Meeting-house, Dublin North City, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Ecclesiastical Sites
A lane in Dublin's north inner city carries a name that outlasted the building it was named for.
Meeting House Lane, running just off Capel Street, takes its title from a Presbyterian meeting house that once stood at its northern end, a structure significant enough to be recorded on John Rocque's meticulous map of the city in 1756, yet long since gone from the streetscape. The lane remains; the congregation moved on; and the name quietly preserves the memory of both.
The Capel Street Meeting House traced its origins to 1667, making it one of the earliest Presbyterian congregations established in Dublin. A meeting house, in the Presbyterian tradition, is the plain, functional gathering place that replaced the more elaborate church architecture associated with other denominations, reflecting a theology that placed the sermon and the congregation at the centre of worship rather than ceremonial space. This particular congregation survived and grew through the eighteenth century before eventually relocating to Rutland Square, now known as Parnell Square. What is striking is the care taken to carry the old association forward: the congregation's new home was named Abbey Presbyterian Church, a reference not to any abbey but to the area around the former premises, preserving a link to the Capel Street origins even after the building itself had been left behind. The detail is recorded by Lennon and Montague (2010).
There is nothing to see on the ground today that directly marks the original site. Meeting House Lane still exists as a modest passage in the dense street grid north of the Liffey, and Rocque's 1756 map, copies of which are widely available in Dublin's libraries and archives, offers the clearest visual record of where the building once sat. The Abbey Presbyterian Church on Parnell Square is the living continuation of that 1667 congregation, and its name, once you know what it refers to, reads rather differently than it might otherwise.