30th November 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the Consecration of Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork and a short Service online inaugurated a year of celebrations. Marking the anniversary personally, the Bishop of Cork, Dr Paul Colton, and Mrs Susan Colton, commissioned the renowned artist Annie West to paint a contemporary celebration of the Cathedral.

The Bishop and Mrs Colton decided to make a very limited edition – 100 prints in total of the original – available for purchase.

Recently, Bishop Colton presented the Dean of Cork, the Very Reverend Nigel Dunne, with a cheque for €3000, being the proceeds of the sale of the limited edition prints and suggested that the money might be used for something in Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral to mark the sesquicentenary.

The Annie West painting depicts the west front of the Cathedral as it became in the years after the consecration, and as it is today with a gathering of people on the driveway of the Bishop’s House opposite, on their way to a party of joyful celebration and from a Service of Thanksgiving (both of which had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic).

The bunting is based on the flags of Saint Patrick and of the Anglican Communion. Among the crowd are representations of people from the community today, including some choristers and clergy, as well as, in the communion of saints, some of those who were alive at the time of the Consecration in 1870, Bishop John Gregg, Miss Frances Gregg, the Architect William Burges, and some of the workmen who worked on the Cathedral in the 1860s and 1870s.