Daily prayer in Christmas 2025-2026: 7, Wednesday 31 December 2025, New Year’s Eve

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Inchicore, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

We have come to the end of December, the end of the year, the end of 2025. This is New Year’s Eve, the seventh day of Christmas and tomorrow is New Year’s Day.

Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Wyclif (1384), an early, pre-Reformation reformer. Before today begins, before I even begin to look back on the past year or to start thinking of any New Year’s resolutions, 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.

‘Christ in Majesty’ by Sir Ninian Comper in Southwark Cathedral, surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 1: 1-18 (NRSVA):

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me”.’) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

The Four Cardinal Virtues and the Three Theological Virtues … windows in the Church of Sant Jaume in Barcelona (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

‘To begin at the beginning’ – these are the opening lines of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (1954).

Or I might begin with words from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. In Chapter 12, the White Rabbit puts on his spectacles.

‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’

TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker,’ the second of his Four Quartets, is set at the end of the year and opens:

In my beginning is my end.

It is December, and he goes on to say:

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon …

The opening words at the beginning of a play, a novel or a poem – or for that matter, a sermon – can be important for holding the reader’s or the listener’s attention and telling me what to expect. Begin as you mean to go on.

So it is surprising to some that Charles Dickens waits until the second sentence in David Copperfieldto say: ‘To begin my life with the beginning of my life …’

At the very end of the year, the Gospel reading at the Eucharist is the beginning of Saint John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …’

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the seven swans a-swimming on this day as figurative representations of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit or the seven virtues – Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord – or they might even represent the seven churches of the Book of Revelation.

Sir Ninian Comper’s East Window in Southwark Cathedral shows Christ in Majesty in the centre light, with the Virgin Mary on the left and Saint John the Evangelist on the right. Christ sits enthroned above the world surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord.

Christ is depicted in the window as a youthful figure, with a globe or the world below his feet bearing seven stars representing the seven churches in the Book of Revelation:

• Ephesus (Revelation 2: 1-7): known for toil and not patient endurance, and separating themselves from the wicked; admonished for having abandoned their first love (2: 4).

• Smyrna (Revelation 2: 8-11): admired for its affliction and poverty; about to suffer persecution (2: 10).

• Pergamum (Revelation 2: 12-17): living where ‘Satan’s throne is; needs to repent of allowing heretics to teach (2: 16).

• Thyatira (Revelation 2: 18-29): known for its love, faith, service, and patient endurance; tolerates the teachings of a beguiling and prophet who refuses to repent (2: 20).

• Sardis (Revelation 3: 1-6): admonished for being spiritually dead, despite its reputation; told to wake up and repent (3: 2-3).

• Philadelphia (Revelation 3: 7-13): known for its patient endurance and keeping God’s word (3: 10).

• Laodicea (Revelation 3: 14-22): is neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, called on to be earnest and repent (3: 19).

The cardinal virtues comprise a set of four virtues recognised in Classical writings and are usually paired with the three theological virtues.

The cardinal virtues are the four principal moral virtues on which all other virtues hinge: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The three theological virtues are: faith, hope and love. Together, the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues comprise what are known as the seven virtues.

Plato is the first philosopher to discuss the cardinal virtues when he discusses them in the Republic. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle writes: ‘The forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, wisdom.’ Cicero, like Plato, limits the list to four virtues.

Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas adapted them, and Saint Ambrose was the first to use the term ‘cardinal virtues.’

The three Theological Virtues are: Faith, Hope and Love (see I Corinthians 13).

In his King’s Speech on Christmas Day this year, King Charles pondered the state of the world today and referred to the ways of living that ‘are treasured by all the great faiths and provide us with deep wells of hope: of resilience in the face of adversity; peace through forgiveness; simply getting to know our neighbours and, by showing respect to one another, creating new friendships.

‘Indeed, as our world seems to spin ever faster, our journeying may pause, to quieten our minds – in TS Eliot’s words “At the still point of the turning world” – and allow our souls to renew.

‘In this, with the great diversity of our communities, we can find the strength to ensure that right triumphs over wrong.’

As we step into the New Year, we know that our world is a deeply uncertain place. Few of us predicted the events of the last few years – the return of Covid-19 in many new strains, a major land war in Europe, the conflicts on many fronts in the Middle East, the unresolved refugee crises, the rise of the far-right across Europe, the return of Donald Trump to a second term of office … Where shall I begin to imagine what lies ahead in 2025?

King Charles was quoting from TS Eliot’s Burnt Norton. But once again I call to mind East Coker:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark …
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God …

Yet, in this apocalyptic, visionary, poem, Eliot is neither all doom nor all gloom. He talks about Faith

… pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

And he concludes East Coker:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Harold’s Cross, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 31 December 2025):

The theme this week (28 December 2025 to 3 January 2026) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Mother and Child’ (pp 14-15). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Imran Englefield, Individual Giving Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 31 December 2025) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we give thanks for the work of USPG over the past year. For every life touched, every family supported, and every community strengthened, we give thanks and pray that your love continues to shine throughout the world.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Collect on the Eve of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus:

Almighty God,
whose blessed Son was circumcised
in obedience to the law for our sake
and given the Name that is above every name:
give us grace faithfully to bear his Name,
to worship him in the freedom of the Spirit,
and to proclaim him as the Saviour of the world;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Happy New Year

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Swan … once claimed to be the oldest pub in Lichfield, but has since been turned into a restaurant and apartments (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

Fading memories of the Morris assembly works at the former Brittain motors site in Rathmines

The former Brittain Motors site on Lower Rathmines, included flanking ‘In’ and ‘Out’ wings designed by Arnold Francis Hendy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

My childhood memories are patchy and are not connected in any sort of ‘joined-up writing’. What I think are memories from infancy may, in fact, be founded on the few photographs I have from those early years, with either the photographs providing the memories or the memories being based on the images in those old photographs.

