St Finbarrs Cathedral
- December 4, 2002
- Rated 5 of 5 by
eros from Cork, Ireland, Ireland
The stark precision of nineteenth-century Gothic which is repeated time and again in the city's churches may not be to everyone's taste, but here it undeniably gives the city a rhythmic architectural cohesion. Both Pugin and Pain are very much in evidence, Pugin in the brilliant Revivalist essay of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul on Friar Matthew Quay, with its handsome lantern spire, and Pain in St. Patrick's Church on Lower Glanmire Road. Best of all is William Burges' St. Finbarr's Cathedral (built 1867–79), obsessively detailed, with its impressive French Gothic spire providing a grand silhouette on the southwesternly shoulder of the city.
From journal Cork an Emerald Paradise