The Yellow Prefab Church- Our Lady of Loreto, Tallaght 1969

The Yellow Prefab Church of Mountain Park-  Our Lady of Loreto

On the 10^th December 1969 the Most Rev John Charles McQuaid came to Tallaght to dedicate and bless a large yellow prefabricated structure recently set down and assembled on the Old Bawn Road (Mountain Park).  It was a temporary prefab Church erected to serve the faithful of the district on an interim basis, while greater plans were being advanced for the building of more permanent churches all over, what was soon to become Tallaght New Town.  There were plans for the construction of 7000 new houses in the district over the following seven years and a rapidly growing flock, estimated to be 40,000 souls would soon need ministering to, some it was felt, rather urgently. The Catholic Church in Ireland had discovered the merits of prefabricated Churches in 1961 when the first two prefabricated churches manufactured in Ireland had been erected on Achill Island.

The Most Reverent Dr. McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin was accompanied by Ms Helen Smith, an Air Hostess with Aer Lingus, who was there to formally represent the airline and to witness the naming of the church on behalf of the national carrier.  The new Church was named and dedicated to Our Lady of Loreto after the Patron Saint of Air Travellers and Pilots.  It is often the custom to name a church  after some local saint, Christian martyr or celebrated good skin awaiting beatification (think St. Kevin, St. Aengus or St. Maelruain).  An aerodrome in Tallaght had closed in 1923. There was no obvious or discernible connection between Tallaght and Our Lady of Loreto, leaving the reason for its name something of a puzzle to locals, and one to which we will return.

Tallaght Aerodrome- Dismantling 1923

The Architect John L Griffith F.R.I.A.I, presented His Grace with a large gold key with which to open the Church and during the ceremony a specially carved statue of the Madonna of Loreto, carved in Italy and flown to Ireland, was presented to the church by the parishioners of Bohernabreena who had traipsed down to Goose Park for their sins.  The first mass was celebrated by the Very Reverent Andrew Griffith P.P of Tallaght-Bohernabreena, at which His Grace (The Most Reverent!) presided. The Sanctuary Lamp was lit by the chief steward Vincent McMahon and readings were read dutifully on cue by local laymen Joe McGrath and Charlie O’ Toole (a particularly good skin from Maelruain’s Park, after whom a local bridge from St. Dominic’s Road to Tallaght village would later be named).  Our Lady’s Choral Society formed the choir during the mass and would, later that evening, sing Mozart’s Mass in the new church.  Fr Griffith was director of Our Lady’s Choral Society.

New to the district

Fr Griffith’s recent appointment to Tallaght, and this modest opening, was in all probability not the highlight of his career. A musical Minister of some note, he was a close personal friend of the internationally celebrated Cellist Sir John Barbirroli and would celebrate the latter’s Requiem Mass the following year.  As Director of Our Lady’s Choral Society Fr Griffith had toured Germany and the United States and had signed a recording contact with Decca Records on behalf of the Society.  He had been invited by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, to bring Our Lady’s Choral Society to Monaco in 1961.  On a ten day visit to Monaco and Monte Carlo (Or Monte Carlow, as the Irish Examiner called it) Fr Griffith led the Society’s 200 members to perform Beethoven’s Choral Symphony in the Palace Courtyard under the baton of the celebrated Romanian Conductor Constantin Silvestri. The performance would be broadcast by Radio Monte Carlo. He had taken the Choral Society on one of their first outings to Berlin as early as 1956.  In 1950, when meeting the Pope in Rome, the Pontiff reportedly asked Fr Griffith “What do you think of my Irish pronunciation?”, to which Fr Griffith, with characteristic frankness replied “We find your pronunciation in English a little difficult, but your Irish is fine!”.  

It is probable that both the general acoustics and certain agnostics in the yellow prefab Church in Tallaght, were not entirely to his liking.

But why on earth was a prefabricated church in Tallaght called after Our Lady of Loreto? And in turn, the neighbouring school?  To answer that we must take a flying visit to Italy and Croatia via Palestine.

Our Lady of Loreto- A movable feast

There is and has been since the 14^th Century, a house in the small village of Loreto, Italy, which many Catholics believe was the birth chamber of Our Lady.   The theological convention holds that Our Lady was born in Palestine and that her birthplace, ‘Our Lady’s house’, was transported from there by “Angels” to Loreto in Italy.  The house in which Mary was born, raised and greeted the angel Gabriel, was miraculously transported from Palestine to Tersatto (Croatia) then to Recanati before being set down in Loreto, Italy on the 10^th December 1294. For this reason in 1920 Pope Benedict XV declared the Madonna of Loreto the Patron Saint of air travellers and Pilots. 