These few black-and-out photographs are over 70 years old, and most of them show me in the small garden in front of my grandmother’s farmhouse at Moonwee, near Cappoquin in west Waterford, or an unknown beach. In all these photographs I am with my foster-mother Peggy Kerr, the dogs that were family pets but that also worked on the farm, and the family car, an old black Morris Minor ZL 5776, made in 1949.

I thought of that old Morris Minor and wondered about those photographs and memories during my visit to Dublin last week as I stood outside the former Brittain Motors assembly plant on Lower Rathmines Road, beside Portobello Bridge. I was in Dublin for the launch of Salvador Ryan’s new book, Childhood and the Irish in the Royal Irish Academy the previous night. My two chapters in this book are about the Portobello and ‘Little Jerusalem’ area, so I should have expected memories of the area would come rushing back into my my mind the next monrning.

The decorated stucco Victorian house at the centre of the former Brittain Motors site in Rathmines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Brittain Motors or GA Brittain Ltd was a car assembly plant and not just a dealership. There, during my childhood, popular models from the UK were assembled, including the Morris Minor and the Mini. It was the first company outside Britain to assemble the Morris Minor, receiving the first ‘completely knocked down’ (CKD) export kits, and production continued until 1971.

The Irish-assembled cars sometimes used a different paint palette than their UK counterparts, and the locally popular colours included dark brown.

These cars were built at the Morris Minor and Mini plant in Oxford, and then taken to production locations across Europe, including Slovenia, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as the assembly site at Portobello in Dublin. In addition, there was a service facility in Ringsend, close to what is now the Aviva Stadium.

When the Mini was launched in 1959, it was an overnight success in Ireland. But before the car could be sold in the Republic, all the component parts had to be packed in wooden crates in the UK, shipped to the Port of Dublin, and then assembled by the Brittain Group in Dublin.

I remember watching the assembled cars being lined up on Rathmines Road as I walked to parent’s home in Harold’s Cross from school, enthralled not only by their appearance but by the Brittain Motors building, with its ‘In’ and ‘Out’ lettering over the entrance and exit gates, bookending a splendid decorated stucco house.

A faded sign is a reminder that the house was once known as Grand Canal House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

I was young and naïve and at the age of eight or nine, in 1960 or 1961, all I hoped and wished Santa would leave for me under the tree for Christmas was a model yellow Mini. That Christmas night, I crept downstairs in the middle of the night to find it and to play with it in the silence between Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. But from his bedroom above, my father could see the light I had switched on, casting its beams on the front garden. In his characteristic anger, he rushed down, promptly confiscated it, never to be seen again.

But the petty, almost vindictive, attitudes of an adult parent to a playful young boy failed to dull my fascination with the Morris assembly plant at Brittain’s premises on Lower Rathmines Road until I was sent away to boarding school in the mid-1960s.

Soon after, the Brittain Group and their rivals Lincoln and Nolan Ltd – who also assembled the Mini at New Wapping Street in East Wall – amalgamated in 1967 or 1968 and became the BLN Motor Company, moving to the Naas Road on the west side of Dublin. The company was then bought by the Smith Group which assembled Renault cars in Wexford. Following the BLN merger, the Mini assembly franchise went to Reg Armstrong Motors in Ringsend.

As I stood last week looking at the former Brittain works on Lower Rathmines Road, near Portobello Bridge, those memories from 60 years or more ago came back as though it had all been only last year.

The 1930 parts of the Brittain site was designed by the Dublin-based architect Arnold Francis Hendy (1894-1958) of Kaye-Parry & Ross and were built by H&J Martin, founded in 1840, whose great buildings include the Grand Opera House, Belfast (1895), he Slieve Donard Hotel (1898), and Belfast City Hall in 1898.

Hendy was born in Plymouth and after World War I in Palestine and France with the Devonshire Regiment, he moved to Dublin and trained as an architect with WH Byrne & Son. As a student of the RIAI, he won the Downes Bronze Medal in 1920-1921 and the Institute Prize in 1921-1922. He joined Kaye-Parry & Ross in 1924 and soon became a partner.

After George Murray Ross died in 1927 and William Kaye-Parry died in 1932, Hendy carried on the practice under the same name until he died in 1958. His works include the Church of Our Lady of the Wayside, Kilternan (1929), the Pembroke Library (1929), Ballsbridge, No 35-36 Westmoreland Street (1935), on the corner with Fleet Street, for the Pearl Assurance Co (1935), Archer’s Garage (1948) on Fenian Street, the Top Hat ballroom (1953) in Dun Laoghaire, and a number of housing estates in Dublin.

Hendy died in 1958 and his firm continued as Kaye-Parry, Ross & Hendy until ca 1965, and then as Kaye-Parry & Partners until the early 1970s.

Many stucco details remain on the original 19th century house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The central, decorated stucco house between Hendy’s ‘In’ and ‘Out’ wings of the former Brittain premises retains its charm and Victorian details. But so far I have been unable to find out who was its original architect.

The building is a fine, late 19th century, two storey over basement, five-bay building, with many remaining architectural features, both externally and internally. It appears to have been originally built as office accommodation for the adjoining works, which were originally a building contractors before becoming Brittain Motors.

Faded lettering on a decorative shield above the door indicates the house was once known as Grand Canal House. In the post-Brittain years, it became the offices of Liam Carroll (1950-2021) Zoe Developments, one of the biggest builders of residential properties in the 1990s, and was known as La Touche House, an acknowledgement that the real, official name of Portobello Bridge nearby is La Touche Bridge, built in 1791.

