Bethel Solomons, the prominent Jewish doctor who won ten caps in international rugby for Ireland

A portrait of Dr Bethel Solomons by his sister Estella Solomons (Irish Jewish Museum, ©The Trustees of the Estate of Estella Solomons)

Patrick Comerford

This is another weekend of wall-to-wall, back-to-back rugby in the Six Nations Championship, with Ireland playing Italy tomorrow (2:10 pm) and England playing Scotland (4:40 pm), and then Wales and France on Sunday afternoon (15:10).

Despite a disappointing 36-14 defeat by France in the Stade de France last week, my fervour for Irish rugby is undimmed, and my hopes, however unfounded, remain high this weekend.

Few Jewish players have played at the highest levels in Irish rugby history. Bethel Solomons (1885-1965) is the most prominent Jewish Irish rugby international, capped as a forward for Ireland in the early 20th century, and also a noted doctor. Later, another former Irish rugby international, Tony Ward, discovered his Jewish heritage with dramatic revelations in recent years.

Dr Bethel Solons was the Master of the Rotunda Hospital, an actor at the Abbey Theatre and President of the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation. In addition, he was an international rugby player.

Bethel Albert Herbert Solomons was born on 27 February 1885 into a prominent Jewish family who are one of the oldest continuous Jewish families in Ireland. The Solomons family came to Ireland from England in 1824, when Elias Solomons opened his optician’s shop in Nassau Street, close to Trinity College Dublin. His son, Maurice Solomons (1832-1922), continued the optician’s practice at 19 Nassau Street, on the corner with South Frederick Street. He is mentioned by James Joyce in Ulysses, and was also a JP and the honorary consul in Ireland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

James Joyce in street art in Nassau Street … Maurice Solomons (is mentioned by James Joyce in ‘Ulysses’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bethel’s elder brother Edwin Solomons (1879-1964) was a stockbroker and prominent member of the Dublin Jewish community. Their sister Estella Solomons (1882-1968) was a leading artist; she married the poet and publisher James Sullivan Starkey (1879-1958), a Methodist, who wrote under the penname Seumas O’Sullivan. Their younger sister Sophie trained as an opera singer.

Bethel Solomons went to Saint Andrew’s School, Dublin, and studied medicine in Trinity College Dublin, where he enjoyed the social life, theatre and rugby. He captained Trinity to the Leinster Senior Cup (1908), also played for Wanderers, and played on the Hospitals’ Cup winning team in the 1903-1904 and 1904-1905 seasons. He became the first Jew to play Test rugby when, on 8 February 1908, he lined up as Ireland’s number 8 in a 13-3 defeat by England at the Richmond Athletic Ground. In all, he won ten caps for Ireland (1908-1910).

In The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby' by Tony Collins, an account is given of Solomons taking a taxi to ensure he would be in time to run on to the pitch for a rugby international: ‘Fearing he would be late for Ireland’s 1909 home match against England, he hailed a cab in the centre of Dublin. He told the cabbie he wanted to go to Lansdowne Road. “It’s for the Ireland rugby international” explained Solomons. “Ireland?” snorted the driver dismissively “it’s nothing but fourteen Prods and a Jew”.’

Ireland were defeated 11-5 by England that day, 13 February 1909.

The stadium at Lansdowne Road, the home ground of Ireland and of Wanderers … Bethel Solomons was capped ten times for Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

He acted at the Abbey Theatre, under the stage name Thomas Thornhill, in 1913 in August Strindberg’s There are Crimes and Crimes, and James Stephens dedicated The Charwoman’s Daughter to him.

Although his rugby and theatrical ambitions were limited by the demands and successful medical career, he went on to become a selector for the Irish team and was vice-president of the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) in later years.

After his experience as an extern maternity assistant at the Rotunda Hospital, attending home births in the Dublin slums, he became devoted to obstetrics and gynaecology, also studied in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and Munich, and started to teach medical students.

Bethel Solomons was a supporter of the suffrage movement and an advocate of women’s equality. He opened the Jewish Medical Dispensary in Stamer Street in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ in 1913 and ran it with Ada Shillman, a midwife who attended most of the Jewish women in Dublin during her career.

He married Gertrude Levy in 1916 at the Liberal Synagogue in London in a wedding conducted by Claude Montefiore. Gertrude was a friend of his sister Sophie since they were students at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Gertrude and Bethel lived in 42 Fitzwilliam Square, where he ran a successful practice (1916-1926). His patients included George Yeats and Iseult Gonne, and they later rented the upstairs of 42 Fitzwilliam Square to WB Yeats and his wife George. He later practiced from 30 Lower Baggot Street.

Bethel Solomons was the Master of the Rotunda Hospital from 1926 to 1933, and as Master he is mentioned by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake: ‘in my bethel of Solyman’s I accouched my rotundaties.’

He inherited considerable financial challenges at a hospital that needed to modernise and to maintain its reputation as one of the world’s leading maternity hospitals. His improvements included a new nurses’ home, new out-patient department, theatre block and sick babies ward, the introduction of X-ray facilities and incubators and a revival of the pathology laboratory.

As World War II approached, Solomons took an increased role in Jewish affairs. He wrote to the British Medical Journal in 1937 warning against the choice of Berlin as the location for an international medical academy of postgraduate work and research to ‘further international fellowship and friendship’.

The Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation on Leicester Avenue, Rathgar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

From 1939, he worked to raise funds for the Jewish Refugee Aid Committee, which was chaired by Leonard Abrahamson and had among its vice-chairs, his brother Edwin, who was the President of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation at Adelaide Road Synagogue. At the end of the war, he became chair of the Jewish Children’s Refugee fund, raising funds to bring refugee children to Clonyn Castle, Co Westmeath or to Millisle Farm in Northern Ireland.

Solomons chaired a meeting in the Mansion House in Dublin in 1946 addressed by Rabbi Israel Mattuck of the Liberal Synagogue in London. The meeting led to the formation of the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation (DJPC), with Bethel Solomons as president from 1946 to 1965. The former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yitzhak Herzog (1888-1959), by then the Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land, denounced the new synagogue as an ‘open, active, organised rebellion against the Torah’, but Bethel Solomons refuted this in the Jewish Chronicle in 1946.

Solomons received many international honours and was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1946-1949. He died on 11 September 1965 at his home, Laughton Beg, Rochestown Avenue, Dún Laoghaire. Bethel and Gertrude Solomons were the parents of three children. Their second son, Dr Michael Solomons (1919-2007) was a distinguished gynaecologist, a pioneer of family planning in Ireland, and a veteran of the bitter and divisive 1983 constitutional amendment referendum campaign.

Another Irish rugby international, Tony Ward, found out late in life that his father, Danny Ward, was from a Jewish family that fled Poland to escape Nazi persecution. In a peculiar accident or coincidence in history, his paternal ancestors too had Solomons as their original family name.

Tony Ward was only five years old when his father died, leaving him with ‘precious few early memories of him’ so that he ‘knew very little about him or his family.’ It was only in later life he discovered his father’s story as a Jewish refugee from Poland later, partly through research initiated by his daughters, Nikki and Lynn, as a Christmas present. Through a professional genealogical agency, Ancestry Made Easy, they came across findings he had never known for the best part of six decades.

His father, known as Danny Ward, was born Saul Solomons on 16 August 1909. The Solomons family were victims of their time, and following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, they fled the persecution of Jews in Russia, Poland and Finland.

Harris Solomons and Jane Cohen were the parents of Saul (Danny). Harris was a tailor and he and Jane lived at Great Garden Street, Whitechapel, in the East End of London. Saul Solomons, or Danny Ward, had three siblings: Sadie, Sydney and another sister, Sarah, who died soon after birth. The three surviving children were all born in London, but the census return listed them as Russians.

Saul Solomons and Lily Gross were married in Philpot Street Synagogue in the East End in 1934. They both worked in London as hairdressers and their son Derek, who was born in 1935, is Tony Ward’s half-brother.

That first marriage was later dissolved, and Saul Solomons then moved to Ireland and settled in Dublin in the late 1940s. He met June Connolly, a Catholic, around 1952 and there was an 18-year age gap between them. Gor them to marry, he reportedly had to give up his Jewish religion. By late November 1953, he had changed his name from Saul Solomons to Daniel Ward, had become a Catholic, and they married in Cardiff Registry Office.

The couple lived for a time in Leeds, where Tony Ward was born. Danny Ward had a heart attack and died in Leeds General Infirmary on Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1960. Tony was only five, and June returned to Dublin almost immediately. Yet, having spent part of his childhood in Leeds, Tony Ward is still a committed Leeds United supporter.

There are other Jewish sports figures who have played cricket and football for Ireland, including Louis ‘Abraham’ Bookman and Finn Isaac Azaz. But more about them, perhaps, on another and appropriate Friday evening.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Dr Bethel Solons was the Master of the Rotunda Hospital, an actor at the Abbey Theatre, President of the Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, and was capped then times for Ireland in international rugby

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

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

Patrick Comerford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ernst Scheyer: the life of a Holocaust refugee and German scholar in Kenilworth Square, Dublin

Ernst Scheyer (1890-1958), a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, lived at 67 Kenilworth Square from 1939 to 1956 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas and Chanukah coincide this year, and this evening is the Sabbath evening in Chanukah. The Sabbath in Chanukah is known as Shabbat Mikets. Chanukah is the Jewish festival that celebrates liberation from brutal oppression, the defeat of violent religious discrimination and putting an end to antisemitic and despotic rule.

When I visited Kenilworth Square, one of my favourite corners of Dublin, last week and met Martin and Colette Joyce in their home at No 67, I was reminded that the house was once the home of Dr Ernst Scheyer (1890-1958), a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in the late 1930s.

Scheyer had been a successful lawyer in Germany and he had survived both Kristallnacht and time in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin. He arrived in Dublin on 14 January 1939 at the age of 48, and his family made their home at 67 Kenilworth Square. He later taught German at Saint Andrew’s College, Clyde Road, Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and Trinity College Dublin. He was a key figure in founding the Progressive Jewish Community in Dublin in 1946, and when he died in Birmingham 1958 he was buried in Woodtown, near Rathfarnham.

Ernst Scheyer lived in Ireland for almost 20 years. During those two decades, he was a pioneering figure in teaching German in Dublin, an influential figure in Jewish life in Ireland, a founding member of the Jewish progrssive Synagogue in Rathgar, and a friend of Albert Einstein.

