Library displayed a scrapbook compiled by the Rev Reynell on the Parochial history of Mullingar from 13th to 19th century as their online Archive of the Month.
I would like to acknowledge Dr Susan Hood and the RCB Library for allowing me to reproduce the portrait of Revd Reynell.
For more on the original Bishop’s Palace at Kilmore, see the Cavan Weekly News.
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