Nearby Portobello Bridge was built as La Touche Bridge in 1791 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Before he went bankrupt, Carroll was described by Kathy Sherridan in The Irish Times as ‘a billionaire developer who flies Ryanair and writes his own cheques’. He was regarded as ‘a maverick, a reclusive puzzle wrapped in an enigma’.

There were proposals in 2017 to turn Grand Canal House into an eight-bedroom annexe for the nearby Portobello Hotel, on the other side of the bridge on Richmond Street. It now seems to be used for sheltered housing, while other parts of the Brittain site include a café, solicitor’s offices, apartments and what appears to be sheltered housing.

Sadly, the ‘Out’ lettering is now missing from Hendy’s paired ‘In’ and ‘Out’ windows.

The fall of Liam Carroll and the sale of his property portfolios by NAMA are among the many fading memories of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. My memories of the Brittain assembly site and that dinky Mini Minor or Austin 7 one of Christmas in the early 1960s could easily have become another offering for Salvador Ryain’s Childhood and the Irish. Meanwhile, I’d still like to find out more about the architect and the history of the former Grand Canal House, at the centre of the former Brittain site on Lower Rathmines Road.

With ZL 5776 outside my grandmother’s house in Cappoquin, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford collection)

The planned demolition of Terenure synagogue is the loss of another of my childhood landmarks

Terenure Synagogue on Rathfarnham Road was built in 1952-1953 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I have often said in jest that I was born between a synagogue and a laundry and across the road from a cinema.

But Terenure Laundry – still celebrated in trade union lore for a 14-week strike led by Mai Clifford – closed soon after I was born on Rathfarnham Road. The site at 14-18 Rathfarnham Road was later the premises of the Sunday World, and now it’s the site of Lidl in Terenure.

The Classic Cinema was at 11-13 Rathfarnham Road, across the road from both the laundry and the synagogue. It opened in 1938, and when it closed in 1976, Albert Kelly transferred the name of the Classic to the former Kenilworth Cinema in Harold’s Cross – but it too is long gone.

Now it looks as though the third landmark that defined that stretch of Rathfarnham Road where I was born is about to disappear too, and that Dublin’s largest synagogue is soon to be demolished.

Gordon Deegan reported in The Irish Times yesterday (18 September 2025) that An Coimisiún Pleanála (ACP), the Irish Planning Commission, has approved a plan to demolish Dublin’s largest synagogue to make way for a 60-unit apartment scheme.

The Dublin Hebrew Congregation endorses the redevelopment, but the plan has been opposed by some local residents who say the area would is going to lose an important historical landmark. ACP has granted planning permission to Granbrind Terenure Ltd for the apartment block scheme on the 0.54 ha site on Rathfarnham Road, Terenure, where the synagogue and has been since 1952.

ACP granted planning permission after concluding that the proposal ‘would provide for a compact and sustainable form of urban development at a highly accessible location, would not seriously injure the visual or residential amenities of the area and would not adversely impact the character of the area.’

A letter on behalf of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation in July 2024 gave full support to the application. The signatories to the letter include the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, the Very Revd Yoni Wieder, whose inauguration had taken place in the synagogue two months earlier.

Dublin City Council granted planning permission for the scheme in April, but the development was stalled after an appeal by the Terenure Residents’ Association, Wasdale Park residents and Greenmount Lawns residents.

The residents who oppose the demolition of the synagogue site say the landmark building with its five Stars of David and stained-glass windows would be a huge loss to the history of the Jewish community living in the area. They argue the proposed apartment blocks would result be an overbearing and intrusive presence and overshadow adjoining properties.

As part of a 105-page inspector’s report, the ACP inspector Ms Mary Kennelly agreed ‘that the demolition of these buildings is appropriate’. She said the synagogue building ‘is not a protected structure and has not been assessed as being of architectural or historical significance and is unsuitable for repurposing and reuse’.

She also said it was intended to reuse the stained-glass windows in a future synagogue site and it was accepted these would not be suitable for use in other community buildings. Ms Kennelly said the proposed demolition and redevelopment of the site would benefit the community. A report said the new development would provide new housing units in an area of such high population growth, and within close proximity of the city centre.

A spokesperson for the Dublin Hebrew Congregation told The Irish Times last year it planned to move to a more suitably sized facility as the space was too large for its needs.

Five Stars of David over 10 squared panels on Terenure Synagogue facing onto Rathfarnham Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The synagogue is a distinctive building in the Terenure and Rathfarnham areas of south Dublin, clearly visible and identifiable with windows with five Stars of David over 10 squared panels. It was designed by the architect Wilfred Cantwell (1921-2000) and was dedicated in 1953.

I had been born a few doors away, at No 28 Rathfarnham Road, and lived part of my childhood at No 104 Rathfarnham Road. My father was born in Rathmines and spent his childhood in Terenure. Although my parents lived for much of their life in Harold’s Cross, they later lived in Rathfarnham Wood.

The Terenure synagogue at No 32-34 Rathfarnham Road was designed by the Irish architect Wilfred Cantwell and dates back to a meeting in 1936, when it was agreed to set up a synagogue in the Rathmines, Rathgar or Terenure area to cater for families in those suburbs who found it was too far to walk on Saturdays to the synagogues on Adelaide Road or at Greenville Hall on the South Circular Road.

The shul started in rented rooms at 6 Grosvenor Place, Rathmines, and moved when No 52 Grosvenor Road was bought in 1940. At Rosh Hashanah, 4 October 1948, the congregation moved from Rathmines to a Nissen hut in the grounds of ‘Leoville’ on Rathfarnham Road, bought a few years earlier for £1,490 on behalf of the congregation by Woulfe Freedman and Erwin Goldwater.

