Five photographs of Dublin are included in a new pocket guide for visitors and tourists

The new 100-page ‘Dublin Visitor Guide 2025-2026’, edited by Sally Davies, includes five of my photographs

Patrick Comerford

I was back in Dublin last week for a family visit, and naturally there was a rush of memories even in the short gap of five of six hours, between arriving in the airport and leaving for the airport once again.

I visited the house in Knocklyon where I lived for over 20 years from 1996 to 2017, and Christ Church Cathedral, where I had been a canon for 10 years. But I also saw schools and I had attended, childhood and family homes, the church where I had been confirmed, streets I had played on, suburbs where I spent some of my childhood and teenage years, places where I had worked, and bookshops I once frequently browsed in.

It is not a good idea to have fly-in/fly-out-again to places you have once lived in, and not to have time to meet family members, friends and former colleagues and neighbours. I need time to amble around, to stop and talk, to sit and sip coffee, to stroll through old haunts.

When I moved back to Dublin in my mid-20s, from the Wexford People to The Irish Times, I felt out of place, and it took many years to adjust to life there. I left this time with memories and a small degree of feeling out of place, but also the hope of being back again in the weeks or months ahead, for family visits and perhaps the possibility of a reunion of the 1969 year from Gormanston.

But I left too with the pleasure of knowing that five of my photographs have been used by Sally Davies in her new slimline 100-page Dublin Visitor Guide 2025-2026, which she has edited for Smarttraveller.

Three of these photographs were taken last year, and my photographs in this new guide include churches, street art and photographs of the Portobello and ‘Little Jerusalem’ area of Dublin.

Last year, she used nine of my photographs in her Co. Clare Visitor Guide and one photograph in her County Kerry Visitor Guide, both also published by Smarttraveller365.

The Dublin Visitor Guide 2025-2026is a 100-page publication produced as a comprehensive directory for tourists. It features travel ideas, local business listings and discount coupons and covers a wide range of visitor essentials, including where to eat and stay, directories of restaurants, pubs, and accommodation, and highlights of major historical landmarks, museums and hidden gems, as well as special deals, exclusive offers and service discounts.

In her introduction, Sally Davies says ‘we have a deep passion for Ireland and have crafted this guide to share the hidden gems and unforgettable experiences to be had in the city’.

Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

My photograph of Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge (p 24), has this accompanying text:

Close to the US Embassy, and Herbert Park, is St Bartholomew’s Church, designed by Thomas Henry Wyatt, built in the Gothic revival style with sandstone facings and Dublin granite. The stairway to the clock tower is in the shape of an Irish round tower, the influence of the Celtic Romantic period. It is also known for its fine music and the choir of boys and men is the only remaining all-male parish church choir in the Church of Ireland. Formed in 2003, the girls choir also plays a prominent role.

Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, seen from Grafton Street and Ann Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

My photograph of Anne Street (p 30) has this accompanying text:

Home to John Brereton Jewellers, which has five star reviews for their excellent customer service and help with choosing from their unique pieces of diamond jewellery. The street has pharmacies, several cafés one of which is Dolce Sicily, serving showstopping delights from poached cod with orange and fennel salad to pistachio tiramisu, delicious!

Sheridan’s Cheesemongers, which is a rustic shop selling a huge array of cheeses, and accompaniments, who teamed up with the Centre of Food Culture and Samhain Festival to create a mouthwatering festival every November. The imposing St Ann’s Church faces you, known for its concerts, recitals and stained glass windows.

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

Three of photographs from the Portobello, ‘Little Jerusalem and Rathmines areas (pp 44-45) are published with these paragraphs:

Portobello, meaning “beautiful harbour” in Irish, came to be in the 18th century.

So folks say …

In 1861 there was a terrible tragedy on Portobello Bridge. Horses pulling a horse-drawn bus reared up and broke through the bridge railings and plunged the bus down into the canal lock. All but the driver and conductor drowned. One was the father of the Gunne brothers who opened the Gaiety Theatre and one was the niece of Daniel O’Connell. It is said this was the work of the vindictive ghost of the lock keeper, who himself drowned after being sacked for drunkenness. All passengers had to alight before crossing the bridge and walk over after the incident.

In the 1800s, the land round Portobello was part of the Kingsland estate with parkland and fountains before the developers built housing on it, and many entertainers performed there. One of which was Charles Blondin -who had previously crossed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope and cooked omelettes on a stove on the tightrope, which he distributed to lookers-on. His performance in Dublin though, ended in disaster, when his tightrope broke, leading to the scaffolding collapsing which killed two workers, who fell.

