Amazing replica of famous Offaly shrine going up for auction and expected to fetch large sum

THE “Adare Manor Replica” of the famous St Manchan's Shrine is up for auction, and is expected to reach a sale price between €20,000 and €30,000.

This beautifully crafted replica is composed of wood, plaster of Paris, gilding and mixed media. It was commissioned around 1850 by Sir William Wilde and presented by him to the 3rd Earl of Dunraven.

It conveys well the magnificence of one of the greatest examples of twelfth-century metalwork to have survived in Ireland.

The original medieval shrine stands in Boher Church in west Offaly (near Leamonaghan where, in the 7th Century, St Manchan founded his monastery) and is greatly loved and revered by the local community.

The replica was displayed at Adare Manor for over a century and was included in the sale of the contents of Adare in 1982.

When first exhibited, in the Dublin Great Exhibition in 1853, the medieval Shrine of St. Manchan attracted enormous interest and several life-size replicas were made around this time.

One of these, based on casts taken by Dr. Alexander Carte, curator of the RDS museum, was (according to Graves), in the collection of Dr. Lentaigne of Dublin.

A wealthy physician, John Francis O'Neill Lentaigne lived at Tallaght demesne, where he had a private museum of antiquities.

His replica, now in the National Museum, gives an idea of how the reliquary originally looked, with its elaborate Romanesque and Viking decoration fully intact.

A similar imaginative version is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The Adare replica is a more faithful copy of the actual shrine. Wilde also commissioned a second replica, which he presented to the Royal Irish Academy.

The auctioneers are Fonsie Mealy of Castlecomer, Kilkenny. The Sale Date is Wednesday, December 7, at 10.15am. The Adare Manor Replica is Lot number 610.