In Philip Larkin's wonderful poem, Church Going, the poet, contemplating an agnostic Britain, asks himself:
"When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
It never seemed to have occurred to the agnostic Larkin, perhaps due to a lack of spiritual enlightenment and to the fact that he was writing in the less progressive 1950s, that the churches' owners might simply knock them down.
Yet this is the fate that has just befallen the Presbyterian church in Sandymount, which has stood since 1858 in a prominent position on the corner of Sandymount Road and Tritonville Road. It has been demolished on the instructions of its owners, the Presbyterian Residential Church, with full planning permission, to make way for some sheltered housing and apartments.
Spire removed
Although deconsecrated since the 1970s, and with its spire removed since February 1987, it had by no means fallen "completely out of use", being availed of for many local community events and even by RTE for rehearsals and for such exotic purposes as the shooting of a video by Boyzone - a function which the poet could scarcely have anticipated.
The Presbyterian community at Sandymount has been in existence since at least the 1830s. The church was originally known as the "Scotch Church", - understandably, in view of the Presbyterian Church's strong Scottish connections. Its first minister was the Rev Thomas Lyttle MA. (And my thanks to Catherine Cavendish of the area for generously sharing with me the fruits of her laborious researches.) Contrary to the impression conveyed here and there in recent times, the building was by no means without architectural merit or value. Its style is perhaps best described as gentle Gothic, with many nice features such as latticed windows and a fine arched doorway. Inside, it bore a strong resemblance to the setting of a Walter Scott novel, with a high wooden roof supported by fine internal arched buttresses.
More important, though, than its architectural quality was its place in the life of a community - firstly, the Presbyterian community that gathered there, and secondly the wider Sandymount community to whom it was such a landmark. Many of the church's former congregation have been deeply saddened by its demolition; some, even though elderly, have joined the small group that has gathered daily outside the ruins to express sorrow and regret at what has happened. Other former members of the congregation have taken an understandable but basically defensive attitude of blaming everyone else for not having done more to prevent this happening. They, naturally, are the most hurt of all.
Loyalty to history
The reality of religious decline, long a problem for the minority churches in this State, and now beginning to affect the majority one, cannot be wished away. There remains, though, a loyalty to history, whether that history be seen as positive or malevolent - a feeling that its testimony should not be erased, a feeling that should transcend sectarian divisions. Not to wish to rub salt in the wound, it is a loyalty that the Church of Ireland has most conspicuously manifested of all the Irish religious institutions. It is to be hoped that all the churches realise what a priceless heritage lies in their hands.
The people who gathered outside the church at Sandymount last week before, during and after its destruction, of many religions and of none, would probably have difficulty in saying just why what happened seemed such a violation. For many, it was not their first experience of such a phenomenon: the fact, for instance, that there is no longer any such address as Number 2 Tritonville Road tells its own story. But what drew them there was certainly a feeling that the fabric of a neighbourhood, what makes it recognisably what it is, - a matter that transcends architecture and aesthetics - should be preserved. Sandymount, after all, or Dublin come to that, are only names unless something is there to give them a continuity and a meaning.
Dublin Corporation
The purpose of this valediction has not been to engage in any recrimination or invective over what did or did not happen - although it would be carrying forbearance a little too far not to query, at least, the role of the statutory authority, Dublin Corporation's planning department, in this matter. Other than that, suffice it to comment that anyone present last Wednesday, as the mechanical digger clawed at the sturdy, dignified walls of the church that was, would be very hard put to disagree with the comment of the leader of the Labour Party: "Obscene."
Having begun with one great poem about churches and their environs, it might be appropriate to end with an even greater, Gray's Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard (of which Larkin's poem is in many ways a brilliant rewriting). The best possible comment on the heap of rubble that is now all that remains of Sandymount Presbyterian church is that it implores the passing tribute of a sigh.