The Art Deco Chancery Street House flats and park in Dublin 1

Chancery House and Park.

Harry writes:

Dublin has some wonderful little parks tucked away but this tiny Art Deco-style Park is hiding in plain sight, it is located just off the quays beside the Four Courts. Attached to the Art Deco style Chancery Street House flats or in today’s parlance, apartment block, Chancery Park may be a small park but it has a beautifully cultivated garden with a stylised fountain, a pool and formal yew topiary plants.

Make sure you check out the front of the kiosk in the park, it has delightfully designed geometric railings and an ornate clock all in a wonderful Art-Deco style. Credit where credit is due, the park is well kept and clean, the local residents are proud of it and it is a fine example of the work done by the Parks & Landscape Services of Dublin City council.

But where did Dublin get this Art Deco Park from? In the 1930s, at a time when Dublin was notorious for its tenement slums and the State barely had two halfpennies to rub together, an incoming Fianna Fáil government put an emphasis on tenement slum clearance and new housing in its election campaign. After the election the political will was evident with housing acts being passed focusing on slum clearance and funding was found for the large-scale construction of social housing by local authorities.

Come the time and come the man. Herbert Simms was a Londoner and a veteran of the First World War. After his military service Simms won a scholarship and studied architecture at Liverpool University. After graduation he came to Ireland joining Dublin Corporation in 1925 in a temporary role as architect to Dublin Corporation until 1927. From the beginning of his employment with Dublin Corporation his concern was in working class housing and in 1926 he visited Manchester, Liverpool and London to explore the latest concepts in flat construction. After a stint in Dublin Corporation Simms worked as a town planner in India for some time and he later returned to Dublin

In 1932 Dublin Corporation created a separate housing architect’s department to focus on the building of new houses and Simms was appointed to the new role of Corporation housing architect. He endeavoured to bring the best modern methods and ideas from the UK and Holland for public housing. He set about the task with great drive and ambition, immediately recruiting additional staff to work in the department.

In the sixteen years he was in the post and working on a fraction of the budget that similar sized European cities could secure, he was responsible for the construction of 17,000 flats and houses across Dublin. Simms championed good quality public housing in the city, drawing his influences from new apartment blocks designed by de Klerk in Amsterdam and J.P. Oud in Rotterdam resulting in his Art-Deco style designs in Chancery Street House and Henrietta House. Simms was also responsible for suburban housing estates in Crumlin, Kimmage and Cabra.

By all accounts Simms had put a tremendous personal effort into his heavy work load and being overwhelmed with work pressure he tragically took his own life by throwing himself into the front of a train near Coal Quay Bridge near Dun Laoghaire. He left a note mentioning that he felt his sanity threatened from overwork. He is now at rest in Deansgrange cemetery.

An article by F.N. Taylor, the city surveyor, printed in the Irish Builder in tribute to Simms said: –

‘Behind a quiet and unassuming manner there lurked a forceful personality; and Mr Simms could uphold his point of view with a vigour that sometimes surprised those who did not know him well. By sheer hard work and conscientious devotion to duty, he has made a personal contribution towards the solution of Dublin’s housing problem, probably unequaled by anyone in our time…It is not given to many of us to achieve so much in the space of a short lifetime for the benefit of our fellow men.’

So, if you find yourself in Chancery Park spare a kind thought for Herbert Simms, the driving force behind a large-scale programme of housing construction, a true public servant, city architect and champion of good quality public housing in Dublin.

Harry’s Dublin appears here every Friday.

Pics by Harry Warren

From top: The Wellington Monument/Testimonial with bas-reliefs at the foot of the obelisk made from brass cannons captured at Waterloo

The Wellington Testimonial.

Harry Writes:

When Dubliners mention “The Monument”, they are of course referring to the Wellington Testimonial or the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park grounds beside Chesterfield Avenue. Arguably, both names for “The Monument” are correct as Sir Arthur Wellesley was very much alive when the construction work began but he was quite dead before it was completed. It was built between 1817 and 1861 to commemorate the victories of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

Arthur Wellesley was born in Ireland in 1769. His place of birth is disputed, being born either in Mornington House in Dublin (now the Merrion Hotel) or in the town of Trim, Co. Meath. Daniel O’Connell’s quote describing Wellesley’s Irishness as, “just because you are born in a stable does not make you a horse” is very true.

He was quintessentially a British warrior, statesman, imperialist and aristocrat. He never considered himself Irish, he was from Ireland, but he was not of Ireland. He was part of an Anglo-Irish caste whose first allegiance was to the British Crown. He described himself as part of the “English garrison” and Ireland “in a view to military operations must be considered enemy country”

There is no doubting his courage or military successes. He had an illustrious military career after joining the British army as an ensign in 1787. He seen his first action in Flanders in 1794 He then served in India from 1797 until 1805. After a number of victories enforcing British power in India, Wellesley returned to Ireland band became Chief Secretary in April 1807 until he resigned the post in April 1809. From 1808 until 1814, he led the British forces across Portugal, Spain and France, winning many crucial victories against France and earning him the titles of Viscount Wellington of Talavera and Duke of Wellington, from the British Crown.

