Museums, Walking, Cathedral in Waterford

My day today consisted of visiting museums, taking a walking tour, and checking out another cathedral.

The Vikings established Waterford as a walled town of a roughly triangular shape. I don’t think the shape had any superstitious or other human-based significance. The lay of the land, and particularly the intersecting rivers, now called the River Suir and John’s River, played a large part in determining that shape.

Today, the city calls the area where the Viking town stood “The Viking Triangle.” I wanted to come up with a joke alleging some connection to the Bermuda Triangle, but I couldn’t think of one.

Then again, what the heck did happen to the Vikings and their Viking ships? It makes you think, doesn’t it? And if it does make you think, you’re apparently capable of believing any ridiculous nonsense you hear or read. If that describes you, all I’ll say is, get your damned vaccine shots already. They are not part of some government or globalist plot to bring about a new world order.

Where was I? Sometimes I get lost and have to dig myself out of the pile of claptrap I occasionally feel the need to address in case any of the crazies find this journal.

Oh, yes. The Viking Triangle. A cluster of five museums that operate under the umbrella title of Waterford Treasures is located there.

Waterford Treasures sells either single tickets for each museum or a combo pass that normally includes all five. I said “normally” because, today, one of them, “The King of the Vikings,” had very limited availability for some unstated reason and, therefore was excluded from the pass.

The pass also includes a walking tour. The tour mostly confined itself to the Viking Triangle, but it very briefly skirted along the outside of where the walls were.

Introductions done, let’s get into it.

Bishop’s Palace (Waterford Treasures Museums)

I imagine the Bishop’s Palace served at one time as a palace for a bishop. Otherwise, the name is rather fanciful and inane. Today, it serves as a Waterford history museum, with paintings, tableware, text panels and other items presenting local Georgian and Victorian history. One room takes the history up to the 1970s.

The museum, which sits right across the street from the Waterford Crystal factory, also contains one of the world’s, or maybe the world’s largest collection of antique Waterford Crystal. Its oldest piece is a Penrose decanter. It’s not only the museum’s oldest piece, it’s also the oldest surviving piece of Waterford glass in the world. I don’t know when the decanter dates from, but as I mentioned yesterday, the Penroses founded Waterford Crystal.

One room in the Bishop’s Palace houses a small theatre. In front of white walls along two of the sides sit a few glass cylinders containing pieces of antique Waterford Crystal. The front wall is white and unobstructed. Visitors to the theatre, including me, don 3D glasses and wireless headphones.

The film projects 3D animations on the front wall and 2D animations on the two side walls. It tells the early history of Waterford Crystal. The daughter of one of the Penrose founders narrates the story in the first person. Okay, it’s not the actual daughter. A voice actress portrays her. The daughter probably died somewhere around a couple of centuries or more ago, long before anyone had the means to record her voice. What’s more, I’m not entirely certain the filmmakers didn’t invent a fictional daughter as a device to deliver the narrative.

With the 3D glasses, objects flew up close to my face and I travelled through doors. At appropriate moments in the film, lights lit the crystal objects in the cylindrical display cases. My description of the theatre probably sounds hokey, but it was quite restrained and well done. I don’t know about anyone else, but I appreciated the use of the technology.

One thing the film taught me is that the ungrateful, upstart Americans* were indirectly responsible for some of Waterford Crystal’s success around 1776. Because England spent a lot of money fighting the Americans in the American Revolution, the King of England had to find a way to cover the costs. As one measure, he imposed a hefty excise tax on the export of English glass. I don’t know what stroke of ignorance led him to tax exports, which brought money into the country, but he did.

The good part for Waterford is that the King did not charge the tax on exports from Ireland. All of a sudden, it became very profitable to make and export glass products from Ireland rather than England. Waterford Crystal took advantage of that.

(*I’m Canadian. The current head of state of Canada is the King of Canada. Until recently, the Queen of Canada held that role. Of course, that isn’t (wasn’t) their only formal job title. They also hold (held) the title of King (Queen) of Great Britain, as well as King (Queen) of a bunch of other British Commonwealth countries. But Canada is, obviously, the most important one.)

