Rashida Jones goes down memory lane in search of her Irish Jewish ancestors in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’

The Irish Jewish Museum is housed in the former synagogue on Walworth Road in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this month, during a family visit to Dublin, I was staying in Rathmines, close to Portobello and the Grand Canal, and I took time each day to stroll through the streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’, between the South Circular Road and the Canal, between Kelly’s Corner and Clanbrassil Street.

I was looking for streets and houses where many members of the extended Comerford family – cousins of my grandfather and my father – had lived in the first half of the last century, searching out the family home of artists like Harry Kernoff, and reminiscing and recalling memories of the Bretzel, the last kosher bakery on Lennox Street, and the small synagogues of ‘Little Jerusalem’ that I remember from the days when I played in these street as a schoolboy in the early 1960s, including the small and pious shuls on Lennox Street, Walworth Road and Saint Kevin’s Parade.

The combination of family history, Jewish history, genealogy, childhood memories and local history that are brought together in this one small area are a heady mixture that I find stimulating and exciting.

But, in the days that followed, I soon found myself stumbling across an old edition of the American version of the television series Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing the ancestors of the writer and actor Rashida Jones who had also lived in the streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’.

Her father was the songwriting legend Quincy Jones; her mother was the actor Peggy Lipton, who died after the programme was made. The programme concentrated on Peggy Lipton’s ancestors and brought together many of the memories that I face when I return to ‘Little Jerusalem’.

The programme was first broadcast in the US on 4 May 2012, but I had never seen it before, and I had never thought of Rashida Jones as having Irish ancestors or Jewish ancestors, still less of her having Irish Jewish ancestors who lived in ‘Little Jerusalem’.

I took part in one programme in the BBC version of Who Do You Think You Are? back in 2010, introducing the actor Dervla Kirwan to her Jewish ancestors in Dublin. Her great-grandfather, Henry Kahn, who ran a shop in Capel Street and who inspired an incident in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

That programme has been repeated and rebroadcast many times, much to my amusement. But working on the research and production, it also made me aware of the limitations of trying to encapsulate genealogical research into the short time a programme like this allows.

In the programme made for the US version of Who Do You Think You Are?, Rashida Jones learned about her Latvian-Jewish ancestors who changed their name to Benson. Initially, the programme seemed to suggest the name Benson was chosen to disguise the family’s Jewish heritage. But this was not so, and the name Benson was part of the story of her Jewish ancestors in ‘Little Jerusalem’, bringing her to the Irish Jewish Museum in the former synagogue on Walworth Road.

Rashida Jones is known for her roles in Parks and Recreation and The Social Network. She is the daughter of Quincy Jones, the renowned music producer, and Peggy Lipton, the actor known for The Mod Squad, who had already researched his family stories. But Rashida Jomes knew very little about her Jewish heritage on her mother’s side of the family.

Peggy Lipton (1946-2019) was born into a Jewish family in New York, the daughter of the artist Rita Benson and a corporate lawyer Harold Lipton (1911-1990), who married in 1941. Harold Lipton’s parents, Max Lipschitz and Alice ‘Gussie’ Goldfarb, were Jewish immigrants from Belarus, who changed their name to Lipton in the 1930s; Rita Benson was born in Dublin to Jewish parents from Latvia.



Rita Hettie Rosenberg, who later became Rita Benson, was born at 15 Victoria Street, Dublin, on 30 May 1912, the daughter of Hyman Rosenberg and Jenny Benson. Her great-great-grandparents, Benjamin Benson and Sophia Weinstein, had arrived in Ireland from Latvia, which was then in the Russian Empire.

Rita left Dublin with her sister Pearl as teenagers in 1926. The sisters who were just 13 and 18 years old. They made the journey from Ireland on their own and first stayed in New York with their uncle Elliot Benson.

Rita was still using her full name in 1936, but by 1939, when she became a US citizen, she changed her name to Rita Benson as part of the naturalisation process, and she married Harold Lipton in 1941.

Rashida visited Dublin and the Irish Jewish Museum, where the genealogist Stuart Rosenblatt, who spent decades compiling Jewish records in Ireland, presented her with her grandmother’s birth certificate, showing Rita was born on 15 May 1912 to Hyman and Jeannie Rosenberg.

At the time of the 1911 census, Hyman Rosenberg was 29, a tailor, who was born in Russia, Jeannie was 26, and they were living on Dufferin Avenue, with a son and daughter, Pearl (3) and Harold (2).

Jeannie Benson and Hyman Rosenberg were married Hyman in Dublin in 1906. Jeannie was born in Manchester. Her parents – Rashida’s great-great-grandparents – were Sophia Weinstein and Benjamin Benson. Benjamin was born in the Russian Empire ca 1839, settled in Ireland and worked as a Hebrew teacher.

Sophia and Benjamin Benson appear in the 1911 Irish census, living with Sophia in Peyton’s Cottages, Dublin, and they are recorded as speaking Hebrew. He was 72 and a Hebrew teacher, she was 67. They had been married for 53 years, and they were the parents of nine children, four of whom were still living. A photograph of Benjamin Benson in the archives show him in formal dress, complete with a top hat.

Rashida’s journey continued from Dublin to Latvia in search of Benjamin Benson’s family. Latvian military enlistment records from 1871 show Benjamin’s father, Shlomo, lived in Hasenpoth, now Aizpute, a small town in western Latvia that was then part of the Russian Empire.

The Latvian records include a residence permit from 1834 for Shlomo even before he had a surname. At the time, Jews were being forced by law to accept fixed surnames, and so Benson became the official family name.

Tragically, those family members who stayed behind in Latvia faced a much darker fate and were murdered in the Holocaust. Ghetto housing lists, passport applications and residency registers documented their lives before World War II – and, in some cases, how abruptly those lives came to an end.

