History

A brief History of the Presbyterian Congregation of
CHRIST CHURCH RATHGAR

The Very Rev. William Fleming Stevenson, D.D.
First Minister of the congregation
(1860-1886)
& Moderator of the General Assembly (1881)

Present day photograph of the church interior, showing the west gallery (previously the Choir Loft), which was extended in 1900 to provide additional seating.

The Very Rev. James Jordan Macaulay, B.A., D.D.
Fourth Minister of the congregation (1913-1951)
& Moderator of the General Assembly (1932)

“Presbyterians have been an influential section of Dublin's population since the early 1600s”, writes the author of a remarkable little guide book to the city published in 1821.  He adds that they are distinguished “for industry, opulence and public spirit," a judgement, we hope, not less merited today.

Twenty years earlier, at the turn of the century, Dublin had a total population of close upon a quarter of a million, slowly and steadily increasing.  Though there were still areas not yet filled with buildings within the encircling canals, the city was upon the eve of a quite spectacular suburban expansion.  The minds of many of its inhabitants were turning towards the open lands which lay beyond the urban boundaries, the desire to live away from the scenes of work was growing among them, and ways of access were soon to be provided.  The more well-to-do, as might be expected, were first to move to new-built houses and villas, others, less well endowed, were to follow them to the green areas beyond the canals made up of farms, demesnes, gardens and scattered villages.

One of these villages was Rathmines, an ancient place two miles to the south of the city's centre, and approached, not very directly, by a winding road, now Mount Pleasant Avenue.  This partial isolation was not to last.  Soon after 1800 a new road, straight and wide, was laid out from Portobello to the village and along it there sprang up brick houses in the sedate style of Georgian Dublin, generously endowed with garden space.  Other roads quickly followed, among them the straight wide line to Rathgar.  It too, was quickly, though less closely, bordered with houses.  Around Rathmines itself the expansion was rapid and the area became populous enough by 1828 to move the Established Church to erect a place of worship, a chapel-of-ease to St. Peter's, in that year.

It was in this grown-up Rathmines, thirty-one years later that the Rathgar congregation was born.  At least a score of Presbyterian families were living round about and desired to have a place of worship in their midst. The first step towards this end was made in the September of 1859 when a Memorial was presented to the Dublin Presbytery by Messrs. Hugh Moore, James S. Millar, David Drummond and William Aitken, requesting that a regular Sabbath evening service be established in the old school house in Rathmines.  This structure, in which was the small and unattractive room in which the services were conducted, no longer exists.  It is marked, however, on the earliest edition of the Ordnance map of Dublin (1837).  Here it appears at the northern end of a row of buildings extending city-wards from the avenue to Greenville House (now York Road) to a point a little north of the Mission House, 116 Upper Rathmines.

The sought-for permission to form a congregation was granted by the Presbytery early in November and an interim Session was appointed.  Worship under the leadership of ministers of the city churches, the Reverend John Hall of the Scots Church in particular, began in the school house.  But this building, it was recognized from the first, could and should be no more than a temporary home; at the first official meeting of the Church Committee contributions of over £725 towards the building of a new church were promised by twenty members.  At the same meeting arrangements were made for the collection of additional monies and certain members were entrusted with the task of finding a suitable site.  Several were inspected: one at the junction of Leeson Park and the Appian Way; the other on the Rathgar Road, at Leicester Avenue - Murphy's Field.  No offer was made for the first and the second, it was later reported, had been given to the Roman Catholics (also in search of a site in the expanding suburb) for the church built there soon after.  By December the present site was reported on and steps taken to acquire it from the owner.

On the first day of the same month, twenty-seven members of the congregation signed a call to the Reverend William Fleming Stevenson, then assistant Minister of the Alfred Street Church, Belfast.  He had ministered already more than once in the temporary home of the congregation and the invitation had unanimous support.  In January, 1860, he began his ministry in Rathmines before the formal ordination which took place in Adelaide Road Church on the 1st of March.  His ministry was fruitful in every respect and to him Rathgar owes much.  He was a devoted pastor, a preacher of great power, and a man of the warmest sympathy.  Under his inspired ministrations the congregation grew from a small body to a large one. Missions at home and abroad were his master-passions and he was incessantly active in their cause.

