Church of the Visitation

In 1807 a body of Camelite Tertiaries established a community in Clondalkin. A pious merchant from Fairview, James Younge joined them. He and some of his brethren opened a branch house in Fairview. This monastery was on Fairview Avenue, with an entrance from the front facing the sea. It consisted of a house and chapel, and occupied part of the site of the Fairview Cinema.

When the Cinema was being built, the contractors uncovered the floor of the old chapel.

In 1819, Dr. Troy Archbishop of Dublin blessed the chapel and permitted the faithful to frequent it. Mr. Younge owned the property, and when he died he left the property to his neice, Mrs. Brophy. The 8 shillings rent was henceforth paid to her and it became known locallly as “Brophy’s Chapel”.

Mrs. Brophy’s house was no. 2 Fairview, on the corner of Fairview Avenue.

However, in 1830 following a dispute with the locals, the Carmelites closed the chapel to the public. The parishioners refused to pay the rent for the house, and had to attend Mass in Coolock.

Shortly afterwards, the Carmelite brothers moved to Glasnevin, and the Fairview parishioners purchased the monastery from Mrs. Brophy, at an annual rent of £35.

So from 1835 until the present, the Church of the Visitation was opened on Sunday 15th January 1855.

When the Church opened in 1855, there were only twenty houses on Fairview Strand.

St. Joseph’s CBS

Between St. Joseph’s C.B.S and Marino Mart once stood the entrance gates to the Earl of Charlemont’s estate.

The granite gateway with the Caulfield family motto, “Deo duce ferro, Comitante” (with God as my guide, my sword by my side), can presently be seen at the entrance to the Christian Brothers headquarters on Griffith Avenue.

St. Joseph’s C.B.S. celebrated it’s centenary in 1988. A veritable “spring” of G.A.A. stars (e.g. Kevin Heffernan, Des and Lar Foley, Johny Joyce, etc) Joey’s has been a bountiful nursery for St. Vincent’s G.A.A. club and Dublin teams. Among the endless list of weell knonw students to pass through its hallowed portals are former Taoisaigh John A. Costelloe & Charles J. Haughey, Lord Mayer of Dublin Eugene Timmons, George Colley TD, and Kevin & Harry Boland TD.

Fairview Crescent

Fairview was home in its time for quite an imprissive array of literary luminaries. James Joyce lived at Stella Maris, 29 Windsor Avenue 1896-99, 7 Convent Avenue 1899, 15 Richmond Avenue 1899-90, and at 8 Royal Terrace (Inverness Terrace) Fairview from 1900 to 1901. Ffolliott’s Crescent, built in 1792 as a “hate fence” blocking Lord Charlemont’s view to the sea, has housed a plethora of famous literary people.

Bram Stoker, author of the horror story Dracula was born in no.15, where he lived for some sixteen years. Surely the young Bram was aware of and influenced by the gruesome history of the adjacent Suicides Plot at Ballybough Bridge. Charles Benjamin Mosse, grandson of the founder of the Rotunda Hospital resided at no. 26, william Carleton, the scholar lived in no.2, Elanor Balcmmbe , who jilted Oscar Wilde and married Bram Stoker lived in no. 1, while Ffolliott himself lived in no. 10 the Crescent.

Fairview has been the scene of many historical events in its proud existence. The hugely successful Carnival of 1952, held in Fairview Park, to raise funds for the Church of the Visitation. The dramatic escape of a lioness from waste ground behind Fairview Cinema in the early 50’s. The tense stalking and eventual shooting of the lioness by a Garda marksman. At 10pm on the 8th December 1954, after two days of torrential rain, and a high tide, the Tolka burst its banks causing the worst floods the areas ever experienced. The railway bridge at East Wall was swept away, gas mains severed, electric power cut off and some houses left under 14 feet of water. From the air, Fairview with rescuers, residents, horses, dogs and all, going about by boat and paddle, bore an uncanny resemblance to its definition on early 18th Century maps.