St James's former Protestant
Church and Graveyard, James's Street, Dublin, with monument to Sir Toby Butler,
and tower of nearby Catholic St James's Church in centre background (photograph Sean
J Murphy)
What is the connection between St James's Church in Dublin
and Archbishop Thomas Becket? And with the pilgrimage to Compostela in
Spain? About how many people are buried in St James's Graveyard? Who
was Sir Toby Butler? Why were Catholics buried in a Protestant
Graveyard? How do you establish if any of your relatives are buried
there? What is St James's Church currently used for? Read on if you
wish to find out.
New
Book: A History of St James's Church and Graveyard, Dublin, From the
12th to 21st Centuries, second edition in paperback and hardback
formats available from Amazon UK, Spain, France, Germany and US (prices vary).
Foundation of St James's Church
The story of St James’s Church in Dublin’s Liberties district
begins with the murder of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury,
carried out by four knights of King Henry II in 1170. As part of his
penance, Henry founded an abbey dedicated to St Thomas the Martyr in
Dublin in 1177, from which Thomas Street derives its name. About 1190
St James’s Church was built on land donated by Henry Tyrrell and with
its sister church of St Catherine, St James’s was attached to St
Thomas’s Abbey.
Dublin's St James’s Church was also associated with the great
pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Compostela is the
reputed burial place of St James the Apostle and hence a great draw for
religious travellers. As in other European cities, intending pilgrims
would have visited St James's Church in James's Street in Dublin before
embarking for Compostela, a custom which has been revived at St James's Catholic Church in modern times (http://stjamesparish.ie).
In
the course of the Reformation of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century St
Thomas’s Abbey was dissolved and St James’s became a Protestant church
under the newly established Church of Ireland. The present St James’s
Church was designed by the architect Joseph Welland and
opened in 1860. Having occupied various locations, the current Catholic
St James’s Church was opened in 1854, on the other side of
James’s Street to the its Protestant counterpart, and remains in
religious use. Both churches are
Gothic in style, reflecting the influence of Pugin, the ‘apostle of the
Gothic Revival’ in the nineteenth century.
The Penal Era
A
feature of the era of the Penal Laws was that Catholics, while allowed
to have chapels, were not permitted to maintain their own graveyards.
Reflecting a situation which existed in other city parishes, the large
graveyard behind the Protestant St James’s Church was used by Catholics
also. Indeed as Dublin ceased to be a city with a Protestant majority
in the eighteenth century, Catholic burials began to outnumber
Protestant ones, and a majority of burials in St James's Graveyard are
in fact of Catholics.
A fair was formerly held in James’s Street
around St James’s Day on 25 July, when relatives decorated the graves
of deceased family members. To this day the local community remembers
the custom of carrying a coffin three times around the James’s Street
Fountain before entering the graveyard. It has plausibly been suggested
that the origin of this custom lay in the fact that Catholic clergy
were refused entry to the graveyard during burials and took the
opportunity to say prayers for the deceased while circling the Fountain.
Burials in St James's Graveyard
St James’s Graveyard also
remained in use much longer than other city burial places, the last
interment being as recent as 1989. In the course of its long history of
use
from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries, St James's Graveyard
received about 100,000 burials. This is an approximate figure
calculated by the
writer from surviving burial registers and extrapolation, but is
certainly more accurate than other totals offered, ranging from 30,000
to 300,000. Notable
individuals buried in the
graveyard include Sir Toby Butler, the courtesan Margaret (Peg) Leeson,
Mother Mary
Bellew, the founder of Power’s Distillery James
Power, Sergeant-Major John Lucas VC, the 1916
casualty Volunteer John J O’Grady and Guinness Managing Director Sir
William Haldane Porter (for further information see publications listed
below).
St James's
Church and James's Street, Rocque's Map of Dublin, 1756
Closure of St James's Church and Graveyard
Due to
decline in numbers of the Protestant congregation, St James’s Church
was closed as a place of worship in 1963. Thereafter the church was
cleared of its furniture and fittings and used for commercial purposes,
first as a cash-and-carry and then by Lighting World, which ceased
business in 2009. In 1987-88 a state-sponsored community
project, of whose committee the writer had the honour to serve as
chairman, tidied
up the graveyard and recorded its inscriptions (see first two
publications listed below). Thereafter St James's
Graveyard fell back into a state of neglect until acquired in 2010 by
Dublin City Council, which committed itself to a programme of
conservation works with a view hopefully to re-opening the site to
public access. Unfortunately, as of July 2024 St James's Graveyard has
been allowed to fall into neglect again and a large part is
covered with Ragwort, a noxious and invasive weed, meaning that the
site is to all intents and purposes inaccessible and most gravestones
cannot be read. Senior management of Dublin City Council has noted the
writer's concerns but will not discuss them further.
St James's Graveyard July 2024, restored Butler monument visible, but site
mostly overgrown with weeds and inaccessible (photograph Sean J Murphy)
Pearse Lyons Distillery
In 2013 St James's Church was acquired by Dr Pearse Lyons of
Alltech. Dr Lyons and his wife Deirdre Lyons oversaw a meticulous
restoration of St James's Church and converted the building into the
Pearse Lyons Distillery, which opened in 2017 (https://www.pearselyonsdistillery.com).
Two notable features of
the restored St James's Church are a replacement glass spire which is
lit at night and a stained glass window representing the Santiago
pilgrimage. Note that only paying Distillery customers are allowed to
enter St James's Church and that permission to visit St James's
Graveyard must be sought from Dublin City Council.