Building work on the new synagogue began in August 1952, shortly after I was born, and it was completed and dedicated on 30 August 1953.

During his career, the architect Wilfrid Cantwell worked with Michael Scott, alongside Kevin Roche, Kevin Fox and Robin Walker, and worked on Bus Arús, Dublin. He later worked with JN Kidney before setting up his own practice (1947-1975). He attained distinction in the area of church architecture, particularly in the years immediately after Vatican II. From 1976 until he retired in 1993, he specialised as a consultant in church design.

Cantwell said his new synagogue in Terenure met the committee’s specifications for a building that would ‘cost less than half the normal place, look as if it cost the full amount and be an example of good modern design.’ It was praised for its ‘original, modern, commanding and attractive design.’

The ‘master builder’ of the synagogue was the Dublin timber merchant Sam Noyek, who built the synagogue with a capacity for 600 people.

Terenure Synagogue was supported by or attracted a number of Jewish families to this part of Terenure and Rathfarnham, including the Leon, Citron, Lazarus, Gafson, Khan and Davis families who lived on Rathfarnham Road.

In typical Dublin wit, some members of the Adelaide Road synagogue, which was regarded as more middle class, referred to the new synagogue opposite the Classic Cinema as the ‘cinema-gogue.’

A Church of Ireland Interfaith Conference visiting Terenure Synagogue on Rathfarnham Road, Dublin

The shul was set on fire on Wednesday 9 February 1966. Several Siffrei Torah were destroyed, and the shul itself was very badly damaged. The Nissen hut that had been turned into a function hall was quickly converted back into a shul, and no Shabbat services were missed.

The newly refurbished synagogue was rededicated on Sunday 26 May 1968. Its features include the striking stained-glass windows on the north and south walls by Stanley Tomlin, who began his career in the Harry Clarke Studios in 1932.

At extraordinary meetings of the Terenure and Adelaide Road congregations in January 1999, the two congregations agreed to merge. It was agreed that the Adelaide Road Synagogue would be sold, and that some of the proceeds of the sale would be used to build a new synagogue complex, including a new mikveh and a community centre, on the grounds at Rathfarnham Road.

From then on, the Terenure Synagogue hosted the members of the former synagogue on Adelaide Road. This arrangements continued until 15 December 2004, when both congregations held simultaneous extraordinary general meetings and agreed to merge as the new Dublin Hebrew Congregation.

The agreed new synagogue was never built, and Terenure Synagogue is the only major Orthodox synagogue in the Republic of Ireland.

Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, said the decision to sell the Terenure synagogue is not so much ‘a story of decline’ as one of changing patterns of practice among Jews in Ireland. ‘As with most religions, attendance at services is not as great as it used to be,’ he told Patsy McGarry of The Irish Times in May 2023.

Indeed, despite widespread reports of decline, the Jewish population in Ireland is growing. The 2022 census shows there were 2,193 Jewish people in Ireland, a drop since the figure of 2,557 in 2016. But both figures are higher than the figure of 1,984 in 2011, and other statistics show the Jewish population in Ireland may even be higher.

The Institute for Jewish Population Research, which uses four key definitions to describe the size of the Jewish population in different countries, offers these figures for the Jewish population in Ireland: the ‘core’ Jewish population, 2,700; population with Jewish parents, 3,348; enlarged Jewish population, 3,966; the ‘Law of Return’ Jewish population, 4,644.

Much of the steady increase is attributed to employees of multinational companies working in Ireland. Maurice Cohen said at the time, however, that the upkeep of the Terenure synagogue is ‘very expensive’ and figures for attendance at services ‘have gone down dramatically.’ This is exacerbated as ‘the older generation passes away while younger people were less likely to attend. It is an issue Judaism is debating.’

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025: 7, Tuesday 31 December 2024, New Year’s Eve

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Inchicore, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

We have come to the end of December, the end of the year, the end of 2024. This is New Year’s Eve, the seventh day of Christmas and the Hanukkah holiday continues today. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day.

Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Wyclif (1384), an early, pre-Reformation reformer. Before today begins, before I even begin to look back on the past year or to start thinking of New Year’s resolutions, 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.

‘Christ in Majesty’ by Sir Ninian Comper in Southwark Cathedral, surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 1: 1-18 (NRSVA):

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me”.’) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

The Four Cardinal Virtues and the Three Theological Virtues … windows in the Church of Sant Jaume in Barcelona (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

‘To begin at the beginning’ – these are the opening lines of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (1954).

Or I might begin with words from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. In Chapter 12, the White Rabbit puts on his spectacles.

‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’

TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker,’ the second of his Four Quartets, is set at the end of the year and opens:

In my beginning is my end.

It is December, and he goes on to say:

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon …

The opening words at the beginning of a play, a novel or a poem – or for that matter, a sermon – can be important for holding the reader’s or the listener’s attention and telling me what to expect. Begin as you mean to go on.

That is why I am surprised that Charles Dickens waits until the second sentence in David Copperfieldto say: ‘To begin my life with the beginning of my life …’

At the very end of the year, the Gospel reading at the Eucharist is the beginning of Saint John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …’

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the seven swans a-swimming on this day as figurative representations of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit or the seven virtues – Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord – or they might even represent the seven churches of the Book of Revelation.

Sir Ninian Comper’s East Window in Southwark Cathedral shows Christ in Majesty in the centre light, with the Virgin Mary on the left and Saint John the Evangelist on the right. Christ sits enthroned above the world surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord.

