04 October 2016

Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan:
suburban parish with Celtic roots

Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, and the Gough family tombs seen from the parish centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I was invited to preach at two Harvest Eucharists yesterday [2 October 2016], in All Saints’ Church, Blackrock, and Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan.

These are two very different suburban Dublin parish churches, and while this was my first time in All Saints’ Church, I had been in Saint Brigid’s before, and it was a pleasure to be invited back to the parish centre for the generous Harvest Lunch.

Karen Poff (Karen Dalton) has engaged in extensive research on the history of Stillorgan and the surrounding locality. On the parish website, she points out that the name Stillorgan comes from Tig Lorcain or the ‘House of Lorcan’ and dates from ca 900. However, before that Stillorgan was first known as Acranakill or Atnakill (the ‘place of the church’).

It is said that a church stood on this site from the early ninth century and that it was a dependency of Saint Brigid’s monastery in Kildare, which was founded in the fifth or sixth century. A stone slab found in Saint Brigid’s graveyard in 1781 was thought to be from a ninth century church. However, the evidence for a church named Saint Brigid’s only dates from 1216.

In 1181, the lands of Stillorgan and Dundrum were granted to Holy Trinity Church (Christ Church Cathedral), Dublin, as part of the Manor of Kill o’ the Grange.

When Walter de Ridelsford founded a convent at Graney, Co Kildare, ca 1200, he endowed it with the churches of Kilmacud and Bray. The convent continued to hold the church at Kilmacud until the dissolution of the monastic houses at the Reformation. The tithes were then granted to the Lord Deputy, Sir Anthony St Leger. He in turn sold then to the de Bathe family of Drumcondra, who then assigned them to Christ Church Cathedral.

Meanwhile, in 1216, Raymond Carew of Stillorgan granted Saint Brigid’s to the Priory of the Holy Trinity or Christ Church Cathedral, along with the church lands. From then, Saint Brigid’s was attached to the church in Kill o’ the Grange until the Reformation, although Saint Brigid’s Church was in ruins by 1500.

After the Reformation, the Deans of Christ Church Cathedral continued to appoint the clergy to Saint Brigid’s, although Stillorgan was part of Monkstown parish from the 16th century and Saint Brigid’s was still in ruins in 1590.

In 1578, the Wingfield family, later of Powerscourt, acquired some lands in Stillorgan, along with the ruined church and the leased the Manor and lands of Stillorgan to the Wolverston family in 1587. James Wolverston devoted himself to the ‘improvement of his property at Stillorgan,’ and when he died in 1609 he was buried at Stillorgan church.

The Parishes of Booterstown, Blackrock, Stillorgan, Kilmacud, Dundrum, Donnybrook and Irishtown were established in 1616. When William Petty drew up his first map of Co Dublin in 1655, Stillorgan was in the Parish of Kill. By 1660, Saint Brigid’s is described as a church surrounded by trees, and the parish of Stillorgan and Kilmacud was united to Monkstown.

In 1684, Sir Joshua Allen acquired Stillorgan and its manor He was a master builder, and was Sheriff, Alderman and then Mayor of Dublin. He moved to Chester, but returned to Ireland after the Battle of the Boyne and died shortly afterwards in 1691.

Inside Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan … the present church was built through the generosity of the Allen family in 1706-1712 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Stillorgan began to develop as a village after Captain John Allen (1660-1726), later the first Viscount Allen, built Stillorgan House in 1695, when he received a royal patent to enclose a demesne and deer park. Stillorgan Park and house probably stood on the site of the present Stillorgan House (Rehab Ireland).

John Allen was High Sheriff of Co Dublin in 1691, and was MP for Co Dublin three times (1692-1693, 1703-1713 and 1715-1717) and in intervening years he was MP for Co Carlow (1695-1703) and Co Wicklow (1713-1715).

From 1706 to 1712, John Allen helped to rebuild Saint Brigid’s Church with the support of Archbishop William King. In 1717, he was given the titles of Viscount Allen in Co Kildare and Baron Allen of Stillorgan in Co Dublin. His wife Mary FitzGerald was a granddaughter of George FitzGerald, 16th Earl of Kildare. When he died in 1726, his son Joshua Allen (1685-1742), MP for Co Kildare (1709-1727) became the 2nd Viscount Allen.

When the family title eventually passed to distant cousins for want of a male heir, he Stillorgan estates were inherited by the second viscount’s daughter, Elizabeth Allen, who married John Proby (1720-1772) in 1750, and two years later he was given the title of Baron Carysfort. Stillorgan remained a mainly rural and agricultural area in the 18th and 19th centuries, with additional employment provided by a local brewery in which the Guinness family had an interest.

By 1760, Saint Brigid’s has fallen into disrepair once again and needed to be rebuilt. In 1762, Stillorgan was separated from Monkstown to form an independent parish, and in 1762 the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church Cathedral transferred the tithes to the incumbent.

In 1781, the parish boundaries were realigned once more, and Booterstown, including Blackrock, Stillorgan, Kilmacud and Dundrum, was separated from Donnybrook.

In 1812, the church was restored extensively, and north aisle and tower were added to Saint Brigid’s Church with a loan of £800 from the Board of First Fruits. Two schoolrooms, a schoolhouse and a residence for a schoolmaster and schoolmistress were built in 1820.

