The Unitarian church movement had its origins in mid-16th century where it began as a dissenting movement within the Reformation. Unitarian founders (in Poland/Lithuania/Transylvania) were trying to get back to what they considered a “primitive Christianity” which they believed captured the original intent, before all of the official creeds, canons, structures, and practices adopted by the major Christian denominations.

The Unitarian Church in Cork has a history that stretches back for more than three hundred years. Building work on what later became the Unitarian Church began around 1711 in an area then called Dunscombe’s Marsh, outside the city walls. It was built as a dissenting Presbyterian meeting house to replace a smaller church in Watergate Lane (present day South Main Street) that the congregation had outgrown. The building was originally called the Presbyterian Meetinghouse. For a number of years, the congregation included both traditional Presbyterians and Unitarians. In the mid 1800’s, the Presbyterian members who were strongly committed to trinitarian theology left to form what eventually became Cork’s Trinity Presbyterian Church.

Unitarianism was not a recognised religious movement in Ireland until into the 19th century and the term Unitarian did not appear on the church’s signage until 2004.

The buildings to either side of the church were the minister’s manse and a school. Like all dissenting churches or chapels, the interior design was simple. The church has no steeple. It lacks the ornate design associated with contemporary Roman Catholic and Anglican of the same period. The church was designed for the congregation to hear the minister, in the era before microphones and speakers. The church included a balcony, which ran three sides of the building. It could seat up to 800 people.

Many distinguished people have worshipped there over the years, including Thomas Dix Hincks, the congregation’s sole minister from 1792 to 1815. Hincks also established the Royal Cork Institution in 1803 to promote education, science, agriculture, and industry. It led to the establishment of the Cork Opera House, Crawford Gallery, UCC, and CIT (now MTU). His son, Thomas, ministered from 1815 to 1818, before becoming the first professor of natural history at University College, Toronto, and president of the Canadian Institute.

Throughout the 1800s, members of the Cork congregation were active in many social and political movements, including the anti-slavery movement, the Anti-Tithe Association, and the Young Irelanders. The temperance campaigner, Rev Theobald Mathew, OFM-Cap, signed his famous Temperance Agreement in the Unitarian Church in 1839.

Another prominent congregation member was the activist, Richard Dowden. Dowden supported Daniel O’Connell and Catholic emancipation. While serving as Cork’s lord mayor in 1845, Dowden’s work in the anti-slavery movement led to a visit to the city by leading abolitionist and US social campaigner Frederick Douglass (see: www.FrederickDouglass.IE).  Other historically notable church members include both the Irish artist Daniel Maclise and also the father of modern computer science, George Boole. In 1935, the church aligned with the newly formed Synod of Munster of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland (NSPCI).

After a fire in January 2024 destroyed the interior of the chapel, Cork Unitarian Church was left without a home and with little hope of continuing. Some of the church’s lay leadership believed that there was a future if the model for running the church radically changed. The church now operates as a Limited by Guarentee corporation – independent of external ecclesiastic governance (e.g. ordained ministers, synods, etc.).  This is more in keeping with the model of most Unitarian Universalist (i.e. UU) church congregations in the EU (see: EUU). The Cork church congregation no longer has a permanent building to maintain. All of the energies of the church go to meeting the needs of the congregation, not preserving historically significant architecture. 

While the Cork congregation has moved on to a different way of doing “church”. The congregation still has an affection for its former Princess street home. We also have an interest as Corkonians in seeing that the asset of the building, with all of its historic and architectural significance, is preserved. Cork Unitarian Church supports effort to donate and repurpose the Princes Street building as a publicly held asset – revitalising Cork’s City Centre and providing social and cultural benefits of the entire Cork community.

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