Our Lady of Dunsford

‘Naom Muire an Dunseford’ reads the inscription on the pedestal on which stands the only existing pre-Reformation stone statue of the Madonna and Child on the island of Ireland. The remarkable legend of this unique relic of medieval Irish Christianity begins at a quarry in Scrabo, at the head of Strangford Lough from which area the sandstone was extracted. Examination of the carving on the limbs of the statue concludes that it is not dissimilar to one of Affreca, princess of the Isle of Man and wife of John de Courcy, to be found at Greyabbey. The implication of this is that monks based there carved the statue and it was given to the medieval church at Dunsford. Life-size statues such as this were very common in continental Europe in the early fourteenth century, and Our Lady of Dunsford is a contemporary of these dating to in an around the year 1300.

The Virgin Mary has always been a central figure in Christianity but she became particularly important during the medieval era. She was adored and worshipped as an intercessor for the salvation of humankind. As the mother of Christ, she was also a model for all mothers in general. When shown with Christ and her mother Anne she provided an ideal example of religious family life. In Passion images Mary invited onlookers to share her grief and suffering at the death of her son.

From the church site[1] at Dunsford people walked in a procession to stone crosses to the west of the church along an old pathway. A smaller cross was located in a field originally belonging to the Hanna family (On the map of Dunsford their fields are grouped under numbers 18A and 18B[2]). Another Crois Mór was on the farm originally belonging to the Smyth family who were the ancestors of the present Fitzsimons occupiers (number 16B). On the Smyth farm there was also a well, known as Mary’s Well, about which my grandfather informed Betty McCord. It was largely due to the efforts of Betty that the fieldnames of this parish were recorded for posterity. The site of the well is thought to be under the foreground outhouses[3] as shown on the aerial photograph of the site, which dates to about 1960.

This church at Dunsford is believed to have been among the most highly decorated in the district of Lecale[4]. However, after the proclamation of the Act of Supremacy by Henry VIII, the situation became rather confused. The statue was broken up and left in pieces at the site and a few different accounts point the finger of blame at a soldier of Oliver Cromwell’s army. The feet and torso were removed from the church at Dunsford and carried to the residence of the Rev. Dr. William Megarry[5], Parish Priest of Dunsford and Ardglass, who had been born at Crossmore. This was done in order to help preserve the fragments for posterity.

Following Dr. Megarry’s death in 1763 his remains were interred at Dunsford churchyard. After losing their guardian, the portions of the statue were carried to the Newark at Ardglass. In the map of the townland of Ardglass in the Survey of the Mannor of Ardglass, it is recorded that, in 1768, the range of medieval buildings now incorporated into Ardglass Castle was known as the monastery. Whether it is due to the remnants of Our Lady of Dunsford there present, or the confusion of the cell like structure of the rooms with their gothic arches, we cannot be certain.

The head of the statue of Our Lady was found in the medieval churchyard before the erection of the new chapel was begun in 1791. This lonely fragment was inserted into the gable by the Rev. Fr. Edward Mulholland. The head was clearly still held in great veneration by the people of the parish. In 1888 Robert Burns of Killough, County Down, wrote the following verses into the eulogy for his aunt, Mrs. Margaret Martin of Lismore, who was buried beneath the steeple of the chapel[6]:

Almost within sight of the wild Irish Sea,
Whose billows the rocky coast lave-, 
Just under the shade of Our Lady’s sweet image, 
You’ll notice a newly made grave.

A few scattered houses surround the churchyard,

From which a neat church rears its head,

As a mother broods over the loss of her young,

It ever keeps watch o’er the dead.

The building range, of which the Newark comprised, was subsequently redeveloped in 1789 by Rear Admiral Lord Charles James FitzGerald, into Ardglass Castle. Charles Lilley was appointed as his architect. Lilley was a man with a penchant for repurposing medieval building structures, as it was he who drew up the plans of work for the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Downpatrick and it is quite probable that Lord Charles approached him at the time of his appointment.