Medieval Museum (Waterford Treasures Museums)

The Medieval Museum tells the story of the rise to fame of the Beatles and Rolling Stones.

Nah, I’m obviously pulling your leg. Not literally, of course. I don’t want anyone to charge me with assault for pulling their leg.

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that the museum contains exhibits on the medieval history of Waterford.

Two of the rooms are in the basement. They are in situ excavated rooms of medieval buildings. Despite being in the basement now, they were at street level during medieval times.

Damn, dust can really pile up on you if you don’t regularly clean it up, can’t it? I wonder how many more years I have until I won’t be able to stand up in my condo. But, enough about that.

The museum’s prized possessions are some old vestments decorated heavily with real gold threads. In truth, the museum doesn’t own them. The Catholic Church loaned them to the museum, I think permanently.

Yesterday, and down below in the Walking Tour section of this post, I discussed/discuss James Rice, the 15th-century rich dude with the macabre tomb. Purgatory terrified him. According to the Catholic church in his days, one of the ways to reduce your time in purgatory was to donate generously to the church. Convenient for the church, that, wasn’t it?

To that end, James Rice commissioned some literally richly decorated vestments, which had considerable gold content. He donated them to the medieval cathedral that used to stand where Christ Church Cathedral stands today. The church used them for, I think it was, a couple of centuries. Someone can check my arithmetic.

But sometime during the Reformation, when the English tried to convert the Irish to Protestantism and the English did their best to destroy all Catholic symbolism, the vestments went missing.

For many years people assumed that someone stole the vestments and melted down the gold for their personal wealth. However, something like, I think it was, 120 years after the vestments went missing, the old medieval church was demolished in the late 18th century to make way for the current Christ Church Cathedral.

When they pulled up the old floor, they found a big iron box underneath it. Inside the box, carefully wrapped, sat the vestments, perfectly preserved.

it seems that the church hid them there to protect them. When the English came in to get rid of Catholicism they ransacked the church and took from it all the gold and silver treasures they found there. But they never found the vestments.

It’s hard to see the vestments clearly today because the museum keeps them behind glass in a room with a very low light level to protect the dyes. But touch screens in the room provide access to images of the vestments, with the advantage of being able to zoom in on the details.

Irish Museum of Time (Waterford Treasures Museums)

The Irish Museum of Time is a fun little museum occupying two small rooms spread over two floors. Those rooms contain a large collection of old grandfather clocks, table clocks, pocket watches, and other timepieces.

The museum’s oldest grandfather clock dates from 1690. It’s in a glass case and the reflections off the glass rendered a picture of it pointless. But I included here a picture of a grandfather clock that dates from the middle of the 19th century.

The lower floor of the museum displays only Irish timepieces. But the room upstairs contains an international collection, along with a few more Irish pieces.

Irish Silver Museum (Waterford Treasures Museums)

The Irish Silver Museum is also a two-room museum but on only one floor. The first room displays various silver items—religious articles, jewelry, tableware, etc.—arranged chronologically according to when they were made. The pieces date from the Viking era up to more modern times (I don’t know the date of their most recent display piece.)

The second room displays the uses to which the very rich put silver. The very rich aren’t like you and me. Unless, of course, you are very rich, in which case they are exactly like you.

An elaborately set table includes candlesticks, a candelabra, cutlery, bowls, and other tableware. The other display cases in the second room present a variety of silver pieces typically owned only by very rich people, maybe someone like you.

Walking Tour

If you read the posts in this journal from the past few days, you know I lucked into a few private or semi-private tours simply because I was the only one or one of only two visitors to show up for the tour. That wasn’t the case on today’s walking tour. About a couple dozen people went on it. Curses. Don’t they know it’s all about me?

As I said above, the tour mostly stuck to the Viking Triangle. For a little over 45 minutes, as we walked along, the guide showed us some of the few segments of the wall still standing, pointed out some of the old buildings and other sights, and told us a little of the history behind them all.

Oh, about that wall. The few remaining portions of it are not from the Viking wall, but rather an Anglo-Norman wall. The Viking wall was wooden. When the Anglo-Normans took over they tore down the Viking wall and erected a stone wall in its place.

