Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin
The Cathedral of Christ-Church is a long cruciform building, composed of a nave with a north aisle, transepts, and choir, with a central tower. The southern, transept, measuring ninety feet by twenty-five, is entered by a Norman doorway in good preservation: the tower is a low massive pile, terminating in a pointed roof. The whole of the building has recently been repaired and several improvements made, at an expense of upwards of £8000 from the economy fund. The choir is separated from the nave by an elegant skreen, above which is the organ gallery, and decorated with a noble eastern window of stained glass, representing the armorial bearings of the members of the chapter, and having its lower part ornamented with an enriched border of open work above the altar. The ceiling is intersected with quadrangular mouldings, with heavy bosses at the points of intersection serving to conceal a deviation from the straight line of direction between the entrance and the altar window, which is an irremediable defect in the original construction: a handsome border of tracery work goes round the walls.
There are several remarkable monuments, the greater number of which are placed against the blank south wall of the nave. Among them are one of Strongbow, and of his wife Eva, or of his son, mutilated by the fall of the roof, and placed in its present situation by the Lord-Deputy Sidney, in 1570; a very beautiful monument of Thomas Prior, an early and zealous promoter of the Dublin Society; one of Lord Chancellor Bowes; another of Lord Chancellor Lifford; and a fourth of Robert, Earl of Kildare, who died in 1743; besides those of several successive bishops of Kildare. A very fine monument has been lately erected to the memory of Nathaniel Sneyd, Esq., who was shot by a lunatic while walking in Westmoreland-street. Various eminent prelates of the see of Dublin have been interred within the walls of this church.