His story has been recounted by Gisela Holfter of the University of Limerick in her paper ‘Ernst Scheyer’ in German Monitor, vol 63 (2016), ‘German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945’ (pp 149-169), a volume she also edited. Scheyer’s grandson, Stephen Weil, supported her research and provided access to family archival material and photographs.

Ernst Scheyer ca 1915 … he was decorated in the German army during World War I (Archival photograph: Stephen Weil / Gisela Holfter)

Ernst Scheyer was born in Oppeln in Upper Silesia on 23 November 1890. His parents owned a wholesale and retail grain business and were the first generation of Liberal Jews in the family, while he was the first in his family to go to university.

During World War I, he volunteered in the German army in 1915. He was wounded and was decorated for bravery with medals that he later brought with him to Ireland. He received his PhD in law in Breslau (Wroclaw), and became a practising lawyer and a respected member of the Jewish community in Liegnitz, Silesia, now in south-west Poland.

Scheyer married Marie Margareta (Mieze) Epstein, who was born in Breslau and who was five years younger. They were the parents of two children, Heinz (born December 1919) and Renate (born September 1925).

Scheyer has been described as a tall, broad and impressive looking man. He built a successful practice as a lawyer and notary in Liegnitz, where both Ernst and Marie were active in the liberal Jewish community, and for a time he was President of the B’nai Brith Lodge.

After the Nazis took power, Scheyer lost his status as a notary in 1935, the family lost most of their staff and had to move out of their large house, and on 1 December 1938 his accreditation in the district and the superior courts was withdrawn.

After Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, Scheyer was rounded up and spent almost a month in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin, where he was prisoner number 012798 in block 14.

Their son Heinz who had received a scholarship to Trinity College Dublin and started studying medicine at TCD in September 1937, giving the family a much-needed link to Ireland. But entry to Ireland was not easy to gain, particularly for Jews, for whom access had been restricted from the beginning of the Irish Free State.

With the help of Dr Harris Tomkin, a Jewish eye doctor, Heinz obtained a one-month visa for England and Ireland for Ernst and Marie Scheyer. Tomkin was an ophthalmologist at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital on Adelaide Road for 60 years, and was vice-chair of the Jewish Refugee Aid Committee, formed in 1938.

Ernst Scheyer was released from Sachsenhausen on 5 December 1938 and Ernst and Marie arrived in Dublin on 14 January 1939; he was 48. The Scheyer family soon made their home at 67 Kenilworth Square.

Marie Epstein and Ernst Scheyer were engaged in Breslau 3 October 1917 (Archival photograph: Stephen Weil / Gisela Holfter)

According to Heinz Scheyer, his father began working in Dublin as a travelling salesman. He also spent about four months in Northern Ireland, where he left a strong impression. Edith Jacobowitz, who escaped Berlin with her younger brother on one of the last Kindertransporte, mentions him in her memoir.

However, when a local policeman tipped off Heinz that his parents were about to be interned within 24 hours, Ernst and Marie Scheyer fled Northern Ireland. Back in Dublin, he taught German at Saint Andrew’s College, Clyde Road, Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and in TCD.

A few months after arriving in Ireland, he was stripped of his German citizenship. The doctor at the German Embassy Robert Stumpf, who was a member of the Nazi party, reported that the Scheyers lived with a Jewish eye doctor and the nothing negative was known about them. Scheyer seems to have been observed also by Irish Military Intelligence, the G2.

Renate Scheyer joined her parents and her brother in Dublin in June 1940, having stayed in the same boarding school as her brother in England. She was just 16, and started studying Modern Languages at TCD the following autumn. She later married another refugee, Robert Weil.

The Progressive Jewish Synagogue on Leicester Avenue, between Kenilworth Square and Rathgar Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After the war, Ernst and Marie Scheyer became Irish citizens. He was also active in Jewish community life in Dublin and was and involved in founding the Progressive Jewish Synagogue, which would be built on Leicester Avenue, around the corner from his home on Kenilworth Square.

Over 500 people attended he meeting in Dublin on 30 January 1946 to form a Progressive Synagogue. Bethel Solomons, the first president, was a doctor and former rugby player for Ireland. The Dublin Liberal Congregation was formed with Rabbi Brasch as the minister. Scheyer was one of the council members, and with his legal background may have written the constitution.

The wedding of Ernst and Marie Scheyer’s daughter Renate and Robert Weil on 14 July 1948 was the first wedding in the Progressive Jewish community in Dublin. Scheyer may have arrange Leo Baeck’s visit to the Progressive Jewish Community in 1949 in Dublin as Scheyer was bar mitzvah under him in Oppeln.
The first meetings of this congregation were held in a Quaker meeting house until 1952, when the foundation stone of the new synagogue on Leicester Avenue, Rathgar, was consecrated.

Marie and Ernst Scheyer, Renate Scheyer and Robert Weil, Ruth and Heinz Shire at the wedding of Renate and Robert Weil Dublin on 14 July 1948 … the first wedding in the Progressive Jewish Community in Dublin (Archival photograph: Stephen Weil / Gisela Holfter)

Scheyer is listed in the Calendar of TCD from 1947 to 1958 as an Assistant in German. He took over this position from Hans Reiss (1922-2020), another refugee who later became professor of German in Bristol. His students included Bill Watts, a former Provost of TCD, and his wife Geraldine.

