In 2017 we wrote how Ireland’s oldest Jewish cemetery, the 300-year-old Ballybough Jewish cemetery in the Fairview section of northeast Dublin, had been handed over to the Dublin City Council for care, management, maintenance, and restoration.
The website The Journal.ie has just uploaded a YouTube video updating the progress of the conservation works, including an interview with Fergus O’Carroll, the Dublin City Council Parks Superintendent, describing the process and plans for the future.
Located behind a wall and encompassing around 2,500 square meters, the cemetery, founded in 1718, includes 148 headstones, though probably more burials, and was closed at the end of the 19th century (though a few burials took place after that), when a new cemetery was opened in the southern part of the city.
The cemetery is entered via a gate lodge on Fairview Strand that was built in 1857 — the Hebrew date 5618 is inscribed on a plaque on the front of the building. The gate lodge and cemetery are both on the Dublin City Council’s list of protected structures.