The Late Gothic Mouldings of County Clare
Some County Clare Mouldings
Ennis Franciscan Friary, tomb niche in the south have wall. The mouldings and overall design of this niche suggest architectural connections with other sites in Clare, along with sites in Limerick, Kerry and Galway.
Of all the western counties of Ireland, Clare boasts some of the finest Gothic mouldings. This is most likely due to the widespread availability of good quality limestone.
At Ennis Franciscan Friary we find an elaborate cloister and a number of minutely moulded tombs, along with various items of moulded church furniture such as piscinae. Perhaps this might be expected at a large urban site which benefitted from royal patronage, but smaller sites, such as Rathbourney on the Burren, are unusual in boasting windows and doors articulated with finely carved mouldings.
The wonderful thing about the tough, carboniferous limestone of the area is that it holds detail well. Many of the profiles included in this exhibition are as sharp as the day they were carved. One can gain some idea of the aesthetic at work behind the design of these late Gothic mouldings. They are characterised by elements such as quadrants and hollow chamfers which run uninterrupted along the chamfer planes of features like windows, doors and tomb niches. The mouldings are shallow and small in scale, a design choice perhaps made because of the hardness of the stone into which the elements were carved.
Close study of these Clare mouldings reveals interesting interrelationships between the buildings, both locally and nationally. A look at the mouldings of the transept piscinae at Ennis and Quin suggests that these two works are closely related in design and execution. The much damaged tomb niches ranged along the north and south walls of the nave at Ennis relate in both overall design and in mouldings to tombs at nearby Quin, but also Adare, Askeaton (Limerick), Lislaughtin, Abbeydorney (Kerry), and Kilconnell and Ross Errilly (Galway).
The jamb, arch and hood moulding of the Ennis transept piscina. The double hollow chamfers of the hood are dierctly related to those of the same feature in the same location at Quin.
The jamb, arch and hood moulding of the Quin transept piscina. The moulding of the hollow chamfers and quadrants is more regular here at Quin compared with the Ennis example.
The jamb and arch moulding of one of the very defaced tombs. The tombs were damaged when the wall surface was prepared for plaster in the post medieval period. The double ogee seen here is a relatively unusual moulding in late Gothic Ireland and, along with the overall design, relates this tomb niche directly to others in Kerry and Limerick.
One of the many wall tomb niches at Adare Franciscan Friary, Co. Limerick. This tomb niche is moulded with a double ogee as jamb and arch moulding just as at Ennis. The design here is more nuanced, in that the arch of the wall tomb is three-centred rather than simply round.
The tomb in the north nave wall at Quin. The design of this tomb is very similar to those shown from Ennis and Adare, but here the sculptor has opted to use the most popluar arrangement of mouldings in late medieval Ireland: the quadrant and hollow chamfer.
Again, the overall design of this tomb niche from Ross Errilly reflects the Ennis and Adare examples, but the moulding is much closer to that found at Quin.
The church at Rathbourney on the Burren is remote, but the patron clearly had an eye for a quality mason. The south door and window are treated with fine linear mouldings which catch the light rather like linen folds.
At Rathbourney we find the inclusion of a single ogee moulding, a rarity in Irish late Gothic design. A search through the collection will demonstrate how infrequently these occur.