Christ is depicted in the window as a youthful figure, with a globe or the world below his feet bearing seven stars representing the seven churches in the Book of Revelation:

• Ephesus (Revelation 2: 1-7): known for toil and not patient endurance, and separating themselves from the wicked; admonished for having abandoned their first love (2: 4).

• Smyrna (Revelation 2: 8-11): admired for its affliction and poverty; about to suffer persecution (2: 10).

• Pergamum (Revelation 2: 12-17): living where ‘Satan’s throne is; needs to repent of allowing heretics to teach (2: 16).

• Thyatira (Revelation 2: 18-29): known for its love, faith, service, and patient endurance; tolerates the teachings of a beguiling and prophet who refuses to repent (2: 20).

• Sardis (Revelation 3: 1-6): admonished for being spiritually dead, despite its reputation; told to wake up and repent (3: 2-3).

• Philadelphia (Revelation 3: 7-13): known for its patient endurance and keeping God’s word (3: 10).

• Laodicea (Revelation 3: 14-22): is neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, called on to be earnest and repent (3: 19).

The cardinal virtues comprise a set of four virtues recognised in Classical writings and are usually paired with the three theological virtues.

The cardinal virtues are the four principal moral virtues on which all other virtues hinge: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The three theological virtues are: faith, hope and love. Together, the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues comprise what are known as the seven virtues.

Plato is the first philosopher to discuss the cardinal virtues when he discusses them in the Republic. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle writes: ‘The forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, wisdom.’ Cicero, like Plato, limits the list to four virtues.

Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas adapted them, and Saint Ambrose was the first to use the term ‘cardinal virtues.’

The three Theological Virtues are: Faith, Hope and Love (see I Corinthians 13).

As we step into the New Year, we know that our world is a deeply uncertain place. Few of us predicted the events of the last few years – the return of Covid-19 in many new strains, a major land war in Europe, the conflicts on many fronts in the Middle East, the unresolved refugee crises, the rise of the far-right across Europe, the dreaded return of Donald Trump to a second term of office … Where shall I begin to imagine what lies ahead in 2025?

Once again, I call to mind TS Eliot in East Coker:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark …
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God …

Yet, in this apocalyptic, visionary, poem, Eliot is neither all doom nor all gloom. He talks about Faith

… pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

And he concludes East Coker:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Harold’s Cross, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 31 December 2024):

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 ‘We Believe, We Belong: Nicene Creed’. This theme was introduced on Sunday by Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 31 December 2024) invites us to pray:

As we prepare to celebrate the new year, may the truth of this Creed continue to inspire us, reminding us that you, O God, have revealed yourself fully in Christ, the Word made flesh. Empower us to live in the fullness of this revelation, proclaiming your love to the world.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Collect on the Eve of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus:

Almighty God,
whose blessed Son was circumcised
in obedience to the law for our sake
and given the Name that is above every name:
give us grace faithfully to bear his Name,
to worship him in the freedom of the Spirit,
and to proclaim him as the Saviour of the world;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Happy New Year

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

The Swan … once claimed to be the oldest pub in Lichfield, but has since been turned into a restaurant and apartments (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

Some memories from Harold’s Cross ten years after my mother’s death

No 201 Harold’s Cross Road, the birthplace of the Quaker abolitionist and philanthropist Richard Allen (1803–1886), has been restored (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Like many journalists, I was always aware of ‘campaign journalism’. It was a complimentary label when it was applied to journalists with the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ Team, journalists like Paul Foot, John Pilger or Bob Fisk, or many campaign journalists with newspapers such as the Guardian, the Observer and The Irish Times.

There are differences between reporting, analysis, comment, opinion-writing, consciousness raising and campaigning journalism. But when does it spill over into or descend into propaganda and political manipulation?

I suppose I have engaged in a form of campaign journalism and blogging in my support for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to their proper home in Athens.

In another way, I have been campaigning, I suppose, in writing about the deterioration of the former home of the Quaker abolitionist and philanthropist Richard Allen (1803-1886) in Harold’s Cross, Dublin.

I had been familiar with this house in my childhood – my mother even sent me ‘for messages’ as a child in the 1960s to Healy’s, the grocery shop that was once attached to the house that later became Westbank Orphanage or the Protestant Girls’ Orphanage.

I had written since 2013 about the sad neglect and decay of this constituent part of the architectural heritage of Harold’s Cross and Dublin 6. So, ten years later, when I visited Harold’s Cross briefly before Christmas, it was a personal pleasure to see the house had been restored carefully.

To my surprise, the heritage contractors PMac, the Harold’s Cross-based masonry, cleaning and maintenance business involved in the restoration work on behalf of Aspect Design, asked my permission to use some of my photographs on their website, illustrating the ‘before’ and ‘after’ state of this Georgian house.

I rarely agree to commercial or business pages using my photographs online. I figure than a business should pay a photographer to do their work, and I should not deprive professional photographers of potential commissions. However, in this case I was so impressed of the work that I immediately said yes. Ten years of ‘campaign blogging’ had borne its fruit.

I suggested that, in return, PMac should make a donation to an appropriate local charity. They willingly agreed, and quickly told me they are organising a coffee morning in the coming months in aid of the Hospice in Harold’s Cross.

There was an added emotional poignancy to this, because it is ten years ago today since my mother, died in the Hospice in Harold’s Cross, on 20 May 2014.

