In the 1700s, a small number of Jews had settled in the Annadale area off Ellis Avenue, Fairview; most of these marrano Jews came from Spain and Portugal, escaping the Inquisition. On 28 October 1718, Alexander Felix, Jacob Do Porto, and David Machado Do Sequeira, on behalf of the Ashkenazim, leased from Captain Chichester Phillips of Drumcondra Castle a plot of land on which the graveyard was subsequently built. The Jewish community sought assistance from German and Polish Jews in London to build a wall around the cemetery. They were refused but were later supported by the Bevis Marks Synagogue who not only funded the wall but provided a supervisory agent from London. The title deeds for the cemetery were deposited at Bevis Marks Synagogue, where they remained as of 1906. A mortuary chapel was added in 1857. The cemetery itself contains more than 200 graves, the last burial there having taken place in 1958. Most of Dublin's Jewish community would be buried in Dolphins Barn cemetery now. A 1913 account in Life in Old Dublin by James Collins recounts that many headstones were removed from the cemetery by locals:
There were formerly a great number of tombs visible in this graveyard, but some have disappeared in a somewhat extraordinary manner. It is told in Whitlaw's and Walsh's History of Dublin, "That they have been stolen at different times for the purpose of converting them into hearth-stones or other uses," and in support of this theory the following evidence is given : A Jew a short time ago, paid a visit to a Christian friend in the neighbourhood of Ballybough, whom he found in the act of repairing his house. Examining his improvements he perceived near the fireplace a stone with a Hebrew inscription which intimated to the astonished Israelite that the body of his father was buried in the chimney."
From the late 1800s, the cemetery went into decline. The last burial in the 19th century was a Samuel Wachman in 1899. In the 20th century the only burials which took place were members of the Harris family: Juliette Harris in 1908; Ernest Wormser Harris in 1946; and lastly Maude Jeanette Harris, 1958. In 1898, a new cemetery was established on Aughavannagh Road in Dolphin's Barn by Robert Bradlaw and the Dolphin's Barn Jewish Burial Society. Bradlaw was one of the founders of the St. Kevin's Parade Synagogue. The new cemetery was dedicated to Sir Moses Montefiore.
In creative works
Inspired by the old cemetery, Dublin poet Gerry McDonnell wrote a series of imaginary monologues called Mud Island Elegy in a poetry collection looking at Jewish life in 19th century Ireland. It is sometimes incorrectly described as the graveyard that author Bram Stoker, who lived nearby, used to visit when he was young, and which influenced his novel Dracula. In fact, Stoker visited another nearby cemetery which was also sometimes called Ballybough Cemetery, known as the "suicide plot", which was used for suicide victims, robbers and highwaymen, through whose corpses' hearts wooden stakes were driven. This cemetery was likely located across the Luke Kelly Bridge on Clonliffe Road.
