An Irishman's Diary

BECAUSE OF its numerous bridges and an aqueduct that carries the Grand Canal over the River Barrow, Monasterevin is sometimes referred to as the Venice of Ireland. And the renowned tranquillity of the Co Kildare town also derives, I suspect, from the calming effect of all that quietly flowing water.

Of all its many bridges, Monasterevin’s oldest crosses the Barrow at Passlands, just outside the town. This is the Pass Bridge, which hugs my mother’s homeplace, while my father’s homestead is just a mile or so up the back road in Ballagh, the last outpost in the county before you enter Ullard in Co Laois.

In this lush pastoral idyll, in the robust care of my Nana Passlands and Nana Ballagh, I spent those golden summer holidays of youth, far from the gritty streets of Portobello, at the Dublin end of the Royal Canal. One of Nana Passlands’ claims to fame was that she once worked for Count John McCormack, the great Irish tenor, at his home in Moore Abbey. One of her daughters later worked there.

Moore Abbey stands on the site of a 12th-century Cistercian abbey, which was itself built on the ruins of the early medieval monastery of St Evin, after which the town is named. Following the appropriation of church lands by the crown in the 16th century, the Abbey passed into other hands and on to the Moores of Drogheda. The family came to be headed by the Earl of Drogheda, who rebuilt the Abbey in the neo-Gothic style.

By the 18th century, the Moores had built much of Georgian Monasterevin – and indeed Dublin. The capital’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street, was once known as Drogheda Street, while Henry Street, Mary Street, Earl Street and, of course, Moore Street, are also named after the family.

In Monasterevin, my second-favourite bridge is the aptly named High Bridge, which straddles the canal not far from Passlands. It was built by Henry Moore, the 7th Earl, and is so high it could have had a role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Then there’s the town’s own Drogheda Street, a grand tree-lined avenue at the canal end, which features the church of Saints Peter and Paul. John McCormack sang here, and the English Jesuit poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, once helped serve Communion at its marble Venetian altar – famed for its charming cherubs. Nearby is the water font where your diarist was introduced to the peculiar consolations of Christianity.

Some time after the end of the first World War, the Moores brought an end to their centuries-old Monasterevin residency when they leased the mansion to John McCormack and returned to the other island. The world-famous tenor brought superstar appeal to the Abbey and to the town. In 1930, the Abbey was a central location for a film, The Song O’ My Heart, starring the count and featuring the beautiful Hollywood actress Maureen O’Sullivan.

Some years later, the McCormacks also departed; and the Abbey returned to the care of the religious orders when the 10th Earl sold it to the Sisters of Charity, who have been worthy custodians, caring for people with intellectual disabilities.

The foregoing meandering tributaries are mentioned by way of introduction to a curious coincidence that took place in Havana’s José Martí airport – more than 7,000km from Moore Abbey – where you might think the mysteries of Monasterevin would be largely unknown.

Here, feeling a little careworn after hauling my sorry suitcases all over Cuba, I scanned the teeming departures lounge for a sanctuary and spotted one spare seat at a table where a distinguished-looking gentleman was lost in a book. It was, by coincidence, the same table I had sat at on my previous trip.

“You’re not by any chance the same man who was sitting here last year,” I asked, wondering if he was the Frenchman I talked to then. But the Oxford English tones screamed au contraire, as he introduced himself as Derry Moore from London. On discovering my Irishness, he revealed he was Anglo-Irish, and later added he was one of the Moores of Drogheda, late of the Moore Abbey – where my nana and aunt once worked. This great Monasterevin coincidence transformed what might have been the usual tedious airport wait into a very enjoyable conversation with Derry and his gracious wife, Alexandra.

Derry also mentioned that he is a photographer, so on my return I checked his website and found him to be a uniquely accomplished one. His works fill numerous books and glossy magazines and feature striking, atmospheric studies of eminent individuals, great gardens and grand interiors from around the globe. His sitters have ranged from Salvador Dali to Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol to David Bowie and from Britain's royal family to the late Lord Kilbracken of Leitrim. Some 37 of these studies are on display in London's National Portrait Gallery. (See derrymoore.com).

While browsing his work, I also discovered that he is more than an ordinary member of the Moore family. In fact, the “Derry” is short for Dermot and he was born Henry Dermot Ponsonby Moore, and is the 12th Earl of Drogheda. His parents were the last of the Moore line to have lived in the Abbey.

It would make you wonder, though, at the odds of meeting Lord and Lady Drogheda at the last spare table in the airport of the last Communist state in the West – and discovering you also share a bridge to Monasterevin.

All that was missing that night in Havana were the euphonious tenor tones of Count John McCormack wafting over the intercom to serenade us with, perhaps, Panis Angelicus, the song he sang to a million people during the Mass in the Phoenix Park at the culmination of the last Eucharistic Congress 80 years ago this year.