During these years the La Touche estate was owned by Peter David La Touche (died 1857) and then by his brother William Robert (died 1892). Previously only a few families lived there and were principally employed in fishing, but the extension of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway’s line to Greystones in 1854-1856 enabled people to realise its potential for permanent residence and as a seaside holiday destination. In 1789 his son Peter built Christ Church, the new parish church in Delgany.ĭuring the 1850s and 1860s the population of Greystones greatly expanded. The son of one of these refugees, David La Touche, prospered and purchased 300 acres around Delgany in the mid-eighteenth century, building Bellevue and developing the estate.

Political intolerance in France led to Louis XIV revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and many Calvinist Protestants, known as Huguenots, who had previously enjoyed a measure of religious freedom, fled France, taking their energy and skill to Holland, Britain and Ireland. Built in 1857 in response to the dramatic increase in the number of residents and visitors in Greystones, the story of St Patrick’s Church, like so much of the story of Greystones, is inextricably bound up in the story of the La Touche family.

La touche family history