Quakers in Ireland

Last updated

Religious Society of Friends
Classification Christian
Orientation Quakers
Polity Congregationalist polity
LeaderChanges Annually
Associations Friends World Committee for Consultation, Irish Council of Churches
Region Ireland
FounderWilliam Edmundson
Origin1654
Lurgan, County Armagh
Separated from Britain Yearly Meeting
Congregations28
Members1600
Aid organizationIrish Quaker Faith in Action (IQFA), Christian Aid
Hospitals1
Nursing homes1
Primary schools 3
Secondary schools 3
Official website quakers-in-ireland.ie

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) have a long history in Ireland; their first recorded Meeting for Worship in Ireland was in 1654, at the home of William Edmundson, in Lurgan. [1]

Contents

Quakers were known for entrepreneurship, setting up many businesses in Ireland, with many families such as the Goodbodys, Bewley's, Pims, Lambs, Jacobs, Edmundsons, Perrys, and Bells involved in milling, textiles, shipping, imports and exports, food and tobacco production, brewing, iron production and railway industries. [2] William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, converted to Quakerism while dealing with his father's estates in Ireland. He attended meetings in Cork. [3] In the 1650s and 1660s Quakers were treated with some severity by the authorities, especially in Cork.

The Quakers founded the town of Mountmellick, County Laois, in 1657, led by William Edmundson. There is a Quaker burial ground in Rosenallis, Co, Laois. [4] Ballitore in County Kildare was planned as a Quaker town, [5] Abraham Shackleton (ancestor of the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton) founded a school there in 1726. Quakers from all over Ireland attended, as did many non-Quakers. Among the famous non-Quakers to go there were Henry Grattan, Cardinal Paul Cullen, James Napper Tandy, and Edmund Burke.

In 1692, the Quakers opened a meeting house in Sycamore Alley, off Dame Street in Dublin. These premises expanded with the purchase of property backing onto Eustace Street. The Quakers building on Eustace Street, purchased in 1817, is the former Eagle Tavern, it is where the Dublin Society of the United Irishmen was formed in 1791. [6] In 1988 they sold some of their property on Eustace Street, which became the Irish Film Institute.

The Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin was founded by Quakers in the early 19th century. The Royal Hospital, Donnybrook in Dublin, was also originally a Quaker hospital. [7] There was a Quaker graveyard in Cork Street, and one in York Street off St. Stephen's Green, which was sold for the building of the Royal College of Surgeons. [8]

The Quakers were known for setting up relief measures in their localities during the Great Famine. [9]

Quakers' numbers declined due in some part due to individuals being "read out of meeting", where a member was disowned if they married a non-Quaker - this is no longer practised. [10]

The Society was one of the six religious denominations recognized by article 44.1.3 of the Irish Constitution, which was adopted by popular plebiscite in 1937. [11] This reference was deleted from the constitution via the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland in 1972 along with that of the other recognized denominations and the "special position" of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

Quakers in Ireland today

Quakers claim to have circa 1,600 members on the island of Ireland. [12] According to the Republic's 2016 Census, there were 848 members of the Society of Friends living in Ireland. [13]

The Friendly Word is a bimonthly magazine published by Quakers in Ireland. Rathgar Junior School and Newtown School, Waterford are Quaker-ethos schools. [14] Drogheda Grammar School, while not governed by the Quakers, also follows broad Quaker values and hosts the Drogheda Quaker meeting. [15] There is the Friends' School, Lisburn a preparatory school and grammar school. The Archives of the Religious Society of Friends are held in Quaker House, in Rathfarnham, and Meeting House, in Lisburn, County Antrim.

In Dublin, there are four Quaker Meeting Houses, in Eustace Street, Churchtown, Monkstown, and Rathfarnham. [16] The Friends Burial Ground, Dublin is in Temple Hill, Blackrock, County Dublin. In Belfast, there are three meeting houses: South Belfast, Frederick Street, and Hillsborough. A meeting house was re-established in Limerick in the mid-1990s, beside the Quaker cemetery in Southville Gardens, Ballinacurra. [17] There were earlier houses in Creagh Lane, and Cecil Street. The Cork Meeting House is in Summerhill South, Cork, opened in 1939 (replacing the 1833 house on Grattan St., itself a replacement for a 1678 house). [18] [19] There is a Quaker service every Sunday at St Nicholas National School, Waterside, Galway.

The Society decided at its 2018 Ireland Yearly Meeting to allow same-sex marriages in their Meetings for Worship. [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisburn</span> City near Belfast, Northern Ireland

Lisburn is a city in Northern Ireland. It is 8 mi (13 km) southwest of Belfast city centre, on the River Lagan, which forms the boundary between County Antrim and County Down. First laid out in the 17th century by English and Welsh settlers, with the arrival of French Huguenots in the 18th century, the town developed as a global centre of the linen industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosenallis</span> Village in County Laois, Ireland

Rosenallis is a village in north County Laois, Ireland. It is in the foothills of the Slieve Bloom Mountains on the R422 Mountmellick to Birr road, 6 km north-west of Mountmellick. The village is in a townland and civil parish of the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mountmellick</span> Town in County Laois, Ireland

Mountmellick or Mountmellic is a town in the north of County Laois, Ireland. It lies on the N80 national secondary road and the R422 and R423 regional roads. The town is part of Mountmellick Roman Catholic parish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friends' School, Lisburn</span> School in Lisburn, Northern Ireland

Friends' School, Lisburn is a Quaker voluntary grammar school in the city of Lisburn, Northern Ireland, founded in 1774.

