RELIGIOUS STATUES IN THE DOCKLANDS REF-225668-1

ST LAURENCE O’TOOLE’S CHURCH

This church was begun in 1844 by John B. Keane and completed in 1858 by John Bourke, occupying a triangular site at the intersection of Seville Place and Spencer Dock, donated to the church in the mid nineteenth-century. The church was constructed to serve the growing community in the area who were housed in large numbers of brown brick houses and cottages built for the population of dockworkers and their families. The design skillfully exploits the limited site with the four-stage steeple providing an important vertical emphasis. The interior was stripped of much of its decoration in 1975 and is enlivened only by the retained stained glass windows of 1958 by Casey Bros. The spire of the church was said to have been the last landmark visible to emigrants leaving Ireland from the North Wall in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and remains a local landmark and a social focal point of the local community.