STREET PREACHING AND SECTARIANISM IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY WICKLOW. 

In the summer of 1890, the quiet harbour town of Arklow became the unlikely centre of one of the most remarkable religious controversies in late Victorian Ireland. What began as a campaign of evangelical street preaching by four Protestant clergymen soon escalated into a bitter confrontation involving local communities, church leaders, the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British Army, Dublin Castle officials and even Charles Stewart Parnell.          

Drawing on extensive archival research, contemporary newspapers, parish records, official correspondence and a unique collection of surviving photographs, Pat Power reconstructs the dramatic events of what became known as the Arklow Question. At its heart stand the determined and controversial figures of Revd Richard Carmichael Hallowes and Revd John Harrison, whose public missions challenged both religious convention and civil authority in an Ireland already divided by Home Rule politics, land agitation and competing visions of national identity.

Far more than a local dispute, the Arklow street preaching affair illuminates the complex relationship between religion, politics and community life in nineteenth-century Ireland. It reveals how national tensions could erupt in unexpected places and how ordinary townspeople found themselves caught up in conflicts that resonated far beyond their own locality.

Pat Power is a local historian whose research has focused on the social, religious and political history of County Wicklow. This work originated as his award-winning Diploma in Local History thesis at Maynooth University and has been substantially revised and expanded for publication.