With the death of Joshua William Allen (1782-1845), 6th Viscount Allen, in 1845, the Allen titles came to an end. The last Allen family land holdings in Stillorgan were sold off in 1851, and their former house was demolished in 1880-1887.

When Archbishop William Whately died in 1863, a memorial window was erected in Saint Bigid’s Church, Co. Dublin. In 1874, there was a proposal to remove tower, galleries and vestibule in Saint Brigids’ Church, but this was never carried out.

The rectory at Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, was designed by James Franklin Fuller (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The rectory at Saint Brigid’s dates from 1881, and the architect was James Franklin Fuller. The old glebe house was sold to James O’Brien in 1889 and its name was changed to Saint Ita’s.

James Franklin Fuller (1835-1924) was born in Glashnacree, near Kenmare, Co Kerry, and went to school in Blackrock, Co Cork, with the architect Thomas Newenham Deane. Fuller trained as architect in Southampton and London, and worked with William Burges before returning to Ireland in 1861. He became a district architect with the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and set up his own office at 179 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, at the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869.

In 1871 he became architect to the Representative Church Body (RCB) for the dioceses of Dublin, Glendalough, Kildare, Meath, Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin, and held that post for 42 years until his resignation in 1913. In addition, he was also architect to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, the Benchers of King’s Inns and the National Board of Education. His pupils and assistants included George Francis Beckett, Laurence Aloysius McDonnell and Richard George Thompson.

As a writer, he published several novels, as well as articles on genealogy, heraldry and antiquarian subjects. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (FRSAI, 1915), a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA, 1915), and an active member of the Kerry Archaeological Association. He died at his house at 51 Eglinton Road, Dublin, in 1924.

Canon Ernest Henry Lewis-Crosby (1864-1961), the last chaplain to a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, became the Rector of Stillorgan in 1923. He was a member of the Cornwall family of Rathmore House, Naas, Co Kildare, who are commemorated in windows and memorials in Saint Brigid’s. He was later Dean of Christ Church Cathedral (1938-1961).

The graves in the churchyard include those of the Gough family of Saint Helen’s, and Bishop Evelyn Charles Darby Hodges (1887-1980), a former principal of the Church of Ireland Theological College (1928-1942) and a former Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe (1944-1960). In his retirement, he was priest-in-charge of Saint Andrew's, Dublin (1965-1971), where his father, the Revd William Henry Hodges, had been curate almost a century earlier (1889-1991).

In 1978, All Saints’, Blackrock, was united with Saint Brigid’s, Stillorgan, and the present rector is the Revd Ian Gallagher, who was instituted in 2001. A new Parish Centre was built at Saint Brigid’s in 1994, and was opened by President Mary Robinson and Archbishop Donald Caird. There, during the Harvest Lunch yesterday afternoon, many reminiscences of the parish and its clergy were shared.

The grave of Bishop EC Hodges, a former principal of the Church of Ireland Theological College, in Saint Brigid’s Churchyard, Stillorgan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your notes regarding the Glebe of Stillorgan. My direct ancestors, the Warren family (Richard, Peter and Nathaniel Warren) appear to have leased the Glebe from the late 1600s through to 1795 (Nathaniel's death). Two of his daughters by his first marriage, Ann and Sarah Warren appear to have leased it in the 1820s. I am resident of Adelaide South Australia, so it is slow going in putting together the family history, but I am amazed at the availability of records. I will be in Ireland in late September and I hope to undertake further research
Jeanette

Unknown said...

Dear Jeanette,

The Warren's didn't own the house in Patrick Comerford's Article, they owned the house next door named Wood View from C.1770, though they leased land here from Lady Allen C.1750 ascribed to a Peter & Ann Warren. Ann and Sarah Warren lived in Wood View only briefly before leasing it to the Revd. Rawdon Greene in 1837, formerly of the Glebe House, Blackrock, which was the Glebe for Saint Brigid's Church. See Historical Stillorgan FaceBook.

Declan McGinn,
Resident,
Wood View House,
Road of Saint Brigid's Church,
Stillorgan.

Unknown said...

Dear Jeanette,

The Warren's didn't own the house in Patrick Comerford's Article, they owned the house next door named Wood View from C.1770, though they leased land here from Lady Allen C.1750 ascribed to a Peter & Ann Warren. Ann and Sarah Warren lived in Wood View only briefly before leasing it to the Revd. Rawdon Greene in 1837, formerly of the Glebe House, Blackrock, which was the Glebe for Saint Brigid's Church. See Historical Stillorgan FaceBook.

Declan McGinn,
Resident,
Wood View House,
Road of Saint Brigid's Church,
Stillorgan.

Unknown said...

Thank you for this very interesting, worthwhile history. I moved to Dunstaffnage Hall, near St Brigid's Church, only a few months ago. Rev Gallagher delivers a warm, inviting sermon, and the community is very nice, welcoming. Having a fuller sense of the history means a good deal and adds to one's appreciation.

Patricia Egan
Margaret Comerford's great granddaughter

Anonymous said...

UPDATE: Rev Canon Ian Gallagher and his wife, Hillary, retired from St Brigid's and All Saints Parish in 2022. In 2023, Rev Kevin Conroy and his wife, Olive, assumed leadership of St Brigid's and All Saints Parish.