Mí Saileach · Co. Carlow
One church so far out of scale that the village around it barely registers.
Myshall is a crossroads in south Carlow at the foot of Mt Leinster, population around two hundred and fifty, and it has a church in it that would look appropriate in a cathedral city. The Adelaide Memorial Church of the Holy Trinity - Church of Ireland - was built between 1907 and 1913 by a single patron, a wealthy businessman from Dover, England named John Duguid, in memory of his wife Adelaide Smith. It cost him roughly £50,000 at the time. The architect was George Coppinger Ashlin. The result is a full Gothic Revival church in cut limestone, with a tower, a vestibule, stained glass, decorative tilework, and seating for a congregation several times the size of the village. It sits at the centre of the crossroads and fills the view from every road coming in.
The Duguid story is the whole story. John Duguid was a wealthy wine merchant based in Dover, England, and married Adelaide Smith, whose family had roots in the Myshall area. She died before she could see it built. He built it as a private act of grief and gave it over to the Church of Ireland. The church is his headstone, set at her birthplace, at a scale that says something about the money, the feeling, and the distance he had traveled in both senses. He is buried there too, in the grounds, in the end.
Mt Leinster sits behind the village at 795 metres, highest point in the Blackstairs range, and the ridge walk from here runs south into County Wexford in one long sweep. The mountain defines the sky above Myshall and the light on the street in the afternoon. In most villages it would be the headline. Here it is the backdrop.