They were forced into the Riga Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, and on 30 November and 8 December 1941, over 25,000 Latvian Jews were marched to the Rumbula Forest and murdered. The episode closed with Rashida and Peggy visiting the Rumbula Forest Memorial, with its large menorah and engraved memorial stones.

The Bretzel on Lennox Street was once run by the brothers Sidney and George Benson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

But programmes like this are made for popular audiences, and often cannot go into great detail. I found myself asking why, when Rashida Jones was visiting the Irish Jewish Museum on Walworth Road, she was not brought around the corner to see the house at 15 Victoria Street where the Rosenberg family lived and where Rita Benson was born.

Or they could have visited the former home of the Rosenberg family on Dufferin Avenue, off the South Circular Road and close to Greenville Hall, once one of the largest synagogues in Dublin until in closed in 1984.

I would have been interested too in knowing too which Benson and Rosenberg families she may be related to.

Some members of the Rosenberg family changed their name to Ross. The Benson families in ‘Little Jerusalem’ included the brothers Sidney and George Benson and who ran the Bretzel Bakery on Lennox Street as Bensons.

The late Asher Benson (1921-2006) took part in the Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936. He was the driving force in setting up the Irish Jewish Museum, and was the author of Jewish Dublin, Portraits of Life by the Liffey, published posthumously in 2007. His sons the travel agents Alan and Gerry Benson were key figures in the Jewish community in Dublin. My friend Alan, who was once president of the Jewish Representative Council, died in 2014

Scenes of Rashida Jones eating challah in the Bretzel on Lennox Street, or knocking on doors in Victoria Street and Dufferin Avenue would have enriched more of my memories of ‘Little Jerusalem’.

Zekher Tzadik Livrakha, זכר צדיק לברכה (May the memory of the righteous be a blessing)

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

The Bretzel Bakery in Portobello was the lasttraditional Jewish artisan bakery in ‘Little Jerusalem’

The Bretzel on Lennox Street has survived the many social changes in ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During my short visit to Dublin last week, I was staying in Rathmines, and spent some time both days wandering around ‘Little Jerusalem’, looking for houses that had once been home to the Comerford, Levitas and Kernoff families.

These included houses in Lennox Street, one of the many narrow streets in this area between the South Circular Road and the Grand Canal, between Clanbrassil Street and Portobello.

Over the decades, the residents of Lennox Street included the brothers Jack and Patrick Comerford, who lived at No 46; the playwright and twice Lord Mayor of Dublin John McCann, who was born at No 6 Lennox Street in 1905; the Republican revolutionary Harry Boland, who lived at No 26; and the sculptor John Hughes, who once lived at No 28.

When Maurice Elliman arrived in Dublin in 1900, he first lodged with the Smullian family at No 38 Lennox Street and soon married Leah Smullian. He was the founder of the De Luxe, Metropole and Corinthian cinemas, and became the proprietor of the Savoy cinemas and of the Gaiety Theatre, the Theatre Royal and the Queen’s Theatre. He also founded the Walworth Road synagogue, now the Irish Jewish Museum.

Two long established Jewish institutions on Lennox Street have been the small synagogue or hebra at No 32, founded in 1876 or soon after, and the Bretzel Bakery at 1a Lennox Street.

The Lennox Street synagogue closed its doors in the 1974 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Lennox Street shul finally closed its doors over half a century ago in 1974, and moved to Stratford College on Zion Road, Rathgar, where it continued to worship until 1981. However, the Bretzel has survived the many social changes in the area, including the exodus of the Jewish community from Little Jerusalem to Rathfarnham, Terenure and Churchtown in the second half of the 20th century, and the gentrification of the area in the earlier part of this century.

The Bretzel is a three-storey, 19th century building, and it is one of Dublin’s oldest surviving artisan bakeries. The business traces its beginnings back a century and a half when it was started by Moses Grinspon, a refugee Jewish baker from the Russian empire, who lived on Kingsland Parade.

It became Elliman’s Bakery in 1900, and the earliest deeds say the first brick oven was placed there that year.

Solomon and Malka Clein ran the bakery from the 1920s, when his family moved from Cork to Dublin. When Weinrock’s closed in the late 1920s, Cleins was the only kosher bakery left in the Jewish community in Dublin.

The business was then run by their son-in-law, Syd Barnett, until 1936, when he sold it to Barney Stein. Harry Clein, who married Barney Stein’s widow Ida (née Herman), became associated with the bakery in 1948. The staff included Fred Keane, the head baker, and his assistant, Christy Hackett, neither of whom was Jewish.

The menu on the large mirror in the Bretzel on Lennox Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

For some years, Sidney Benson and his brother George ran the bakery as Bensons. They had moved from Liverpool to Dublin after World War II, and when Sidney retired to Liverpool, Christy Hackett took charge.

The bakery became a meeting place on Sunday mornings for nurses and doctors coming off night duty in the Adelaide Hospital in the 1950s and 1960s.

Christy Hackett rented the business from Ida Clein in 1964 and changed the name to the Bretzel, from a Transylvanian bread stick in Romania, was chosen to emphasise the shop’s East European links. From 1964, this was the only kosher supplier of supervised bread and cake in Dublin, and the main product was the Jewish challah or plaited bread.

Christy Hackett’s son, Morgan Hackett, joined the business in 1970. Christy died in 1989, and when Ida Clein died in 1996, Morgan Hackett bought the Bretzel. But both the Jewish community and the Bretzel suffered a setback a year later when the new Chief Rabbi, Dr Gavin Broder, decreed that cakes supplied by the Bretzel could no longer be certified kosher. Morgan Hackett often explained that if he made a profit one week, then he could run it for another seven days.

Five loaves of bread at the Bretzel … William Despard has turned the bakery’s fortunes around (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

William Despard, an engineer from Limerick, and his business partner Cormac Keenan bought the business ‘lock, stock and barrel’ from Morgan Hackett in 2000. The bakery had about ten staff, including four skilled bakers. William Despard was young and enthusiastic about putting it back on the map and he turned the bakery’s fortunes around.

