Today I decided to make one more attempt to access Goldenbridge Cemetery and for me the best way to get there is to get the Luas Tram as far as the Drimnagh Stop [don't make the mistake of getting off at the Goldenbridge tram stop]. Unfortunately the cemetery gates were locked.


Under the Penal Laws, Irish Catholics could only be buried in Church of Ireland (Anglican) cemeteries, and the full graveside rites could not be performed — only prayers from the (Anglican) Book of Common Prayer were permitted. Catholic emancipation came in the 1820s, and the three acres at Goldenbridge, purchased by the Catholic Association for £600, formed the first Catholic cemetery in Ireland since the Reformation. The first burial took place on 15 October 1828. A mortuary chapel in the form of a Roman temple was erected in 1829.

The cemetery was placed provocatively next to Richmond Barracks, a British Army installation. Complaints by the 92nd Regiment of Foot about noise and commotion caused by funeral processions passing their barracks led to a hearing by the Privy Council of Ireland. Abraham Brewster, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, limited future interments to those with burial rights only. Glasnevin Cemetery opened in 1832.

Mass burials took place during the Great Famine (1845–49) and during a cholera epidemic of 1867.

Until 2017, the last burial was of W. T. Cosgrave in 1965, first President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. His grave, along with 26 others, was vandalised in 2014 but restored in 2016. On the 4th October 2017, the son of W. T. Cosgrave, Liam Cosgrave, who had been Taoiseach of Ireland from 1973 to 1977 died. He was subsequently buried at Goldenbridge in the family plot on the 7th of October 2017.

Today I discovered that the cemetery now forms part of a tourist attraction with nearby Richmond Barracks and this is a bit disappointing as I am not willing to pay to access the location.


Drimnagh was farmland until the mid-1930s, when some of the first tenement clearances brought city centre residents from one-room hovels to semi-detached houses in a series of roads named after the mountain ranges of Ireland. The suburb consists of one area close to Drimnagh Castle/Lansdowne Valley, with three-bedroom private housing built by Associated Properties, and another area built by Dublin Corporation (the larger part) consisting of two bedroom 'Parlour Houses' bordering on the Grand Canal and Crumlin. The two areas meet at the parish church, the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel in the centre of Drimnagh, built in 1943.