26 December 2023

Wandering through
literary homes and
labarynthine laneways
and squares in Rathmines

The houses on Leinster Square were developed by John de Courcy Butler and Arthur Williamson between 1830 and 1857 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

During a Christmas family visit to Dublin last week, I stayed in Rathmines. It was a short overnight stay, but I decided early in the morning to take a stroll back through some of the streets and places I had known in my childhood and teens in the area.

I found myself wandering through Leinster Square and Prince Arthur Terrace, Leinster Road and Leinster Road West, Effra Road and Denmark Hill, parts of Harold’s Cross, around the grounds of Leinster Cricket Club, down Richmond Hill and around Mountpleasant Square.

Leinster Square is hardly a square. It is more of a street – or rather two short streets in a T-shape – off Lower Rathmines Road, just a few steps from Rathmines Town Hall and backing onto the lower end of Leinster Road. The earlier, elegant Georgian and Regency houses were built between 1830 and 1843. No 7 was added in 1852 and No 1 around 1877.

The houses on Prince Arthur Terrace were developed by John de Courcy Butler between 1851 and 1859 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The earlier houses on Leinster Square and Prince Arthur Terrace were designed mainly by the Dublin architect, builder and developer John de Courcy Butler. Although Butler’s early life story is not known, he seems to have become a freeman of Dublin as a member of the Bricklayers’ Guild in 1822. He had his offices in the area of Paradise Row (Wellington Street) and Mountjoy Street between 1830 and 1844.

Butler and his neighbour Arthur Williamson realised the potential of developing the Rathmines area in 1830 and leased adjoining pieces of land near the south corner of Rathmines Road and the future Leinster Road. Between 1830 and 1837, they built six houses each on their plots to form Leinster Terrace, and during that time Butler lived at 8 Leinster Terrace and 10 Leinster Terrace.

Meanwhile, in 1835 they had leased two further plots abutting the eastern boundaries of their existing holdings. Butler built Ormond Villa (later Ulster Lodge), where he lived from 1840 to 1843, and Williamson built Berlin Cottage. Butler leased the two adjoining plots to the east of Ormond Villa and Berlin Cottage in 1838, and built Ulster Terrace and Connaught Terrace.

Eventually these developments were renamed Leinster Square and they were renumbered consecutively.

Butler also leased Rookville, a large property beside the south side of the future Leinster Square, in 1841. He lived in the house while he developed the east portion of its grounds fronting Rathmines Road as Ormond Terrace ca 1847.

Finally, around 1851, Butler demolished Rookville and built Prince Arthur Terrace on the west portion of its grounds, laying out a garden between it and Ormond Terrace. Prince Arthur Terrace was designed and developed by Butler in two stages, between 1851 and 1853 and then between 1856 and 1859, when No 7 was added.

The residents of Leinster Square included James Stephens, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy and the telescope builders Thomas and Howard Grubb (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Butler lived at 1 Prince Arthur Terrace in 1852, and then moved to Ulster Lodge, 20 Leinster Square, Rathmines, where he lived from 1853 until he died in 1880.

Meanwhile, at the time he was building Ormond Terrace, Butler became a founding Commissioner of Rathmines Township in 1847, and continued to hold office for 28 years. During those years he was also the contractor for Queen's College, Cork, built for the Board of Public Works in 1846-1849. He retired in 1871 and died on 11 February 1880.

Butler’s partner in these developments in Rathmines was the Dublin builder and architect Arthur Williamson, who came from an important Armagh family of architects. Williamson also had family ties with Francis Johnston, and was an executor of Johnston’s will of 1829. His early contracts included working with Thomas Duff at Emo Court in 1822-1831, where they prepared designs for the north and south porticos, for the north front, for the drawing room ceiling and for an ice-house.

Butler and Williamson were neighbours in the Paradise Row and Mountjoy Street area of Dublin when they leased adjoining sites in Rathmines to build the terrace of 12 houses named Leinster Terrace. While Butler built Ormond Villa (later Ulster Lodge), Williamson built Berlin Cottage. The terrace and the two detached houses eventually became part of Leinster Square.

After Williamson died in November 1846, Butler continued to develop Leinster Square and Prince Arthur Terrace.

The numbers of the houses on Leinster Square have changed over the years, but it is interesting to try trace who lived in these houses over the years.

The author and nationalist leader James Stephens (1825-1901) once lived in what is now No 2 Leinster Square.