The Bretzel also took over Arbutus Breads in Cork after Declan and Patsy Ryan retired. |nother expansion involved buying Rossa Crowe’s Le Levain bakery. Bretzel also built a third bakery, in Kilcullen, Co Kildare, although Covid forced them shut the Kildare factory for over a year. They have since developed a bakery school in Kilcullen bakery, teaching French and international baking techniques.

The Bretzel is now an award-winning bakery, with its main bakery in a state-of-the-art facility in Harold’s Cross, supplying individuals and companies throughout Dublin, including making all the bread for Dollard & Co.

On a busy night, the Bretzel bakes 10 to 12 metric tons of bread, ranging over different sizes: that translates to the equivalent of about 20,000 boules a night. Bretzel’s best breads include its pain de maison, Le Levain sourdough and Boulin, a 2kg loaf. The San Francisco sourdough won Bretzel’s first Blas na hÉireann gold medal. Its pain de maison boule won the Supreme Champion award in 2020.

A chalk sketch of the Bretzelon the café walls … it remains a busy and popular café (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Bretzel on the corner of Lennox Street and Richmond Row and just off Richmond Road, between Kelly’s Corner and Portobello Road, is a busy and popular café and remains the flagship of the business.

Naturally, I stopped in the Bretzel for late morning coffee while I was walking around Portobello and ‘Little Jerusalem’ area last week. The tiny, forged iron doors of the double-decker brick ‘Scotch’ oven that was the cornerstone of the business for over 110 years, are inset in the shop’s walls today.

The Bretzel Bakery continues to make kosher bread, including traditional challah, onsite and under supervision. However, only specified items are currently approved as kosher under the Kashrut Commission of Ireland, and customers are advised to check the list in store for kosher items.

Today, Deli 613 on Upper Rathmines Road is the only kosher deli in Ireland. It takes its name from the 613 mitzvot, or commandments that are a traditional, foundational concept in Judaism. They consist of 248 positive commands, or commands to perform actions, and 365 negative commands, or commands to abstain from actions, totaling 613 precepts. Deli 613 is under the joint supervision of the KCI. It has sandwiches and salads, a grocery section and a coffee bar, and I had a late lunch there one afternoon last week.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

A late morning coffee in the Bretzel on Lennox Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Street art and murals in ‘Little Jerusalem’ and Daniel O’Connell’s lost fading heart in Portobello

Sir David Attenborough is celebrated in street art on the corner of Longwood Avenue and the South Circular Road in ‘Little Jerusalem’ in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Portobello has become an attractive area to live in. It has interesting shops and independent restaurants, it is just around the corner from Camden Street with its food shops and bookshops, and it is 15 minutes from Grafton Street and Saint Stephen’s Green.

I was strolling through Portobello while I was staying in Rathmines last week, searching for family homes associated with the Levitas, Kernoff and Comerford families in the narrow streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’, squeezed between Clanbrassil Street and Richmond Street, between the South Circular Road and the Grand Canal.

A large, colourful mural on Longwood Avenue honouring the life and work of David Attenborough has survived all the legal and official attempts to have it removed. It was painted on a large gable wall on a house on South Circular Road, close to Leonard’s Corner by the Dublin artist collective Subset painted and was unveiled on 8 May 2018 to mark the 93rd birthday of the naturalist and broadcaster.

The mural features a greyscale portrait that captures the personality of the BBC documentary maker and climate activist. Around his face is a burst of beautiful colour and animal life, from butterflies to a hot pink parrot. He has his signature khaki jacket and hat, standing next to a group of animals, including a penguin, a lion, and an elephant.

The mural is vibrantly coloured and features a stylised depiction of the natural world. Residents supposedly gave the artists the go ahead but the mural was controversial from the start as it was painted without planning permission. Dublin City Council ordered its removal in November 2019, and a spokeswoman said the council was seeking ‘the permanent removal of the unauthorised painted mural’ where the piece is based, and that no further murals or art should be painted on the wall.

The decision was met with widespread public opposition. A petition to save the mural attracted over 10,000 signatures. When the prosecution of Subset for this and two other prominent street murals came before Dublin District Court, the case adjourned. Eventually, in June 2022, the council dropped the case.

The David Attenborough Mural is now a popular tourist attraction in Portobello and a reminder of the city’s vibrant street art scene and its appreciation for the natural world.

Street art on Kingsland Park Avenue, between the South Circular Road abd Lennox Street in Little Jerusalem (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The mural was the second piece by Subset to fall foul of the council’s planning department within the space of a few weeks. A case involving the group’s ‘Horseboy’ mural in Smithfield was referred to An Bord Pleanála after the council ruled that it needed planning permission to remain on a property on Church Street.

Other artworks by Subset that were the subject of enforcement orders by Dublin City Council, including the Stormzy mural in late 2017.

The area around Richmond Street, close to Portobello Bridge, was once a colourful area for street art on a much larger scale. But many of the buildings are now being demolished and some of the better graffiti is fading, soon to be lost the latest property developments.

The fading mural of Daniel O’Connell behind fencing on Richmond Street … his heart has faded from view too (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

One fading work, now behind hoarding and fencing, is an image of Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847). His heart was once visible in vivid red. It was a reminder that when O’Connell died in Genoa on a pilgrimage to Rome in May 1847, his body was brought back to Dublin and buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, but his heart was removed, embalmed and entrusted to the Irish College in Rome.

O’Connell’s heart has faded away in Richmond Street, but it has also gone from sight in Rome. It was believed to be in an urn, before being placed behind a marble plaque in the wall of the church. But when the Irish College was moving from the Church of Saint Agatha in 1927, the heart and urn were missing. The whereabouts of O’Connell’s heart remains unknown, and all that remains in the Church of St Agata del Got today is a plaster cast of his heart by the Irish artist Claire Halpin that is now on exhibition.