Ellen Comerford (née Murphy) was born in Millstreet, Co Cork, on 10 February 1919 and went to boarding school in Mountrath, Co Laois

Ellen Comerford (née Murphy) was 95 when she died in the Hospice in Harold’s Cross on 20 May 2014. She was born in Millstreet, Co Cork, on 10 February 1919 and went to boarding school in Mountrath, Co Laois, 20 minutes from Roscrea, Co Tipperary, where her Crowley uncles, Cornelius D Crowley (1879-1972) of Roscrea Castle and Jeremiah D Crowley (1883-1968) of Wallstown Castle, Castltownroche, had extensive business interests.

After a short time in Paris immediately before World War II, she became a civil servant in the Department of Education in Dublin. She married my father, Stephen Edward Comerford (1918-2004) in Blackrock, Co Dublin, on 8 September 1945, in the weeks immediately after World II. By then she was living in Booterstown, and her father was living in Australia.

At first, my parents lived in Bray, Co Wicklow, but they later lived in Dublin in Harold’s Cross and then, in later years, in Rathfarnham. I was the fourth of six children, born on Rathfarnham Road.

I understand how life was difficult for her. My eldest brother died on 18 December 1970 when he was only 24, and she was only 51. No mother recovers from the death of a child, no matter what age either of them is at the time.

My father died in Rathfarnham almost 20 years ago, on 27 December 2004, less than two weeks after his 86th birthday. My widowed mother survived him for almost ten years. I had not known her very well in my childhood or for much of my adult life. But I tried to get to know her better in those last 10 years, as she moved into sheltered housing first on Leeson Park and then in Rathgar.

We visited her first marriage home in Bray, her uncle’s former home at Finnstown House, Lucan, which she knew intimately when the Crowley family lived there, we occasionally had lunch together in Rathgar, Bray or Lucan, and at some stage I returned with her to Paris with a brother and a sister.

I don’t think we every properly resolved the difficulties remaining since my childhood, and I had left her home again in my teens. But, I think, today she might be pleased to know about this piece of restoration work in a part of Harold’s Cross she knew well from the 1950s to the 1970s, and to know how this has boosted the work of the Hospice in Harold’s Cross.

Ellen Comerford (née Murphy) died in the Hospice in Harold’s Cross on 20 May 2014

Daily prayers during the 12 Days of Christmas: 7, 31 December 2023

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Inchicore, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Seventh Day of Christmas (31 December 2023), the First Sunday of Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I spent most of yesterday in bed with a slight temperature, a head cold and some joint and muscular pains. The symptoms seemed to aggravate my Sarcoidosis symtoms last night, and although I had hoped to be at the Parish Eucharist in Holy Trinity Church, Old Wolverton, later this morning I doubt whether that would be considerate to other churchgoers.

Whatever I decide later this morning, before today begins I am taking some time for reading, reflection and prayer.

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.

‘Christ in Majesty’ by Sir Ninian Comper in Southwark Cathedral, surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Seventh Day of Christmas today (31 December) means we are more than half-way through the traditional ‘12 Days of Christmas’ – although, in liturgical terms, Christmas is a 40-day season that continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February).

The seventh verse of the traditional song, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, is:

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me …

Seven Swans a-Swimming,
Six geese-a-laying,
five golden rings,
four colly birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree.

The Christian interpretation of this song often sees the seven swans-a-swimming as figurative representations of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven virtues – they might even represent the seven churches of the Book of Revelation.

Sir Ninian Comper’s East Window in Southwark Cathedral shows Christ in Majesty in the centre light, with the Virgin Mary on the left and Saint John the Evangelist on the right. Christ sits enthroned above the world surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord.

Christ is depicted in the window as a youthful figure, with a globe or the world below his feet bearing seven stars representing the seven churches in the Book of Revelation:

Ephesus (Revelation 2: 1-7): known for toil and not patient endurance, and separating themselves from the wicked; admonished for having abandoned their first love (2: 4).

Smyrna (Revelation 2: 8-11): admired for its affliction and poverty; about to suffer persecution (2: 10).

Pergamum (Revelation 2: 12-17): living where ‘Satan’s throne is; needs to repent of allowing heretics to teach (2: 16).

Thyatira (Revelation 2: 18-29): known for its love, faith, service, and patient endurance; tolerates the teachings of a beguiling and prophet who refuses to repent (2: 20).

Sardis (Revelation 3: 1-6): admonished for being spiritually dead, despite its reputation; told to wake up and repent (3: 2-3).

Philadelphia (Revelation 3: 7-13): known for its patient endurance and keeping God’s word (3: 10).

Laodicea (Revelation 3: 14-22): is neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, called on to be earnest and repent (3: 19).

The cardinal virtues comprise a set of four virtues recognised in Classical writings and and usually paired with the three theological virtues.

The cardinal virtues are the four principal moral virtues on which all other virtues hinge: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The three theological virtues are: faith, hope and love. Together, the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues comprise what are known as the seven virtues.

Plato is the first philosopher to discuss the cardinal virtues when he discusses them in the Republic. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle writes: ‘The forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, wisdom.’ Cicero, like Plato, limits the list to four virtues.

Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas adapted them, and Saint Ambrose was the first to use the term ‘cardinal virtues.’

The three Theological Virtues are: Faith, Hope and Love (see I Corinthians 13).

The Four Cardinal Virtues and the Three Theological Virtues … windows in the Church of Sant Jaume in Barcelona (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 2: 15-21 (NRSVA):

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

21 After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

The visit of the Shepherds (see Luke 2: 15-21) in the Nativity scene on the triptych in the Lady Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 31 December 2023):

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 ‘Looking to 2024 – Freedom in Christ.’ This theme is introduced today by the Revd Duncan Dormor, USPG General Secretary:

‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.’ (Galatians 5:10)

As we step into the new year, we know that our world is a deeply uncertain place. Few of us predicted the events of the last few years – the Covid-19 pandemic, a major land war in Europe, the cost-of-living crisis or conflict in the Holy Land. We do not know what lies ahead in 2024.

