Meeting-house, Dublin South City, Co. Dublin

Co. Dublin |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Meeting-house, Dublin South City, Co. Dublin

Somewhere in Dublin's south city there survives a meeting house belonging to one of the more quietly unusual Christian communities ever to establish itself in Ireland.

The Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination that traces its origins to fifteenth-century Bohemia and predates the Reformation by several decades, set down roots in the Irish capital in the mid-eighteenth century, at a moment when the city was expanding rapidly and its streets were being redrawn on paper by cartographers as well as by builders.

The foundation stone was laid on 29 November 1754, and the meeting house was opened for membership less than five months later, on 3 April 1755. Its early existence is confirmed by one of the most authoritative visual records of Georgian Dublin: John Rocque's detailed map of the city, surveyed and published in 1756, which marks the building among the streets and plots of the south city. A school room and vestry were added in 1798, suggesting the congregation had grown sufficiently to require dedicated space for both education and administration. By 1838 the fabric of the building had deteriorated enough to warrant extensive repairs, indicating it had been in continuous use for the better part of a century by that point. The Moravians were known elsewhere in these islands for establishing tightly knit, self-contained communities, and while Dublin never became one of their model settlements in the way that places like Gracehill in County Antrim did, the presence of a purpose-built meeting house in the capital points to a congregation of some organisational ambition.

The surviving record does not specify the precise street address, so locating the building requires some cross-referencing with Rocque's 1756 map, which is widely available through digital archives including those held by Trinity College Dublin. Researchers and curious walkers who enjoy tracing the city's older grain will find the map a useful guide to where the plot likely sat. If the structure or its site is still identifiable on the ground, it would appear as an eighteenth-century build modified in the late Georgian period, set within a part of the city whose street pattern still broadly reflects the layout Rocque recorded.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Meeting-house, Dublin South City, Co. Dublin. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement