Parish of Crumlin

*(i.e., Cruimghlinn or the curved glen).

This parish contained in the seventeenth century the townlands of Commons, Crumlin, and Petty Canons.

It now contains the townlands of Commons, Crumlin, Greenhills, Kimmage, Larkfield, Limekimfarm, Perrystown Roebuck, Stannaway *(i.e., *the stone-way), Tonguefield, Whitehall, and Wilkinstown.

The objects of antiquarian interest are the tower of the parish church, and a house of the Queen Anne period in the village.

The Village of Crumlin.**

The parish of Crumlin, of which the village called by that name is the centre, has for its boundaries on the west the parishes of Drimnagh and Clondalkin, and on the south and east the parishes of Tallaght and Rathfarnham. It comprises lands which formed in past ages one of the four royal manors near Dublin, and is intersected by a road which formerly was the direct route to Tallaght and Blessington.

At a place within its limits, known as the Greenhills, many cists or sepulchres of prehistoric times have been discovered, and one of these is now to be seen in the National Museum of Ireland, where it is displayed in its original state with the urns and bones found in it.

But of the dwellings of the inhabitants of the royal manor no trace remains, and it is probable that a castle of importance never stood upon the lands. For the lands within Crumlin manor, like those in the other three royal manors, Saggart, Newcastle Lyons, and Esker, already noticed in this history, do not appear to have numbered amongst them occupants any family of high position until the seventeenth century, and the earliest house now standing in Crumlin is one which was probably built at the beginning of the next century.

In an Irish poem entitled “The Battle of Gabrha,” Crumlin is mentioned as the residence in his old age of the Fenian hero Ossian, who has been referred to in connection with the valley of Glenasmole in Tallaght parish, but Crumlin is a name which occurs frequently in the local nomenclature of Ireland, and whether the reference is to Crumlin near Dublin or elsewhere is doubtful.

The poem has been published in the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, and the editor gives the meaning of Crumlin as the lake of Crom*, *a pagan deity who received the thankofferings of the husbandmen for the fruits of the earth, but the curved glen is now generally accepted as the meaning of the name.

The earliest reference to Crumlin a after the Anglo-Norman Conquest shows that the lands were held for a time after that event by a family which came from Harptree in Somersetshire, but before the close of King John’s reign they had been constituted a royal manor. In this manor the system of tenure was different from that on the other royal manors, as the tenants themselves took the place of a middleman and held the demesne lands in addition to their own farms.

According to Holinshed the Crumlin tenants were an unwashed and turbulent crowd, or, in his own words, ” a lobbish and desperat clobberiousnesse,” and had to pay a higher rent than the tenants on the other manors owing to their having murdered one of the King’s seneschals.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century Edward I. decided to lease the manor of Crumlin to Henry de Compton, an ecclesiastic who has been already noticed, as lessee of the profits of the manor courts in Saggart and Newcastle Lyons, and who had rendered valuable service to the Crown in the Irish Chancery.

As in the other manors, Compton met in Crumlin with considerable opposition, and finally, after more than one inquiry had been held, the King thought it more prudent to leave the manor in the possession of “his poor men of Crumlin.” Amongst those foremost in the dispute we find, in addition to the officials, Richard the Provost and Philip the clerk; Thomas of Crumlin, Thomas le Reves, John Russell, and John le Monte, who’ represented the principal Crumlin families of that time.

The family which took its cognomen from the place was known outside the manor, and one of its members, Adam de Crumlin, served as sheriff of the metropolitan county.

During the thirteenth century, as stated in the history of Templeogue, the old city water-course, which flows by Crumlin parish, was constructed. From it the townland of Tonguefield derives its name. After leaving Templeogue the course joined at a point near Kimmage the River Poddle, and their waters flowed together in the bed of the Poddle until they reached a point which has become known as the Tongue in Crumlin parish. Here they divided again, portion following the original line of the Poddle through Harold’s Cross, and the remainder being diverted in an artificial course to Dolphin’s Barn and thence to James’ Street in Dublin.

Crumlin was then known as Crum or Trum, and the similarity of the latter name to that of Trim gave rise in the early part of the fourteenth century to a dispute between the Archbishop of Dublin and the Bishop of Meath as to the right of presentation to the church of Trim.