We can only step forward, as Paul noted, ‘by faith and not by sight.’

As individuals, as flesh and blood, we all crave freedom and security – freedom from injustice and violence, and the security that a good livelihood, friends, community, just laws and the government bring. And so our hearts naturally go out to all who live with deep insecurity and oppression.

As we are called by God to walk faithfully through 2024, so are we called to a freedom rooted in Christ. This is an active, life-giving freedom, a freedom that reaches out towards others.

It is expressed in our solidarity with our sisters and brothers, and with our neighbours, global and local. A solidarity that sets people free, ourselves and others. It begins when we come before our loving God in prayer, and it equips us for the walk ahead.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (31 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

‘The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it’. (Psalm 24: 1-2)
O God,
we have profoundly damaged creation.
Give us the strength to recover what we have tainted,
amplify the voices calling for renewal.

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Harold’s Cross, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Collect on the Eve of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus:

Almighty God,
whose blessed Son was circumcised
in obedience to the law for our sake
and given the Name that is above every name:
give us grace faithfully to bear his Name,
to worship him in the freedom of the Spirit,
and to proclaim him as the Saviour of the world;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Happy New Year

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

The Swan … once claimed to be the oldest pub in Lichfield, but has since been turned into a restaurant and apartments (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

A former rectory in Harold’s Cross was inspired by Wyatt’s ‘Celtic Revival’ work

The former Harold’s Cross Rectory on Leinster Road West was designed by Joseph Maguire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

My eldest brother found it entertaining to point out that Leinster Road West is not to the west but to the south of Leinster Road in Rathmines. Leinster Road West is an interesting street off Harold’s Cross Road, between Leinster Road and Kenilworth Square.

Although the residents of Leinster Road West probably feel more at home in Rathmines, this street runs immediately behind the Roman Catholic parish church of Harold’s Cross and two of its most interesting buildings are associated with the Church of Ireland parish of Harold’s Cross.

I went back to look again at these two buildings one morning last week during my brief pre-Christmas visit to Dublin.

No 13 Leinster Road West is now known as Marleigh House, but it was built in 1871-1872 as the glebe house for Harold’s Cross Church, then a trustee church.

The glebe house was built while the Revd William Booker Askin (1822-1907) was the chaplain in Harold’s Cross from 1857 to 1901. When Harold’s Cross was transferred to the Church of Ireland and became a parish, the glebe house became the rectory.

Joseph Maguire’s design was inspired by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt’s adaptation of the ‘Celtic revival’ style in Grafton Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The house at 13 Leinster Road West, was designed by the Dublin-born architect and engineer Joseph Maguire (1820-1904), who was then living nearby in Kenilworth Square.

In his design of Harold’s Cross Rectory, Maguire was inspired by Irish monastic and cathedral buildings, with their Romanesque arches and decorated columns. Some of this inspiration can still be detected in details of the house, including the porch, arches, columns, capitals and pillars.

Maguire may have drawn his inspiration from the original shopfront at Nos 24-25 Grafton Street, designed in the ‘Celtic revival’ style for William Longfield by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-1877), a descendant of John Wyatt (1675-1742), of Weeford near Lichfield, and a member of an outstanding family of architects.

In his Grafton Street shopfront design in 1863, Wyatt combined details from many churches and cathedrals, including the doorway in Saint Lachtain’s Church, Freshford, Co Kilkenny, crosses from Monasterboice, Co Louth, and the chancel arch and crosses from Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam, Co Galway.

The Irish Builder at the time hoped Wyatt would ‘stimulate many an Irish architect to ... recreate a national style,’ and praised it for being ‘at once novel and successful.’ It seems to have inspired Maguire, who designed the rectory for Harold’s Cross in the decade that followed.

Joseph Maguire designed the rectory in Harold’s Cross in the decade that followed Wyatt’s shopfront in Grafton Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Joseph Maguire was born at 5 Saint Patrick’s Close South, Dublin, on 26 February 1820, a triplet and the tenth of the 16 children of William Maguire, inspector of taxes for the Paving Board, and his wife Mary (Vickers). He was baptised the following day in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, where his father was sexton. After his father died in 1844, Maguire moved with his mother to 9 Peter Place, and he lived until he married Mary Hayes in Rathfarnham in 1845.

Maguire was an active architect by the 1860s and 1870s, with an interest in the design of proper artisan and labourers houses and in church architecture. He was also a district agent to the Royal Insurance Company, the Dublin architect and valuator of the Royal Land, Building and Investment Company of Belfast, and architect and executive sanitary officer to the North and South Dublin Unions.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI) in 1867 on the proposal of James Higgins Owen and Sir Thomas Drew, seconded by Edward Henry Carson, but resigned in 1869. He was a founding member of the Architectural Association of Ireland in 1872.

Maguire worked mainly from addresses in Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), although at times he also had offices in D’Olier Street, Grafton Street and Middle Abbey Street. For most of that working life, Maguire lived in Rathgar at addresses in Kenilworth Square, including No 2 (1858), No 4 (1859), No 8 (1860-1864), No 14 (1862-1865), No 57 (1867-1881), No 50 (1882), No 59 (1883-1892). He also lived on Garville Avenue (1846-1853, 1893), Leicester Avenue (1853-1857), Rathgar Avenue (1894-1896), and Grosvenor Square. He was living at 84 Rathgar Road when he died on 2 December 1904.

The grounds of the rectory at the corner of Harold’s Cross Road and Leinster Road West were originally more extensive. Parts of the grounds were acquired from the Church of Ireland Representative Church Body by the Rathmines and Rathgar town council for road-widening in 1929.