In a letter to Albert Einstein, Scheyer described how he set students tasks of preparing presentations on literature, philosophy, psychology and ethics. He wrote an eight-page letter to Einstein in April 1950 after Einstein had warned about the great dangers of annihilation of life on earth with the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Scheyer presented 19 radio broadcasts for the ‘Europäische Stunde’ of the RIAS Berlin, between 23 October 1955 and 16 February 1958. He reported on politics, elections, cultural festivals such as ‘An Tostal’, the death of Jack B Yeats and the problems with the ownership of the Hugh Lane collection. Robert Briscoe, Dublin’s first Jewish lord mayor, features in at least four of his broadcasts, and Scheyer describes Briscoe’s visit to the US.

He loved and inspired love among his students for German literature and German culture, and organised a Goethe celebration on his bicentenary. With his son-in-law Robert Weil he published A Book of German Idioms in 1955. He visited Germany at least once after World War II, when he went to a spa. But, while he holidayed in German-speaking Switzerland, he never spent a holiday in Germany.

Ernst Scheyer died on 9 March 1958 while visiting his son Heinz, who had become a GP in Birmingham. His heart attack seems to have been connected with the damage to his health during his time in the concentration camp. He was buried in the Progressive Jewish cemetery in Woodtown, Rathfarnham.

Two years after his death, the Ernst Scheyer Prize was founded in his memory in 1960. Two prizes are awarded annually to students in German at TCD.

His widow moved to live with their daughter and son-in-law, Renate and Robert Weil, in Belfast in 1963. She later moved to live with her son, Dr Heinz Shire, in Birmingham, and died there in 1987. She too is buried in Woodtown in Rathfarnham, Dublin.

Although Ernst Scheyer’s name does not appear in the register in Dermot Keogh’s Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland (1998), Nick Harris’s Dublin’s Little Jerusalem (2002) nor in Ray Rivlin’s Shalom Ireland (2003), he is remembered today for his teaching and enthusiasm for German language and literature.

Martin and Colette Joyce of the Protect Kenilworth Square Committee at their home at No 67 Kenilworth Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Another German Jewish refugee who was Scheyer’s near neighbour briefly on Kenilworth Square was Professor Ludwig Hopf (1884-1939). He lived briefly at No 65. He was appointed a lecturer in TCD but had died at the end of 1939, soon after Ernst Scheyer arrived in Dublin.

Hopf was a theoretical physicist and a friend of Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger and Carl Jung – he had been the first assistant to Albert Einstein and introduced Einstein to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

Hopf regarded Dublin as expensive to live in and estimated that everything cost 50% more than in Cambridge. Writing to friends in Germany, he describes living in ‘a very beautiful, very famous and very expensive corner of Europe.’

However, shortly after taking up his post at TCD, Hopf became seriously ill with a previously undiagnosed thyroid failure. He died at 65 Kenilworth Square on the evening of 21 December 1939.

Chag Chanukah Sameach, חַג חֲנוּכָּה שַׂמֵחַ‎

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

No 65 Kenilworth Square … Ludwig Hopf’s home in ‘a very beautiful, very famous and very expensive corner of Europe’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The residents of Kenilworth Square have one Christmas wish: to save their Victorian square for the future

‘All we want for Christmas is to Protect Kenilworth Square’ … over 3,000 people have signed a petition organised by Protect Kenilworth Square Committee (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

The squares of Dublin 6 tell of the development of south Dublin suburbs by benign Victorian developers and architects who had a vision for the expansion of a growing and prospering city. The squares of Ranelagh, Rathmines, Rathgar and Terenure include Dartmouth Square, Mountpleasant Square, Belgrave Square, Brighton Square, Grosvenor Square, Kenilworth Square, Leinster Square and Eaton Square.

But today, the residents of Kenilworth Square in Rathgar believe the future of their square is under threat. The majority of the gates and railings of the houses – and many front doors – are festooned with Christmas wreaths declaring: ‘All we want for Christmas is to Protect Kenilworth Square.’ To date, over 3,000 supporters have signed a petition organised by Protect Kenilworth Square Committee.

This is a square I have known such my childhood, and members of the Comerford have lived in the area across three on more generations, on Kenilworth Square, Rathgar Road and Grosvenor Road.

Martin and Colette Joyce of the Protect Kenilworth Square Committee at their home on Kenilworth Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Martin and Colette Joyce, who are involved with the Protect Kenilworth Square Committee, invited me to coffee in their home on the south-east corner Kenilworth Square one morning this week to discuss their hopes and fears this Christmas.

Kenilworth Square has over 155 years of history and heritage. It consists of three hectares (7.4 acres) of unspoilt parkland, a wide variety of shrubs and healthy, mature heritage trees, many dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The wildlife population includes squirrels, foxes, a variety of birds, and at least four recorded bat species.

Now this Victorian Square ‘is under threat like never before’, Martin Joyce told me over coffee, as we looked across the square. ‘Fortunately, residents of the square have united since we discovered the plans last April,’ he says, referring to proposals by Saint Mary’s College to redevelop their sports grounds in the green heart of the square.

They ‘never contacted residents in the four years they spent putting their plans together in secret, and they have refused to engage with us in the past eight months,’ he says mournfully.

The Spiritans own and manage both Saint Mary’s College, Rathmines, and the parkland of Kenilworth Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Congregation of the Holy Spirit, or the Spiritans, own and manage both Saint Mary’s College, Rathmines, and the parkland of Kenilworth Square. Four months ago (22 August 2024), the Spiritans were granted a Section 5 Exemption from Planning Permission from Dublin City planners for Phase 1 of their Kenilworth Square Redevelopment Plan.

The exemption allows them to replace a grass rugby pitch with a full size (100 m x 70 m) 4G synthetic pitch, install a 1.2 m high fence around it and cut down eight healthy, mature trees, all without planning permission.

They will apply for planning permission for the rest of the plan, which involves six 18 m high floodlights, a 10-room pavilion, a car park inside the Square, and more as Phase 2 of their full plan for Kenilworth Square.

Martin Joyce, who recently retired after a career in publishing, told me how the committe members and the residents of Kenilworth Square are now wondering what Phase 3 of those plans could entail, and he explains how those fears are founded on what they have seen happening to other squares in the Dublin 6 area.

The Kenilworth Bowling Club on nearby Grosvenor Square has a synthetic bowling surface and bar facilities. They applied recently for floodlights. The tennis courts beside the bowling club already have floodlights.

The Georgian square at Mountpleasant Square in Ranelagh is fully surrounded by tall, densely-planted conifers, so that no-one can any longer enjoy what was once a beautiful visual amenity. Over time, Mountpleasant Square has also acquired synthetic playing surfaces, floodlights and a massive clubhouse, complete with a gym, a bar and lounge.

He asks: ‘Is this what the future holds for the tranquil, naturally-lit green space that Kenilworth Square currently is? Will Astroturf pitches be installed next in Palmerston Park, Dartmouth Square or Belgrave Square?’

Martin and Colette Joyce, who have lived at 67 Kenilworth Square since 2002, are determined, along with the committee, to ensure this does not happen to Kenilworth Square. He describes it as one of Dublin’s finest Victorian squares and ‘a vital green lung amidst a sea of ever-expanding high-rise developments just a short distance away on Harold’s Cross Road.’

The Hughes family lived at 18 Kenilworth Square for five generations (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Kenilworth Square in Rathgar was developed by different developers between 1858 and 1879. Unlike the squares of Georgian Dublin, such as Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square or Mountjoy Square, Kenilworth Square developed more organically around a central square plot of land. All the houses are finished in red brick but they are built in a variety of different styles.

Most plots surrounding Kenilworth Square had already been laid out and built on by 1867, as the Ordnance Survey map of 1867 shows.

The names of Kenilworth Square and many of the streets and roads off the square, as well as some of the houses in the area, including Kenilworth Road, Kenilworth Park, Leicester Avenue, Waverley Terrace, Waverley Ville and Dudley Lodge, were inspired by the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), published between 1814 and 1831.

A winter morning in Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, earlier this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Kenilworth was published in three volumes in January 1821, and republished in 1830. It is set in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and centres on the secret marriage of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.

Saint Mary’s College bought the leasehold on their grounds on Kenilworth Square for £1,000 in 1947 from a Mr White, a property developer who bought the land from the residents for £500. He sold the green area to the Spiritans because he had been refused planning permission for any development. They described the acquisition of the park as ‘a gift from heaven’ and ‘fortuitous.’

Martin Joyce believes this is ironic in light of the current plans from Saint Mary’s College for the redevelopment of the square. They include making the synthetic pitch available to clubs from all over Dublin, nightly and at weekends, on a rotational basis. This would require floodlights, a car park, a third vehicular entrance and a 10-room pavilion.

From 1947 until now, the park at Kenilworth Square has been used exclusively by Saint Mary’s College Rathmines for rugby training and matches on some Saturdays, as well as for occasional cricket, annual school sports days, and for their own Boy Scouts group.

The residents of Kenilworth Square and the public lost access to the park in 1999 when high railings were erected around it and locked the gates.

Residents who attended a meeting with Saint Mary’s on the Square at the time say Saint Mary’s had promised to give keys to the park to the residents if they did not oppose the erection of the high fence. The residents agreed, but no keys were given, and a park that had been open to the public since the 1860s has been solely available to Saint Mary’s pupils for the past 25 years.

Martin Joyce describes the latest proposals as ‘a plan to create a mini stadium at Kenilworth Square.’

Many residents of Kenilworth Square and the surrounding area regularly do circuits of the outside perimeter, walking or jogging, while enjoying, through the railings, the beautiful, tranquil views across the park.

Martin Joyce believes all this ‘will be lost forever if floodlights, a synthetic pitch, a car park and densely planted conifers are permitted.’ He is passionate about how the square must be protected from what he believes are ‘wholly inappropriate development plans.’ Please support our campaign to protect the Square by signing the petition.

Martin and Colette Joyce have lived at 67 Kenilworth Square since 2002 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I have known Kenilworth Square in intimate detail since my childhood. Some years ago, I photographed many of the houses and explored the stories of the families who lived there for a photo-essay and extensive blog posting (13 January 2021).

Many famous people have lived here. Kenilworth House at No 1 Kenilworth Square, was once the home of Sir Thomas Devereux Pile (1856-1931), High Sheriff of Dublin in 1898 and Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1900, when he welcomed Queen Victoria to Dublin.

Charles Eason, founder of the Eason’s chain of bookshops, built No 30. Kenilworth Bowling Club, the longest-established bowling club in southern Ireland, was established in 1892 in the back garden of Charles Eason, behind Nos 29 and 30 Kenilworth Square. The club moved to Grosvenor Square in 1909 but retains the Kenilworth name.