The poet, journalist and nationalist leader, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903) once lived in No 4. Duffy later emigrated to Australia, became Premier of Victoria, and was knighted. He died in Nice, but was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

The telescope manufacturers, Thomas Grubb (1800-1878), a Quaker from Portlaw, Co Waterford, and his son, Sir Howard Grubb (1844-1931), lived at No 21 and No 23 Leinster Square. The Grubb Telescope Company was built at Observatory Lane, Rathmines, by the Grubbs in the 1860s. World famous, it produced, what was then the largest refracting telescope in the world for the Imperial and Royal Observatory in Vienna. Grubb telescopes are still in use around the world, including those in the observatories in Armagh, Dunsink and Cape Town.

No 3 Prince Arthur Terrace, Rathmines … an early childhood home of Lefcadio Hearn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Greek-born Irish writer Patricio Lafcadio Hearne, who became a Japanese citizen and died as Koizumi Yakumo, spent part of his childhood in homes of his aunt Sarah Brenane on both Leinster Square and Prince Arthur Terrace.

Lafcadio Hearn was the son an Irish father and a Greek mother. He was given his unusual middle name because he was born on 27 June 1859 on the island of Santa Maura, also known as Lefkas, Levkas or Lefkada, in the Ionian Islands. His father, Charles Bush Hearn (1818-1866), from Clara, Co Offaly, was an Irish-born naval surgeon and the grandson of a Church of Ireland Archdeacon of Cashel; his mother was a Greek woman, Rosa Antoniou Kassimatis. They met when Charles Hearn was stationed on the island of Cerigo or Kythira.

The couple eloped and were married in a Greek Orthodox Church on 25 November 1849. Patrick Lefcadio Hearn, their second son, was born on 27 June 1850, and he was baptised Patrikios Lefcadios Hearn (Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν) in Aghia Paraskevi Church.

When his father was reassigned from the Ionian Islands to the West Indies the following year, his mother brought the child to Dublin and they moved into the home of her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Hearn, at 48 Lower Gardiner Street, where she was living with her daughters Susan and Jane.

When Charles Hearn returned to Dublin in October 1853, another child was conceived and was named Daniel James Hearn. However, the marriage collapsed, and when Rosa left Dublin for Kefalonia their marriage was annulled on a technicality.

Rosa later married Giovanni Cavallini, a Greek citizen of Italian descent who became the British-appointed Governor of the tiny island of Antikythera (Cerigotto). She died in Corfu in 1882.

Meanwhile, the young Patrick Lefcadio Hearn had moved into the home of his grandmother’s sister, Sarah Brenane. She was the widow of Captain Justin Brenane and had converted to Roman Catholicism. The child lived with her in Rathmines, first at 30 Leinster Square (1852-1853), which was then numbered 21, and then at 3 Prince Arthur Terrace (1853-1855), before moving on to 73 Upper Leeson Street.

A plaque at 3 Prince Arthur Terrace remembers a childhood home of Lefcadio Hearn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Hearn lived in the US from the age of 19, and wrote widely about New Orleans. However, he is best known for the years he spent in Japan. He moved to Japan in 1890 and adopted the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo. He is credited with introducing many Westerners to the life and culture of the Japanese, including their ghost stories, lyric forms, religion and customs. He was one of the first Westerners to translate and appreciate the ancient Japanese form of the haiku.

Lefcadio Hearn died of a heart attack on 26 September 1904 at the age of 54 and he was buried in Zoshigaya Cemetery, Tokyo, after a Buddhist funeral according to the rites of the Jodo Sect of Zen Buddhism at Jitoin Kobudera Temple, Ichigaya.

Apart from his two plaques in Rathmines, there is a another plaque at 73 Upper Leeson Street and a fourth Irish plaque in Dunmore East, Co Waterford, where he spent many childhood holidays.

A labyrinth of laneways runs between and behind Leinster Square and Prince Arthur Terrace, connecting them with Leinster Road, Lower Rathmines Road, Charleville Road, Greenwich Court, Swanville Road and Wynnfield Road.

Long before I was born, my grandfather Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921) lived in this part of Dublin after he came back from Thessaloniki in 1916. He had lived much of his life in Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh, and Old Mountpleasant, beside Mountpleasant Square. But when he returned from Greece in the middle of World War I, he moved into these streets in Rathmines. My father was born in Swanville Place and lived the first years of his childhood in a house between the Stella Cinema and Prince Arthur Terrace, before moving later to Terenure.

When I weas a child, I was told that if I listened carefully I could hear the River Swan flowing beneath the footpaths and coobbles. As I found my way through this part of Rathmines last week, childhood memories returned in clear images but without any logical sequence of playing as a schoolboy in this labyrinth of narrow laneways and alleys that link elegant squares, small terraces and narrow streets.