There seems to be some poetic message in the fact that this piece of street art is about to be lost as this month has marked the 250th of the birth of Daniel O’Connell on 6 August 1775.

Among his many political roles and achievements, he was also Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1841-1842. I wonder what he would make of the City Council’s efforts to control the place and subject of street art in Dublin?

A mural on the side of the former Bollywood Bar on the corner of Richmond Street and Richmond Place, Portobello (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A mural on the side of a Chinese restaurant in Rathmines on the corner of Lower Rathmines and Richmond Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The former Kodak building in Rathmines remains an outstanding example of Art Deco architecture in Dublin

The Kodak Building has been a landmark building on the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and Blackberry Lane for almost a century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

When I was staying in Rathmines last week during a very brief family visit to Dublin, I took another look at some interesting late 19th and early 20th century buildings in Rathmines, including the former YMCA building on Rathmines Road, Kensington Lodge around the corner from it on Grove Park, the former Belfast Bank on a prominent corner with Rathgar Road, and the former Kodak building, a listed Art Deco building.

For almost a century, the Kodak Building or Kodak House has been a landmark building on the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and Blackberry Lane and when it was built its design marked an important ‘modern’ moment in Irish architecture. It was designed by the architects Donnelly, Moore and Keatinge in 1930 and built in 1932 and was originally the factory and warehouse for Kodak Ireland.

Art Deco emerged as a design aesthetic in France in the early 20th century and was widely popularised in the 1920s and 1930s. It informed the design of many iconic 20th century iconic buildings, including the Empire State Building in New York.

Many examples of art deco architecture Dublin have been lost, including the Theatre Royal. But others have survived, including the Kodak Building and two other significant Art Deco buildings in Rathmines: the Stella Cinema, designed by Higginbotham and Stafford in 1923; and the Post Office on Upper Rathmines Road, designed by William Henry Howard Cooke (1881-1977), built in 1932-1934, and opened in 1935.

The founder of Kodak, George Eastman, ran ‘an image-conscious company’ and wanted the company’s building in Dublin to disguise the ‘raw factory’ within. Kodak hired Donnelly Moore and Keatinge, a partnership formed by Robert Donnelly, James Moore and William Sedgwick Keatinge in 1925. The new building was built by McLaughlin & Harvey.

One critical commentator said the building looks like ‘a stray project from Miami Beach that found itself cast adrift in Dublin’. On the other hand, when the Twentieth Century Society named the Kodak Building as its ‘building of the month’ in August 2019, it said that ‘the building itself, despite having its once-cream render painted white, still stands out against Dublin’s traditional red brick streets’.

Donnelly Moore and Keatinge designed a building that is made of concrete and supported by a steel structural grid, with horizontal steel windows that were embedded in the concrete walls, and with ‘a squat but imposing tower with vertical slit windows as its central feature’. It was said to ‘conjur[e up] a sense of defensive space as well as abiding by the symmetrical classical language of pediment, pilaster and entablature.’

Some of the machine-age ornamentation of Kodak House remains intact, including the vertical lines on the tower, the zig-zags facing the street, the strong lines leading to the parapet and the ziggurat-type finial. Other art deco touches include the vertical lines on the tower, the stacked antenna-like rectangles, the small areas of fluting around the parapet and the pilasters or projecting columns, and the minimal ornament.

On each street façade, the tower recedes behind the screen, symmetrical with multi-pane windows set deep between the thick, plain pilasters. The zigzag textures and plain bands framing the windows add further texture, and the windows are an indication of its past as a factory.

The partnership of Donnelly Moore and Keatinge lasted until 1937, when the three architects went their separate ways, forming their own practices. One of the original architects, William Sedgewick Keatinge (1887-1964), made alterations modifications to the building in 1949-1951.

The building remained the Kodak headquarters in Ireland for 50 years before they moved to Dun Laoghaire in 1982. Kodak sold the building to Quirke Lynch Ltd that continued the photographic processing business for almost two more decades.

Quirke Lynch decided to concentrate their photographic processing operation to the ground floor only in 1997 and major renovations were undertaken to restore the upper floor and the roof of the building.

Paul Keogh Architects carried out a complete refurbishment of the building in 1999. While the exterior is faithful to the original design, there have been some interventions in the interior, such as a new roof with a curved northlight that allowed a mezzanine level to be added inside. The renovation was recognised with an RIAI award and a Glen Dimplex Design award in 2002.

Kodak House now houses an advertising agency and other businesses. It is an outstanding example of Art Deco architecture in Dublin and is a List 2 building in the Dublin City development plan. Despite having its once-cream render painted white, it still stands out against Dublin’s traditional red brick streets. It remains one of the brightest, most unusual 20th century buildings in Dublin.

Art Deco did not have a huge impact in Ireland, although the style had its moments, and the Carlton and Savoy cinemas on O’Connell Street and the Tivoli Cinema in Francis Street used Art Deco.

Other buildings in the Art Deco style in Dublin include the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation at 23 Kildare Street, designed by James Rupert Boyd Barrett; the Gas Building on D’Olier Street, now home to School of Nursing and Midwifery of Trinity College Dublin; the DIT building on Cathal Brugha Street; the former Deluxe Cinema on Camden Street; and the bathing shelters along the Bull Wall in Dollymount, designed by Herbert Simms.

Art Deco housing designs included: Chancery House, a housing development near the Four Courts designed by Herbert Simms; the houses built in 1938 on Wasdale Park, between Terenure and Rathgar; and an Art Deco house on the Templeogue Road once known as Konstanz and built in 1939 for Stephen Carroll Held – it is known in Templeogue and Terenure as the ‘German house’ because Hermann Gortz, a Nazi spy, used it as a safe house during World War II.

