placenamesMerrion
Muirfin
The older coastal settlement of Merrion preserves traces of its medieval past and a memorial to an 1807 shipping disaster.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Muirfin · Irish · main form
- Merrion · English · main form
Place & story
The castle behind the later suburb
Merrion Castle was associated with Sir John Cruise before passing to the Fitzwilliam family. An archaeological assessment of Merrion Road records that it had become ruinous by 1729 and was demolished around 1780. A later house incorporated material from the earlier building, including a Fitzwilliam heraldic plaque and a carved stone head. These reused fragments link the later residential landscape with a fortified residence that no longer stands. [2]
Churchyard Lane and the old burial place
Merrion’s burial ground marks another older focus of settlement. The archaeological assessment identifies the chapel on the seventeenth-century Down Survey and notes later maps showing a burial place beside Churchyard Lane. Surviving gravestones chiefly date from the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and burials appear to have ceased by around 1866. The enclosed site preserves a religious and funerary landscape amid the later development of Merrion Road. [2]
Remembering the Prince of Wales
Victims of the Prince of Wales wreck in November 1807 were buried in the small cemetery near Merrion Gates, also known as Bellevue. The ship and the Rochdale had left Ringsend during severe weather and were driven onto the south Dublin coast, with heavy loss of life. The Dún Laoghaire harbour bicentenary exhibition records a memorial at Merrion ordered by the Earl of Harrington and a burial registration dated 13 December 1807. The graveyard thus holds a direct connection with Dublin Bay’s maritime disasters. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Dublin
- Barony
- Rathdown
- Civil parish
- Booterstown
- Within
- Blackrock-Booterstown
- Within
- Merrion
- Coordinates
- 53.33453, -6.25846 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1412146 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Merrion. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Gowan Motors Compound, 169–177 Merrion Road: Archaeological Assessment · IAC Archaeology
- Bicentenary of Dún Laoghaire Harbour, disasters of 1807 · Colin and Anna Scudds, Dún Laoghaire Borough Historical Society with dlr Local Studies, 2017
- Merrion (Bellevue) cemetery, Dublin illustration: based on a Merrion Cemetery, Bellevue, Merrion Road, Dublin4 (14 June 2012) by Tara Towers Hotel. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2020-10-29. How this page was prepared.