A welcome awaits you at Overseas House
By Patrick Comerford
When I moved into Overseas House last year to begin working with CMS
Ireland, the Church Missionary Society, the first impressive visible object
to confront me was a life-sized, three-quarter length portrait by Harry B.
Douglas of Bishop William Pakenham-Walsh (1820-1902),
I suppose you could say it is appropriate to have a portrait of Bishop
Pakenham-Walsh above my desk, as he was my predecessor of sorts. After two
short curacies in Co Wicklow, he worked with what was then known as the
Hibernian Church Missionary Society from 1848 to 1873, first as deputation
secretary from 1848 and then as secretary from 1851. During that time he was
also an honorary curate of Sandford Parish (1853-1858), where the rector was
Archdeacon Henry Irwin, formerly of Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, and once a
leading light in the Ossory Clerical Association, which played a key role in
the early formation and development of CMS.
It is said that “Irwin was
to [CMS] in the first half of the nineteenth
century what Pakenham-Walsh was to it in the second half.” Coincidentally,
Overseas House is close to Sandford Parish, where Irwin was Rector from
1826. He was succeeded by Pakenham-Walsh, who was Rector of Sandford from
1858 to 1873.
Pakenham-Walsh, who was a brother-in-law of a future Archbishop of Armagh,
John Baptist Crozier, was made a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin,
while he was still at Sandford. Later he became Dean of Cashel (1873-1878)
and Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin (1878-1897). When he retired, he
moved to Crinken House, near Bray, the home of his father-in-law and
brother-in-law, the Rev John W. Hackett (1804-1888) and the Revd Thomas E.
Hackett, successive incumbents of Saint James’s, Crinken. T.E. Hackett
played a leading role in the formation of the Dublin University Fukien
Mission, later the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission; another member of
that family, the Revd H.M.M. Hackett, worked with CMS in India for 19 years,
and was the CMS Central Secretary in Dublin from 1896 to 1898.
Bishop Pakenham-Walsh died in Crinken House in 1902. A year later, the
Pakenham-Walsh Fund was opened with the object of helping Irish CMS
candidates in training. This fund quickly raised £203, and other similar
funds soon followed
Missionary bishops
Although Bishop Pakenham-Walsh never actually worked at Overseas House,
his portrait is one of the more interesting legacies in my office. And, as
I
was to find, Overseas House has a number of other interesting episcopal
connections and mission links dating from long before CMS moved to Belgrave
Road in 1975.
Two of the bishop’s sons
went on to work in the mission fields: Herbert
Pakenham-Walsh, worked in India for over fifty years, first with the Dublin
University Mission to Chota Nagpur, where he became Principal of Bishop’s
College, Calcutta, and later as Bishop of Assam, and played an important
role in the formation of the Church of South India at the time of Indian
independence.
His brother, the Revd William Sandford Pakenham-Walsh, went to China in
1897 under the auspices of CMS to work with the Dublin University Mission.
William’s middle name recalled his father’s time as curate and
later Rector
or Sandford Parish in Dublin. In China, he was head successively of Fuchow
High School and Theological College, and in 1907 he opened “Saint Mark’s
Anglo-Chinese College”, later known as Trinity College Fuchow. The college
bell was gift from Christ Church, Leeson Park, Dublin.
William Pakenham-Walsh retired in 1919, but remained in China until 1921.
He attended the Jubilee meeting of the Dublin University Mission in TCD in
May 1935.
The Pakenham-Walsh brothers show how the CMS and SPG traditions could come
together in one family: indeed, CMS gave £5,000 towards founding Bishop’s
College in Calcutta.
Before Overseas House
Long before CMS moved to Overseas House, the society had offices in other
parts of Dublin. When CMS Ireland was founded almost 200 years ago in 1814,
our first offices in Dublin were on the corner of Earl Street and O’Connell
Street, then known as Sackville Street. From 1816, the society was based at
16 Upper O’Connell Street, and from 1877 in No 17. CMS moved to 8 Dawson
Street in 1884, and in 1895, we moved to 21 Molesworth Street.
A centenary thanksgiving fund set up in 1914, and a bequest from the
Potterton family, helped buy new CMS premises at 35 Molesworth Street. The
new offices were dedicated on 4 October 1929 by Archbishop John Gregg of
Dublin, and the Bishop of Norwich delivered the address.
CMS stayed in Molesworth Street until 1975, when the society moved to
Rathmines, close to Pakenham Walsh’s former parish. Overseas House was
opened on 22 February 1975 by Archbishop George Otto Simms of Armagh as
Patron of what was then called the Hibernian Church Missionary Society.
Two mementoes from Molesworth Street can be seen in Overseas House to this
day. One is a plaque unveiled by Archbishop Gregg in 1929 in the Molesworth
Street headquarters and moved to the lower ground floor of Overseas House,
commemorating the Thanksgiving Fund and Potterton Bequest. The second is the
portrait of Bishop Pakenham-Walsh by Harry B. Douglas. This portrait conveys
the image of a man who is more at ease in convocation dress than in
addressing the issues of mission. But this image is deceptive, and the
stories of the bishop’s energy, commitment and achievements continue
to be
inspiring.