On 18 June 1815, Wellington led the British and Allied forces to victory over the French in the decisive battle of the Napoleonic Wars at Waterloo. Where “Napoleon met his Waterloo”. Wellington subsequently had a major political career becoming Prime Minister during the reign of George IV after being Commander in Chief of the British Army.

To commemorate “The Iron Duke”, Wellington’s military victories during the Peninsular War, a testimonial committee was formed in Dublin on July 20th, 1813, by the Earl of Roden. He first suggested his idea of a monument at, ‘a meeting of several noblemen and gentlemen of the Kingdom of Ireland’ at the Rotunda in Dublin on 20 July 1813. Wellington’s continuing military success and his major victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 meant continued public support from that echelon of society in raising the necessary funds for the building of a monument.

A competition was held and a large number of potential designs were submitted by artists from all over the United Kingdom. Seven of the designs were shortlisted for the Wellington Testimonial. Models of the designs were put on public display at the Dublin Society’s House on Hawkin’s Street. Eventually, Sir Robert Smirke (1781-1867), design for an obelisk was chosen, a notable architect, he designed many major public buildings, including the main block and facade of the British Museum.

Smirke’s obelisk is a fine imposing structure of 62 metres in height, built of crystalline Kilgobbin granite, tapering upwards consisting of a four-sided shaft with a pyramidal apex, on a three-stepped monumental pedestal. There were also plans for a large statue of Wellington on horseback, accompanied by guardian lions placed on individual pedestals, but eventually after construction began the lack of funds ruled that out.

On 18 June 1817, the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Whitworth, the Crown’s senior representative in Ireland, laid the foundation stone for the testimonial with much fanfare at a ceremony held for the purpose: “The Lord Lieutenant … was attended by several officers of distinction and an escort of dragoons … The ceremony was attended by a vast concourse of carriages, and of equestrian and pedestrian spectators; the day being particularly favourable there were exhibited considerable beauty, rank and fashion. … The Lancers made a beautiful and warlike appearance… After the ceremony of laying the stone, 21 rounds were fired.”

Around 1820, the British Government provided brass cannons captured at Waterloo. After they were melted, they were used to mould the 3-D style bas-reliefs around the base of the monument. If you take a walk around the monument, the bas-reliefs display vibrant images titled, the “Battle of Waterloo”, “Civil and Religious Liberty” and the third the “Indian Wars”. The fourth has an inscription, in Latin and English: –

“Asia and Europe, saved by thee, proclaim

Invincible in war thy deathless name

Now round thy brow the civic oak we twine

That every earthly glory may be thine.”

Support for building the monument had faded somewhat by the early 1820s and due to a lack of funding, it was finally completed in 1861, nine years after the duke’s death.

On completion not everyone enjoyed the artistic merits of the monument as this early exchange relates,

Mr. Osborne: “Anyone who has been in the Phoenix Park must have seen the gigantic Milestone which is placed there in defiance of all rules of art and taste…”

Lord Palmerston: “Upon matters of taste men ought to be permitted to differ…the Monument in the Phoenix Park is in good taste.”

Mr. Osborne: “The Noble Lord must be an admirer of Milestones” -(Commons Debates, 1860)

So, today “The Monument” is a feature of Dublin, it is the tallest stone obelisk in Europe and it stands proud dominating the skyline all around it. Whatever your views of Wellington, it is part of our history and well worth a visit the next time you are in the Phoenix Park.

Harry’s Dublin appears here every Friday.

All pics by Harry Warren

The Grand Canal at Portobello, Dublin 8 where La Touche Bridge, named after a banker and slave-owner, can be crossed

Portobello Harbour.

Harry writes:

Portobello Bridge in Dublin with its distinctive lamp posts, red painted railings and deep Lock is one of the Grand Canal’s visually more attractive bridges. Dubliners just as frequently refer to it as Rathmines Bridge, it is of course correctly titled La Touche Bridge and it has a very interesting history.

The original La Touche bridge was constructed in 1791 and named after William Digges La Touché banker and a director of the Grand Canal Company. The La Touche family also “owned” slaves. Following the abolition of the slave trade the family received ‘compensation’ of £6000 (over £700,000.00 in value today) in 1834, for 400 of their slaves on two of their plantations in Jamaica.

Dublin’s Portobello shares its name with London’s Portobello Road and Portobello in Edinburgh. They were named to honour the capture by Admiral Edward Vernon in 1739 of the Spanish ruled town of Puerto Bello or Portobello on the Caribbean coast of Panama, during a war between Britain and Spain known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear when Robert Jenkins, a merchant sea captain, had his ear sliced off by a Spanish officer in Havana in 1731.