It has also caused a mistake in regard to a terrible tragedy which was enacted at that time near Crumlin, but which has been erroneously supposed to have occurred near Trim. This tragedy was the slaughter by the O’Tooles after their raid on Tallaght, in 1331, Of a number of the leading inhabitants of the neighbourhood, including one of the Brets of Rathfarnham and two of the Barnewalls of Drimnagh, who had followed them, and were led into an ambuscade at a place then known as the Culiagh, not far from Crumlin.

Some years before that time steps had been taken by the Crown to erect a castle at Crumlin for the protection of the inhabitants. These appear to have been largely Anglo-Norman settlers, and from them the Crumlin. lands had obtained extremely curious and interesting place names. Amongst these may be mentioned the grene, the croseynde, the pobel, the moredych; the knocwey in the sledan, the quilagh grene, the fryth or coppice wood, the langlye, the conyngere, the yoghlyhegeswey, caddelscornel, nicholesherneslye, howletesplot, the stockyngs, the pykesley, the holwcroftfelde, willetesplot, the gillyneshill, and the halkey.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Abbey of St. Thomas, the Priory of the’ Holy Trinity and the Guild of St. Anne in St. Audoen’s Church, appear as owners of property at Crumlin, and amongst the local families there occur the names of Stephens, Whitbred, Gallane, Stafford, Hay, Arthur, and Says.

At that time the townland of Stannaway, or Stonway as it was then called, which is now included in Crumlin parish, was in the manor of St. Sepulchre, and was held under the Archbishop of Dublin in 1382 by William Moenes, then the owner of Rathmines.

During the latter part of the fifteenth century an important local person is mentioned in Robert Walsh, who is styled an aquebagelus or parish clerk; and Joan Drywer, who has been already referred to as leaving a legacy to Aderrig Church, is a resident deserving of notice. She was engaged in extensive agricultural operations, and the valuation of her goods at the time of her death is very instructive as to the cost of household goods and live stock in her time.

For instance, a goblet and small cup of maple wood are valued at sixteen shillings and eightpence, while her four cart horses were only thought worth a pound.

The fees paid to several Government officials, including the serjeant of arms and the chief chamberlain of the Exchequer were, in the sixteenth century, drawn from the issues of the manor of Crumlin; and from the court book used at the close of that century it appears that the greater portion of the lands continued to be held under the Crown by small farmers.

But several religious houses wore in possession of property at Crumlin at the time of their dissolution. Besides the Abbey of St. Thomas, the Priory of the Holy Trinity, and the Guild of St. Anne, which have been already mentioned, we find the Convent of St. Mary de Hogges, the Cathedral of St. Patrick, and the Abbey of St. Mary described as owners of land there. Their holdings were afterwards known under various names, including Cromwell’s land, Mastocke’s land, Giffard’s grove and Kevin’s farm.

At the time of his attainder Gerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, was in possession of some lands at Crumlin which were then forfeited to the Crown, and we find subsequently Chief Baron Bathe and his descendants, and the* *families of Sutton and Talbot, holding these as well as the monastic lands, under the Crown.

At that period there were several small castle houses in or near the village of Crumlin, but these afforded no protection to the village when, in December, 1594, Gerald FitzGerald, the brother of Walter Reagh, one of the chief Irish leaders of that time, descended upon it with some eighty followers. The raid was made in the night, and the whole village was plundered and burned before assistance came from Dublin, although Crumlin lay “almost at its gate,” and the Lord Deputy, Sir William Russell, on seeing the flames himself hastened away a troop of horse.

The assailants escaped without “wound or bloodshed,” and were so encouraged by the success of their enterprise that as soon as the village began to be rebuilt they descended upon it again, and burned a great portion of the new buildings.

At the close of the sixteenth century the Purcell family, which was seated near the village until the last century, is first mentioned as resident at Crumlin, and in 1609 Edmund Purcell was leased land then belonging to the church.

About the latter time John Brice, who was mayor of Dublin in 1605, was connected with Crumlin, and also a family called Brereton is mentioned as living there. But the most important resident in the first part of the seventeenth century was Sir Patrick Fox, sometime Clerk of the Council, who then acquired much property in Crumlin and occupied what was known as the manor house.

His widow and family were in possession of the house at the time of the Rebellion, and according to a deposition made by Captain Thomas Harley, who was a contractor for the supply of transport to the army and who had a house and farm in Crumlin, were party to the spoiling of the possessions of persons like himself.

