Ballybough Cemetery

Ballybough Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery in Ballybough, Dublin. Founded in 1718, it is Ireland's oldest Jewish cemetery.

On 28 October 1718, Alexander Felix (David Penso), Jacob Do Porto, and David Machado Do Sequeira, on behalf of the Ashkenazim, leased from Captain Chichester Phillips of Drumcondra Castle (an MP in the Irish Parliament)[1] a plot of land on which the graveyard was subsequently built.[2]

In the 1700s, a small number of Jews had settled in the Annadale area off Ellis Avenue (what is now Philipsburg Avenue), Fairview; most of these marrano Jews came from Spain and Portugal (with some coming from the Netherlands), escaping the Inquisition.[3][4]

A mortuary chapel was added in 1857 (inscribed on the front is "Built in the Year 5618", following the Hebrew Calendar).[3] The cemetery itself contains more than 200 graves,[5] the lasburial there having taken place in 1958.[6] Most of Dublin's Jewish community would be buried in Dolphins Barn cemetery now.

Close by is another grave plot (sometimes called Ballybough Cemetery), locally called the "suicide plot", which was used for suicide victims, robbers and highwaymen, through whose corpses' hearts wooden stakes were driven;[3] this is the graveyard that the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, who lived nearby, used to visit when he was young, and which influenced his novel.[3]

Inspired by the old cemetery Dublin poet Gerry McDonnell wrote a series of imaginary monologues called 'Mud Island Elegy' in a poetry collection looking at Jewish life in Nineteenth century Ireland.

Notes

  1. ↑ History of the Jewish Cemetery Fairview Marino History
  2. ↑ Ball: The Parish of Clonturk - Drumcondra, with Notice of Marino and its Vicinity
  3. 1 2 3 4 5619 The Jewish Cemetery on Fairview Strand, by Diarmuid G. Hiney, Dublin Historical Record, Vol. 50, No. 2, Autumn, 1997.
  4. ↑ http://www.eoinobrien.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/from-the-waters-of-sionjrcps1981.pdf From the waters of sion to Liffeyside, Jewish contribution to medical and culture, Eoin O'Brien
  5. ↑ The Jewish cemetery at Ballybough in Dublin by Bernard Shillman, Paper read before the Jewish Historical Society of England, July 6, 1925
  6. ↑ Ballybough Cemetery, Fairview Jewish Ireland Website
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