Oram The Little Book of Dundrum

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7509-6286-5
Verlag: THP Ireland
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

Reihe: Little Book of

The Little Book of Dundrum is a compendium of fascinating, obscure, strange and entertaining facts about this vibrant suburb of Dublin. This book takes the reader on a journey through Dundrum and its intricate past. Here you will find out about Dundrum's famous sons and daughters, its churches, pubs, shops and great houses, its industries and its natural history. You will also glimpse a darker side to Dundrum's past with a look at crime and mayhem in the district. A reliable reference book and a quirky guide, this can be dipped into time and time again to reveal something new about the people, the heritage and the secrets of this south Dublin suburb.

HUGH ORAM was an author, broadcaster and journalist with countless articles and books to his name, who lived and worked in Dublin for many years.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Oram, Hugh

Leseproben

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CHURCHES

ARMENIAN

The St Hripsime Armenian Sunday School was established in 2009, meeting in the Taney Parish Centre, where the Sunday School and other community celebrations are staged on a regular basis. Between 150 and 350 Armenians live in Ireland, so the Taney Parish Centre is a social and religious hub.

ASYLUM SERVICES

In 1867, a licence was given for Divine Service at the then almost new Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Windy Arbour. Today, Church of Ireland services are still held at the Central Mental Hospital. However, the original Church of Ireland chapel at the hospital was donated to the local Catholic parish in the late nineteenth century.

BAPTIST CHURCH

Hope Baptist Church, which is just behind the Garda station on the Upper Kilmacud Road, has been established for over ten years. Its lively congregation is led by the pastor, Dan Canavan, and among the facilities is a crèche for the children of parents attending services. People who believe that each person must experience individual salvation through a personal faith in Christ alone have met up in various forms in Dundrum from the mid-1990s onwards. In September 2004, they were organised into the Hope Baptist Church at Shamrock House on the Upper Kilmacud Road, Dundrum. By November 2011, the congregation had grown so much it moved to Taney Hall, less than 50 metres from the old place of worship.

CHRIST CHURCH, TANEY

Business and professional people started moving out of Dublin city in the eighteenth century to live in quieter rural areas and by the early nineteenth century, the move of new residents into the Dundrum area was well under way. As a result of this population shift, the new Church of Ireland church (Christ Church) at Taney was opened in 1818, becoming the principal church of the parish.

The church was extended considerably in the 1860s and 1870s, being finally consecrated in 1872. On 11 June 1872, The Irish Times reported on the consecration of the church the previous day by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. The news report said that the church was ‘situated in the midst of a beautiful country, prettily studded with trees and well watered: the day was on the whole very fine, a few slight showers occurring at intervals but not sufficient to mar the success of the interesting ceremony. After the proceedings were over, everyone repaired to the nearby home of Henry Roe, the wealthy Dublin whiskey distiller, who had paid for the cost of the church’s renovation, the building of a new chancel and the installation of a new organ. Henry Roe lived at Mount Anville Park, where magnificent entertainment was provided for 250 people.’

This period of expansion also saw the opening of a parish school, as well as a Sunday school, and the proliferation of social clubs and other parish organisations.

Christ Church is an imposing building, both inside and out. It was designed in the Gothic Revival style and its main external feature is the square bell tower on the north side. It was designed in a cruciform shape, with fixed pew seating and a central aisle running the length of the church up to the altar. There are two timber panel-fronted balconies facing each other across the main aisle and another at the back, facing the chancel. Access to the south balcony is by the timber staircase leading from the south aisle. This staircase was dedicated as a memorial to Canon Orr, rector, 1935-1958, in October 1966, when six collecting plates were given to the church by Canon Orr’s widow and family. The north balcony is reached by an elegant stone spiral staircase in the porch, under the bell tower.

The pulpit is located on the north side of the nave and beside it is the baptistry, with its carved stone font. Within the church, there are many interesting memorial plaques and windows, including, on the north wall of the chancel, a large brass memorial to the twenty people from the parish who died in the First World War. There’s also a brass plaque to Everard Hamilton of Ballinteer Lodge, who died in 1925, his wife Elinor, their son Gustavus and their daughter Helen. Everard Hamilton was a solicitor, who was also a churchwarden from 1883 to 1887. He also assisted Francis Elrington Ball in writing the first history of Taney parish, published in 1895. Much more recently, in 1981, Letitia Overend from Airfield dedicated the church clock in her memory, while the chimes were presented to the church by her sister Naomi Overend.

CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD, BALALLY

This parish was constituted in 1977 from Sandyford parish and it takes its name from the townland of the same name in the ancient deanery of Taney. The old Gaelic form is Baile Amhlaoibh, meaning the ‘town of Olaf’, a reference to the area’s Norse heritage. The parish runs from the Slang River at Ardglas to the M50 motorway at Sandyford and takes in the housing estates on both sides of Sandyford Road, as well as estates on the Ballinteer Road, the Gort Muire conference centre and the Sandyford and Stillorgan industrial estates.

The parish has about 2,000 home and some 9,000 residents. For the first few years of the parish, St Olaf’s National School was used as a Mass Centre. The strikingly modernistic church, circular, with a pink façade, was designed by renowned architect Liam McCormack, and was dedicated by the then Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan, in October 1982. Due to severe financial constraints, some parts of the church weren’t finished until recent years. But when the Green Luas line was being built in the early years of the twenty-first century, the church got a windfall from the sale of some of its land to build the Luas line. This money was used to complete the church and add a new sanctuary. The church was rededicated on 1 October 2006. The first parish priest was Fr Sean Cleary, from 1977 to 1979, now deceased. He was succeeded by Fr Eddie Randles who served until 1992, when the present parish priest, Dr Dermot Lane, took over. Religious sisters connected with the parish include the Sisters of Marie Reparatrice and the Faithful Companions of Jesus.

CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS

For many years in the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries, Dundrum was part of Booterstown parish. It didn’t become a parish in its own right until 1879, when Holy Cross church had been completed. About 1813, construction began on the first chapel, just off Main Street, and this work was completed before 1830. The first resident curate in Dundrum, Fr Powell, began his ministry in 1833 and shortly afterwards, the chapel was enlarged and the buildings that hid it from Main Street were taken down. An advertisement in the Freeman’s Journal, on 27 June 1835, sought more money for the completion of the new chapel. It said that a committee had been appointed to solicit contributions to complete the enlargement of the Roman Catholic chapel of Dundrum and said that ‘they most respectfully entreat the aid of their fellow citizens of every religious persuasion that they may be enabled to accomplish this desirable and indispensable work of piety’. The work was duly completed and on 14 September 1837, Dublin’s Catholic Archbishop Murray arrived in the village of Dundrum to dedicate Holy Cross church.

Fr Joseph Hickey was appointed curate in Dundrum in 1865 and it was he who was faced with the task of building a new church, the present building. The current Catholic church, fronting onto Main Street, is among the most interesting ecclesiastical buildings in the area. Building started in 1877 and was completed in 1879. The church is noted for its fine sandstone façade, replicated in the adjoining presbytery. The new church cost around £5,000 to build. After all his exertions in getting the new church built, Fr Hickey lived long enough to see the fruits of his labours for a further decade, until he died in 1889.

The present church was almost doubled in length during a big extension carried out in 1953. Many of the features of the earlier church were retained, along with Sacred Heart vessels of fine late Georgian design. The 1953 extension was designed so sensitively that it retained much of the atmosphere of the 1877 design, yet created much more space as well as a hall beneath the main body of the church. Just over twenty years ago, the parish got a new parish priest, Fr Donal O’Doherty, appointed in 1993. In his twenty years with the parish, both as parish priest and pastor emeritus, he was commended by the local Catholic community for guiding the parish to its present vibrant state. In September 2013, Fr John Bracken was appointed as a co-parish priest for the team serving Dundrum, Ballinteer and Meadowbrook parishes.

In the eighteenth century, this part of Dublin was so undeveloped that one priest covered a vast area. From 1759 to 1775, the Very Revd James Nicholas was the parish priest not only of Dundrum but also of Booterstown, Donnybrook, Irishtown, Ringsend, Stillorgan and Kilmacud. All the housing development in the Dundrum area, during the later twentieth century, has meant the creation of more localised parishes.

Tony Cullen, Holy Cross Church

Tony Cullen, who died on 3 August 1964, was the clerk at Holy Cross church for fifty years. He opened and closed the doors, rang the Angelus three times a day and rang all the Mass bells. He looked after all the candles and officiated at christenings, weddings and funerals. Perhaps his hardest task was supervising the choirboys. In his earlier years, he had taken part in the War of Independence (1919-1921) and as the new state settled down, Tony Cullen became involved in...