Among the small shops, a big church.
I don't have much to say about this one and maybe that's exactly the point. It's not a church I visited; it's a church I keep dropping into. What always gets me is that it's this beautiful, this big, right there in the centre where everything around it is small shops.
Whenever I'm near Grafton Street — waiting for someone, or out with the camera — I step in, take a photo, and light a candle for my mother. Every time.
A few people scattered through the pews, praying. The smell of incense still in the air. Outside, Grafton Street going about its business.
Today I came in to photograph, like almost always.
In 1793, the year the Irish Parliament passed the Catholic Relief Act, the brewer John Sweetman bought this plot for the Carmelites and laid the foundation stone. Catholics could finally build again — but quietly, off the main street, with nothing on the outside to announce a church. The 1798 Rising interrupted the works, and the building was only finished in 1810, to a design by Timothy Beahan. Over the nineteenth century it grew: John Bourke added the sanctuary, east transept and campanile in 1863; O'Neill & Byrne the west transept in 1876. In 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation itself, John Hogan's Dead Christ was placed beneath the high altar, where it still lies. Grafton Street grew up loud around it; the church stayed.
One of the first public Catholic churches after the Penal Laws (from 1793).
One of the first post-Penal Catholic churches in the city centre (opened 1793-1810s).
Fragments gathered while researching this church: stories, curiosities, people and dates.
The church was originally reached through Johnson's Court, a narrow lane off Grafton Street, a discreet arrangement reflecting the position of Catholic congregations before Emancipation. The present Clarendon Street front only came in the later nineteenth century.
Also known as: St. Theresa's Carmelite Church · Clarendon Street Church
Mass times
Checked 10 Jul 2026