St James' Church, Dublin, Former Church of Ireland church in James's Street, Dublin, Ireland
St James' Church is a red brick church building in Dublin located at the intersection of James Street and Echlin Street. The structure displays traditional ecclesiastical design with a distinctive facade and Echlin Street entrance for visitors.
A church dedicated to St James is first mentioned in the mid-13th century, and burials in the churchyard are recorded from 1495. The parish was separated from St Catherine's in 1710, and the present building, designed by Joseph Welland, dates from 1859. In 2014 Pearse Lyons bought the church and converted it into a distillery and visitor centre.
The churchyard holds the grave of Sir Theobald Butler (1650–1720), a Catholic barrister who helped frame the 1691 Treaty of Limerick; his Latin epitaph was erected by his eldest son. Bishop Concobhar Ó Duibheannaigh and Fr. Patrick O'Loughran, executed in 1612, were secretly buried here and beatified in 1992, their feast day on 20 June.
The building now operates as a distillery and visitor centre, so entry is tied to its opening as a commercial attraction rather than to church use. The former cemetery beside it is overgrown and, as of 2019, closed to the public; it belongs to Dublin City Council, and community efforts are under way to revive the annual cleaning and decoration of graves.
The churchyard holds the grave of Sir Theobald Butler (1650–1720), a Catholic barrister who helped frame the 1691 Treaty of Limerick; his Latin epitaph was erected by his eldest son "to the best of fathers". Bishop Concobhar Ó Duibheannaigh and Fr. Patrick O'Loughran, executed in 1612, were secretly buried here and beatified in 1992.
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