It led to calls in the British parliament for war with Spain. Captain Edward Vernon claimed he could take the Spanish town of Porto Bello with only six war ships and after a ferocious battle his very popular victory made Vernon a national hero. Portobello Dublin, still honours the Admiral’s victory to this day

In the 18th century Portobello began to develop as a small suburb in the south of the city of Dublin, expanding from Richmond Street. Portobello Harbour was built in 1801. The Grand Canal supplied water for Portobello Basin, the local areas reservoir and supply of fresh drinking water. It was in use until the 1860s when testing of the water quality identified too high levels of sulphuric acid and water was then sourced from Varty reservoir. The Basin was filled in 1883 and the harbour itself was largely filled in and in 1912 an Ever-Ready battery factory was built on the site.

By the 19th century Portobello Harbour was an important transport hub for traffic on the Grand Canal and a new hotel Portobello House, was built in 1807 to cater for passengers. It fell into decline after the success of the railways took away passenger transport on the canals. In 1858 it was taken over by a Catholic order of nuns, opening St. Mary’s asylum for visually impaired girls, after further incarnations it subsequently becoming a nursing home where the artist Jack B. Yeats passed away in old age. In later years it became a building for commercial use but still retains its visual charm along the canal.

The bridge and the lock have had its share of tragedies. At 9 o’clock Saturday evening on the 6th April 1861, a horse-drawn Omnibus with eight passengers, driven by Patrick Hardy, stopped at the crown of the bridge so a passenger and his young son could alight, the driver attempted to make the horses go on and as they clambered over the incline of the bridge one of the horses was startled and began to rear.

The driver tried to turn the horses to traverse the bridge diagonally but both lead horses became uncontrollable with fear. The back park of the Omnibus came in contact with a wooden fence between the Lock and the road, the back wheels went over the granite kerb causing the carriage to topple over and plunge six passengers along with two horses into the dark freezing waters of the canal Lock, which has a depth of over 6 metres.

The conductor managed to jump clear and the driver was pulled to safety from the roof of the Omnibus. The Lock gates were quickly opened lowering the water somewhat and two brave men, Police Constable Gaffney and Private Smith of the 4th Light Dragoon’s from nearby Portobello Barracks, with the aid of a ladder, used hatchets to break a hole into the roof of the Omnibus and diving into the flooded carriage, pulled out the now tragically drowned bodies of the passengers.

One of the victims was the father of the Gunne brothers, who opened the Gaiety Theatre in South King Street. Two women were mothers, each with a little daughter, one of them a niece of “The Great Emancipator”, Daniel O’Connell. Subsequently after the accident and until the bridge was redesigned, passengers on horse-drawn vehicles then had to disembark at Portobello Bridge and walk over the bridge before continuing on their journey.

But what spooked the horses leading to the accident? As with many tragedies’ legends sprung up. Some witnesses claimed they seen a bright light arising from the water and taking human shape, the ghostly form frightened the horses resulting in the tragedy.

There is an old ghost story about the Lock, that there was a previous avoidable accident resulting in a tragedy due to the Lock chamber overflowing with water, making the edge of the canal and the Lock chamber indistinguishable on a foggy night. The Lock gates should have been opened lowering the water table but were closed due to the Lock keeper being drunk at the time. The victim was crossing over the Lock’s footbridge and slipped fell in and drowned.

After that tragedy the Lock keeper was sacked from his job and in remorse drowned himself. On the anniversary of his death a bright light reportedly has been witnessed rising from the water. Supposedly the same phantom light arose when the horse drawn Omnibus was crossing the bridge, thereby spooking the horses. More realistically the horses lost their footing and the weight of the Omnibus pulled them backwards and toppled over the bridge.

During the Easter Rising in 1916. A group from the Irish Citizen Army seized Davy’s Bar (now the Portobello Pub) near the bridge, British army members were dispatched from Portobello Barracks and were pinned down by rebel fire. Army reinforcements set up a Maxim machine gun on the bridge and sprayed the bar with heavy calibre fire shattering windows, mirrors and embedding bullets in the walls and furnishings. After they ceased firing, they checked the premises but the rebels had made their escape.

It was along here that the anti-war pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was arrested on 25 April 1916 on his way home to Rathmines, he was taken to Portobello Barracks and murdered by the orders of Captain Bowen-Colturst in the barracks.

So, today La Touche Bridge and Portobello Harbour’s history continues. It is still making multiple news reports, as evidenced by Portobello Plaza having been closed due to copious amounts of outdoor alcohol consumption leading to antisocial and degrading behaviour by both sexes, coupled with the filthy littering of a residential area, or depending on your point of view, the abject failure by Dublin City Council to facilitate a public space with enough litter bins and toilet facilities along with the Gardai’s failure to properly police the area.