A family home
Overseas House stands on part of the site of the 17th century Battle of
Rathmines. But by the beginning of the 19th century, this part of Dublin was
fast developing as a fashionable suburb. When Archbishop William Magee of
Dublin consecrated Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, in 1828, this area was
known as “Church Fields”.
In 1858, the year William Pakenham-Walsh became Rector of Sandford, the
east section of Church Avenue, from the church to Dunville Avenue, was
renamed Belgrave Road. At the time, part of the area was being developed by
the father of Edward Carson, the Unionist leader, who lived for some time in
Belgrave Square. But No 3 Belgrave Road and the neighbouring houses there
built in the 1860s by Patrick Plunkett, a prominent nationalist, who also
built many houses in neighbouring streets, including Palmerston Road, Cowper
Road, Windsor Road, and part of Belgrave Square.
Plunkett lived in 3 Belgrave Road in the 1860s, before moving to 14
Palmerston Road, where he died in 1918. In the 1870s and the 1880s, No 3 was
the home of Andrew Heyfrom, a “salesmaster”. But from 1894 to 1905
this was
the home of another leading figure in the Irish missionary movement, Revd
Harry Vere White (1853-1941).
White, brother of the historian Canon Newport White, was ordained for the
Diocese of Meath in 1878 by William Conyngham, Lord Plunket, whose
missionary zeal led him to play a key role in the formation of the Spanish
Reformed Episcopal Church and the Lusitanian Church, also known as the
Portuguese Episcopal Church.
White spent six years as a missionary in New Zealand from 1879 to 1885. He
returned to Ireland to become Rector of All Saints’ Killesk, now part
of New
Ross Union in the Diocese of Ferns. But in 1894, he moved to Dublin to
become the Irish organising secretary of SPG, the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, the oldest Anglican mission society and now known
as USPG.
When White moved from Co Wexford to Dublin, he lived at No 3 Belgrave
Road. He moved when he became Vicar of Saint Bartholomew’s, Ballsbridge
(1905-1918); his parishioners there included the Revd R.M. Gwynn of TCD, a
daily communicant, a radical activist in the Irish Labour Movement, and and
co-author of the history of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission.
Later, Harry Vere White was a canon of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin,
Archdeacon of Dublin, and Dean of Christ Church Cathedral (1918-1921) before
becoming Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe (1921-1934).
The historian of Saint Bartholomew’s, Dr Kenneth Milne, quotes what he
describes as a “typical broadside” from Bishop White: “A
church which has
ceased to wish for expansion confesses itself to be without firm hold upon
the Catholic faith.”
Bishop White wrote short biographies of Bishop Jebb of Limerick and Bishop
Berkeley of Cloyne, and was the author of a history of Irish SPG
missionaries, The Children of Saint Columba. He died on 20 January 1941, and
there is a window to his memory in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, depicting
“
The Road to Emmaus”.
Interesting neighbours
After Harry Vere White left No 3, the house was home to Major William
Nangle, who was followed first by Albert Hamilton, and then by the Orr
family, who lived in the house throughout much of the 20th century.
The Orrs had interesting neighbours on Belgrave Road. No 7 was the home of
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, a prominent pacifist, socialist, trade union
organiser and feminist during the War of Independence. No 8 was the home of
sculptor Dermot Broe. No 9 was the home of Dr Kathleen Lynn, a rector’s
daughter, who was a feminist, republican and trade union activist, during
the War of Independence. Countess Markievicz (Constance Gore-Booth) stayed
at No 9 when she was released after the 1916 Rising. Dr Lynn was elected to
Dail Eireann as an anti-treaty TD in 1923. Throughout these times she was a
committed Church of Ireland member and parishioner of Holy Trinity
Rathmines.
In the 1960s and 1970s, No 3 was the home of A.F. Gibney. In 1975, CMS
moved here from Molesworth Street, and No 3 was renamed Overseas House.
Today, Overseas House is the Dublin office of CMS Ireland and the Dublin
home of other mission and development agencies, including Crosslinks,
Grandmas, SAMS (the South American Mission Society), Tearfund and the Irish
Sudanese Solidarity Group. Other agencies linked with the house include the
Association of Missionary Societies (AMS) and the Dublin and Glendalough
Diocesan Council for Mission, and in the past the house had links with
Christian Aid and the Dublin, Glendalough and Kildare Board of Mission
Overseas House still has interesting neighbours. The house is close to the
Resource Centre of the Sunday School Society, and Church House, the offices
of the Representative Church Body and the Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan
Offices. Nearby are both See House and the Church of Ireland College of
Education
So, when you’re next passing by, drop into Overseas House. And under
Bishop Pakenham-Walsh’s portrait, in the room that was once Bishop Harry
Vere White’s dining room, as we celebrate the work of those great nineteenth
and twentieth century missionaries, we can drink coffee and see how we can
work together in mission in the twenty-first century.
Rev Patrick Comerford is Southern Regional Co-ordinator of the Church
Missionary Society Ireland. Contact: theology@ireland.com