John West Elvery and his wife Catherine Jane (Fuller) built No 31 in 1861. The Elvery family, a famous Dublin business family, claimed to be descended from Spanish or Portuguese Sephardic refugees who had changed their name in England from Alvarez to Elvery.

John West Elvery was the founder of the Elvery chain of shops that sells sports goods.

Their son, William Elvery, married Mary Teresa Moss of No 23 Kenilworth Square, and their children included the artists Daphne Kaye and Beatrice Elvery Moss, who married Gordon Campbell (1885-1963), who succeeded as Lord Glenavy in 1931. Lady Glenavy’s son, Patrick Campbell (1913-1980), was a well-known writer, Irish Times journalist, satirist and television personality and 3rd Lord Glenavy.

During the War of Independence, Éamon de Valera (1882-1975) moved his office to 53 Kenilworth Square in 1921, when his house in Blackrock was raided. It was in this house that Arthur Griffith presented Lloyd George’s proposals for the Anglo-Irish Treaty to de Valera four days before the Treaty was signed in London.

No 60 Kenilworth Square was the home of Charles William Comerford (1877-1953), the only member of the Comerford family who was actually in the GPO in Dublin in Easter Week 1916. His granddaughter, Angela Marks, believes Charles recalls family tradition that tells of him crawling out along the street and swearing to leave Ireland.

The Comerford family left Ireland ca 1922, but the memory of the family home on Kenilworth Square continued in the name ‘Kenilworth’ which they gave to his house on Nore Road in Portishead, near Bristol. Charles and Elizabeth Comerford had three daughters, Lillian, Nora and Kathleen, who were born while they were living at No 60. All three daughters became teachers in England. After the Comerford family moved, No 60 Kenilworth Square was home to the Little family for almost a century until it was placed on the market in 2016.

From July to December 1939, 65 Kenilworth Square was the home of Professor Ludwig Hopf (1884-1939), a German-Jewish refugee and theoretical physicist who had been the first assistant to Albert Einstein and introduced Einstein to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Writing to friends in Germany, he describes living in ‘a very beautiful, very famous and very expensive corner of Europe.’ Shortly after taking up a post at TCD, he died of thyroid failure on 21 December 1939. Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961), described him as ‘a friend to the greatest geniuses of his time,’ adding, ‘Indeed, he was one of them.’

No 60 Kenilworth Square was the home of Charles William Comerford and his family until 1922 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

No 67 Kenilworth Square, where Martin and Colette Joyce live, was once the home of Dr Ernst Scheyer (1890-1958), a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. He was rounded up after Kristallnacht, and spent almost a month in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin.

He arrived in Dublin on 14 January 1939, and the Scheyer family made their home at 67 Kenilworth Square. He later taught German at Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and in TCD. He died in 1958 and was buried in the Progressive Jewish community’s cemetery in Woodtown, Rathfarnham.

Philip Baker (1879-1932), who lived at No 77, was an Irish chess champion. He was born in Riga in 1879, and eventually ownws his own clothing factory.

Philip Baker’s son, Professor Joshua Baker (1906-1979), lectured at TCD for 30 years in Hebrew and as Reid Professor of Criminal Law. Another son, David Baker, was the Hebrew/Gaelic interpreter when the leaders of Israel and Ireland met.

The Protect Kenilworth Square Petition is available to sign HERE.

Christmas decorations on a house in Kenilworth Square this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

An odyssey before Bloomsday visiting Joyce’s early homes in Dublin and Bray

Terenure in Dublin stakes a claim to James Joyce and his childhood odysseys (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Today is Bloomsday celebrating that day 120 years ago – Thursday 16 June 1904 – celebrated by James Joyce in Ulysses 102 years ago in 1922. The day is named after Leopold Bloom, the principal character in the book as he wanders through the streets of Dublin.

The Bloomsday celebrations this year include readings, performances, re-enactments, tours, exhibitions, lectures, children’s events, a film festival, and many other festivities, with many people dressing, including straw boaters and bowlers.

Bloomsday is unparallelled as an international literary and cultural festival and it is one of the largest festivals in Dublin, with about 100 events throughout the city, attracting thousands of visitors from around the world.

Shakespeare & Co on the Rue de la Bûcherie in Paris … ‘Ulysses’ was first published by Shakespeare & Co in Paris in 1922 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Ulysses was first published by Shakespeare & Co in Paris in 1922, and I visited the successor bookshop on the Left Bank in February. A number of events today would compete for my attention if I were in Dublin today.

‘Joyce and the Jesuits: Bloomsday at St Francis Xavier Church’ is one of those events, from 12:30 to 4 pm. When Ulysses was published 102 years ago, Father George O’Neill, one of Joyce’s Jesuit teachers at Clongowes Wood, said Joyce was enjoying ‘regrettable celebrity’ in Paris. Yet, while Joyce pokes gentle fun at some individual Jesuits, his affection for the Jesuits who educated him runs through his writings.

The main response to Ulysses in Ireland was to attack it on anti-Catholic grounds. But, while Joyce may have had issues with the Irish Catholic Church at the time, his writings were steeped in Church history, philosophy and theology, and his knowledge was often far better than many of the Irish Catholic clergy who denounced him. Gradually, the importance of Joyce in Irish literature became more widely accepted.