In 1858, the Portobello Gardens was leased and while a band played, acrobats entertained and fireworks were set off.

In the mid 1900s, Ever-Ready Batteries was the main employer for the area at Portobello Harbour. When the factory closed, small businesses took over the area and the remainder of the harbour was drained and mainly filled in.

During the late 1900s, many Ashkenazi Jews, fleeing Russia and Eastern Europe settled in Portobello, which was given the nickname “Little Jerusalem”.

The area is vibrant with many walls covered in street art, this one of David Attenborough.

Or this on the side of a Chinese restaurant.

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

You must visit the fabulous Bretzel Bakery, who strongly believe in the nutritional goodness of sourdough bread.

The Bretzel Bakery & Cafe serves award winning breads, pastries, cakes, sandwiches & coffee until 4pm every day of the week on Lennox Street, Portobello.

Along the western edge of Portobello, you will find cafés and bars along Clanbrassil Street Lower and dozens on the eastern side at St Kevins Camden Street Lower and Harcourt Street.

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

In her acknowledgements towards the end of the guide (p 94), Sally Davies is generous in her tribute to me when she writes:

‘Thank you for your continuing support with your incredible knowledge (of the world!) and help in allowing me to use your photos Patrick Comerford’

She also provides a link to this blog: www.patrickcomerford.com

I hope she produces more of these guides to other parts of Ireland.

Saying goodbye to Dublin at Dublin Airport last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 13, Friday 17 April 2026

Tsoureki, a sweet Greek bread traditionally served at Easter, on a table in Panormos, near Rethymnon, on Easter Day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Second Sunday of Easter (Easter II) or Easter in the calendar of the Greek. Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost.

Before today 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.

A variety of bread gathered in a basket (see John 6: 1-15) in Panormos, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 1-15 (NRSVA):

1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages[b] would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ 10 Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ 13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Five loaves at the preparation for the Eucharist in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle – apart from the Resurrection – that is recorded in all four Gospels (see also Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 32-44; Luke 9: 10-17). The feeding of 4,000 is told by both Mark (Mark 8: 1-9) and Matthew (Matthew 15: 32-38), but by neither Luke nor John.

The story of the multiplication of the loaves and fish and the feeding of the 5,000 is told in a very similar way in all four Gospels, with only minor variations on the place of the miracle or the circumstances surrounding it.

Saint John alone tells us that the feeding and the teaching took place as the Feast of the Passover was drawing near, so both the action and the discourse are to be understood with those particular perspectives.

Some time has passed since the healing of the man by the pool in Jerusalem, the better part of a year perhaps, and we are now back in Galilee in the following spring for the second Passover narrative (see verse 4) in Saint John’s Gospel.

Commentators point to the shift from the Festival of the Booths in the previous chapter and to the significance of the second Passover. But sometimes I wonder are we in danger of missing one other point, no matter how insignificant it may seem at first reading?

There is a story about how the Puritans in New England worked themselves to death in the fields without getting much in return for their back-breaking efforts. So much so that they were in danger of starving to death until the wiser inhabitants of the land taught them a few home truths about living in harmony with the rhythms of the earth. There are times to plant. There are times to rest. There are times to work the soil. And there are times to let the soil rest.

Perhaps the gap between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 is part of the Hidden Years of Jesus … when he was an adult, when he was in harmony with the rhythms of the earth and the rhythms of life, and when he was preparing for the harvest that is gathered in in Chapter 6.

The story of the multiplication of the loaves as told in John 6 has a number of key details that are intended to remind us as the readers of the Eucharist, and the Eucharistic narrative resumes in verses 51-58. But the story is also one that is full of Messianic hope and harvesting, and of Eucharistic promise, for it recalls the story of King David. When David first fled from King Saul, he fed his small group of followers, those who acknowledged him as the rightful king, with the priest’s bread, asking the priest: ‘Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here’ (I Samuel 21: 3).

The ‘other side’ in verse 1 refers to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was named Tiberias after the city founded ca 20-26 CE by Herod Antipas and named after Tiberias Caesar. In this way, John places the last work done among the Galilean disciples in Gentile territory.

Here too the Galileans are following Jesus because of signs and miracles, and not because of faith (verse 2). Once again, we have the Johannine question about the link between seeing and believing, which we encountered dramatically in the Easter story of Thomas in last Sunday’s Gospel reading (John 20: 19-31).

Christ is seated on the top of the mountain (verse 3). What does this remind us of? The top of Mount Sinai? The mountain of the Transfiguration? The hill of Calvary outside Jerusalem?