Major Aubrey William Beauclerk was Lord Charles’ half-nephew and Victorian successor to the landlordship of Ardglass. As a man of impressive social standing, Major Beauclerk would hold several engagements at his County Down seat. Ardglass, with its other five castles, must have proved quite a marvel to a Victorian visitor. Fashionable tastes for the upper classes at that time transcended the Romantic Movement which favoured tumbledown ruins. Follies were the ‘in thing’ and included reinterpreting ruined antiquity. The visual created was reminiscent of the ancient Roman Forum and the Acropolis. Unique to Major Beauclerk’s pleasure grounds was a ruined statue and, from studying the its restored state, it can be seen that the lower fragment of Our Lady of Dunsford would have stood to thigh height as his Victorian folly.

Unfortunately for Major Beauclerk and the populace of the Ardglass estate, his son and heir did not have the same sensibilities or love for the family seat. The castle was put up for rent and lay derelict and neglected for long periods when Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk was off gallivanting, frivolously frittering away the estate his father and great grandfather had tended so dearly. Ardglass Castle was abandoned and the gardens left untended. In 1896 a lease was agreed and the first nine holes of Ardglass golf course were laid out. Remarkably at the same time the Belfast and County Down Railway were leased the same ground and there is even an account of a disgruntled day tripper having her cup of tea smashed out of her hand whilst she left holding onto the porcelain handle! One night vandals entered the pleasure grounds and destroyed the folly, carrying off the statue and throwing it into the sea beneath the first tee at Ardglass Golf Course. And so, by the early years of the twentieth century, Beauclerk’s financial troubles caught up with him.

In June 2009 the Rev. Fr. Gerard McCloskey received a telephone call from a parishioner of Saint Agnes’, over thirty miles away in Andersonstown, regarding his dying father. Fr. McCloskey was asked to bring a Dictaphone as the man had valuable information to give, which went something like this:

In the summer of 1907 three young green keepers, one the dying man’s father, were working for the golf club and had been tasked with re-landscaping part of the green. This work involved the relocation of steps within what was part of Ardglass Castle’s front lawn. Well into the afternoon they lifted a piece of stone and upon turning it over underneath it they discovered an intricately carved piece of stone. Knowing they had uncovered something precious and ecclesiastical they decided not to notify anyone on site. Under the cover of darkness, they returned armed with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Having hoisted the stone onto the wheelbarrow and shrouded it with a bed sheet, they wheeled it through the town to the parochial house and left it for the priest to find. 

Whether he knew it or not Charles Lilley has seemingly had a hand in obscuring two great parts of Lecale’s heritage. The first was that when he undertook the work at Down Cathedral he cleared the interior of all graves including that of Saints Patrick, Brigid, and Columba and of course the second when he accidentally incorporated Our Lady of Dunsford into a garden feature! 

Francis Joseph Bigger was at that time a frequent visitor to Lecale and he would have sleuthed around and worked out, from written text and gathering oral tradition, what had become of the statue. With his expert eye he was able to identify the fragments as parts of the statue. This meant that he had succeeded where many, including the Rev. Dr. Richard Marner, who was Parish Priest from 1876 to 1885, had failed. Bigger could then claim success, as the torso had now been located having been missing for almost a century and a half. Bigger recounted, ‘Fortune favoured me in gathering them together, my antiquarian experience readily recognising carved fragments of an ancient statue in what to others might only have appeared as “old stones”’. Having gathered all the pieces together, the statue was reassembled by Robert May of Belfast with modern heads[7] which were made and inserted into the gable by S. & T. Hastings at Chapeltown on 25 March 1908. This was the Feast of the Annunciation and a special feature of the ceremony was the free use of the Gaeilge tongue.

