St Brides Church of Ireland

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St Bride's Church of Ireland (built 1684) which was part of the Dublin streetscape for some 214 years, is no longer extant.

The original medieval St. Bride's church (erected in the 1100s) was an ancient Irish church located south of the walls of Dublin and dedicated to St. Brigid.
It was rebuilt following the Reformation in 1684 by Nathaniel Foy (Bishop of Waterford and founder of Bishop Foy's School) while he was rector of St. Bride's. The curacy of St Brides was in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick's.

Since its heyday in the mid-1700s, the number of Church of Ireland parishioners in St Bride's (aka St. Bridget’s) fell in steady decline. It was repaired in 1827 at an expense of between £300 and £400, by parish assessment; and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have since granted £158. 5. 9. for its further repair.

In 1837, the church was described as "a very plain building, situated in the street to which it gives name... Among the monuments are those of Mr and Mrs Pleasants, distinguished for their munificent charitable donations and bequests". [Lewis]

By 1898, the church of St. Bride’s had fallen into a perilous condition and it was demolished to make way for the Guinness sponsored Iveagh Trust housing development for the poor (aka "Bull Alley scheme") which still stands on the site.

The Church of Ireland was required to sell the ruinous church and graveyard to Edward; it was necessary that the "remains of any person interred or deposited" in the graveyard were to "be removed under the superintendence of the medical officer of health for the time being of the city of Dublin and re-interred in any consecrated burial ground".

St Brides Churchyard (also no longer extant) had a large number of parishioners buried here. The memorials from St Brides graveyard (pictured above) were placed in St Werburgh's churchyard.

Among the remains transferred to Mount Jerome Cemetery were:

Thomas Carter (1690–1763), politician and Master of the Rolls in Ireland, was buried in the church.
O'Hanlon, keeper of the Record Tower in Dublin Castle, who was killed during the rebellion of Robert Emmet in 1803.
Thomas Pleasants (1729–1818) for whom Pleasants Street was named and his wife Mildred Daunt (d.1814).

A list of the original tombstones inscriptions and names of those buried at St. Bride's was compiled as a record, a copy of which is maintained in the Iveagh Trust's private archive. For online transcriptions see IGP-Web Dublin Cemeteries -St Brides .

St Bride's fine organ-case can still be seen in the National Museum of Ireland.