Dr Lyons's family has
strong connections with the Liberties district and the writer
confirmed that his
grandfather,
John Hubert Lyons (died 1948), and eight other members of the family
are buried in St James's Graveyard. It has further been established
that John Hubert Lyons was baptised in the nearby Catholic St James’s
Church in 1887, at which time the Lyons family was resident at 1 Echlin
Street Buildings, across the road from Catholic St James and around the
corner from Protestant St James. Again, it should be noted that the
custom of Catholics being buried in Protestant graveyards has
continued even in modern times.
St James's Church, now housing the Pearse Lyons Distillery, with
replacement glass spire lit at night (photograph Sean J Murphy)
Historical Research
The writer has been engaged in research relating to St
James's
Church and Graveyard from the time of his involvement in the St James's
Graveyard Project 1987-88. Most recently I carried out commissioned
work for Dr Pearse Lyons, before his death in
2018. In March 2022 Kilmainham Tales Teo published my book, A History of St James's Church and Graveyard, Dublin, From the 12th to 21st Centuries, which by kind permission
incorporated research carried out for the late Dr Lyons. Due
to the sad death of my publisher, Mícheál Ó Doibhilín, in July 2022 this book went
out of print. A
second edition of the book in paperback and hardback formats was
published independently in 2023 and can be ordered from Amazon UK, Spain,
France, Germany and US (prices vary).
Copies of the book are available in a few Dublin bookshops priced about
€12.50, and the work can also be read in some Dublin libraries. See also the wroter's freely accessible historical articles on St
James's Church, Graveyard and associations
which are linked at the bottom of this page.
Unfortunately, unauthorised
and inadequately acknowledged use of content from my book, A
History of St James’s Church and Graveyard, Dublin,
was made in an audio guide to St
James’s Church and Graveyard produced
by Abarta Heritage for
Dublin City Council
(https://www.abartaheritage.ie/st-james-church-graveyard-audio-guide). While the matter has not been resolved to my satisfaction, a small token was offered in the form of the
following notice added to
the above mentioned Abarta webpage: ‘Special thanks to genealogist,
lecturer and author Sean Murphy for his valuable research into the
history of St James’s Church & Graveyard.’ Dublin City
Council’s
St James’s Graveyard
Project website, badly
composed and not apparently revised since 2019, has been periodically
offline and is not accessible at the time of writing in July 2024
(https://www.stjamesgraveyard.ie).
Checking Burials in St
James's Graveyard
How does one find out if an individual is buried in St James's
Graveyard? Bearing in mind that only a small minority of burial places
are
marked with permanent memorials, firstly check the transcription of
inscriptions from St James's Graveyard (first item in publications list
below). St James's Graveyard burial registers survive from 1742
and can be searched online from that date until 1883 at https://www.irishgenealogy.ie
('Church Records'). From 1884 until the last burial in St James's
Graveyard
in 1989, the original burial registers can be searched at the
Representative Church Body Library, Braemor Park, Churchtown, Dublin (https://www.ireland.anglican.org/about/rcb-library).
Unfortunately there is no plot register to show where graves without
memorials are located and the burial registers generally give date of
burial, name and address only, in the later period providing age and
religion also. Relatives of those buried there and others who need to
access St
James's Graveyard should apply to the Parks Department of Dublin City
Council (https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/parks). General advice on tracing Irish ancestors can be found in the author's Primer in Irish Genealogy (free download at http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/epubs, 9th item).
In conclusion,
those who wish to contact the author with queries or to offer information
concerning St James's Church and Graveyard can reach me either by email sjbmurphy1951@gmail.com or at
the postal address listed at the end of this page.
Sean J Murphy
25 November 2019, last revised St James's Day, 25 July 2024
St James-related
publications, articles and a full book which can be downloaded freely in PDF
format or read online:
St
James's Graveyard Project, Memorial
Inscriptions from St James's Graveyard Dublin,
Dublin 1988,
(a full
listing of the inscriptions with location map, as compiled by
the
project team 1987-88,
amended and digitised by
the present writer,
2012, with a further update in progress).
Same,
St James's Graveyard
Project, St James's Graveyard, Dublin: History and Associations,
Dublin 1988,
(the
project booklet compiled by
the supervisor and the present writer, note that this is now out of date).
Sean J
Murphy, 'Burying Poor and Gentry: St James's Church and Graveyard,
Dublin, Twelfth to Twenty-First Centuries', 2018
(this is the most up to date article on the history of the church and graveyard).
Same, 'St
James and Irish Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela', 2018.
Same, '1916
Rebel John J O'Grady Buried in St James's Graveyard, Dublin', 2016.
Same,
'Rediscovery of Memorial to Victoria Cross Holder Sergeant-Major John
Lucas in St James’s Graveyard, Dublin', 2017.
Same,
'The Story of St James's Fair', 2019.
Same, 'Distillers and St James's Church and Graveyard', 2020.
Same, 'Sir Toby Butler, Drafter of the Treaty of Limerick 1691', 2021,
(marking the tercentenary of his death).
Same, 'St James's Parish: Two Churches, One Graveyard', 2022
This
is an independent webpage maintained by Sean J Murphy, who can be
contacted by email
at sjbmurphy1951@gmail.com.
Copyright
© 2012-24 Sean J Murphy, Centre for Irish Genealogical and Historical
Studies, Carraig, Cliff Road, Windgates, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland.
This work may be freely stored on library systems for reader use and archiving and
reproduced offline for fair personal and educational use, with proper
acknowledgement.