A branch of the Ussher family had also settled at Crumlin, and during the reign of James I. Robert Ussher, whose sister married Lamerick Nottingham of Ballyowen in Esker parish, was living there. He was engaged in the wine trade in Dublin, and married a daughter of Alderman Nicholas Ball, who represented Dublin in parliament in Queen Elizabeth’s reign.

His eldest son, Robert Ussher the younger, was granted in 1646 a license to hold two fairs annually at Crumlin, and a few years later the children of the latter, Arlander and Mary, appear as the occupants of a house in the village.

During the Commonwealth period the manor house and lands, which had been forfeited by the Fox family, and other lands, including those which had belonged to John Brice, were granted to Captain John Blackwell, already mentioned as owner at that time of Terenure.

But the other inhabitants of Crumlin appear not to have been disturbed, and after the Restoration we find two houses rated as containing four hearths each, occupied respectively by Arlander Ussher and Peter Holmes, who had married a grand-aunt of Ussher’s, and two houses rated as containing two hearths each, occupied respectively by Ignatius Purcell and Patrick Brereton.

The greater portion of the Crumlin lands came, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, into the possession of Major Joseph Deane, who has been already mentioned as the owner of Terenure at that time.

As stated in the history of Terenure, Major Deane, although identified with Commonwealth principles as brother of one of the regicides and an officer in Cromwell’s army, rose under monarchal rule to a high position in this country and sat in the Restoration parliament as member for the borough of Inistiogue in the County Kilkenny, where he owned property and a residence. He was prominent in the political movements of his time.

In 1682 he was in correspondence with the Duke of Ormonde as to schemes for collecting the Irish revenue, and in 1694, although then not in parliament, he was consulted by some of its most influential members on the great question of that day, the powers of the Irish parliament with respect to money bills.

He appears to have lived constantly at Crumlin and probably occupied the manor house in which Sir Patrick Fox had resided.

The chief historical event, in which Crumlin was concerned, occurred in his time, the encampment there for two days after the Battle of the Boyne of King William and his victorious army. A brief memorandum of the King’s progress tells us that on July 5, 1690, the army arrived at Finglas, that on July 6 the King went thence to church in Dublin, and that on July 9 the army marched to Crumlin whence, two days later, it proceeded to Castlemartin on its way to the south of Ireland.

Major Deane was twice married. By his first wife he had a son Joseph, who married a daughter of Dr. John Parker, Archbishop of Dublin, and died before his father; and by his second wife, a daughter of Maurice Cuffe of the Desart family, he had a son Edward.

On his death in 1699 Major Deane was succeeded at Crumlin by his son Joseph’s only son, who bore the same Christian name, and at Terenure, as already stated, by his son Edward.

The Right Hon. Joseph Deane, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, as Major Deane’s grandson became, was the builder of the red brick house, which still adorns Crumlin village, and used it as his country residence. He was not long called to the bar before his grandfather’s death, but a few years after it gained distinction as member for the County Dublin.

To that position he was called in 1703 at the general election on the accession of Queen Anne, and he continued to occupy it until 1714, when on the accession of George I. he was raised to the bench as Chief Baron. His judicial honours were only enjoyed for a brief space, as in less than a year, in May, 1715, his death took place.

His illness was attributed by Archbishop King to a chill contracted during a total eclipse of the sun. This eclipse was attended with great cold and dew, and the Chief Baron was returning on horseback at the time from circuit, and was thus much exposed to the weather. The Chief Baron’s wife was a granddaughter of the first Earl of Orrery and a sister of Speaker Henry Boyle, who was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Shannon.

Their only son, who was born after the Chief Baron’s death, died when an infant, and the Chief Baron’s property descended to his five daughters. They made great marriages, and amongst the Chief Baron’s sons-in-law were the Earl of Mayo, the Lord Doneraile, the Lord Lisle, and the Lord Dungannon of that time.

About ten years after the Chief Baron’s death his house at Crumlin was advertised for sale. It is described as a handsome new-fashioned residence, and was surrounded by walled gardens in which there were fish ponds.

Apparently it was not disposed of at that time, and was subsequently occupied under the Chief Baron’s representatives by the Hon. Richard Allen, the third son of the first Viscount Allen of Stillorgan and father of the third and fourth peers of that title.