In some distant future when the pandemic has ceased and lockdowns have faded away to a memory that is best forgotten, Broadsheet readers may enjoy reading a brief history of Portobello that will include this era’s pandemic as an interesting historic footnote in time.

Harry’s Dublin appears here every Friday.

All pics by Harry Warren

A Little History of Sandymount Beach.

Harry writes:

Walking along the beach at Sandymount today and glancing across at the houses along Strand Road it’s hard to believe that in the 18th century there were very few buildings in what was then Brickfield Town (Brickfield Town was later named Sandymount around 1810). The name Brickfield was derived from a major brickworks in the area.

The brickworks manufactured bricks for the new Georgian houses that were being constructed in the likes of Fitzwilliam Square, Fitzwilliam Street and the Pembroke Estate. At that time only ten families lived around a triangle of workers cottages in what later became Sandymount Green. It wasn’t until the arrival of the 19th century and the building of the sea wall that the area became popular for wealthy merchant Dubliners to build fine houses along the coast line and in Sandymount.

Strand road along the beachfront is a good one-kilometre stroll and worth the walk. Looking out to sea at the view of the coast, it is understandable why James Joyce and his beloved Nora Barnacle from Galway loved the area so much with its beautiful views of Dublin Bay. Joyce wrote of the beach being “at the lace fringe of the tide”.

The view towards Dun Laoire on a sunny day is splendid. Looking back towards Pigeon House and Poolbeg along with the iconic twin chimneys with Howth in the distance is a fine view, it’s the sight of the albeit, very environmentally clean Poolbeg incinerator that ruins it for me, but still its architecture has a very brutalist style that I am sure some folks would enjoy.

Halfway along the road is a notable Martello Tower with 2.75-metre-thick walls that was completed in 1804. It is one of the larger ones along the coastline. Twenty soldiers manned the tower for guarding the coast. The tower had a one-storey building attached with a stores for weaponry along with two 24 pound roof cannons to engage with any enemy ships across Dublin Bay.

The present incarnation of the tower has been modified with an additional window and metal shutters designed for a restaurant but unfortunately it never came to fruition and is closed to the public. There was a total of fifty Martello towers built along the coast of Ireland in the early 1800s as a defensive measure by our British chums in case that the French Emperor Napoleon would invade Ireland during the Napoleonic war between England and France.

A contemporary account of military exercises at Sandymount in 1806 records how the towers functioned as a complement to other military forces:

“INTERESTING MILITARY SPECTACLE, At an early hour on Friday morning the troop of horse artillery, and two car brigades of light artillery marched on the sands between the Pigeon-house fort and Sandymount … a shell was thrown from the Pigeon-house fort as a signal for the commencement of the novel and interesting scene that was to follow: the horse artillery immediately advanced from behind Sandymount, as did the light artillery from Ringsend and Irishtown (where they had been concealed), upon the sands, where targets were placed for their practice; during their advance, the Pigeon-house fort and the Martello towers on that line of coast kept up a steady fire of shot and shell”.

I would imagine that day was not a good day for a quiet walk on the beach!

Halfway along the beach and out to sea there are the ruins and walls of what once was Merrion Pier and Sandymount swimming baths. The Merrion Promenade Pier and Baths Company Ltd built Sandymount swimming baths, opening them in 1883 to take advantage of Dubliner’s leisure time during the summer.

The baths were very popular in their day and they measured approximately 40 by 40 metres with separate pools for ladies and gentlemen. A 73-metre pier built of iron girders and timber planks for flooring was added in 1884. With the convenience of Merrion and Sandymount then having both tram and rail, the pier and baths were a popular destination for Dubliners.

At the height of their popularity in 1890 over 30,0000 bathers visited during that summer season, swimming in the fresh seawater baths, partaking of refreshments along the pier accompanied by the enjoyment of music concerts on the bandstand.

When the tide was out the gaps between the planks along the pier attracted “Peeping Toms” and from time-to-time bath attendants would attempt to cool their ardour by dumping buckets of cold sea water on them.

Sadly, the pier and baths fell out of favour and slowly turned to dereliction. By 1923 the seaward wall had collapsed resulting in the baths being dismantled and the iron from the pier being sold as scrap to the Hammond Lane Foundry. At low tide you can still walk out to the baths to day and visit their ruins.

So, the next time you are walking along Sandymount strand have a gaze at the unused Martello tower that with a bit of imagination could be turned into a civic building, perhaps a museum and wonder at the ruins of the old baths, then ponder awhile as to why Dublin City council in all these years hasn’t bothered to either develop the Martello tower or demolish and remove the ruins of the baths as they are a dangerous eyesore, or even to refurbish them into something more modern. Perhaps Broadsheet readers know?