Within a decade of the new rectory being built on Leinster Road West, a parish hall was built in 1882-1883 for Harold’s Cross opposite the rectory, on the corner of Harold’s Cross Road and Leinster Road West. It was designed by Alfred Gresham Jones (1824-1915) and his pupil Thomas Phillips Figgis (1858-1948).

The parish hall was converted into offices in 1992 and is now called Century House.

Century House was built as Harold’s Cross Parish Hall in 1882-1883 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Memories of a former Jewish home and its two synagogues on Denmark Hill, Rathmines

The former Jewish home on Denmark Hill, off Leinster Road, Rathmines, was founded in 1950 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

In my walk around Rathmines and Harold’s Cross last week, during my short return visit to Dublin, I spent a morning strolling around Leinster Road, Harold’s Cross Road and Leinster Road West.

Between these two streets, I went in search of the site of the former Jewish Home on Denmark Hill, which was founded in 1950. The home had its own synagogue until it closed and was moved to the Quaker-run Bloomfield Care Centre in Rathfarnham.

The private synagogue was in what was formally known as the Home of Aged and Infirm Jews Synagogue on Denmark Hill, part of Le Bas Terrace running between Leinster Road and the junction of Leinster Road West and Effra Road.

The home, later known from about 1974 as the Jewish Home of Ireland, was founded in 1950 after Rifka and Zalman Potashnick made a deed of gift, giving their home on Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines, to the Board of Guardians of the Jewish community for the establishment of a ‘real Jewish home’ for the Jewish elderly ‘not blessed with children or other relations who can lovingly care for them.’

The couple were known locally as ‘Mr and Mrs Solomon’. Rifka Potashnick was moved to set up this charitable foundation after she befriended the widowed Rabbi Brown. He had been reduced to poverty, and she found him living in circumstances that made him dependent on community welfare. He wore many layers of clothes to keep himself warm and he moved from one household to the next, relying on the meals each family offered him.

When he failed to turn up at her home for a few days, Rifka went in search of the impoverished rabbi, and found him in Saint Kevin’s Hospital. When he died there, she was disturbed by the circumstances. She talked about her plans for a new home with her son-in-law Maurice Wine and, to help establish the new home, Rifka and Zalman ‘downsized’ and moved to a smaller home in Neville Road, Rathgar.

However, the Potashnick home was not suitable for communal living. It was sold to provide the initial funds towards buying the premises on Denmark Hill, close to the synagogue at 52 Grosvenor Road.

The architect of the new home was Norman Douglas Good, the eldest son of Dr Douglas Good and Ada Baillie Good of Appian Way, Dublin. He trained in a Dublin architect’s office, the school of architecture at University College Dublin, and the Architectural Association in London, in the 1920s. He worked in partnership with the architect Michael Scott as Scott & Good from 1931 to 1936, and then continued to practise from 36 Frederick Street.

The home was first listed in the Jewish Year Book in 1951. The synagogue followed Ashkenazi Orthodox ritual, and may have relied for spiritual leadership on the various Chief Rabbis of Ireland and Dublin’s communal rabbis, as well as readers from the various Dublin synagogues.

The home was supported by the Jewish communities in Dublin, Belfast and Cork, and was open to any Jewish applicant, anywhere in Ireland, subject only to medical condition and the availability of a bed.

The first trustees of the home included Maurice Wine, Gerald Gilbert, Solomon Verby, and Maurice Baum. They bought the home of Hanchen and Louis Wine. The acclaimed violinist and musician Erwin Goldwater was the first chairman of the committee. He was President of the Rathmines Hebrew Congregation, which then had its synagogue nearby at 52 Grosvenor Road, Rathgar.

At the opening ceremony, Erwin Goldwater expressed the hope that ‘never again will any of our poor and aged end their days in surroundings that are strange.’ It is said no-one was ever turned away for lack of funds.

The original synagogue in the home was a replica of a synagogue in Abraham Isaac Cohen’s antique shop on Lower Ormond Quay. Until his death in 1985, Abraham Cohen’s son, Louis Cohen, took personal responsibility for this synagogue. As Ray Rivlin has recalled in Jewish Ireland – a social history (2011), it attracted a regular Shabbat minyan, even from members of others shuls, and Louis Cohen hosted a Kiddush at the home every Sabbath and Festival.

The home was provided with a beautiful new synagogue in 1991, dedicated to the Revd Abraham Gittleson (1915-1983). He was born and raised in Dublin and studied at Gateshead yeshiva. He returned to Dublin and from the early 1940s for over 40 years he served many congregational roles in Dublin as a mohel, shochet and teacher.

He served at the Lennox Street Synagogue in the 1940s. He became second reader of the Dublin United Hebrew Congregation at Greenville Hall on the South Circular Road ca 1948, and served that synagogue as second and then first reader until he died in 1983.

The new synagogue in the home was named in his memory in 1991cand a scholarship fund in his name was established to support the education of Jewish children in Dublin.

When the home closed in 2005, the 18 residents were moved, two at a time, to the Quaker-run Bloomfield Care Centre on Stocking Lane in Rathfarnham, with a separate wing, its own prayer room and a kosher kitchen under kashrut supervision. Today, the Bloomfield Care Centre works in conjunction with the Jewish Representative Council to help members of the Jewish community to continue a Jewish lifestyle while in assisted living.

Initially, the home on Denmark Hill was converted into two student houses, one male and one female. But in recent years the site has since been developed into mixed housing.

Shabbat Shalom

The former Jewish home on Denmark Hill, off Leinster Road, Rathmines, closed in 2005 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)