There was no delay in preparations for the projected building. In the December issue of the local architectural journal, The Dublin Builder there a note that a plan for the church was being made by Mr. E. P. Gribbon, a Dublin architect.  This seems to have been but a speculative effort, since, in the early days of January, 1860, an invitation to architects to submit designs in competition appeared in the daily press.  The conditions called for a church to seat 400 people at a cost of £2,000, a sum, as it proved, less than sufficient to provide a worthy and dignified structure.  Thirteen designs were received, most of them from Dublin architects.  Two, however, were Scottish, Messrs. Heiton (Perth) and Dewar (Glasgow).  At a meeting of the building committee (Messrs. Thomas Drury, J. P., David Drummond, Robert Bell, Hugh Moore, and Henry Richardson) the competing schemes were considered.  All but three were rejected.  No one of these three was accepted outright; all were retained for closer consideration.  Later the design by the Glasgow architect was eliminated and a compromise solution proposed: a combination of the exterior of Mr. Gribbon's scheme with the internal planning of that by Mr. Heiton.  This was not, in the end, proceeded with and Mr. Andrew [edit: Heiton] of Perth, was commissioned as sole architect for the new church.  It is of interest to note that Mr. Heiton carried out other work for the Presbyterian community in Dublin: the church [edit: Findlater's] at Rutland (now Parnell) Square and that at York Road, Kingstown [the latter known as Dun Laoghaire, since 1921] which went up in 1863.  The York Road structure is of particular interest in this connection since it was a replica of Christ Church as first erected.  In both churches the pulpit was high and centrally placed in the “eastern” recess beneath the rose window.  In both, the gallery filled no more than the opposite recess (as it still does at York Road.  The inspiration of the architecture is English Gothic of the early fourteenth century period when window tracery was evolving from forms almost purely geometric into more fluent, flowing lines.  In a fashion almost traditional in Dublin since the early part of the eighteenth century the materials chosen were granite dressed with Portland stone.  These well selected stones have stood the test of time and weather in admirable fashion.

The contractor entrusted with the execution of the work was Mr. Gilbert Cockburn, a builder of high repute who had erected many important structures in Ireland and Dublin.  Among the latter may be noted the National Gallery and Natural History Museum on Leinster Lawn and the Engineering School, Trinity College, so highly commended by John Ruskin.  The first stone of Christ Church was laid on July the 19th, 1860 by the Reverend Dr. Cooke of Belfast.  When the building was sufficiently advanced, the Rathmines congregation left its temporary home in the old school-house [edit: no longer standing] and moved into the basement storey, the lecture hall, of the new church.

First Services held on 28th July, 1861 when the Rev. Dr. J. Morgan, of Fisherwick Place, Belfast, and the Rev. Dr. John Hall, of Mary's Abbey, preached, on 2nd February, 1862 the church was opened, the Rev. Dr. Norman MacLeod, of the Barony Church, Glasgow, preaching at both Services.

Text compiled by the late Harold G. Leask, M.R.I.A., Litt.D.

(excerpt from "Christ Church Rathgar, The Story of One Hundred Years", 1962 and reproduced in 2009 in Christ Church Rathgar 1859-2009).

The Very Rev. William Fleming Stevenson, D.D.
First Minister of the congregation
(1860-1886)
& Moderator of the General Assembly (1881)

The Rev. George Hanson, M.A., D.D.
Second Minister of the congregation
(1886-1898)

The Rev. Robin W. J. MacDermott,
M.A., B.D., S.T.M., D.D.

Seventh Minister of the Congregation
(1970 - 1989)

The Rev. C. Mary Hunter,
B.A., B.D., M.Min.

Eighth Minister of the Congregation
(1989 - present)