Harry’s Dublin appears here every Friday.

All pics by Harry Warren

Watch towers and cages were built at Glasnevin cemetery to protect the dead from the epidemic of grave robbing in early 19th-century Dublin

A Dying Business.

Harry writes:

Stories warning children of the bogeyman often have a historical basis. One of my favourite stories from the Blackpitts area of Dublin dated from a time when horse and carts were still employed for deliveries.

Mothers trying to get their children to come in from play during the long summer evenings would warn them that the headless horseman would be along soon and would take them away if they didn’t come in.

The origin of the “headless horseman” in this instance was due to the deeds of the body snatchers, conveying a stolen cadaver or two on their back of their cart. To evade the law and to hide their identity they would pull up the large collar of their 19th century coat to hide their faces making them to all intents and purposes appear headless as they passed by on their grim business with their delivery for one of Dublin’s anatomy colleges of the day.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, body snatchers who looted the cemeteries for cadavers to supply the anatomy colleges were known as “Resurrectionists”, or more commonly as the “sack-em-ups”. In the earlier years medical students often procured the bodies themselves by raiding a graveyard in the middle of the night.

A fresh burial was preferred and the pauper’s cemetery beside the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, “Bully’s Acre”, was a favoured one for grave robbing. The deceased were frequently buried in a shallow grave a metre or so down making access easy.

Robbing a body was a grisly business as related in the biography of the Irish physician Sir Dominic Corrigan, describing an incident when he was a student,

“We moved with our hands the recently deposited clay and stones which covered the head and shoulders of the coffin –  no more was uncovered; then a rope was let down and the grapple, an iron hook with the end flattened out attached to the rope, was inserted under the edge of the coffin-lid.

“The student then pulled on the rope until the lid of the coffin cracked across. The other end of the rope was now inserted round the neck of the dead, and the whole body was then drawn upwards and carried across the churchyard to some convenient situation, until four or six were gathered together awaiting the arrival of the car that was to convey them to some dissecting theatre.

“What added to the ghastly character of the moonlight scene was, that the bodies were stripped stark naked, for the possession of a shroud subjects us to prosecution.”

Due to the law of the day nobody could own a dead body, it was easier to bring a prosecution for stealing property i.e., a shroud rather than having possession of a stolen body!

Body snatching soon became a lucrative business. The demand for cadavers was very high and the anatomy colleges including the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin paid well for good specimens, an adult cadaver could fetch as much as 4 Guineas, (less than €5 in today’s money but a substantial amount back in the day), while children’s bodies were sold by the inch.

A letter to the medical journal, The Lancet, in the 1800’s, strongly criticised surgeons paying body snatchers for illegally-obtained cadavers. In the 1829 issue, there was a report of bodies being shipped from Ireland’s ports (for shipment, the cadavers were folded into barrels of whiskey, a “stiff drink” anyone?) and sent over to England and Scotland for dissection.

Mentioning that if Irish resurrectionists were being hired from overseas with no questions asked to the source of the bodies, how would surgeons in Britain know if the cadavers were furnished by foul means or good? The suspicion being that the resurrectionists may be murdering people to supply the trade rather than robbing a grave for a fresh corpse and soon enough the suspicions were proved to be true.

Two infamous Irishmen, Burke and Hare, murdered sixteen people in the city of Edinburgh, much easier than digging up corpses in graveyards and they sold them to Dr. Robert Knox at the Edinburgh Medical School. They preferred friendless individuals who were alone in the world, much less fuss if they unfortunately passed away. Most victims were guests in Hare’s lodging house, after plying them with drink and with the victim sound asleep, they murdered them by pinching the nose and lying on the chest to cause suffocation leaving no marks on the body.

The law eventually caught up with them and they were put on trial in 1828. Hare saved his neck by turning king’s evidence. Burke was hanged in 1829 and ironically publicly dissected. In a macabre turn of events grisly souvenirs were made from his remains. A calling card case was fashioned from a portion of his treated and tanned skin, embellished with decorative gold engraving. The skin was sliced from the back of William Burke’s left hand.

Many years later it was bought at auction in 1988 for £1050. The story made the national dailies but The Sun newspapers headline ‘£1000 Bid for Bit of a Burke’, was probably the most darkly amusing. Today Burke’s skeleton is preserved in the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh Medical School.

With the demand for fresh cadavers resulting in multiple raids on various cemeteries many methods were employed to thwart body snatchers, placing heavy stone slabs over graves, installing cages (Mortsafes) around them, employing watchmen and erecting walls and watch towers in cemeteries.

Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin is surrounded by a high stone wall along with multiple towers. The towers look nicely decorative today but they were built to protect the dead from the epidemic of grave robbing in early 19th-century Dublin. Glasnevin even had a mobile watchtower that was moved around the graveyard when fresh graves were dug to prevent the bodies being stolen and ending up being dissected in one of Dublin’s anatomy schools. A pack of bloodhounds were also used to patrol the cemetery at night.

