BY Alyson Gavin, event coordinator
To mark Heritage Week 2020, a virtual presentation entitled “St John’s Sandymount: our educational and cultural heritage” will be available from 15th August on the church’s website www.sandymount.dublin.anglican.org.
Using the records of St John’s, newspaper archives and local memories, it presents people and events that contributed to the religious, educational, and cultural life of the church at the edge of Sandymount down the years.
Among those with links to St John’s are distinguished clergy, teachers, artists, performers, writers and musicians.
Visit St John’s website www.sandymount.dublin.anglican.org to read about:
- the unusual architecture of St John’s, its artefacts and stained-glass windows;
- the noted clerics Fr F.S. Le Fanu and Fr S.R.S. Colquhoun;
- the once-bustling life of the former Parochial Hall;
- the nearby order of religious sisters of St John the Evangelist, and the St Agnes School for Girls and School of Embroidery on St John’s Road;
- the actress Dame Sybil Thorndike and poet Sir John Betjeman;
- the career and early death of promising local actor Ivor Earle;
- the much-loved songwriter Percy French, sometime organist and Easter Week rebel Cathal Mac Dubhghaill, Gaiety Theatre Orchestra Director Bay Jellett, and Gate Theatre violinist Vera Wilkinson;
- the medical missionary Emily De Burgh Daly;
- the artists Eva and Laetitia Hamilton, Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone and Hilda Van Stockum;
- the educationalist and principal of Pembroke Technical School Ringsend C.P Coote-Cummins.
St John’s Virtual Heritage Week 2020 is presented online only, due to restrictions relating to the Covid-19 pandemic.
