Five Star Internet Cafe (Talbot Street) Image by Ciaran (CHTM)
Covered in graffiti, the Five Star Internet Cafe on Talbot Street is an interesting building to look at from outside. Inside it is taken over by computers, telephones and pool tables, which give no real hint of the former life of this building.
This building was once a church – a Welsh Presbyterian Church to be precise. The foundation stone of the church was laid in 1838, and as Howell Evans has written “its original intention was not for the Welsh in Dublin, but mainly for the Welsh visiting the city.” Its proximity to the docks of Dublin ensured that visiting Welsh seamen would avail of the church. A contemporary sailors magazine noted that “In Dublin, English and Welsh seamen hear the Gospel preached to them several times a week, in their respective languages.” Another article in a sailors magazine noted that “the inhabitants [of Dublin] are friends of seamen, as evinced by the lofty column erected to the memory of Nelson, with its colossal statue of that hero on its summit, which stands in the centre of one of the finest streets in Europe.”
While very little has been written on this Dublin church, Einion Thomas has described how the background of the men who visited the church greatly influenced customs within it:
The gallery was called the ‘Quarter‑Deck’ and only sailors were allowed to sit there. On the ground floor (or the ‘Main Deck’ as it was called) the men sat on the ‘starboard side’ (the right) and the women on the ‘port side’ (the left). It also included some surprising accessories such as spittoons near some of the men’s seats and in the early years smoking was permitted!
The church attracted some Irish language advocates owing to the fact services were conducted in Welsh, and Thomas has noted that Ernest Blythe was one such visitor. Blythe was born into a Presbyterian and Unionist family near Lisburn, and over the course of a long and colourful political career he would later become a key figure in the Army Comrades Association, or Blueshirt movement. Of the Welsh church he remembered:
When I joined the Gaelic League and began to learn Irish, one of my fellow members told me, almost with bated breath, that the Welsh community in Dublin had its own church in which services were conducted in Welsh. I went there one Sunday morning to revel in the sound of a language closely related to Irish.
In June 1944, the Irish Independent (nowadays located just across the street from the church) reported that “a regrettable break in the few remaining links binding the Irish people with their fellow Celts, the Welsh, will follow on the closing down of the Welsh Church, Talbot Street. This church, the only one of its kind in the country, will be offered for sale on June 20.” The paper noted that the last Minister in the church was Rev. John Lewis, who was Minister from 1894 to 1934, serving forty years. The report gives the impression that the building had been scarcely in the period between that and the publication of the paper.
What became of the building between church and internet cafe? For many years it served as a shoe shop, operating under the name Griffiths. A ‘ghost sign’ remains today in the form of the tiling leading into the internet cafe which still says Griffiths.
Griffiths Shoes (Image; Dublin City Public Libraries, http://dublincitypubliclibraries.com/content/091-griffiths-shoes )
In March 2013, Colette Kinsella put together a short but fascinating audio report on the church which can be played here. Einion Thomas’ interesting article is here.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
Reblogged this on aliaptech1.
Reblogged this on 53 degrees and commented:
This is one of those blog posts that shows how ‘religious’ places are remade and remembered. Great work here.
Helo,
Thank-you for your article about the former Welsh Chapel on Talbot Street. I am Chair of Draig Werdd The Welsh Society in Ireland and we currently have an application with Dublin City Council for protected status for the building. Our application has the support of all the locals TDs and Carwyn Jones the First Minster of Wales amongst others. President Higgins is also closely following our application. A final decision by the Dublin City Council is expected in May 2015.
Our application summarised the importance of the Chapel as follows:
• The building is the only example of a purpose built Welsh Church ever to be built in Ireland.
• The building is attributed to the Irish architect William Murray (1789-1844).
• It was built in 1838 and is thus one of the oldest surviving buildings in Talbot
Street.
• An extremely well documented building with much archival information available to historians. Most of the documents were retained by the diocese in North Wales following the building’s closure in 1944.