Public outrage eventually forced legislators to pass the British 1832 Anatomy Act, which enabled medical schools to use unclaimed bodies from workhouses and asylums providing anatomists with a legal source of cadavers, and grave robbing quickly declined.

So, if you are having stroll in the Botanic gardens in Glasnevin and you follow the wall it shares with Glasnevin Cemetery you will soon see some of the very same watch towers that were employed to prevent grave robbing back in the 19th century, enjoy your walk!

Harry’s Dublin appears here regularly, often on a Friday.

All pics by Harry Warren

From top: Dalkey Island: gun battery; Martello Tower and the ruins of St. Begnat’s Church

Dalkey Island.

Harry writes:

Dalkey Island appeared wonderful in the Spring sunshine. It is a beautiful compact island of 22 acres. It is only 300 metres across Dalkey Sound off the mainland and can be visited by a boat from Collimore harbour.

It’s many years since I first strolled around the island and I look forward to visiting it again hopefully sooner than later. It is deserted now but it wasn’t always so and the island has a long history. A human skull filled with periwinkle shells was discovered during an excavation in the 1960s and it was radio carbon dated all the way back to 2,500 BC.

Archaeologists have shown that the island was home to some of the first Stone Age settlers on the east coast of Ireland. There have been finds of flints, arrowheads, axes and pottery relating to the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Iron and Bronze age.

There is evidence that the island appears to have had a metalworker after the discovery of clay moulds for socketed spearheads, knives, axes and a sword along with crucible fragments for metalwork. Later excavations recovered medieval glassware and pottery from the Mediterranean region and from Gaul, English pottery and an 11th Century silver coin from Normandy. There are also signs that the island was once used for farming.

The original Irish name for the island was Deilg Inis or Thorn Island supposedly due to it resembling a thorn in shape. With the arrival of the Vikings the name Dalk-Ei came into use. The Danish word Dalk means thorn and Ey means island so at least our Viking chums kept the original meaning of the Irish name for the island.

One of the earliest mentions of Dalkey relates to a Viking raid on Dalkey: “Coibhdeanach, Abbot of Cill-achaidh, was drowned in the sea of Delginis-cualann while fleeing from the foreigners”

Viking raiders kept slaves there and it was also used as a refuge by the Vikings when in 942AD the Vikings fled to the island after being beaten at a battle in Dublin.

Evidence of Christianity in Dalkey island dates back a long time and you can see the stone ruins today of the 11th century St. Begnat’s Church overlooking the shoreline. Archaeologists recovered evidence of an earlier 7th century wooden church on the same location. Saint Begnet’s Church and its burial ground is dedicated to Saint Begnet also known as Begh or Bee and is associated with Saint Bea’s Head in Cumberland and Killibeaes in Scotland.

In the 19th century changes were made to the church by workmen constructing the islands Martello tower and gun battery: “The masons and other workmen finding it inconvenient and often dangerous to cross the Sound to their lodgings, fitted up the ruin as a dwelling house, added a fireplace, and enlarged a doorway and some of the windows.” Quite a home from home.

On the south-east of the Island are the remains the gun battery and nearby on higher ground is the Martello Tower. The tower is built in a sentinel position with excellent views out to sea of any incoming vessels. The tower was also used for semaphore signalling and it can be clearly seen from Howth Peninsula twelve miles to the north-east across Dublin Bay.

Along the south-east side it can be seen from other Martello towers along the coast from Sandymount to Bray. Both the tower and gun battery were built in response to the threat of invasion by French forces around 1804 to 1805. The roof of the Martello tower had two 24 pounder cannons as offensive armament. The tower was designed to work in tandem with the gun battery armed with three cannons to control a ships approach to Dublin Bay and anchorage in Dalkey Sound: ‘For the defence of the Sound, and passage between the Muglins, to keep an enemy’s boats & vessels at a distance and oblige them to work up to fetch the South Bull.’

If you visit it today it is in fairly good condition but unfortunately its floor has collapsed so you enter at your own risk.

Just off Dalkey Island are three small rocky islets, Clare Rock, Lamb Island and Maiden Rock that is said to have received its name after some girls from the mainland were foraging and were unfortunately drowned in a tragic accident.

North-east of the island are a group of rocks known as the Muglins and they have a macabre history. In 1776, the executed bodies of the pirates MacKinley and Gidley were hung in chains and left to rot on the Muglins. They were executed for the murder of Captain Cochrane, Captain Glass, and other passengers of the Ship “Sandwich”, on the high seas in the previous year.

