Timogue Church
| I expect that Timogue Church will have to go on my spreadsheet of damaged and removed memorials. The Lusitania now joining Queen Victoria, Michael Collins, Lord Nelson and even Eamon deValera. I read some years ago of one of the panes of glass having been etched to record that the building was painted on the day the Lusitania was sunk. It read: “This Church Painted by W. Dobbin May 1915 Sinking of the Lusitania by the Germans Will the allies be at them or will it be a draw He who reads this in years to come will know” On Monday, I stole some me-time and took a wee diversion to Timogue to see the etched glass and there is was – gone. I even visited again that evening as I had been looking at the top panes when the etching was on a pane next to the top pane – but it was still gone. It looks like the windows have been replaced. I do hope that the glass was salvaged and preserved – one for the TO FIND OUT MORE list. |  GONE  |
‘The commemorative function of monuments was paramount. However, the expression of loss and regret for the dead was inextricably entwined with and, to an extent, secondary to attempts to continue the memory of their owners’ personal and social identities……..
….the endlessly manipulable nature of funeral monuments could become invaluable. By choosing an identity from the most socially acceptable elements of one’s past, present and future, and rendering this in stone, a medium which by its very nature could convey added veracity, solidity and permanency, reality could be created and controlled by the patron. Moreover, once reality is constructed in this manner, monuments allow for no doubt or argument. Their owners may be denounced or discredited, but monuments will continue to proclaim their own brand of truth. This is why contemporaries occasionally found it necessary to destroy monuments. The propaganda element inherent in them could not be countered in any other way.’
Clodagh Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, p.105.
