A brief History of Greystones

Churches

Greystones was still just a corner of Delgany Parish in the Church of Ireland, and of Bray parish in the Roman Catholic Church. However, within two years a small Church of Ireland church was built by private subscription. It was an un-endowed unofficial chapel of Ease to the Parish Church. At this time the Church of Ireland was still the Established Church of the country and the rector of Delgany was supported by tithes paid by the La Touche and Whitshed families; the clergyman in charge of Greystones would have at first been paid by voluntary subscriptions. The founders of the Church must have been happy to see it enlarge three times in 1875, 1888 and 1898, but the parish never added a church tower. The families could not have foreseen that the Parish of Greystones would become the most populous Church of Ireland parish in the whole diocese of Glendalough.

As a small boy I was taken to the Harvest Festival in Greystones in 1920 and at that service there may well have been some old people who were present at the first services in the Church.Pillar Boxes In the 1850's, the famous novelist Anthony Trollope was head of the Irish post office. He was the inventor of the Pillar-box. The pillar-box outside the Ormonde Cinema bears the initials V-R, Victoria Regina and is of the original pattern with a knob on the top. Another example of this pattern stands opposite Bray Town Hall.

I think I am right in saying that until recently the Greystones pillar-box stood at the harbour; and it may have been put there by Trollope's orders. Greystones began at the harbour and spread southwards. I have heard it said that Upton at the corner beside the flagpole was the original post office.

In 1864 the Church was raised to the status of a Parish Church and consecrated by Archbishop Trench. Perhaps it was then that it was dedicated to St Patrick. The three town lands of Upper Rathdown, Lower Rathdown and Killincarrig became the parish of Greystones St Kilian's Church in Blacklion was built in 1866 and a Roman Catholic Parish of Greystones and Blacklion were formed independent of Bray. St Killian was one of the early Irish missionaries to the continent - there is a statue of him at Bonn.

Charles Dickens had just written Our Mutual Friend, his last complete novel, he was to start one more but did not finish it before his death in 1970. Alexandra College was founded in 1866 and 1867 was the year of the Fenian rising. W.B. Yeats was born in 1865. James Connolly in 1866.

It was not only from Dublin that visitors came. The railway had changed its title to the Dublin, Wicklow, Wexford Railway Company and had reached Enniscorthy in 1863. My grandmother remembered coming up from Enniscorthy to spend a family holiday at Bayswater Terrace sometime around 1870. The expedition would have had the same adventurousness as going to Majorca or the Canary islands today.

About the same time a branch line reached Shillelagh. Liscarrig, (the house is no longer standing) beside St Patrick's Hall, was built by a County Kilkenny family who travelled by horse drawn vehicle to Shillelagh and on by rail to Greystones.

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Hawkins-Whitshed & La Touche families

1690. The Battle of the Boyne followed by the Penal laws and the century of Protestant Ascendancy. For over a hundred years there was no pitched battle fought on Irish soil. The characteristic building of this period is not a monastery or a castle but the large unfortified dwelling house with its well-proportioned rows of sashed windows.

There is only one example of this period in Greystones - Killincarrick House in the wood at the top of Whitshed road, two fields away from the ruins of the first Killincarrick house. The family who built and lived in this house were called Hawkins and they owned the townland of Killincarrick and other lands further south. The boundary of the townland runs from the sea at the station, up the lane behind Killincarrig road, along the North edge of the golf course to the Bray-Kilcoole road, through Killincarrig village to Three Trout's Bridge, then down the river to the sea at Cobblers Bulk.

The two town lands of Upper and Lower Rathdown were bought early in the 18th century by the La Touche family. They belonged to that small but important element in the Irish population - the Huguenots - French Protestant refugees from the persecuting Louis XIV, who treated his Protestant subjects with the same intolerance that the then Irish Protestant Parliament was showing against their Roman Catholic fellow countrymen.

The La Touches let Rathdown Castle fall into ruins and built their big house with its French name, Bellevue, high on the south west of Kendlestown hill, their estate extended as far inland as the Glen of the Downs.