Historical Library

In January 2005 the library moved into purpose-built rooms at the new Quaker headquarters in Stocking Lane, Dublin 16, a beautiful site on the edge of the mountains overlooking the city and Dublin Bay. The new library comprises strong room, reading room and librarian's office. The strong-room has state-of-the-art atmospheric control for the safe keeping of all the archival material. The main room contains the book stacks, tables and computer work-stations.

A staff of volunteers sees to the needs of readers and works long-term on cataloguing and indexing the material. With financial assistance from various trusts and public bodies, copying of the archival material to microfilm and digital storage is an ongoing process. As well as making the written records even more secure, this process is making possible the wide distribution of the information. It also means that the copies of the records of local Quaker meetings, deposited in the Library for permanent safe-keeping, can be supplied to the meetings and to adjacent public libraries.

The Library is open to the public once a week, on Thursday mornings from 10.30 am to 1.00 pm. Visitors include research workers in local or religious history together with private individuals from many parts of the world in search of genealogical and other information.

Phone 01-495-6890, e-mail qhist at eircom dot net.

Ulster Friends' Archive

Microfilmsof almost all minute books and records for the province of Ulster are held in the Public Records Office for Northern Ireland, and are available to the public there. Microfilms are also available at the Yearly Meeting Historical Library in Dublin (Ref. M I C.16), Quaker House, Stocking Lane, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16, Ireland.

Enquiries regarding Quaker archives and records for Ulster should be addressed to :- Ulster Quarterly Meeting Archives Committee, 4 Magheralave Road, Lisburn, BT28 3BD.

General Archive

Inter-Friend Publishers maintain an archive which contains a selection of articles, talks, quotations, the titles of books of Quaker interest, and much other material.

Papers from Various Sources

Avoiding Fundamentalism: a Quaker View, by Roy H W Johnston, published in the July-August 2008 issue of Humanism Ireland, arising from some questions raised in discussion at earlier meetings of the Humanists attended by the author.

Dublin Monthly Meeting Peace Committee

14th March 2006: Letter to An Taoiseach:

Dear Taoiseach,
Writing to you as the Dublin Quaker Peace Committee we feel it necessary to state our view that any plans for a military commemoration of Easter 1916 are totally inappropriate to the current situation in Ireland, particularly following the violent demonstrations in Dublin on Saturday 11th February 2006. Through our Quaker Peace Testimony we are deeply concerned that any plans for a military parade will exacerbate enormously the current tensions between North and South and within Northern Ireland itself.
Yours sincerely, Sean McCrum, on behalf of the Dublin Quaker Peace Committee.

The following is an extract from the report on its activities during 2005:-

The Committee has met on 12 occasions during the year.

We have been much concerned with the continuing lack of peace in Iraq and have given consideration to our lack of understanding of Islam. An open meeting, to help us, and Friends of the Monthly Meeting, was held in Quaker House when speakers from the Shia and Sunni Muslim communities explained their aspects of Muslim spirituality and its practical involvement in daily living. A further speaker was a recently retired Roman Catholic priest who had lived and worked amongst Middle Eastern Muslim countries for many years.

At the request of the Monthly Meeting a draft reply to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland in relation to its review of the updating of the Code of Programme Standards was prepared. This was approved by the strengthening of the wording criticising the excessive degree of violence on television and the pervasive effect that it has on civil society and youth in particular.

Recently a whole Saturday was given over to brainstorming the complexities of peace and the approach of a loving non involvement toward personal, civil and international violence. Peace is not easy but complex and diverse. The Committee is working towards producing a programme involving Friends in the varied facets of the subject leading to a public conference in 2007 when a balanced and forward looking commitment enabling Friends to achieve a greater influence in Irish society and to bring real active life to the Quaker Peace Testimony.

The following papers are also accessible:

Irene Ni Mhaille on How I Read the Bible delivered at a Dublin Monthly Meeting Seminar on February 20 2006; see also Thomas Webster's paper on the same theme.

David Kingston on Spirit Led or Consensus Driven delivered at the November 2005 Leinster Quarterly Meeting.

France Yearly Meeting 2005 - report by Pauline Goggin.

Yearly Meeting 2004 Epistle

The Public Lecture in 2004 Children of Light was given by Martin Lynn of Belfast. What did the "Children of Light", one of the names used by early Quakers, stand for? The speaker's main theme was the distinctiveness of the early Quaker vision including the encounter with God's presence, the inward light, living in the spirit, and the present reality of the kingdom of heaven. The speaker explored these insights into the relationship between humankind and God, and their relevance in the vastly changed world of today.

Miriam Logan, of Cork Meeting, spoke at Yearly Meeting 2004 on the theme: Fear of Difference is at the Core of Conflict.

Also from YM2004: In and Out the Meeting House, David Butler, Britain Yearly Meeting; David is the author and illustrator of the definitive book on Quaker Meeting Houses in Ireland, past and present, which is about to be published. He begins: "These remarks are lightly-connected incidents in Quaker life, mostly from Ireland, gleaned from a life-time spent looking at meeting houses and reading about them, and from a mere five years enjoying Irish meeting houses. They include many small events, few of which one would wish to make permanent, but which I thought you might like to hear before they sink back into the sands..."

Peace Project in Afghanistan, by Sue Williams, Lisburn Monthly Meeting; this talk was given in the 2004 "Irish Quaker Faith in Action" session. Sue and Stephen Williams have been deeply involved in the research, development and application of alternatives to conflict for a number of years, including a period as Residents in Quaker House Belfast.

Index

Basic Reference Documentation

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003 and earlier: