Rite and Reason:What do Dracula, Barnardos and the Lusitania have in common? They all share a link with St Ann's Church in the heart of Dublin, writes Valerie Jones.
This year, St Ann's parish is celebrating its tercentenary. One of the main celebratory events will be a reunion, thanksgiving service and harvest festival on Sunday, September 30th, to be attended by President Mary McAleese.
St Ann's is many things to many people. For the crowds of daily passersby, it is a familiar landmark. For others, it is a place of considerable architectural and historical beauty. Many others know it for its role in the cultural life of the city, as a venue for the performance of the Bach cantatas and other musical events.
It is also home to a worshipping community from many parts of Dublin who are frequently joined by visitors from overseas.
Change has been a constant theme of life at St Ann's.
When the parish was created in 1707 the area was rapidly becoming a fashionable residential suburb. Sir Joshua Dawson, after whom the street is named, gave the site for the church. His house, a few doors from the church, is now the Mansion House.
The church took some time to build and it was the 1720s before it was finished. The intended grandiose baroque front was never completed.
Many members of the aristocracy and the gentry, such as the Duke of Leinster and the lord mayor, were parishioners. Despite such wealthy members of its congregation, the church became known in the 18th century as "dirty Ann's", with its dismal music and dingy interior.
It was not until 1868, when the beautiful Georgian interior was refurbished, that the present imposing neo-Romanesque front was added.
Over the years, thousands of people have found a spiritual home in St Ann's.
Famous names associated with the parish include Wolfe Tone, Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and Thomas Barnardo, founder of the children's charity.
A memorial tablet commemorates art connoisseur Hugh Lane, who perished on the Lusitania.
In the last century, many parishioners were sympathetic to the change of government and were quite involved in the Irish Ireland movement.
Patrick Pearse was publicly welcomed by the then vicar, Canon Plunket, to speak at a concert to raise funds for Irish services.
As a result, two Irish classes started in the parish. Cumann Gaelach na hEaglaise, or the Irish Guild of the Church, was founded in the parish's Molesworth Hall in 1914. Its principal aim was, and still is, the holding of regular Church of Ireland services in Irish.
Leading nationalists associated with the parish included Douglas Hyde, whose daughter was married in the church in 1927 and whose two grandchildren were baptised there.
Dr Dorothy Stopford Price, who was doctor to the IRA in west Cork during the War of Independence and who introduced the BCG vaccination to Ireland, was married in St Ann's in 1925.
In more recent times, former president Erskine Childers was a regular worshipper.
St Ann's parish has shown a wonderful capacity to adapt its ministry to meet the needs of the times. An example of this is the "Clergy Sit-Out 4 Charity" at Christmas, started by the present vicar, Canon Tom Haskins, in 2002, in response to the plight of so many people begging on the city's streets.
Modelled on the Belfast Black Santa sit-outs, it has raised more than €125,000 for the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Third World development and local charities.
Although the parish's ministry today includes pastoral care at three hospitals and the Dublin Port chaplaincy, its main focus is on services for those who pass through its doors. These include a senior citizens' cyber café, lunchtime and evening concerts and recitals, bereavement counselling, healing services and daily Holy Communion.
The parish also hosts a wide range of AA meetings, as well as the offices of 3 Rock, the Dublin and Glendalough diocesan youth department.
All these activities bring people in to St Ann's which, unique to a church of the reformed tradition, is open daily from 10am to 4pm.
Others, particularly tourists, come to enjoy a few moments of tranquillity away from the bustling traffic outside.
But the main purpose of this church in the heart of the city, the worship of Almighty God, has not changed, and the lunchtime Holy Communion and Sunday services continue to offer to all a time for reflection and refreshment of the spirit.
In the words of Canon Haskins: "The church must keep God in front of an apathetic world. In the tercentenary year we are celebrating the past and we are reflecting on the future as we consider how to serve God in this place in the next 10 years.
"St Ann's will continue to reinvent itself and to grasp opportunities to serve the community going past its doors."
Dr Valerie Jones is honorary secretary of the St Ann's tercentenary committee