The hysteria in the parish was palpable for weeks beforehand. The children of Saint Mary’s Dunsford National School were given lyrics to learn which their teacher, Miss Mary Mount, had penned. Miss Mount, who later married a man by the name of Halpin, was a talented musician who composed numerous songs and sat around the harmonium with the children. So skilled was she that any verse could be placed to a tune. The choir of Saint Mary’s would sing a variation of her hymn at both Easter and Christmas which was somewhat fitting as the accompanying tune was ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem[8]’:

Facing the east our statue stands

The image of Mary, favoured by grace,

On a hilltop by the sea.
Profaned and torn by strife in the past
But restored now that all might see
Mother of God’s own Son,
Our Lady of Dunsford, plead for us
Till salvation’s battle be won.

As we pass by your shrine both day and night
On our earthly business bent,
May we offer a prayer to your listening ear

For your special kind of grace,
That peace may reign in our own dear land
Where Ireland’s saint adored,
O Lady of Dunsford, plead for us,
God hearkens to your every word. 

The work was once again made famous throughout Ireland, from northeast to south west, by Francis Joseph Bigger, as this reference to it in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society in 1913 proves testament:

“This statue had been shattered and scattered, and all traces of it had disappeared for centuries. It is like a romance. Mr. Bigger searched for them and found them broken into three main portions in various places. One was in the doorstep of a golf club house. The tale is too long to tell, but suffice to say, he rescued the “disjecta membra,” and had them rejoined by a capable workman in Belfast, and replaced in a niche over the west doorway of St. Mary’s Dunsfort”.

For the Marian Year 1954, Canon McKee who had two Marian shrines made Our Lady of Dunsford a thing to celebrate. While many parishes erected Lourdes grottos Dunsford and Ardglass printed calendars with the featured subject of Our Lady of Dunsford. Some of these calendars, which were sold for 1s6d, are still to be found adorning walls of homes in the area. As one of the most ancient stone Madonna’s in the world the statue is unique in Ireland in that it is still venerated by its original parish. In August 2013 a strange twist of fate fell upon the Rev. Fr. Gerard McCloskey when he himself was appointed to the role of Guardian of the Restored Shrine of Our Lady of Dunsford and Protector of the Holy Well of Saint Patrick. It is thanks to him we can now record for posterity the story of the parish’s most ancient resident.

Duane Fitzsimons

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[1] Henry Fitzsimons, my grandfather believed that under Church Road, at the front of the church, there may be a souterrain. The reason he held this consideration was that anytime he passed the front of the building towing the old horse pulled reaper, the blade would vibrate in an unusual way, as if the ground beneath was hollow. It has never been stated that Rogerus de Dunesford founded the church, merely that he granted the church that stood there to the Abbey of Saint Patrick in 1194. It could be possible that this church site too was an early Christian one.

[2] The sites of the crosses are no longer discernible, there were two groves (the one on the Hanna farm has long since been removed) which were planted on both farms and it believed that the crosses may have been located in these.

[3] This has been determined by a spring which rises through the floor of these buildings.

[4] This fact has been determined by fragments of mullions from the windows in addition to the existence of the statue.

[5] Overlooking Crossmore and the church site is Megarry’s Hill, at the time he ministered to the Parish of Dunsford and Ardglass Rev. Dr. William may well have resided with his family. The dwelling is shown on the 1768 Survey of the Mannor of Ardglass.

[6] Mrs. Margaret Martin was the sister of John Fitzsimons; she was the first person known to have been buried in that plot and her name can be found on the side of the headstone.

[7] The head of Jesus has never been located, my grandfather ascertained that it may well be found in the field immediately in front of the medieval church site. Likewise, the hand of Our Lady have never been located either. It has never been stated where the original head of Our Lady found and inserted by the Rev. Fr. Mulholland went to. Though if you ever pay attention to the gateway at the quayside entrance to Jordan’s Castle you will discover a carved head of a female. This archway was put up in 1911 and the head was inserted there, perhaps returning it to its parish.

[8] As currently played by Una Fitzsimons, the version has been varied a little and the tune which accompanies the lyrics has been adapted from a jig which Gerry Curran’s band composed. Having no other purpose, it had been elevated to the role of embellishing the sentiment of this parish’s indigenous hymn.