But more about these Art Deco houses and buildings, hopefully, after another visit to Dublin.

Kodak House remains an outstanding example of Art Deco architecture in Dublin Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The former Belfast Bank in Rathmines has moved from a ‘Quid’ in the Psalms to making the best dough

The former Belfast Bank, now Reggie’s Pizzeria on Rathmines Road Lower, was designed by Vincent Craig (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The former Belfast Bank at 221-223 Rathmines Road Lower is now Reggie’s Pizzeria and is one of the interesting buildings in Rathmines that I looked at last week, along with the former YMCA building on Lower Rathmines Road, close to Portobello Road, nearby Kensington Lodge on Grove Park, and the former Kodak building.

The former Belfast Bank in Rathmines is a small building in a Scottish Baronial style, with a sharp corner and a corner turret. Despite its size, it is very noticeable for the narrow façade that creates an optical illusion, for its individual features, and because of its prominent location on a busy corner where Rathmines Road Lower meets Rathgar Road and Rathmines Road Upper.

The side street is Wynnefield Road, and many people also know the building because of its location beside Slattery’s public house.

The narrow façade at the junction of Rathmines Road, Wynnefield Road and Rathgar Road creates an optical illusion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Belfast Bank was formed in 1827 by a merger of two private banks, Batt’s, also known as the Belfast Bank, and Tennant’s, also known as the Commercial Bank. The bank moved in 1846 to the former Assembly Buildings at the corner of North Street, Bridge Street, Waring Street and Donegall Street. Within decades, the bank was trading in branches throughout the northern half of Ireland.

The Belfast Bank had a New York branch by the 1860s, but it did not establish a branch in Dublin until 1892, when temporary premises were acquired in Dame Street. A purpose-built branch at 21-22 College Green was designed by William Henry Lynn and was built in 1893-1894.

The Belfast Bank in Rathmines was the second branch in Dublin, and a third branch in Dublin at 86 Talbot Street was designed by Frederick George Hicks and built in 1900. The branch building in Rathmines was designed by the Belfast architect Vincent Craig (1869-1925), whose work included clubhouses for yacht and golf clubs, Presbyterian churches, hospitals, banks for the Belfast Bank and the Ulster Bank, and masonic halls.

Craig was born at Craigavon, Strandtown, Belfast, in 1869, one of seven sons of James Craig, a wealthy whiskey distiller, and a younger brother of James Craig (1871-1940), later Lord Craigavon and first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

Vincent Criag was educated at Bath College and received his architectural training in the office of William Henry Lynn from 1885 to 1889. He then spent a year travelling in Europe before setting up in practice in Belfast in 1891.

He was a member of the Royal Institute of the Architects in Ireland, and was elected a fellow (FRIAI) in 29 May 1906. He was also a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA, 1900). His pupils and assistants included John Charles Lepper, Arthur Norman McClinton and Jackson Graham Smyth. He exhibited drawings of three of his designs in the Irish International Exhibition in Dublin in 1907.

Craig was a keen yachtsman and motorist, and also a generous benefactor of hospitals. He represented Court Ward on Belfast City Council in 1903-1906, and he was president of the Belfast Art Society in 1903.

He worked from 5 Lombard Street, Belfast, and 22 Donegall Place, and lived at Eldon Green, Helen’s Bay, Co Down, which he designed for himself. He moved to England in 1910, retired from his architectural practice soon after, and lived in retirement at High Close, Wokingham, Berkshire.

The former bank is in a Scottish baronial style, with a sharp corner and a corner turret (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Craig’s bank in Rathmines was built between 1899 and 1900 for the Belfast Bank. Tenders were invited in September 1899 and the building was ‘nearly complete’ by mid-July 1900.

The site was once part of the Chains. A fading photograph in Slattery’s beside the former bank tells how the Chains were one of the worst slums in late Victorian Rathmines. According to Weston St John Joyce in The Neighbourhood of Dublin (1912), the Chains were a number of dilapidated shanties enclosed by chains hung from stone pillars. They had become ‘an unsightly and insanitary slum’ until they were cleared to make the site for a new bank.

The corner is marked by a tower, topped by a finial and cut into at the base to make the entrance. The curve to the castellation is picked up on the apex of the gable, and the little peaks on the slope look even more like cake decoration when you follow the line down into the fussy scrolled base.

The terracotta plaque with the coat of arms of Belfast and the motto ‘Pro tanto quid retribuamus’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

On the Wynnefield Road elevation, a terracotta plaque set into the wall displays the coat of arms of Belfast with the motto Pro tanto quid retribuamus (‘What return shall we make for so much?’). It is a paraphrase of Psalm 116: 12 in the Vulgate translation, which reads ‘Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi?’

My childish sense of humour could not resist being amused by a Latin motto on a bank building that includes the word Quid.

On this façade, the chimney’s descent stops nearly in line with the top of the door, and it is an additional tension, a feat of brinksmanship with the visual weight as well as a clear marker of the asymmetry of the two façades. The break happens within the entrance, too, with the columns holding nothing and the pointed brackets above hanging like stalactites.

Sitting on the string course are two stone figures that look like lions bearing shields with the initials BB for Belfast Bank. The doors have panels and panes of stained glass.

Two stone figures that look like lions bear holdshields with the initials BB for Belfast Bank (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, the Belfast Bank merged with the London City & Midland Bank in 1917, the first entry into the Irish market by an English bank. After partition, the Belfast Bank decided to operate only in what became Northern Ireland. Following secret negotiations, the business in what had become the Irish Free State was transferred to the Royal Bank of Ireland in 1923, along with 20 branches and their staff.

The bank in Rathmines was more recently the premises of the Trustee Savings Bank/TSB Bank, and then the offices of a recruitment agency. It is now Reggie’s Pizzeria, which was opened in December 2024 by Reggie White, his wife Amy and their daughter Florence, who live nearby.