This is the time approaching the second Passover (verse 4), so there is a build-up in the number of Passovers being recounted, bringing us towards an expectation of fulfilment at Passover.

Christ lifts up his eyes (verse 5). When the disciples rejoined Christ at the well in Sychar while he was talking with the Samaritan woman, he told them to ‘lift up their eyes’ (John 4: 35, translated in the NRSV as ‘look around you’) and to see the ‘harvest’ of the seed he had been sowing.

The introduction of Philip (verse 5) and Andrew (verse 8) as characters in the scene is typical of John’s style. They represent the disciples. Just as at Jacob’s Well, they have failed to buy or produce enough bread.

Philip’s faith is being tested (verse 6), and, by implication, the faith of all the disciples. Where the NRSV says ‘six months’ wages’ (verse 7), the original Greek says 200 denarii. A denarius was a day’s wage for an unskilled labourer.

John alone mentions the young boy or servant and the barley loaves (verse 9). Barley loaves were the food of poor people and for animals, but strikingly, the barley loaves in this story remind us of the time when Elisha who fed 100 men with 20 loaves of bread (II Kings 4: 42-44), saying: ‘For thus says the Lord, “They shall eat and have some left”.’ The feeding of the multitude therefore may be seen as a demonstrative prelude to Jesus’ words, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in will never be thirsty’ (John 6: 35).

The feeding with the fish is a prelude to, looks forward to, another meal by the shores of Lake Tiberias, ehen Jesus feeds the disciples with bread and fish (see John 21: 1-19). The fish is an early Christian symbol of faith in the Risen Christ: Ichthus (ἰχθύς, capitalised as ΙΧΘΥC) is the Greek word for fish, and can be read as an acrostic, a word formed from the first letters of several words, spelling out Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ (Iēsous Christos Theou Huios, Sōtēr, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour).

Christ asks the disciples to make the people sit down – well, not so much to sit down as to recline (verse 10). They are asked to recline on the grass as they would at a banquet or a feast – just as he did with the disciples at the Last Supper.

Notice the Eucharistic actions in verse 11: Dom Gregory Dix identified the four-fold movement in the Eucharist as taking, blessing (giving thanks), breaking and giving.

John alone has Christ commanding the disciples to gather up the fragments lest they perish (verse 12). Gathering is an act of reverential economy towards the gifts of God. But we return later to the Eucharistic imagery here too. Meanwhile, the gathering also anticipates the gathering that takes place in connection with the work of the Son as he receives from the Father those who are given to him, ‘that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me …’ (John 6: 39; see also John 17: 12).

There are twelve baskets – one for each tribe of Israel and one for each of the twelve disciples (verse 13). Mark alone mentions fragments of fish being picked up too.

In Saint Mark’s Gospel, Christ forces his disciples to leave immediately (see Mark 6: 45). But only in Saint John’s Gospel (verse 15) are we given the reason for this: the people want to make Christ their earthly king (compare this with the reference to the test in verse 6). When they want to make him their king, they want to make him a political messiah, opposing Rome. But Jesus would not accept this way of being king or of being messiah (see John 18: 36).

In Saint John’s Gospel, the account of the Feeding of the Multitude is followed with the conversation Jesus has with the crowds who follow him to Capernaum. The main motif in the passage (verses 26-59) centres on Jesus saying: ‘I am that bread of life’ (verse 48). In this way, John links the Feeding of the Multitude with the feeding of the people in the wilderness with manna and with the heavenly banquet and the coming of the kingdom (see John 6: 25-40).

In the Fourth Gospel, the preceding food miracle is at the Wedding in Cana, where Jesus turns the water into wine. Now we have a miracle with bread. The Eucharistic connection of bread and wine is obvious even to the first-time reader.

The story of the multiplication of the loaves as told here has a number of key details that intended to remind the reader of the Eucharist, and the Eucharistic narrative resumes in verses 51-58.

• In verse 10, the crowd is asked to recline on the grass, as if they were at a banquet, a Passover meal or a wedding feast, just as Christ and the 12 ate while reclining at the Last Supper.

• Once again, notice the Eucharistic actions in verse 11. Dom Gregory Dix identified the four-fold movement in the Eucharist as taking, blessing (giving thanks), breaking and giving.

• John alone uses εὐχαριστήσας (eucharistisas, verse 11), from the verb εὐχαριστέω (eucharisteo), ‘to give thanks,’ from which we derive the word Eucharist for the liturgy.