The Baptistry in Saint Joseph’s Church, Terenure … James Joyce was baptised on 5 February 1882 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Jesuit Church of Saint Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street, features throughout his work. This afternoon, the actor, writer and broadcaster Gerry McArdle puts together a programme of readings from Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses that highlight Joyce’s Jesuit connections. He is joined by Raphael Kelly, a well-known figure in Irish musical circles, and the singer Suzanne Mangan. The event is hosted and narrated by the RTÉ newscaster Eileen Dunne.

At the same time, the Irish Jewish Museum is presenting two events for Bloomsday about the Jewish history of Dublin during Joyce’s time.

The Joyce Focus Tour is at 1:30. The Irish Jewish Museum is in the heart of what was the Jewish quarter of Portobello, known to many as ‘Little Jerusalem’, and has memories of life in the area as Leopold Bloom might have known it and as Joyce witnessed it in the early 1900s.

This is followed at 3 pm with a screening of Estella, a documentary on the life of Estella Solomons, the Irish landscape and portrait painter and contemporary of James Joyce. Born in Dublin in 1882 and her portraits record three generation of rebels, artists and literary figures who forged the new Ireland. The 52-minutes film, made in 2002, was directed by Steve Woods, who is present at this afternoon’s screening.

Rathgar Bloomsday Festival was celebrated a day before Bloomsday this weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Rathgar, the suburban Dublin village where James Joyce was born in 1882, celebrated Bloomsday a day earlier with the Rathgar Bloomsday Festival yesterday at Rathgar Village Square, sponsored by Dublin City Council and Rathgar Business Association.

The programme included readings from Ulysses, jazz from Razzmajazz, food stalls and face painting.

My friend and colleague Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth University is planning a new book on ‘Childhood and the Irish’, following on the success of his recent books on Birth (2021), Marriage (2019), Death (2016) and Christmas (2023) and the Irish. One of the suggestions I have put to him is a chapter on James Joyce’s childhood, and his childhood odyssey across Dublin, between 1882 and 1902.

James Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, on 2 February 1882 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

When Charlotte and I were in Bray and Dublin about a week ago, I went in search of some of Joyce’s childhood homes in Rathgar, Rathmines and Bray that were part of that odyssey. During the course of a day, I visited the first three houses that were the childhood homes of James Joyce.

His childhood odyssey began when James Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, on 2 February 1882, and baptised on 5 February 1882 in the temporary church on the site of Saint Joseph’s Church, Terenure, just a few steps away from the Eagle Tavern, where his mother May (Murray) Joyce was born.

Over the next 20 years, Joyce’s father moved the family to 14 different addresses in Dublin and neighbouring areas. The family moved in 1884 to 23 Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines, where he lived until 1887. A plaque on the house says he lived there from the age of two to five, ‘and wrote his first words here.’

James Joyce ‘wrote his first words’ at 23 Castlewood Avenue in Rathmines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Joyce family then moved to No 1 Martello Terrace in Bray in 1887, and lived there until 1892. A modest plaque is on the façade of the house, facing the Promenade and Bray Head, and a short stroll from the Martello Hotel, where Charlotte and I were staying for two nights. Appropriately, Ulysses is the name of a former guesthouse nearby on Strand Road, that has recently been converted into apartments.

When Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan stand ‘looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale,’ it actually physically impossible for them see Bray Head from the tower in Sandycove. This is surprising, because Joyce was familiar with Bray Head as a child, and Bray Head is praised as one of the glories of Ireland in ‘Cyclops’. Bray is where Stephen Dedalus grew up, and it is where Molly and Leopold Bloom once took a rowboat out on the waves.

Joyce’s childhood home in Bray is represented in A Portrait of the Artist, in the Christmas dinner scene in which Simon Dedalus squares off against Dante O’Riordain over the tragic death of Charles Stewart Parnell. One of Joyce's memories from those days also surfaces in ‘Calypso,’ when Bloom mentally recites a little love poem to his daughter.

The Joyce family moved to No 1 Martello Terrace, Bray, in 1887 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

In ‘Penelope,’ Molly Bloom recalls a nearly disastrous rowing outing off the coast in Bray: ‘Id never again in this life get into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off him before all the people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the good in the world.’

Bray Rowing Club continues to keep seagoing rowing boats on the beach in Bray to this day, and the boats were on the beach as Charolotte strolled along the seafront towards Bray Head at dusk in the late evening.

Bray Rowing Club continues to keep rowing boats on the beach in Bray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

From Bray, the Joyce family moved regularly, evading and escaping debt collectors and bailiffs at addresses in Blackrock (1892), Fitzgibbon Street (1893), Hardwicke Street (1894), Millbourne Avenue (1894), North Richmond Street (1895), Windsor Avenue (1896), Convent Avenue (1899), Richmond Avenue (1899), Royal Terrace (1900), Glengariff Parade (1902), and Saint Peter’s Terrace (1902).

The family continued to move after James Joyce moved to Paris in 1902, with at least six more identifiable and known addresses.

Perhaps this childhood and teenage odyssey, criss-crossing Dublin, influenced the greatest odyssey in modern Irish literature, the wanderings of Leopold Bloom 120 years ago on Bloomsday, 16 June 1904.