In 1765 the ship Sandwich sailed from one of the Canary Islands with a cargo of Madeira wine and a large treasure of Spanish milled dollars, ingots of gold, some jewels and a quantity of gold dust. Before leaving the Canaries MacKinley the ships boatswain and Gidley the ships cook along with two others conspired to murder all on board and to plunder the vessel. When the ship was in the English Channel on her way to London, they killed all on board apart from two boys.

The pirates landed in Duncannon, Wexford and were eventually arrested with their booty. Suspicions were aroused when they brought too much attention to themselves by carousing and drunkenness. They were put on trial in Dublin and on March the 1st in 1776 found guilty.

The pirates were executed in Stephen’s Green with the bodies of MacKinley and Gidley eventually being hung in chains to rot, tied to the Muglin rocks in Dalkey, as a warning to would be pirates. Today there remains are reputed to be buried beneath the concrete base of a beacon on the Muglins.

So, if you want to give yourself a treat then find your way to Collimore harbour in Dalkey where you can get a ferry across the sound to enjoy an island with historic ruins to explore along with rare flora, fauna and wildlife to view.

Harry’s Dublin appears here regularly, often on a Friday.

All pics by Harry Warren

From top Mount Jerome’s ‘long walk’; Angel statue; the grave of Gothic writer Sheridan La Fanu; The vertical Gresham Vault; The Weir Tomb featuring an anguished ‘Cesar’

Mount Jerome Cemetery.

Harry writes:

Mount Jerome cemetery opened in 1836 with the sad burial of the infant twins of Matthew Pollock. The Victorian 50-acre cemetery in Harold’s Cross on the south side of Dublin is a peaceful place. Inside the gates and walking up the avenue towards the Victorian Chapel the most you will hear is bird song and perhaps the gentle sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. It is a good place for a stroll and to collect your thoughts.

In 1836 Mount Jerome was the first privately owned cemetery in Ireland, today over 300,000 rest there.

Originally Mount Jerome was opened as a non-denominational cemetery.Glasnevin on the North side of Dublin was an established Catholic cemetery but mostly Protestants lived around the Harold’s Cross area and with them favouring Mt Jerome, it consequently became a Protestant cemetery for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It wasn’t until the 1920’s and the formation of the Irish Free State that the first Catholic burials became more common.

Walking along its avenues you will see some wonderful echoes of Victorian Dublin and its wealthy and notable citizens. Understandably, with its Victorian monuments and layout it has often been compared to Highgate Cemetery in London and Père Lachaise in Paris and like them it has a very similar atmosphere with exquisite Victorian funerary art including ornate memorials, shrouded urns, tombs, angels, vaults and crypts.

Many notaries rest in Mount Jerome, the artists Jack Butler Yeats and AE Russell, William Wilde the father of Oscar Wilde and “Oculist to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria”, the authors Sheridan Le Fanu ‘the Father of the English Ghost Story’ and one of the “best loved writers of her generation” Maeve Binchy, the broadcaster Derek Davis, playwright John Millington Synge, the patriot Thomas Davis and brewer Arthur Guinness the Second along with many members of the Guinness family to name but a few.

What I personally find most interesting are the Victorian graves and monuments. If you are contemplating visiting, here is a little information to hopefully whet your appetite.

Entering the cemetery head towards the Victorian Chapel then take a right along the Hawthorn Walk. Along here there is a fine monument depicting a very sad dog, howling to the heavens whilst standing on his master’s cloak atop a large tomb. The pathways of Mount Jerome are reputed to be haunted by this faithful dog, Caesar.

The legend goes that his master was William Weir, who drowned swimming off the coast of Wicklow. Caesar, refused to leave the area where Weir had left his clothes on the beach and soon died of a broken-heart. After Weir’s body was recovered from the sea and his tomb eventually erected in Mount Jerome, the sculpture of his ever-faithful companion was placed on top of the tomb and ever since then, the phantom dog of Caesar is reputed to be seen wandering along the avenues in the cemetery.

Le Fanu, the Victorian writer of superb Gothic ghost stories rests nearby along the Nun’s Walk. His grave has a notable plaque” Here Lies Dublin’s Invisible Prince, Novelist and Writer of Ghost Stories”.

And somewhat unusually but perhaps not unsurprisingly we find a curious shaped tomb, the “Gresham Vault”. Due to its owner suffering from a severe case of taphophobia they had a very elaborate upright tomb constructed. The lady interred here was so terrified of being buried alive that she was laid in a coffin with a spring-loaded lid. A bell was installed on top of the tomb linked to an interior cable back to her coffin so that she could stand upright and ring for help if she awoke from her eternal or not so eternal slumber.

Taphophobia or the fear of being buried alive was not without reason. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the fear of being buried alive terrified some individuals. There were gruesome news stories of bodies being exhumed with broken fingernails being stuck into the lid of their coffins, skeletons lying near the doors of their tombs and most horribly babies born to women post mortem who had been left for dead. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident.