He has been described by the The Irish Times as ‘Ireland’s pizzaiolo-in-chief.’ He has trained Ballymaloe, and had stints at Del Popolo and Flour+Water in San Francisco. He returned to Dublin, co-founded Pi on George’s Street, and then made his name consulting for some of Ireland’s best-known pizza spots, including Little Forest, Bambino and Otto. With ten of his friends, including James Lowe, quietly backing 20 per cent, he opened Reggie’s in Rathmines shortly before last Christmas.

Once again, my childish sense of humour could not resist being amused by the thought that a former bank that exalted the word Quid is now making some of the best dough in Dublin.

As for the Belfast Bank, its businesses in Northern Ireland eventually merged with the Northern Bank, which began trading in 1824. Both were acquired by the Midland Bank, the integration was completed in 1970, and Northern Bank continued to trade throughout the whole of Ireland. The Midland Bank eventually sold the Northern Bank to the National Australia Bank, which later transferred ownership to Danske Bank.

Many of the former Belfast Bank buildings in Northern Ireland have been sold on to other businesses. But the name of ‘Belfast Bank’ continues to adorn a few of the old buildings, including those in Portrush, Rathfriland and Warrenpoint, as well as the former bank building on that narrow corner on Lower Rathmines Road.

For the former National Bank and Bank of Ireland branch at Lower Rathmines Road, see here

Inside Reggie's Pizzeria in the former Belfast Bank on Rathmines Road Lower (Photograph © Bryan O’Brien, The Irish Times, 2025)

Kensington Lodge on Grove Park, Rathmines, and the introduction of terracotta to Irish architecture

Kensington Lodge on Grove Park, Rathmines, with its highly decorative façade, seen from the street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Kensington Lodge on Grove Park in Rathmines is a beautiful example of Queen Anne style architecture in the late Victorian period, and one of the fine examples of the use of terracotta in architecture in Dublin at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Unlike many of the other terracotta buildings from that period, such as the former Harding Home on Lord Edward Street and D’Olier Chambers on D’Olier Street, Kensington Lodge was built as a private family home.

It stands at 107 Grove Park, almost at the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and facing the south side of the former YMCA building, built 30 years later, close to Portobello Bridge on the Grand Canal.

Kensington Lodge was built in 1882 and designed by the architect William Isaac Chambers (1847-1924) as his own home. It is particularly remarkable for its early use of terracotta mouldings in Dublin, and for many of the idiosyncratic details and embellishments that were designed by Chambers for his own entertainment.

Chambers built his house on the Grove Park estate at a time when it was being developed into building sites, and his design showcases a period of architectural innovation and experimentation in Dublin. He had a penchant for architectural flamboyance, and is best known for his mosque in Woking, built in what was described as a ‘Persian-Saracenic Revival’ style.

Kensington Lodge is remarkable for its early use of terracotta mouldings in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

William Chambers was born in Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire, in 1847. He trained as an architect in Darlington and Sunderland, and at early stage in his career he worked with John Ross of Darlington.

He had moved to Dublin by the end of 1879 and in 1882 he initiated and offered prizes in the competitions held by the Irish Builder for a design for a gate lodge and for a design for a shop front. During this period he was engaged in various projects in Dundalk, where he had an office in the Market House.

He designed houses and shops in Dundalk and Blackrock, Co Louth, and his other works include a glebe house and a groom’s cottage at Monasterevan, Co Kildare, where he used brick supplied by Messrs Thompson of Kingscourt, Co Cavan.

He had offices at 44 Westland Row (1880) and 4-5 Westmoreland Street (1881-1884) in Dublin. He lived at 2 Brighton Vale, Monkstown (1880), Auburn Villa, Rathgar (1880) and 3 Leinster Road, Rathmines (1881-1882), before designing and building Kensington Lodge on Grove Park, where he lived from 1883 to 1885.

The details include two baroque female herms, each wearing a diadem and a rosette, panels with heraldic details and a a wheel window (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Chambers designed Kensington Lodge as his own home, so it is something of an ambitious showcase for his work. As he designed Kensington Lodge for himself, it offers reliable insights into his personal tastes.

Susan Keating, who has studied architectural terracotta in Ireland, notes how his terracotta details dominate the house and that he impressed the trade with the crispness and colour of his material and his designs.

Chambers was influenced by the then-fashionable Queen Anne style and his house was built over three storeys with highly decorative interior and exterior flourishes from the heavy swag over the front door and the baroque female herms on either side of the main upstairs window to the elaborate stucco work in the gracious living room.

The terracotta for the house was modelled to Chambers’ own designs, and manufactured by Wilcock and Co (Burmantofts) in Leeds.

A heavy, fruit-laden swag above the front door of Kensington Lodge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The remarkable details include two baroque female herms, each wearing a diadem and with a rosette set in the middle of her bust that has the illusion of being quite ample as her torso disappears into a bracket below. Two panels seem to be set with heraldic detail in the centre and a foliate pattern in the background.

A heavy, fruit-laden swag above the front door is accompanied by recessed, vertical foliate panels that flank the ground floor windows. Running above the string-course is a horizontal panel of dogtooth pattern, set into the wall surface. These features are flanked by a minor reiteration of the foliate panels.

Other original features include several elaborate coloured glass windows. Crowning the whole, the shaped gable is pierced by a wheel window at attic level, contributing to the lively character of the house.

Susan Keating notices how some changes can be noticed by comparing the building with the architect’s published elevation of 1882. In the drawing, the gable features an idiosyncratic swan’s neck pediment, flanked by heavy scrolls enriched with garlands. This ornate feature was, however, simplified in execution.

The carved stone elements on the wall outside, including angels with a heraldic plaque, however, have not survived so well.