The Hon. Richard Allen, who was a captain in the army, inherited his father’s Kildare estate and represented that county in the Irish parliament, of which he and his brothers were well-known members. Their capacity for parliamentary business does not seem from contemporary references to them to have been great, but on the announcement of his death, which occurred at Crumlin in 1745, it is stated that the Hon. Richard Allen was a sincere friend to the interests of true liberty and his country as well as a gentleman of the strictest honour, justice and humanity.

The Chief Baron’s house was afterwards occupied for a time by Philip Walsh, an eminent King’s Counsel, who represented the claimant in the famous Annesley peerage case, and who died in the same year as Captain Allen. There died also in that year at Crumlin, which seems to have been a fatal one for the inhabitants, Theobald Mathew, the grandfather of the first Earl of Llandaff.

He is said to have been a “gentleman of great probity and charity,” and lie was succeeded by his son Thomas Mathew, of whose hospitality at his seat in the County Tipperary an extraordinary picture has been given (*Dublin Journal, *No. 1936 ; Fitzpatrick’s “Ireland before the Union”, p.170).

Later on the Chief Baron’s house was for a time a country residence of one of his sons-in-law, Lord Lisle, but the latter deserted it for Fort Lisle near Blackrock, which has been referred to in the history of Booterstown, and the house was then divided into two dwellings, which were advertised to be let with a garden and fish pond, fully stocked with fish, for each of them.

About the middle of the eighteenth century a French tourist describes Crumlin as a small village with a neat church, and mentions that the neighbourhood, especially the Greenhills, which had formerly been a great resort of highwaymen who took the lives as well as the property of their victims, was well inhabited by farmers and labourers.

Amongst the residents at that time* *two centenarians deserve notice. One of them, Andrew Tench, who died near Crumlin in 1750, had been a farmer there all his life, and the other, John Rider, who died in 1762 at the Greenhills, had been a soldier in foreign service and had been at the siege of Vienna in 1683.

It is also worthy of notice that John O’Keeffe the actor passed some portion of his childhood in the village. When by order of the Irish parliament in 1766 a religious census of Crumlin was taken, the principal Protestant resident was George Thwaites, and the principal Roman Catholic John Purcell. The latter was a descendant of Ignatius Purcell, and the deaths of many other members of that family at Crumlin are announced during the eighteenth century

.(A tombstone at Crumlin bears the following inscription :-” Ign. Purcell, Esqr., his burial place. His first wife Margaret Purcell alias Sweetman, died 13th of June, 1682. His second wife Elenor Purcell alias Plunket died the 6th of Jany. 1691. Not lost but gone before. Ignatius Purcell, Esqr., obt. 3rd of Mardi, 1791. Died 31st of Decr., 185.1. Henrietta Frances O’Neill, daughter of Major Bristow, and wife of Ignatius Francis Purcell, Esqr. Also Ignatius Francis Purcell, of Cromlyn House, Co. Dublin, Esqr., 14th Agt., 1856, Trusting in the merits of Jesus. Here also are deposited the remains of Selina E. Purcell, wife of Jno. F. Purcell, who departed this life on the 7th day of October, 1823, in her 22nd year.).

Horse races took place at that time annually on the common of Crumlin, but became so intolerable to the inhabitants in 1789 that an attempt was made to stop them. It was unsuccessful, and although tents, which had been erected for them, were pulled down under the direction of a magistrate, who had the assistance of “a strong party of the army,” the races continued for several days with great satisfaction to the racing fraternity.

In the following year the inhabitants made another effort to prevent the races taking place, on the ground that they were “productive of idleness and disorder and calculated to disturb peace. ” In a contemporary guide to Dublin reference is made to the great traffic to Blessington and Baltinglass which then passed through Crumlin, and it is stated that the village was no longer so fashionable as it had been. But it still enjoyed some measure of popularity and included amongst its residents. Lady Frances Holt, a daughter of the first Earl of Aldborough, and the Hon. Joseph Lysaght, a son of the first Lord Lisle.