During Famine times there were mass burials with bodies being dumped into mass grave pits. One of the most famous instances involved a boy called Tom Guerin. He was only three years old when he was buried alive in a mass grave in Abbeystrewry near Skibbereen.

The details of exactly what happened are somewhat limited. Some reports say he was buried for two days before the mistake was discovered, possibly when more bodies were being placed into the same pit. Others say the mistake was discovered during his burial. The gravedigger accidentally struck his legs with a spade, causing Guerin to moan in pain. Disabled by the spade he later wrote of his premature burial in a poem and made a pittance by recounting his story of being buried alive and rescued to passers-by.

The English reformer William Tebb in 1905 collected accounts of premature burials. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissections and 2 cases of the “corpse” waking while being embalmed. Of course, there have been many novels and movies depicting someone being buried alive like Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Premature Burial” and the 2012 movie, the very unnerving “Buried”. Despite all of today’s medical advances the fear of being buried alive continues. When the time comes, I think I may be wise to have myself cremated.

So, today Mount Jerome is a place well worth a visit where you can explore its historic past, view its fine funerary art and idle away a few hours in quiet contemplative solitude.

Harry’s Dublin appears here regularly, often on a Friday.

All pics by Harry Warren

From top: Murals by street artist FiNK on the The Barley Mow (above) in Dublin 8, now demolished

A Corner of Francis Street.

Harry writes:

I always feel a little poignant when I see another piece of auld Dublin disappearing. The old derelict building on the corner of Francis Street and Mark’s Alley West in Dublin 8 has been demolished. And like many such corners in Dublin it has a history to tell.

It was originally the site of the Barley Mow Pub. It has now been reduced to a small pyramidical pile of broken bricks, looking like the sad remnants of a miniature collapsed Inca temple. It is now being swept away as I write. There are only ghosts there now.

A new apart-hotel was planned for the site despite Dublin City Council’s initial refusal of planning permission, because it would, “exacerbate the existing overconcentration of hotel developments and prevent the delivery of residential development” and “the existing historic facades of the building should be retained or reconstructed in order to preserve the character of the Architectural Conservation Area”, but after the site was allowed to fall into dereliction, apparently safety works showed the building was beyond repair and Dublin City Council subsequently allowed it to be torn down. Once again exposing the inept failure of Dublin City Council’s mandarins to either protect structures or look after the best interest of its citizens.

In its hey-day the pub was a busy local when Gerry the barman was serving pints and toasting sandwiches for denizens of the Liberties and the proprietors of the Antique shops in Francis St, but like too many local style pubs across Dublin it closed its doors during the last property boom for development.

The pub made a good location for a movie and it was used during the filming of “Rat”, a comedic film about a Dublin bread-delivery man who is turned into a rat, starring the late great Pete Postlethwaite.

And about the pub’s name The Barley Mow? Apologies to all of the well-read seasoned beer drinkers but I only recently discovered what a “Mow” is, a barley mow is a stack (Mow) of barley, especially barley that was cultivated and then harvested. Barley is a grain that is of course, commonly malted for brewing beer.

In 1999 an offsite commission by the Project Arts Centre, a work by Tina O’Connell, “In Dublin”, used the recently shut but then fully intact pub for an innovative art project. Tina created the sculpture, a deconstruction piece, while on residency at IMMA, with support from multiple organisations including Irish Tar.

A room upstairs in the pub had a circular hole cut into the floor, after the upstairs windows were removed the artwork, a one-ton bitumen sphere, was brought in and placed upon the cut-out hole. The bitumen then slowly melted through the hole to the bar beneath. The private viewing audience allegedly took bets as to how long it would take before the melting bitumen would reach the floor below, if anyone made a bet on 4 hours then they happily won the wager. The art was afterwards opened to the public to view for the following 3 weeks. The pub was hoarded up and over the years the building slowly sank into a state of decay.

In recent years the superb artist FiNK (sic) created some excellent and original mural style artworks using the walls of the defunct pub as his canvas. I believe he had an agreement with the owner to paint his murals on the old pub’s walls. FiNK’s work was colourful, provocative and entertaining, long lasting and brought a vibrancy to an otherwise sad piece of dereliction. It is a pity that in the many areas of the city with similar hoarded up sites that they can’t be used as canvases for street art in a similar manner.

It is a shame Dublin has lost many of its old pubs. Many were closed for development as part of an emerging property boom in the capital in the late 1990’s and many also disappeared during the financial crash after the property boom. Perhaps Broadsheet readers would like to nominate and share a few memories of their favourite pubs that have ceased to be?

Unfortunately, I expect many of the recent pandemically and “temporarily” closed ones, will be unable to reopen due to financial difficulties when the pandemic finally eases. Only time will tell.

Harry’s Dublin appears here regularly, often on a Friday

All photos by Harry Warren