Ulysses on Strand Road in Bray … recently converted into apartments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

A short visit to Dublin and Bray brings back good memories from 40 and 50 years ago

Time moves on at McCloskey’s in Donnybrook … memories of poetry readings, drama groups and rugby matches (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I was back in Dublin at the end of last week for a very short family visit, and we stayed for two nights in Bray, Co Wicklow, in the Martello Hotel on the Promenade, facing out onto the sea front.

Seeing the Bray People on a news stand in a nearby supermarket on Friday evening was a reminder that this was one of the titles in the Wexford People Group of Newspapers, where I had worked 50 years ago.

Until I left the Wexford People for The Irish Times in late 1974, one of my pleasant assignments each week was the design and layout of the front page of the Bray People.

Evening lights in Bray and a table at Butler and Barry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Bray has many family links and memories. Until, perhaps, the 1960s, an aunt had lived only three days away from the Martello, at Seanchara House, once known as Tullira, in Wavecrest Terrace on Strand Road. My parents first lived on Putland Road in Bray after they were married almost 80 years ago, at end of World War II in 1945.

I also remember many childhood trips to Bray, when I was able to sneak away and enjoy the thrills of the ‘Bumpers’ and the Ghost Trains or – when some of us were more adventurous – climbing Bray Head and pretending we could see across to the coast of Wales on the other side of the Irish Sea.

In more recent decades, I often enjoyed walks along the seafront in Bray or around the harbour, followed by coffee or lunch in cafés such as Carpe Diem.

Living near Milton Keynes for the last two or three years, it is difficult (though not impossible) to find the same opportunities for a walk on any beach. So, as we had dinner in Butler and Barry on one of those evenings, it was good to share the joys of looking out onto the sea below and beyond.

Friday was a packed day, with family visits in Rathmines and Knocklyon, and the Dart connections between Bray and Lansdowne Road were ideal for setting out on a walk through some of south Dublin suburbs that retain many sweet memories for me, and that allowed me to recall some key anniversaries that take place this year.

The former Bea House on Pembroke Park … memories of student days at the Irish School of Ecumenics 40 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

A short walk from the Lansdowne Road stop on the Dart line in from Bray brought me to Pembroke Park, off Herbert Park, and the house that was once known as Bea House when it was the administrative centre of the Irish School of Ecumenics.

I was burning the candle at both ends 40 years ago, when I studied post-graduate theology there in the 1980s while working at The Irish Times spending a lot of time campaigning with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

There were happy memories of Robin Boyd, who had been the director of ISE, Alan Falconer, who was my tutor and, at the time, also a neighbour, and Bill McSweeney, who supervised my dissertation, leading to my graduation through ISE from Trinity College Dublin in 1984.

Other part-time lecturers 40 years ago included Des Dinan, who was then working on his PhD and who is now a professor at Georg Mason University, while the visiting lecturers included Jürgen Moltmann, who died last week, and Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), who died two years ago.

There were happy memories too of many walks with other students from Pembroke Park through Donnybrook and along Marlborough Road to Ranelagh and lectures in Milltown Park.

I had to stop too to see McCloskey’s pub in Donnybrook, although it is now closed and has been sold. This had been a favourite ‘haunt’ in the early 1970s, when I was involved in poetry groups and poetry groups based around the corner in Muckross Park on Marlborough Road. And there was the house at 52 Marlborough Road, where I stayed those weekends I travelled up to Dublin from Wexford until 50 years ago, when I left Wexford and the Wexford People and joined The Irish Times at the end of 1974.

Street art in Rathmines last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I walked on through Ranelagh, once again sought out the house in Old Mountpleasant where my grandfather had once lived, and then found myself on Belgrave Road, where I worked 20 years ago, from 2002 until 2006, when I joined the Church of Ireland Theological College, later the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

I stopped for lunch in Rathmines, visited my brother in Rathmines and once again visited the house in Rathmines where my father was born in 1918, and the house in Terenure where he spent his childhood.

By late afternoon, I was at the house where I lived in Knocklyon from 1996 until 2017, when I moved to the Rectory in Askeaton, Co Limerick. At the polling booth in Firhouse, I bumped into an old friend and neighbour, Dr Vincent Kenny. We caught up on many shared memories in Delaney’s, also known as the Knocklyon, before I caught a bus to Blackrock Station, and the Dart to Bray.

Evening lights at Blackrock Station last week waiting for the Dart to Bray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on image for full-screen view)

I am working on a paper for Salvador Ryan’s next collection, looking at ‘Childhood and the Irish.’ Throughout the day, I found myself thinking of the various places James Joyce had lived as a child, including Brighton Square, Rathgar, and the house where he was bor, Saint Joseph’s Church in Terenure where he was baptised, the houses in Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines, and back at Martello Terrace, Bray, where he had spent parts of his childhood years, and the place in Terenure where his mother was born.

But next Sunday is Bloomsday (16 June 2024), and perhaps I should tell some of those stories then and more of them in that planned book that Salvador Ryan is commissioning and editing.

Meanwhile, as I was on my own Bloom-like odyssey around Dublin 4 and Dublin 6, Charlotte was back in Bray, and decided to climb Bray Head. Sorry to say, she did not catch a glimpse of the coast of Wales either.

We had dinner in the Martello on Friday evening, and caught the plane back from Dublin to Birmingham yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, and were back in Stony Stratford by early evening.

The ‘Bray People’ … still going 50 years after I left in 1974 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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)