The original site on which it reputedly stood in Palestine is now marked by the Church of St. Anne. “Mary’s House”, in Loreto, Italy is now enclosed within the Basilica della Santa Casa (Basilica of the Holy House). The story of the house of Loreto has been read as an allegory of how Catholicism spread peacefully around the world by dropping miraculously from the heavens.

Our Lady of Loreto & Tallaght
The new church in Tallaght was a temporary and movable structure that could, once it had served its purpose, be picked up and moved elsewhere.  And it is possibly for this reason that the Church was called after Our Lady of Loreto.  The new school in Mountain Park (now St. Dominic’s NS since 1990) was named Our Lady of Loreto National School (1970-1990), after the neighbouring and temporary Church. The first principal of Our Lady of Loreto Boys School was Mr. Leo Swan who had, coincidentally, been an aviator!  The Church in Baldonnel, serving the Air Corp, is called the Church of Our Lady of Loreto and St. Brigid, dedicated on the 10^th December 1944.

Fr Andrew Griffith, the newly appointed Parish Priest to the recently constituted parish had visited the Holy House of Loreto on a trip to Italy in 1966.  So impressed was he by the story, that he agreed to become a representative of the “Holy House of Loreto” in Ireland.  He led a number of pilgrimages from Ireland to Loreto and in 1981 Fr Griffith, by then P.P. in Kill-o'-the-Grange, would attend a ceremony in the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven in Dublin Airport for the blessing of a statue of our Lady of Loreto, presented by Aer Rianta to the Church.  It was of course the 10^th of December.

The architect of the yellow prefab church in Tallaght, John L. Griffith, was Fr Griffith’s brother.

On  10^th of December 2019, 50 years to the day after the blessing of Our Lady of Loreto Church in Mountain Park, Tallaght,  Pope Francis restored the feast of our lady of Loreto, 10^th December, to the universal Roman Calendar.  

What became of Tallaght’s Moveable Church?

After the opening of St. Dominic’s Church in Milbrook Lawns in July 1975, the yellow prefab Church was deconsecrated and used the following year by the recently established St. Maelruain’s Youth Club. The club was set up in May 1976 by Joan Garrigan, Trudy Mullally and Tom Masterson and catered for up to 300 young people in the district, serving 180 neighbouring houses.  St Dominic’s Youth Club, which had traditionally served the Village area had been disbanded after their clubhouse  had been leased to the Department of Posts and Telegraphs by the Prior of the Dominican Priory.

St. Maelruain’s youth club ran six nights a week and in only a couple of months had purchased £100 worth of equipment and raised £400 towards the purchase or building of a club house. After only two months in the Yellow prefab, the club were disappointed to learn that they would have to vacate their prefabricated clubhouse.  After much protest, the Very Rev Mannus Fields O.P., agreed with the Clubs committee, that if they vacated the yellow prefab they could have the use of two newer prefabs erected on the grounds of Our Lady of Loreto School.  There was however a caveat!  The prefabs may be required for use as classrooms in the near future!  With little alternative, St. Maelruain’s youth club reluctantly accepted the offer, vacated the old ‘Church’ and decamped a few hundred meters up the road to the new school yard.

In the summer of 1976, the yellow prefab Church was disassembled, removed and not too angelically transported to Lucan where it was to be used as temporary classrooms.

St. Maelruain’s Youth Club used the new prefabs in Our Lady of Loreto School until August, when they broke up for the summer.  A press release had been issued by the youth club, noting they were looking for a site, on to which they wished to permanently move the two ‘loaned’ prefabs from Our Lady of Loreto School.  On their return in mid-September, the Committee was enraged to learn that their two prefabs had been ‘taken back’ by the Parish Priest and deployed- one as a classroom and the other for “storage”.  These prefabs were not for moving!


The yellow prefab Church or the church of Our Lady of Loreto, Tallaght, was arguably the shortest lived church in Tallaght's long ecclesiastical history, surviving a little over five years in all.  But it was in this church, that the first generation of Christians born in "Tallaght New Town", were welcomed to a very new community, which to a large degree had simply 'landed' here overnight.  And it was from this community, that thirty years later, many would take flight!

Afterword

A word about Angels

During archaeological excavations undertaken beneath the Holy House at Loreto, in Italy, two coins associated with a local aristocratic family called “Angelos” were found.  It is believed that the bricks of Our Lady’s house in Palestine were removed for safe keeping during the Muslim invasions in the 1200s.  They were, it is posited, transported to Italy, via Croatia, and re-erected by the Angelos Family!

And Fr Griffith?

Fr Andrew Griffith, after only three years in Tallaght, was assigned as Parish Priest to Monkstown, Co. Dublin. In 1973 a new parish church was built in Monkstown costing £230,000.  The architect for the Church was John L. Griffith.  Fr Andrew Griffith remained a director of Our Lady’s Choral Society for many years.  He died in 1992.

Albert Perris

A Ramble about Tallaght

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