Dublin Rathdown early RC church records

[KD146]

St.Peter's church in Little Bray was built in 1837.  Holy Redeemer in Main Street, Bray was built in 1852.  St.Michael's church in Kingstown was built in 1829.

There are earlier RC church records dating from the late 1700s and early 1800s.  These are recorded in Kingstown, Co.Dublin, and refer to people living in the Loughlinstown, Shanganagh, Rathmichael and Old Connaught districts.

This, of course, is before the time of O'Connell's catholic emancipation, but my question is, if RC priests were keeping baptism and marriage records, there must have been some kind of church worship, surely.  Does anyone know where these early church records for the Dublin Rathdown area refer to?  Were there older churches, or were the people in these early records baptised and married behind hedges?  What does Kingstown, in a 1797 RC baptism record, for example, refer to?  What does Bray, in an 1831 RC marriage record, refer to?

[taramcdsmall]

Hi There

I had the EXACT same question as it was driving me barmy that every family record that I was finding on IFHF said either BRAY or KINGSTOWN !

So, I posed the Q to IFHF but the answer was a clear as mud 

Tara

[Sinann]

There was quite a few Acts gradually giving rights to Catholics before Daniel O Connell's time.
O'Connell campaigned for full Emancipation. He was the last hurrah as such.

This gives you an idea of how far back some Catholic records go http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/Roman-Catholic-baptism.html

This gives you an idea of how a parish survived http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Catherine's_Church,_Dublin_(Church_of_Ireland)
Note how the Catholics got the use of a chapel at the end of the 17th century.

[KD146]

There is another anomaly.  King George IV came to visit in 1821, to oversee construction of the new port.  Thereafter, the town was named Kingstown in his honour.  But before 1821, the name of Kingstown did not exist in this context.

So a RC church baptism record in 1797 should not refer to Kingstown at all.  I presume this is an IFHF error?  I was in the National Library a long time ago, but I better pay another visit.

Would catholics have had the use of Church of Ireland facilities prior to 1829?  What early churches existed before this time?  St.Michael's was apparently constituted from Loughlinstown.  I wonder what Loughlinstown refers to?  Tully Church was already abandoned by the mid 1600s.

[KD146]

St.Paul's church in Bray apparently dates from 1609.  Again, I wonder did catholics have access to this for their baptisms and marriages?

[dermo]

I have no special knowledge about Bray or Kingstown, but I think the problem stems from the fact that catholic parishes were often very large in the 17th and 18th centuries because of a shortage of priests as the result of the penal laws. As legal restrictions relaxed, the old parishes were subdivided so records for people in a given district might turn up under different parishes depending on when the event occurred.  I'm not sure if there is a general source that provides information on what the appropriate parish would be for a given district at different periods in the past. The Archdiocese of Dublin website gives some information but it looks limited to me. Donnelly's Short Histories of Dublin Parishes is a better source but I don't think it covers Bray or Dun Laoire.