The carved stone elements on the wall outside have not survived so well (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Chambers continued to live in Ireland for only a few short years after it was built, and he seems to have left Ireland around 1885. He has the distinction of designing the first mosque in Britain.

The Shah Jahan Mosque on Oriental Road, Woking, was built in 1889, and is now one of Woking’s great architectural treasures. Chambers designed the mosque in what has been described as a ‘Persian-Saracenic Revival’ style, with a dome, minarets, and a courtyard. It is described by the Pevsner Architectural Guides as ‘extraordinarily dignified.’

A prominent early member of the mosque in Woking was the Irish peer Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn (1855-1935), 5th Baron Headley, who was an early convert to Islam.

Chambers was living in Albany Courtyard, Piccadilly, London, by 1891. In the decade that followed, he married and was widowed, and in 1900 he had offices in in Savoy House, London.

Kensington Lodge is a private family home once again (Photograph: Finnegan Menton)

Kensington Lodge has changed hands many times in recent decades, and at one stage the house was divided into flats. It is now a private residence. At hall level there are two rooms, one grand living room to the front, with high ceilings, a period fireplace and elaborate cornice work, and a smaller room at the back. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two doubles and a single, and a family shower room.

The attic has a wood panelled ceiling and is reached by a spiral staircase. In the basement, three rooms were put together to create a large eat-in kitchen. Off this is a family room, with custom-made doors to the garden at the side of the house.

The house is decorated in a restrained period style, including William Morris wallpaper and dark paintwork.

Across the street, Kensington Lodge has given its name to the former chapel of the YMCA building, which has been renamed Kensington Hall, and became the home of the Leeson Park School of Music.

Much of the original crispness of Kensington Lodge has been lost through atmospheric erosion, over time. But it remains a remarkable building and its exterior and its charm mean it remains a striking architectural feature in Rathmines.

The Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, designed by William Chambers, is the first purpose-built mosque on these islands (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Additional reading:

Susan Keating, ‘Dublin’s terracotta buildings in the later nineteenth century’, Irish architectural and decorative studies Vol 4, 2001, pp 142-169.

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 43, Saturday 21 June 2025

Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” (Matthew 6: 31) … James Joyce and Patrick Kavanagh at Toner’s in Baggot Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the First Sunday after Trinity (22 June 2025). Today (21 June) is the Summer Solstice, although next Tuesday (24 June) is officially Midsummer’s Day.

As this hot weather and sunshine is likely to continue for another few days, I may go to watch and enjoy some cricket in Stony Stratford this afternoon. But, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink’ (Matthew 6: 25) … empty tables at a restaurant in the old town in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Matthew 6: 24-34 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 24 ‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

25 ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

34 ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’

‘But if God so clothes the grass of the field … will he not much more clothe you?’ … walking through the fields and by the River Tame in Comberford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Matthew 6: 24-34) continues the series of readings from the Sermon on the Mount. In a world where I wake up each morning worrying whether the large regional conflicts are going to unravel and draw us all into a global conflagration, how do I respond to the advice not to worry about tomorrow?

Imagine two different ways of reading this Gospel passage.

The first is if you have a respectable and well-paying job, a good house in the suburbs, a decent car, adult children who have good prospects too, you have regular holidays, and you can change your car every two or three years.

The second way to read it is to imagine yourself living in a deprived urban area, a single parent with a mortgaged house in negative equity, unemployed, noisy and unsocial neighbours, facing severe cuts in your welfare payments, an adult child with special needs, and an ageing parent who needs residential care you cannot afford.

How then do you then receive the message, do not worry about what you will eat or drink or wear (verse 25), because God will take care of you? Today’s trouble is certainly more than enough for today.

For the first group, this is irrelevant, meaningless. You may be worried about higher taxes, winding down and preparing for retirement, that your children marry the right sort of people. If you have worries, they are hidden from the neighbours, perhaps even hidden from yourself.

For the second group, it verges on the absurd. If you have spent the last few years worrying about the roof your head, unable to afford and prepare adequate meals, worried about the friends and dangers your children meet, the future they face, then this is no easy message to hear. What does Christ mean, ‘do not worry’? Life is full of worries, every single waking day.

But is Christ really saying that the basic necessities of life do not matter? Is he really saying that the basic necessities of life will appear miraculously if only we believe in him correctly?

Let us first put this reading in context – Christ is talking to people who have enough, it seems. Otherwise, his encouragement not to worry would simply be cruel.

But, what about those who truly do not have enough?

How are they going to hear good news in this Gospel reading?

Though the message is going to be heard differently by those who have enough and those who do not, the message is really the same: do not fret.

If you have enough, be thankful, but beware of making an idol of having what you want, rather than merely what you need.

If you do not have enough, it is not because God does not love you. Christ is working to break the connection that was commonly made in his day: those who please God are rewarded with plenty, while those who suffer have earned God’s displeasure.

We still make that connection. How often we have an inner feeling of glee when we think people get what they deserve? How often we think people have brought about their own downfall? How often we think people could improve their lot if only they were not indolent, if only they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps?

Christ encourages us to look beyond the narrow perspectives that attach virtue to success and vice to failure.

That challenge is expressed by Frederick Faber in the words of his hymn, ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’:

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of our mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow
by false limits of our own;
and we magnify his strictness
with a zeal he will not own.

If our love were but more simple,
we should take him at his word,
and our lives would be gladness
in the presence of the Lord.

God’s desire for us is that we all have enough, rather than calculating the degree to which each of us should be blessed or cursed.

That does not change the circumstances today for the single mother or the unemployed father. But neither do present circumstances justify making political, economic and social decisions based on self-interest and selfishness.

Perhaps it is comforting this morning to recall the Collect for Peace, the Second Collect at Morning Prayer. This collect originated in the Sacramentary of Gelasius and was incorporated in the Sarum Breviary, from which Thomas Cranmer translated it in 1549:

O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom; Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Kingdom of God has different values from life in the empire, or life in a profit-based society. The Kingdom of God includes the poor, the merciful, those who mourn. The Kingdom of God calls us to bring light to the darkest parts of the world, to be salt in the world, to be signs and sacraments of mercy and justice.

