There is evidence of Neolithic settlement between the southern ridge of the Phoenix Park and the Liffey and several burial mounds exist to the north of the village.

In 1177, Tyrell, Baron of Castleknock, granted lands at Kilmainham to the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem (Knights Hospitallers).

This was made explicit by the Duke of Ormonde after he successfully lobbied for the creation of an enclosed deer park outside Dublin in 1662.

[4] In 1671, Colonel Richard Lawrence settled a number of Huguenots in the village with the intention of establishing a linen industry (with some success).

[4] During much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Chapelizod was a prosperous village with a rural atmosphere close to the centre of Dublin.

[citation needed] Chapelizod is served by Dublin Bus route 26 which runs every 10-15 minutes throughout the day.

Following the relaxation of the Penal Laws, it became possible for Catholics to consider the construction of additional churches and to repair the existing stock of religious buildings.

The well-proportioned Georgian house, where Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu once resided in his early childhood, stands at the corner of Park Lane facing Main Street in front of the church.

In James Joyce's short story "A Painful Case", published in Dubliners, it is the home of the unsociable protagonist James Duffy, who "lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious."

It is the setting—as well as the scene of the home and hostelry of the protagonist Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, and their family Shaun, Shem and Issy—in Joyce's final major work, Finnegans Wake.