TELLING THE “INSIDE” STORY: ARCHIVAL SOURCES FOR CHURCH OF INTERIORS

SUSAN HOOD

EHLG Seminar: Inside the Place of Worship Dublin Castle, 6 October 2009

1. Introduction

2. The Worshipping Church

3. Administration and Historical Sources

Table of administration / records Broad administrative period Record situation Medieval – Reformation period Scanty. Exceptions are archives of the th th 12 -16 centuries two Dublin cathedrals (St Patrick’s and Christ Church) both of which have published histories, & St Werburgh’s parish churchwarden accounts – about to be published in RCB Library series.

Board of First Fruits Largely destroyed. Six albums of James 1719-1833 Pain drawings (Cashel province) & 11 drawings of John Semple churches (Dublin province) only.

Ecclesiastical Commissioners Inaccessible apart from four Joseph 1833-69 Welland (principal architect) albums (1843-60) and official published report (1836-37).

Representative Church Body (RCB) Holdings of RCB Library include 1870 → administrative papers; vestry, diocesan materials, manuscripts. Pre-date 1870 and great variation from parish to parish, diocese to diocese.

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4 The RCB Library, Dublin, and its resources

The Library is the Church of Ireland’s repository for its archives and manuscripts. Non-current records from parishes, dioceses, cathedrals, the General Synod and the Representative Church Body are regularly transferred to the Library. However, some records remain in local custody and some, which originated in , have been transferred to the Public Record Office in .

Opening hours: Monday to Friday - 9:30 to 13:00 and 14.00 to 17:00.

Further information: http://www.library.ireland.anglican.org/

Conclusions

Further Reading

General Background:

G.W.O. Addleshaw and Frederick Etchells, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (London, 1948)

Nigel Yates, Buildings, Faith and Worship, The Liturgical Arrangement of Anglican Churches 1600-1900 (Oxford, 1991)

Maurice Craig, The From the Earliest Times to 1880 (Dublin, 1982)

Frank Bottomley, The Church Explorer’s Guide (London, 1978)

Church of Ireland:

Paul Larmour and Stephen McBride, ‘Buildings and faith: church building from medieval to modern’, in Raymond Gillespie and W. G. Neely (eds.), The Laity and the Church of Ireland 1000-2000 (Dublin, 2002), pp. 304-350 is essential reading.

John Crawford, The Church of Ireland in Victorian Dublin, especially chapter 4: ‘The church, church services and religious practice’, pp. 122-150, which has much useful background on the worshipping church.

2 Sam Hutchinson, Towers, Spires and Pinnacles: a history of the cathedrals and churches of the Church of Ireland (Bray, 2003) H.A. Wheeler and M.J. Craig, The Dublin city churches of the Church of Ireland (Dublin, 1948)

Frank Salmon (ed.), Gothic and the Gothic Revival, Papers from the 26th Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (Manchester, 1997), especially Roger Stalley, ‘Confronting the past: George Edmund Street at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin’, pp. 75-86

Kenneth Milne (ed.), Christ Church Cathedral Dublin: a history (Dublin, 2000)

John Crawford and Raymond Gillespie St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin : a history (Dublin, 2009)

David Lee and Debbie Jacobs, James Pain Architect (Limerick Civic Trust, 2005)

Richard Oram, Expressions of Faith: Ulster’s Church Heritage (Newtownards, 2001)

Simon Walker, Historic Ulster Churches (Belfast, 2000)

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