God is not promising to meet all our needs, like some shopping list brought to the Kingdom-value-supermarket, if we pay up with the right kind of prayers. Tomorrow is going to bring its worries: ‘for tomorrow will bring worries of its own’ (verse 34). But God does not bargain with us. God expects us to serve God through living out the kingdom values, and in that we find perfect freedom.

As we seek first the Kingdom of God we come to accept with joy those things God adds to us. Our trials and troubles remain real, but that reality can be transformed and made glorious as we serve God and seek to do God’s will.

‘Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns …’ (Matthew 6: 26) … an empty barn near Comberford Hall in Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 21 June 2025):

‘Crossing the Channel’ has been the theme this week (15-21 June) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced last Sunday with reflections by Bradon Muilenburg, Anglican Refugee Support Lead.

The USPG prayer diary today (Saturday 21 June 2025) invites us to pray:

Eternal God, grant rest to the souls of those who have died on their journey, and may they be remembered with dignity.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Almighty and eternal God,
you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and live and reign in the perfect unity of love:
hold us firm in this faith,
that we may know you in all your ways
and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory,
who are three Persons yet one God,
now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Collect on the Eve of Trinity I:

O God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you,
mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you,
grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them’ (Matthew 6: 26) … a mother bird feeds her chick at Pavlos Beach in Platanias, near Rethymnon (Patrick Comerford)

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

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 16, Tuesday 18 February 2025

The staff of life … 12 loaves of bread depicted in a fresco in the 17th century Kupa Synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz in Kraków (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are little more than two weeks away (5 March 2025).

Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve’ (Mark 8: 19) … 12 loaves of bread in the Bretzel Bakery in Portobello, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Mark 8: 14-21 (NRSVA):

14 Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out – beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ 16 They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ 17 And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ 20 ‘And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ 21 Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’

‘Bread is still the staff of life’ … the façade of Frank O’Connor’s former bakery on North Main Street, Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

I can truly identify with the forgetfulness of the disciples in this morning’s Gospel reading (Mark 8: 14-21). I have forgotten to pack enough clothes for a weekend away and for holidays. I have left clothes behind in hotels, keys on a shop counter, lost a phone on a train between Tamworth and Lichfield and another in taxi in Tamworth, and got a train in the wrong direction when I was to speak at a book launch in London. I have even left my passport at home, and so missing a flight and the launch in Dublin of a book to which I had contributed two chapters.

I know it happens to others too. But this morning I might feel very sympathetic with any of the disciples who might be dismissed by readers as being ‘a sandwich short of a picnic.’

I have memories from my more youthful days in Wexford, when I worked with the Wexford People and Frank O’Connor’s bakery was on North Main Street. The bakery dated back to 1860, and closed in 1979. But I remember the initials FOC on the façade, and the slogan: ‘Bread is still the staff of life.’

The constant and witty response from one friend as he passed that shop in North Main Street was: ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’

One is a popular proverb that many assume is a Biblical quotation; the other is a Biblical quotation, that appears once in Deuteronomy and twice in the Gospels.

The Gospel reading for the Eucharist today reflects the importance of breads in daily life in the time of Jesus and the Disciples – it was truly the staff of life.

The Kupa Synagogue in the Old Jewish in Kraków has a wall painting or fresco of 12 loaves of bread that are described as ‘sacramental.’

To what degree is this morning’s Gospel reading for the Eucharist a sacramental reading?

When the disciples are rebuked for forgetting to bring any bread with them, it is not just a matter of everyone in the group going hungry for a little while. The Greek verb used here for ‘to forget’ (ἐπιλανθάνομαι, epilanthanomai) conveys the sense of negligence or disregarding rather than memory loss. I am inclined to read it as describing a wilful decision not to remember to bring bread rather than some forgetful lapse of memory.

And the Greek word used here to describe to bring or to take (λαμβάνω, lambanō) describes not the process of buying bread, or putting it in your shopping basket or a picnic hamper. It describes laying hands on it.

Taking, blessing, breaking and giving … essential acts of giving and receiving, Eucharistic acts.

Bread is still the staff of life, and encountering Christ in the breaking of the bread, in sacramental living, still brings and gives life.

The church is the boat, and not merely forgetting but neglecting the opportunity to share the staff of life in the Church, for me, is one of the weaknesses I find in a church that professes to be a church of word and sacrament.

A sandwich bar in Zurich Airport … were some of the disciples close to being ‘a sandwich short of a picnic’? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 18 February 2025):

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 ‘The Struggle for Indigenous Land Rights in Brazil.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Dr Rodrigo Espiúca dos Anjos Siqueira, Coordinator of the Department of Advocacy, Human, Environmental and Territorial Rights of the Anglican Diocese of Brasília. Pastor of Espírito Santo Parish, Novo Gama, Goiás.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 18 February 2025) invites us to pray:

We pray for transparency and honesty, that the political authorities may realise the serious injustice suffered by Indigenous peoples and traditional communities.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who alone can bring order
to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity:
give your people grace
so to love what you command
and to desire what you promise,
that, among the many changes of this world,
our hearts may surely there be fixed
where true joys are to be found;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
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 Father,
who gave Jesus Christ to be for us the bread of life,
that those who come to him should never hunger:
draw us to the Lord in faith and love,
that we may eat and drink with him
at his table in the kingdom,
where he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Eternal God,
whose Son went among the crowds
and brought healing with his touch:
help us to show his love,
in your Church as we gather together,
and by our lives as they are transformed
into the image of Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

A summer evening on the lawns at Saint John's College, Cambridge … have I sometimes been close to being ‘a sandwich short of a picnic’? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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