In this series, Christopher Moriarty delves into the history and architecture of Irish Cathedrals and Churches. This month, he takes us to County Clare, to The Little Ark.

 

In 1849 the parish priest Father Malachy Duggan died in the cholera epidemic that came in the wake of the Famine. His successor was Father Michael Meehan. The nearest church to the community at Kilbaha was five miles away, at Cross and the nearest National School was in Carrigaholt. Westby the landlord and his agent Marcus Keane were fervent evangelical Protestants with strong views on what they regarded as the ‘superstitions’ of Catholicism. Although they established free schools in the parish, they refused to allow the building of a place of worship for Catholics and the priest’s association with the schools was limited to one hour a week - outside the buildings.

In 1851 Father Meehan bought a pair of cottages and converted them to a church, dedicated to St. Patrick. It seems that the purchase was not sufficient to establish ownership within the landlord’s property. Keane obtained a court order and had the cottage-church demolished.

So it seemed that the dry land of the Westby holding was firmly forbidden as far as a church building was concerned. One place was left – the foreshore, between high and low tide which, even in those days, was public rather than private property. Two farm carts, placed end to end on the strand with a covering of sail cloth provided a place where Mass could be celebrated - at least in fine weather.

Inspiration came in 1852. One story is that Father Meehan had taken a bus trip from Kilrush to Kilkee and the horse-drawn bus gave him the idea of a Mass-house on wheels. Another theory is that the source of his inspiration was one of the ‘bathing machines’ at Kilkee in which people modestly changed into their swim-suits and were wheeled down to the water. For a fee of ten pounds, Owen Collins, a carpenter in Carrigaholt, built a wooden cabin with door and glazed windows and mounted it on a four-wheeled cart structure. Too big for the workshop, the Little Ark was assembled on the street.

A great procession conveyed the new church over the seven miles from Carrigaholt to Kilbaha. The Agent would not admit defeat and brought a prosecution against Father Meehan for placing a nuisance at the crossroads at Kilbaha. The Resident Magistrate at Kilkee, guided by a dictionary, ruled that the Little Ark did not constitute a nuisance. Keane appealed the judgement - but lost again. It was a major victory for the priest, who thus became free to hold his worship at the crossroads rather than depending on the state of the tide.

Father Meehan had won a major victory - and for the next five years his Little Ark served well for Mass, for baptism, for marriages and teaching. But while there was shelter from the elements for the priest, the altar and the Sacrament, the people and even the Mass server were kept outside. Which might be no problem in fine weather - but was next to impossible in the rain.

 But the determination of priest and people would achieve very much more than the survival of religious observance under very difficult conditions. Not surprisingly, the Little Ark began to attract attention far from Loop Head. Articles first in the Limerick Leader and then in the Dublin Catholic Telegraph led to widespread publicity. People came from far and wide to see the wonder. The landlord reacted to public outrage and provided a site for a church. The foundation stone was laid on 12 July 1857. One wonders whether Orangeman’s Day was deliberately selected for the event. The building was completed in a little more than a year and dedicated in October 1858. The redoubtable Father Meehan made a fund-raising tour through Ireland, England and the USA and cleared the debt quickly. He died in 1878 at the age of sixty-eight having lived to enjoy ten years of a more peaceful, if less eventful, ministry than he had witnessed when he first came to Kilbaha.

The Little Ark was faithfully preserved. It first stood in a special shelter within the church grounds, then was moved to a position just inside the church door and now stands, with its wheels removed, in an alcove to the left of the altar. A beautiful stained glass window above the main door of the church shows the Ark in use on the strand.

The Ark is a very simple structure, built from large wooden planks and with a wooden roof. The wheels have long since been removed. The windows are large and take up most of the sides of the structure - providing a clear view of the priest by the congregation outside.

Loop Head then and now, although beautiful, is a barren place. The wind and spray from the Atlantic prevent trees from growing, so there is little shelter. Life is still harsh and the population is small, clustered mostly around the village of Kilbaha where that amazing act of faith and resistance to oppression was made more than a hundred and fifty years ago.