The tour took in some of the sights I saw yesterday, but this time I got more information. And, possibly a correction about James Rice’s tomb. Or maybe the guide today was wrong.

Remember in the Christ Church Cathedral section of yesterday’s post I told you that James Rice instructed that, a year after his death, his body should be dug up and used as a model to create a cadaver effigy on the top of his tomb, which now resides in Christ Church Cathedral? Well, that might be wrong.

I got that information from a tour book I use on this trip. But as part of the walking tour, the guide took us into Christ Church Cathedral. There, he spoke about John Rice’s tomb and told us that John Rice had the effigy made during his lifetime. I still find that macabre, but maybe not as macabre as the story I relayed yesterday.

Now I don’t know who to believe. I should probably ask another person who claims to know about John Rice’s tomb as a tiebreaker. But what if that person tells me something completely different? What if they tell me, “No, no, no! Both of those stories are completely false. During his lifetime, Elvis Presley invented a time machine, travelled back to the 15th century, made the tomb, left it empty, came back to his own time and arranged to be buried in the empty “John Rice” tomb when he died, which is not at all when history records his death as happening. It was his final joke on the world. Believe me. It’s the truth. Don’t believe the lying, fake news mainstream media!” Then who should I believe?

(If you’re the sort of person who might believe the Elvis story, please reread what I said above about getting your vaccinations.)

Oh, well. I guess I’ll never know the true story.

(Unlike yesterday, I remembered to take a picture today. I posted it near here on this page.)

A few times on my walks yesterday, I passed a long wooden pole with intricate carvings on it. As it happens, Waterford is holding a festival of some sort this weekend. I thought it was part of that festival. Nope.

The guide said it’s a tree that two artists, John Hayes and James Doyle, sculpted in 2017. It’s called the “Dragon Slayer Sword” because they shaped it sort of vaguely like a sword, and it’s huge. A dragon-killing length, as it were. (If you’re the sort of person who believes in the reality of dragons, well, you know.)

They carved the Dragon Slayer Sword out of a single tree. The tree wasn’t cut down. It fell over. As a result, a good chunk of its roots are still on it.

Carvings along the length of two sides depict major events in Waterford’s history from the late eighth century to the late thirteenth century.

Cathedral of the Holy Trinity

I visited the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity because the tour book I use here recommended it.

In 1793, to appease the Irish, who became quite resentful of the British due to the restrictions placed on them by the crown, the King of England allowed the Irish to build Catholic churches again. Irish wine merchants who became wealthy trading wines in Spain sponsored the construction of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in 1796.

To my eye, it’s a so-so cathedral, except for its chandeliers. They are great. Ten crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Waterford Crystal chandeliers, of course.

About Town

I mentioned above that Waterford is hosting a festival of some sort. As I walked around today, I came across a few performances including musical entertainment, dance, and a weird pantomime show.

The latter consisted of two actors, a woman and a man, dressed in beach clothes. The woman flopped around awkwardly on an inflated beach chair-type thingy that looked like a beanbag chair, except more wobbly. While she did that, the man sat on the ground painting something. Although, the man interrupted his painting to help the woman when she had trouble getting out of her inflatable, beanbag-like chair

Then, the two ran after each other in circles opening and closing one big and one small beach umbrella and switching back and forth the music coming out of their boombox as per each of their tastes. (In reality, it was one long recording played on another sound system.) After running around, they returned to their positions of painting and awkward sitting. (I think the painting was already finished before the pantomime started and he was just acting.)

The skit ended with the man displaying his finished painting, which was of the boombox. That’s entertainment.

With the musical performances, even when I couldn’t see where the performance was, I heard music filling the streets. In fact, with my windows open I can hear live music as I type these words in my hotel room.

Yesterday, I promised to tell you if my first impressions of Waterford as a nice, but not fantastic city changed today. They haven’t. If you have the time to spend, definitely visit Waterford. There are interesting things to see here and a few pretty streets to walk along. But if your time is limited and you have to choose between Kilkenny and Waterford, without time to visit both, choose Kilkenny.

With that said, here are some more pictures of Waterford for you to enjoy, or not enjoy depending on your tastes.