No 30 Leinster Square (right) … one of the childhood homes of Lefcadio Hearn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Daily prayers during
the 12 Days of Christmas:
2, 26 December 2023

Two turtle doves … a detail in the Presentation window by the Harry Clarke Studios in Saint Flannan’s Church, Killaloe, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is Saint Stephen’s Day (26 December 2023). Many people here also all it ‘Boxing Day’. But this is not the ‘Day after Christmas.’ Christmas is a season, and my reflections each morning during the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a verse from the popular Christmas song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’;

2, the Gospel reading of the day;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple … a stained-glass window by the Harry Clarke Studios in Saint Flannan’s Church, Killaloe, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The 12 Days of Christmas: 2, Turtle Doves:

Today is 26 December, Saint Stephen’s Day and the Second Day of Christmas. In many places, this day is also known as Boxing Day, for on this day Christmas boxes were given to service workers, such as postal workers and trades people. It is a holiday in several countries, and whatever the explanation for the name ‘Boxing Day,’ it is a reminder that this is a day to be generous to those who are less fortunate than we are. The day after Christmas Day is a particularly good day to put the spirit of giving into practice.

Giving is so appropriate, for this day celebrates the first person to give his life for Christ, Saint Stephen, who was also one of the first deacons ordained to serve the poor.

Another saint closely associated with this day is Saint Wenceslas of Bohemia whose charity to the poor on Saint Stephen’s Day is remembered in John Mason Neale’s well-loved carol.

The second verse of the traditional song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, says:

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me …
two turtle doves,
and a partridge in a pear tree.


The Christian interpretation of this song often sees the two turtle doves as figurative representations of the Old Testament and the New Testament. But two turtle doves also appear in the Christmas story as the poor offering in the Temple after the birth of Christ:

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons.’ (Luke 2: 22-24, NRSVA)

The law provided for two turtle doves as a substitute for the offering of a lamb in the case of poor families (see Leviticus 12: 8). In other words, Luke sees the two turtle doves representing or prefiguring the lamb, or even the Lamb of God.

People who were even poorer, and who could not afford two turtle doves, could offer a portion of fine flour, but without the usual fragrant accompaniments of oil and frankincense, as it represented a sin offering (see Leviticus 12: 6-8; 5: 7-11). In other words, the intermediate offering of’ ‘a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons’ indicates Joseph and the Virgin were in poor circumstances, but not living in abject poverty.

However, in these three verses, Luke fuses two discrete ritual observances. In Luke 2: 24, Luke describes the doves or pigeons as a gift on the occasion of the presentation, when according to Leviticus 12: 6 they were the gift prescribed for the purification.

After childbirth, the mother (not both parents) took part in a rite of purification that includes the offering of a lamb and either a pigeon or turtledove – or, if the woman’s poverty requires less, two pigeons or turtledoves – after seven days of ritual impurity and the boy’s circumcision on the eighth day (see Leviticus 12: 2-8).

The narrator connects this sacrificial offering to the presentation of Jesus as the firstborn son (see Exodus 13: 2, 11-16), rather than to the mother’s purification. The two rituals are fused in an arrangement that places the presentation of Jesus – as the firstborn son, ‘holy to the Lord’ (Luke 2: 23) – at the centre of the unit and the sacrificial offering of two birds at the end (Luke 2: 24).

Luke’s notice of the offering of two turtle doves is also a curtain-raiser to the priority his Gospel gives to the poor – an emphasis that ought to inform all our giving and all our priorities at Christmas-time.

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, with two turtle doves on the table … a stained-glass window in Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Matthew 10: 17-22 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 17 ‘Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; 18 and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. 19 When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; 20 for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 21 Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; 22 and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.’

Saint Stephen before the Council … a window by CE Kempe (1837-1907) in the south aisle in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 26 December 2023, Saint Stephen’s Day):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Love at Advent and Christmas.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (26 December 2023, Saint Stephen, First Martyr) invites us to pray in these words:

Gracious Father, who gave the first martyr Stephen grace to pray for those who took up stones against him: grant that in all our sufferings for the truth we may learn to love even our enemies and to seek forgiveness for those who desire our hurt. Amen (adapted, Church of England Collect).

The Collect:

Gracious Father,
who gave the first martyr Stephen
grace to pray for those who took up stones against him:
grant that in all our sufferings for the truth
we may learn to love even our enemies
and to seek forgiveness for those who desire our hurt,
looking up to heaven to him who was crucified for us,
Jesus Christ, our mediator and advocate,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Lord,
we thank you for the signs of your mercy
revealed in birth and death:
save us by the coming of your Son,
and give us joy in honouring Stephen,
first martyr of the new Israel;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Two turtle doves … a detail in the Presentation window in Saint Mary’s Church (the Hub), Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org