• The building survives intact in its original form, also surviving is the vestry and chapel house which accommodated the visiting ministers.
• Much of the historic fabric still remains in the building including, early 19th century sliding sash windows, a fine plasterwork ceiling, Welsh slate roof and cast iron gutters.
• The building stood witness to some of the mist historic events in modern Irish history including the 1916 Easter Rising. The vestry was used as a weapon store
• The former Welsh Chapel still remains an important building to the Welsh community of Ireland who strongly believe the building needs to be officially recognised and be given protected status by Dublin City Council. The building has featured on RTE’s TV programme “Capital D” on the 12th May 2011, it has also featured on RTE radio show Countrywide in 2013.
• Ernest Blythe, Minister for Finance, was inspired by the Welsh outpost, learnt Welsh from the Minister and attended Welsh services in the Chapel.
Further details about the Chapel can be found on our website:
http://www.welshsociety.ie/features/
(Which also contains an interesting article on Padraig Pearse too!).
For those that want to follow the progress of our application please join our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/116538688359582/
Many thanks for your interest.
Hwyl,
Robin
Helo,
Thank-you for your article about the former Welsh Chapel on Talbot Street.
I am Chair of Draig Werdd The Welsh Society in Ireland and we currently have an application with Dublin City Council for protected status for the building.
Our application has the support of all the locals TDs and Carwyn Jones the First Minster of Wales amongst others. President Higgins is also closely following our application.
A final decision by the Dublin City Council is expected in May 2015.
Our application summarised the importance of the Chapel as follows:
• The building is the only example of a purpose built Welsh Church ever to be built in Ireland.
• The building is attributed to the Irish architect William Murray (1789-1844).
• It was built in 1838 and is thus one of the oldest surviving buildings in Talbot
Street.
• An extremely well documented building with much archival information available to historians. Most of the documents were retained by the diocese in North Wales following the building’s closure in 1944.
• The building survives intact in its original form, also surviving is the vestry and chapel house which accommodated the visiting ministers.
• Much of the historic fabric still remains in the building including, early 19th century sliding sash windows, a fine plasterwork ceiling, Welsh slate roof and cast iron gutters.
• The building stood witness to some of the mist historic events in modern Irish history including the 1916 Easter Rising. The vestry was used as a weapon store
• The former Welsh Chapel still remains an important building to the Welsh community of Ireland who strongly believe the building needs to be officially recognised and be given protected status by Dublin City Council. The building has featured on RTE’s TV programme “Capital D” on the 12th May 2011, it has also featured on RTE radio show Countrywide in 2013.
• Ernest Blythe, Minister for Finance, was inspired by the Welsh outpost, learnt Welsh from the Minister and attended Welsh services in the Chapel.
Further details about the Chapel can be found on our website:
http://www.welshsociety.ie/features/
(Which also contains an interesting article on Padraig Pearse too!).
For those that want to follow the progress of our application please join our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/116538688359582/
Many thanks for your interest.
Hwyl,
Robin
And the ‘Scots’ Presbyterian Church was just around the corner on Abbey Street.
Howell Evans, whom you mentioned above, died in January 2012 aged 104.
http://ancnagaire.blogspot.ie/2012/05/er-cof-am-howell-evans-rip.html
The previous year he appeared in an RTÉ feature on the church. He had been a member of the congregation for many years before the church closed.
I sang with him in the 1970s in the Dublin Welsh Male Voice Choir. Apart from the choral stuff, he had a deep interest in Welsh Folk music and an abiding passion for the language.
He was a gentleman in every sense of the word.
RIP.
An evening shot of the chapel taken shortly after Howell’s death.
Fascinating paper by Earnest Blythe on the Chapel in the Dublin Historical Record of July 1957.
http://photopol.com/wales/capel.html
Earnest he was indeed but I should have written Ernest.
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