Plaque Commemorating Francis Hutcheson’s Grave

Hutcheson loved Dublin, and died while on a visit to that city in 1746. He is buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary’s, which is also the final resting place of his cousin William Bruce. Today Saint Mary’s is a public park located in what is now Wolfe Tone Street. Many United Irishmen would have revered the memory of Francis Hutcheson. Some of the leaders of the Dublin United Irishmen are remembered in the street and place-names of the city. Most Dubliners can direct a visitor to Wolfe Tone Street, Oliver Bond Street, Russell Street, Lord Edward Street and Emmet Road. ‘Never to be forgotten Hutcheson’ lies in what is now an unmarked grave in the Dublin he loved and ‘where his best work was done’.

If the citizens of his beloved adopted city have consigned the memory of their most eminent scholar and philosopher to oblivion, the citizens of his home town have been more generous. In 2003 the people of Saintfield, County Down unveiled a plaque to Hutcheson, very appropriately on the wall of the First Presbyterian Church where his grandfather had been minister and where the young Francis would have first imbibed his Dissenting Protestant principles.  [From Dissent into Treason by Fergus Whelan]

Fergus Whelan, the secretary of the Francis Hutcheson Memorial Committee has established the following evidence for the site of Francis Hutcheson’s grave.  Dublic City Council has an information display at St Mary’s Church which states that Mr Francis Hutcheson and his cousin Mr William Bruce are buried there.  This information was gleaned from the St Mary’s burial records which are now held at the Representative Church Library, Dublin.

In Stewart, A.T.Q., “The Deeper Silence: The Hidden Origins of the United Irishmen”, Blackstaff 1993, p. 116, the author states that Mr William Bruce, who died in 1755, was buried in the same grave as Mr Francis Hutcheson.

In Ray Bateson’s book “The End”, it states that from the burial records it shows that Francis Hutcheson was buried at St Mary’s and that part of Bruce’s headstone is still visible.

On Saturday 1st December 2012 this plaque to commemorate the burial site of Francis Hutcheson was unveiled in Dublin.