• John alone depicts Christ himself distributing the bread as he will do again at the Last Supper.

• John alone has Christ commanding the disciples to gather up the fragments lest they perish. The Greek word συνάγω (synago, to gather up) gives us the word συναγωγή (synagogue) for the assembly of faith, and the word σύναξις (synaxis) for the gathering or first part of the Liturgy. The Greek word for ‘fragments’, κλάσμα (klasma), appears also in early Christian literature as the liturgical word for the host or the bread at the Eucharist.

Jesus puts no questions of belief to either the disciples or the crowd when he feeds them on the mountainside. They did not believe in the Resurrection – it had yet to happen. But Jesus feeds them, and feeds them indiscriminately. The disciples wanted to send them away, but Jesus wants to count them in. Christ invites more people to the banquet than we can fit into our churches.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

Five loaves in the Bretzel in ‘Little Jerusalem’ in Portobello in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 17 April 2026):

‘Stocked with Hope’ provides 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), pp 46-47. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Mayank Thomas, Programme Manager, the Synodical Board of Social Services, Church of North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 17 April 2026) invites us to pray:

God, bless women like Shaila who are using small businesses to provide for their families. May her efforts reflect dignity, purpose, and hope for economic independence and community leadership.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ 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:

Lord God our Father,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
you have assured your children of eternal life
and in baptism have made us one with him:
deliver us from the death of sin
and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Bread and wine as part of a simple meal in Rethymnon in Crete (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

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 15, Tuesday 17 February 2026

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

This period of Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar has been very short this year, lasting for little more than two weeks, today is Shrove Tuesday, or in most of our childhood memories, Pancake Tueday, with pncake races in Lichield, Olney and many other places. Lent begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday (18 February 2026).

The calendar of the Church of England today remembers the life and witness of Janani Luwum (1977), Archbishop of Uganda and Martyr. 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)

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 Reflections:

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 a taxi from Luton. I got a train in the wrong direction when I was to speak at a book launch in London. I have even left my passport behind in Stony Stratford, so that I missed a flight and the launch in Dublin of a book to which I had contributed two chapters.

I know it happens to others too. I hope this forgetfulness does not mark the way we set out on a long journey tomorrow. But with those memories and that in the background, I understandably feel sympathetic with any of the disciples in today’s reading 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 17 February 2026):

The theme this week (15-21 February 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Look to the Amazon!’ (pp 28-29). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Most Revd Marinez Bassotto, Bishop of Amazonia and Archbishop of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 17 February 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, bless the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil as it stands alongside Indigenous communities in the Amazon to protect forests and defend the rights of land and culture.

The Collect:

God of truth,
whose servant Janani Luwum walked in the light,
and in his death defied the powers of darkness:
free us from fear of those who kill the body,
that we too may walk as children of light,
through him who overcame darkness by the power of the cross,
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:

Eternal God,
who gave us this holy meal
in which we have celebrated the glory of the cross
and the victory of your martyr Janani Luwum:
by our communion with Christ
in his saving death and resurrection,
give us with all your saints the courage to conquer evil
and so to share the fruit of the tree of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

A town sign in Olney depicts the town’s traditional pancake race on Shrove Tuesday (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 intriguing stories that can emerge from research into Irish Jewish genealogy and family history

Stuart Rosenblatt is the leading expert on Irish Jewish genealogy and has been described as ‘a beacon of light for future generations’

Patrick Comerford

Two statistics have been drawn to my attention in recent days that I find intriguing.

An analysis of DNA findings suggests that nearly half of the population of Ireland may carry Jewish ancestry, according to Stuart Rosenblatt, the leading expert on Irish Jewish genealogy.

In a 20-page study published in the IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science (Vol 26, Issue 6, Series 10, June 2021), Elizabeth C Hirschman Hill, Richmond Gott Professor of Business Department of Business and Economics, University of Virginia-Wise, says DNA evidence suggests many Lowland Scots and Northern Irish people have Jewish ancestry.

She says she has used the newest genealogical DNA methodology of phylogenetic trees to identify a large population of Jewish descent in the Scottish Lowlands and Northern Ireland. She proposes that the majority of these ‘Lowland Scots and Northern Ireland colonists’ were likely crypto-Jews who had arrived in Scotland in three phases: with the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066; after the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290; and after the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in the 1490s.

She believes evidence is found that both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic branches of Judaism are present among these Lowland Scot and Northern Ireland residents. I was interested that the family names she included in her study are Hunter in Ireland and Kirkpatrick in Ireland and Scotland.

