The date stone cut into the entrance arch reads 1673, making it older than much of the surrounding neighbourhood, and it belongs to a community whose presence in Ireland is easy to overlook entirely: the Huguenots, French Protestants who fled persecution in Catholic France and scattered across Protestant Europe in the seventeenth century.

The Huguenots arrived in Ireland in significant numbers following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had previously guaranteed them a degree of religious tolerance. Many settled in Dublin, where they established their own churches, guilds, and civic institutions. The graveyard at No. 10 Merrion Row predates even that major wave of arrivals, its 1673 date stone suggesting that a Huguenot community was already present and organised in Dublin before the worst of the French persecution came. They brought with them skills in weaving, silversmithing, and banking that left a quiet but lasting mark on Irish economic and cultural life, and they maintained their own burial ground as a way of preserving a distinct communal identity in an adopted city.

The graveyard is small and enclosed, tucked just off St Stephen's Green near the junction with Merrion Row. It is not always open to the public, so visiting requires some patience and good timing; it is worth checking access arrangements in advance. The inscriptions on many of the surviving stones carry French surnames, and the quality of the stonecutting reflects the relative prosperity of the community buried here. The gateway itself, with its 1673 date stone, is the most immediately legible piece of history on the site, visible even when the ground beyond is closed.