Clonegam Church, Portlaw, Co. Waterford

The ancestral home of the marquis of Waterford, Curraghmore House near the village of Portlaw is one of Ireland's great country houses. The current house dates from the mid-eighteenth century, but was built on the site of an earlier medieval tower house. The de la Poer family arrived in Ireland in the twelfth century, as part of the Anglo-Norman invasion, and settled near the banks of the River Clodagh, some ten or so miles west of Waterford City. By the eighteenth century the family possessed the title earl of Tyrone, and were granted the current title of marquis of Waterford in 1789. As part of the major restructuring of the estate that took place in the mid 1700s, a new chapel was erected within the estate bounds. 

The present church, known as Clonegam church, was erected in 1741, and subsequently renovated in 1791. The church was affiliated to the Protestant Church of Ireland, the de la Poers having conformed to the established church in the wake of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland. It is a relatively small structure; a single cell three bay detached church, not untypical of many Protestant churches erected in rural Ireland in this period. 

On first view Clonegam resembles more a family mausoleum than a parish church. And in many respects this is true. The church and adjoining graveyard is dominated by monuments to the de la Poer Beresford family. A number of these monuments are especially fine, made of cut stone Kilkenny marble.

This monument dates from 1873, and is dedicated to Florence Grosvenor Rowley, wife of the fifth marquis of Waterford. The marchioness, as she was known, died in 1873 during childbirth. Her grief stricken husband commissioned this monument, designed by an eminent Austrian artist, Joseph Edgar Boehm. The monument, in Kilkenny marble, sits cleverly in a wall niche, and is lit by a skylight in the roof above.