I am not convinced of her methodology, deductions or arguments, and she seems to be unsure about the understanding of lineage of Levites and cohanim in Jewish communities. Nevertheless, it is a curious hypothesis.

The leading expert on Irish Jewish genealogy, undoubtedly, is Stuart Rosenblatt. He also says DNA findings now suggest that nearly half of Ireland’s population may carry Jewish ancestry.

On a mailing list I am part of, Stuart was described earlier this week as ‘a beacon of light for future generations’ whose ‘quiet determination preserves the memory of a people.’

Stuart Rosenblatt is the founder of the Irish Jewish Genealogical Society, and he was the newly-elected president of the Irish Genealogical Society when I was invited to give a lecture in Dún Laoghaire on ‘The Comerfords in Ireland: Disentangling Myths and Legends to Find True Origins’ over ten years ago (10 February 2015).

Stuart was a genial host, and we had wonderful conversations about Comerford genealogy and Jewish genealogy and shared our thoughts on genealogical methodology that evening as he brought me to and from Dún Laoghaire Further Education Institute. We have both collaborated on research for programmes in the popular genealogical television series, Who Do You Think You Are?.

It has been said among genealogists and within the Jewish community in Ireland that never before in genealogical research has anyone attempted what Stuart has achieved – recording the full story of an ethnic Jewish minority across an entire nation, spanning all 32 counties in his Irish Jewish Roots project.

Over more than three decades, he has meticulously compiled an archive of 75,771 names, each entry containing up to 110 pieces of information. His work now fills 22 bound volumes, with copies in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, the National Library, the National Archives Dublin, the Irish Jewish Museum and the Genealogical Society of Ireland.

This archive is more than genealogical data – it is a bridge to identity. It aids descendants of Irish Jews worldwide, whether they seek to trace relatives, secure an Irish passport, or walk the streets where their ancestors once lived.

The records show many lineages go back 300 years, and the oldest stretch as far back as 1555, when most Irish Jews were of Spanish-Sephardic heritage. Today, most Irish Jews can be traced back to Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews from Lithuania and neighbouring nations who arrived in Ireland the 1870s.

Stuart has travelled throughout Ireland, gathering overlooked sources such as school registers, midwife journals, nursing home logs, memorial notices, and prayer books with handwritten inscriptions – fragments that official records rarely capture. His dedication is unwavering and at 81, he still works on it at his own expense, joking that his commitment is ‘eight days a week.’

His project began in the Irish Jewish Museum, housed in the former Beth Hamedresh Hagadol Synagogue on Walworth Road, Portobello, in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’. There he came across dusty boxes filled with genealogical fragments, and ouft o this chaos he created 16 separate databases, later merging them into a searchable programme.

Since then, the archive has become a living resource, accessed by scholars, families, and institutions worldwide. His work has supported television research, inheritance cases, DNA studies and countless personal projects.

‘Circumcision records are rare,’ he told an interviewer for the Jewish News Service, ‘although in one record, Revd Abraham Gittleson, in an entry under ‘Observations’ noted that the nurse fainted! And that stood out!’

The second statistic that has come to my attention in recent days and that I find intriguing is found in an analysis of the figures in the 2021 census for the Jewish population in England and Wales by ethnic group and nationality.

The figure for the total the Jewish population in England and Wales in the last census is 269,293, or 0.5% of the overall population. Of these, 230,399 (85.56 per cent) are classified as white, and among them 927 (0.34 per cent) are described as Irish, and 161 (0.06 per cent) as Irish Travellers.

The census category ‘Irish Traveller’ was introduced for the first time in 2011, and in the 2021 Census of England and Wales, the Gypsy/Irish Traveller community numbered 67,757, or 0.1% of the population. But it means that 1.36 per cent of Irish Travellers identity themselves or declare themselves as Jewish, so that the proportion of Jews in the Irish Traveller population in England and Wales is higher than the proportion of Jews in the total population in England and Wales (0.24) or the proportion of Irish Travellers in the total population in England and Wales (0.1).

The other intriguing figures in those census returns in England and Wales include (and I am selecting randomly) 178 Roma Jews, 159 Chinese Jews, and 422 who say they are Arabs.

These are intriguing and fascinating breakdowns of statistics. But behind each statistic and each figure is a human story, and I’d love to hear more of those stories. Who are the Irish Traveller Jews living in England today? Where do the Chinese Jews come from? How do the 422 Arab Jews feel about events over the past two years in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank?

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

The Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ in Portobello (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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)