The Vestry Records of the Parish of St Michael the Archangel, Dublin, 1664–1754

Window on a Dublin city parish

Michael O’Neill, Editor

The parish of St Michael the Archangel served a small area inside the Dublin city walls between Winetavern Street to the east and Schoolhouse Lane to the west, north to the river front and south across High Street (St Audoen’s parish lay immediately west, that of St John the Evangelist and Christ Church Liberty to the east and St Nicholas Within to the south east). The records of its vestry and the churchwarden accounts of income and expenditure reveal how the parish recovered following the Restoration of the monarchy and church and how it developed in the eighteenth century. Information on rebuilding the parish church, patterns of worship, the role of the parish officers and their interaction with the city in areas such as poor-relief, fire fighting and policing, provide valuable insights into local and ecclesiastical history in inner city Dublin. Intriguingly, the volume also contains an abstract of deeds relating to the parish (1286 to 1710), a survey of houses and lands belonging to it in 1708/9 and an index commissioned in 1710.

Michael O’Neill is an architectural historian and digital archivist. His most recent publications are An architectural history of the Church of Ireland (Dublin, 2023), editor of Episcopal Visitations of the Diocese of Meath, 1622-1799 (Dublin, 2017) and a contributor to Dublin Castle: from fortress to palace, Volume 1. Vikings to Victorians: a history of Dublin Castle to 1850 (Dublin, 2022).