The Ireland Yearly Meeting is the umbrella body for the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland. It is one of many Yearly Meetings (YM's) of Friends around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regional road (Ireland)</span> Class of road in Ireland

A regional road in the Republic of Ireland is a class of road not forming a major route, but nevertheless forming a link in the national route network. There are over 11,600 kilometres of regional roads. Regional roads are numbered with three-digit route numbers, prefixed by "R". The equivalent road category in Northern Ireland are B roads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belfast–Dublin line</span> Railway route in Ireland

The Belfast–Dublin Main Line is a main and the busiest railway route on the island of Ireland that connects Dublin Connolly station in the Republic of Ireland and Belfast Lanyon Place station in Northern Ireland. It is the only railway line that crosses the Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ballitore</span> Village in County Kildare, Ireland

Ballitore is a village in County Kildare, Ireland, sometimes spelt as Ballytore. It is noted for its historical Quaker associations. It was the first planned Quaker village in either England or Ireland - and remains the only one in Europe.

Events from the year 1820 in Ireland.

Mary Leadbeater was an Irish Quaker author and diarist who lived most of her life in the planned Quaker settlement of Ballitore, County Kildare. She wrote and published extensively on both secular and religious topics ranging from translation, poetry, letters, children's literature and biography. Her accounts of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 provide an insight into the effects of the Rebellion on the community in Ballitore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friends Burial Ground, Dublin</span>

The Friends Burial Ground, also called Temple Hill Burial Ground or the Friends Sleeping Place is a Quaker burial ground located at Temple Hill, Blackrock, Dublin. It opened in 1860 and is one of only two Quaker burial grounds in Dublin; the other being at Cork Street.

In Ireland, the term city has somewhat differing meanings in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Saurin</span> Irish Anglican bishop

James Saurin (c.1760–1842) was an Irish Anglican bishop in the 19th century. He was the last Bishop of Dromore before it was merged to the Diocese of Down and Dromore.

Job Scott was an eminent traveling minister in the Religious Society of Friends and a prominent American quietist. His religious philosophy had a deep, shaping influence that contributed to the first schism in American Quakerism, the 1827 Hicksite-Orthodox split.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lydia Shackleton</span> Irish botanical artist

Lydia Shackleton was an Irish botanical artist who studied at the Royal Dublin School of Art and Design. She was the first artist-in-residence at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Dublin, creating hundreds of botanic studies. She also taught, wrote verses, and travelled to the United States.

Adam Cusack (c.1630–1681) was an Irish landowner, barrister and judge of the seventeenth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unitarian Church in Ireland</span>

The Unitarian Church in Ireland presently consists of two Congregations, Dublin and Cork, part of the Synod of Munster, in the Republic of Ireland, which has itself been part of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland since 1935. Some congregations remain closely associated with the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. These churches would abide by the traditional Unitarian principles of Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eustace Street</span> Street in central Dublin, Ireland

Eustace Street is a street in the Temple Bar area of Dublin, Ireland.

Abraham Shackelton (1696–1771) was a Quaker schoolmaster. Born in West Yorkshire, he settled and established a school in Ballitore, County Kildare, Ireland. His private boarding school, open to people of any faith, educated boys from France, England, and other foreign countries. He taught Edmund Burke, who became a statesman and philosopher, and Paul Cullen, later the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin.

References

  1. "Who do you think you are - Ivan Yeats". RTÉ.
  2. A Quaker take on Irish Business History by Colm Keena, Irish Times, March 2, 2012.
  3. William Penn Cork Past and Present.
  4. Quaker Cemetery Rosenallis
  5. The Quaker village of Ballitore Irish Quakers, Irish Genealogy Toolkit.
  6. Thomas Russell Communist Party of Ireland, Website.
  7. Quakers in Ireland Quakers in the World.
  8. Quaker burial ground Summer of Heritage Programme.
  9. Quakers during the Famine History Ireland
  10. Movers and Quakers The Irish Times, January 17, 2009.
  11. "Original text of the constitution of Ireland".
  12. Religious Society of Friends www.irishchurches.org
  13. "2016 Census table E8009". Central Statistics Office.
  14. History Rathgar Junior School
  15. School Ethos - Drogheda Grammar School.
  16. Eustace Street Friends Meeting House Dublin Quakers
  17. Quakers have a meeting house in Limerick again Irish Times, January 13, 1998.
  18. Quaker Meeting House - Cork Ask About Ireland Architecture
  19. Cork Quakers Cork Past and Present
  20. "Press Release".