During the rebellion of 1798 the inhabitants suffered much loss and damage, especially Mr. Arthur Orde and Mr. Thomas Jones, who then kept a boarding school in Crumlin, and profiting by their experience when the rising under Robert Emmet took place in 1803, they were foremost in raising a company of infantry, which was commanded by Mr. Arthur Orde. **

Ecclesiastical History**

The parish church of Crumlin is a building of the early part of the nineteenth century with the exception of the tower at the west end, which had an earlier origin. According to inscriptions on tablets in the gate piers the exact date of the erection of the present church was 1817, while the wall, which surrounds it, is stated to have been built in 1725 and repaired exactly one hundred years afterwards. In the tower there is a handsome doorway, and above it there is a skull carved in the stonework with a tablet on which a text is inscribed. The tower is two stories in height and in one of the small rooms there are some fragments of a tombstone which is said to have been erected to the memory of a waiting woman of Queen Anne.

The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, occupies the site of one which stood in Crumlin in the twelfth century and bore a similar dedication. The advowson was for a time in the possession of the Harptree family, and the church was conferred by William FitzWilliam FitzJohn of Harptree on Robert his clerk, together with the tithe of all timber cut in a wood, which then stood at Crumlin, and permission to appropriate sixteen acres near the church.

But before the close of the twelfth century, in 1193, the church of Crumlin was given by King John, then Prince of Moreton, to form a prebend in the collegiate church of St. Patrick. This prebend was given by the Prince to William Rydal, but subsequent presentations were vested in the Archbishop of Dublin.

At the close of the thirteenth century the church was valued at £10, and amongst its chaplains we find, in 1390 John Stakeboll, and in 1449 John Holiwod.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century Joan Drywer, who has been already referred to, bequeathed money for the support of three lights, as well as for gilding the chalice, in the church of St. Mary the Virgin of Crumlin, and Joan Stephen, the widow of John Mastocke, directed her body to be brought “to holy burial in the cemetery of the parish church of Crumlin”.

At the time of the dissolution of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1547 the Cathedral’s possessions at Crumlin were divided between the Economy Fund, the Minor Canons, and the Vicars Choral, and the church was probably served, as in later times, by some member of the Cathedral establishment. During the Irish raid On Crumlin in 1594 the fabric of the church suffered great damage by fire. It is interesting to notice that the roof was of lead which is said to have been carried off by the insurgents for the purpose of making bullets. The church had not been rebuilt in 1615, when the cure was returned as being in charge of the Rev. William Cogan, but it was stated to be in good repair in 1630, when the cure was served by the Rev. John Hughes. The parishioners were then “for the most part recusants,” and the Rev. John Heath, who held the cure at the time of the rebellion, was resident in Dublin.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Archbishop King stated that Crumlin had been neglected from the time of the Reformation, but under his vigorous rule a change soon began. In 1707 the Rev. Peter Finell was in charge, and he was succeeded in 1708 by the Rev. Thomas Fetherston, in 1719 by the Rev John Bouhereau, with the Rev. Nicholas Tones as curate; in 1723 by the Rev. Zachary Norton, afterwards Vicar of Tallaght, and in 1726 by the Rev. Roger Ford, who had for a time the Rev. William Candler, afterwards curate of Rathfarnham, as an assistant.

Some years after his appointment to Crumlin Mr. Ford became prebendary of Tasagart, and, as we have seen, held the living of Rathcoole as well as Crumlin He kept a school in Dublin, at which Edmund Malone was educated, and so high was his reputation as a preacher that he was called by the House of Commons to preach before it.

Under the Roman Catholic Church the parish of Crumlin has been always united to that of Rathfarnham excepting during a brief period from 1781 to 1800, when it was joined to Clondalkin. According to a return presented to the Irish parliament in 1731, there was then a Roman Catholic place of worship in Crumlin, which had been rebuilt five years before, and according to the census of 1766, there was then a clergyman of that Church, the Rev. Nicholas Gibbons, resident in the village.

The parish church which preceded the present one is described by Austin Cooper, who visited it in 1780, as a very plain building containing about a dozen seats. The chancel was approached by two steps and the communion table was enclosed by a semi-circular rail. Under the latter lay the tomb of the Deane family, and a little outside it the tomb of the Purcell family.

At the foot of the steps on the right-hand side was the reading desk with the pulpit above it, and on the other side stood a black marble font. After the death of the Rev. Roger Ford, which occurred in 1756, the Rev. William Ford succeeded to the cure, and the succession of incumbents since has been, in 1785 the Rev. Roger Ford, in 1831 the Rev. James Elliott, and in 1867 the Rev. Humphry Davy.

To Chapter 14 To Ball Index. Home.