On Saturday 3rd November, the Church of Ireland Historical Society (COIHS) hosted its second conference of the year in the Music Room at Christ Church Cathedral. We had a superb turnout and wish to thank members, both old and new …

Looking back: Dublin conference 2018 Read more »

The ‘War to end all Wars’ came to an end on Monday 11th November 1918. After over four years of fighting and death, it was finally over. The sense of relief is captured in the pages of the weekly newspaper, …

Church of Ireland Gazette coverage of WWI, November 1918 Read more »

To mark last week’s 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Leinster – torpedoed and sunk just one month before the end of the First World War – the Representative Church Body Library has compiled an online exhibition entitled …

The Leinster Tragedy: Human Interest Stories brought to life by the Church of Ireland Gazette and Other Sources Read more »

The Church of Ireland Historical Society’s second conference of the year will be on Saturday, 3 November 2018 in Christ Church Cathedral’s Music Room, Dublin. Tea and coffee will be served from 10.30am and the first paper will start at 11am. Confirmed speakers are …

Date for your diary: COIHS Winter Conference 3 November 2018 Read more »

The Representative Church Body Library currently holds 1,114 collections of parish records covering a variety of time spans (some dating back to medieval times, but most from the late 17th Century onwards). They contain a wide variety of sources relating …

The importance of parish records: the case of Shrule, County Longford Read more »

The Representative Church Body Library has welcomed the announcement of a €100,000 capital grant towards the digitisation of Church of Ireland parish registers as part of the Department of Culture, Heritage and Gaeltacht’s digitisation scheme.  The funding was announced by …

Government grant for digitisation of Church of Ireland Parish Registers Read more »

In addition to approximately 70,000 books, the RCB Library is the repository for the records of some 1,110 parishes. These registers often contain baptism, marriage, and burial records, but also numerous other items, such as vestry books, account minutes, and …

The Caddy Caricature: Hidden Aspects in a Church of Ireland Parish Register Read more »

Another decade’s worth of editions of the weekly newspaper, the Church of Ireland Gazette, from 1924 to 1933, has just been digitized and uploaded online by the RCB Library, where they may be consulted as a freely-searchable resource. This means …

Human interest stories from the Gazette: the miraculous escape of St Mark’s church congregation, 1912 Read more »

The value of the Church of Ireland vestry minute book as a resource for social, economic, religious, and indeed legal history at parish level is immeasurable. A local historian and native of Roscommon, Alan Moran, has transcribed the entire content …

The Strokestown (Bumlin) Vestry Book, 1811-1870 Read more »