The Magazine Fort.

Harry Warren writes:

On a fine Spring day, I was strolling along near the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park. Some children playing football kicked their ball near me and with a quick instep kick I tapped the ball back. It brought to mind a historic raid on the Fort that involved of all things a game of football but more of that anon.

Dating back to the 18th century the Duke of Dorset directed that a powder magazine be provided for Dublin.  The Phoenix Lodge built in 1611, standing on top of St. Thomas Hill (The Phoenix Park took its name from the lodge) was demolished so that the Magazine Fort with its five feet thick walls and surrounding dry moat could be built on the same spot.

The new fort was designed by the architect John Corneille and it was constructed in 1734 to 1736 for storing munitions for the Crown in Ireland. The Fort was never properly utilised for this purpose and early on, was seen as a symbol of British occupation. In 1737 Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels) satirised the fort suggesting that there was nothing worthwhile to defend in an impoverished Dublin at that time anyway so why waste time building it?

He wrote:  “Now’s here’s a proof of Irish sense, here Irish wit is seen, when nothing’s left that’s worth defending, we build a Magazine!”

In 1801, a barracks was added to the fort to accommodate troops. And in 1830, an older and larger earthwork fort that stood nearby was demolished.

The Magazine fort was a British garrison until 1922 until it was handed over to the National Army (1922-1924) after the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The Irish Army (1924 -) continued to operate the site as an ammunition store until it was demilitarised during the late 1980’s and it is now in the care of the Office of Public Works.

Unsurprisingly the fort was raided on two occasions in its history. Now about that football I mentioned earlier. On Easter Monday 1916 the IRA raided the fort, with one recalling:

“We arrived at the outside of the Fort, pretending to be a Football Team, and by passing the ball from one to the other got near enough to the outside sentry to rush and disarm him, while the remainder of the unit doubled into the Fort with pistols and revolvers drawn. The Guard Room was rushed, the soldiers there were covered and their rifles, which were stacked, were collected.”

An attempt was made to explode the fort by the laying of mines but the IRA discovered that it did not contain any high explosives that could have demolished the building. The fort had a store of only a small supply of firearms and ammunition. After the mines detonated, modest explosive damage was done to the fort and a blaze broke out. Later the fire brigade subsequently succeeded in extinguishing the fire and the fort was restored to service.

Years later on the 23rd of December 1939, a daring raid was made by the IRA on the fort, now in the control of the Irish Army. The “Christmas Raid” as it became known, resulted in the successful seizure of a huge quantity of weapons and ammunition. The reason for the raid was, that although the IRA had copious amounts of Thompson submachine guns, the .45 calibre rounds used in the guns were difficult to come by. By coincidence the Irish Army also used the Thompson and the same ammo.  So, a raid was planned and soon took place.

At 8:30pm on the 23rd of December 1939, a civilian called to the fort saying he had a parcel to deliver to the officer-in-charge. At his court martial, a military policeman then on guard duty at the entrance gate, said he bent down to unbolt the gate to take the parcel and when he stood up there was a muzzle of a revolver pointed in his face. He was told to open the gate and put his hands up. At this point the IRA members appeared from both inside and outside the fort and with the rest of the soldiers caught unawares they were taken captive.

The raid resulted in the huge theft of 1.2 million rounds of ammunition and cases of Thompsons arms being taken away in thirteen lorries with no casualties inflicted on either side. Though the raid was initially successful the majority of the ammunition and arms were recovered in the next two weeks turning it into a major PR disaster for the IRA. The day after the raid the Irish Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland, introduced the Emergency Powers bill to reinstate internment, Military Tribunal, and executions for IRA members.

Today the Magazine Fort stands somewhat dilapidated but it is being renovated and when the pandemic restrictions are eased it will open reopen as an important military historic site on view to the public. It is part of our history as a nation and well worth a visit.

All pics by Harry Warren

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

St. Michan’s church, Church Street, Dublin 7 and what lies beneath

The Mummies of St. Michan’s Crypt.

Harry writes:

There are many cultures around the world known for the preservation of the dead through mummification.

The most well-known are the Egyptians who preserved soft tissues by a deliberate action of embalming, preparing a body, they left the heart in place due to their spiritual beliefs, removed the rest of the internal organs, rinsed the body with wine, covered and packed the body with natron, a natural salt, leaving it to dry out for 40 days. The now shrivelled body was then plumped up with padding and perfumed, finally coated in hot resin and wrapped in a football fields length of linen strips.

The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin’s Kildare Street. has a petite but very interesting Egyptian room well worth a visit, with several mummies on view, including the mummy and coffin of the lady Tentdinebu dating from the first millennium.

Arguably the earliest practitioners of mummification occurred in what is now the north coast of Chile by the Chincheros, they mummified their dead as early as 5000 B.C. They also eviscerated the internal organs, treating them with salt and clay before returning them to the body. The dry arid climate did the rest for preservation.

Surprisingly, here in Dublin we have an excellent example of natural mummification and the macabre preserved remains can be viewed in St. Michan’s church vaults in Church Street, Dublin. Both the church and its burial vaults have a history to be told.

St. Michan’s is the oldest church on the north side of Dublin. Originally a Catholic Church founded by the Danes in 1095, it has been a Protestant Church since the Reformation. St. Michan’s has been renovated twice over the centuries, in 1685 and 1825. Its current incarnation is little changed since Victorian times.

The church itself is well worth viewing, it features an original wooden interior and a 1725 pipe organ with an original casing that is the oldest in Ireland. Reputedly it was on this organ that the composer Handel on a visit to Dublin first played The Messiah. There are some other unusual items displayed inside the church including a Stool of Repentance, where ‘open and notoriously naughty livers’ did public penance and a skull that purports to represent Oliver Cromwell.

It is what lies beneath the church in the crypt that is of most interest.

Inside the crypt the vaults contain the remains of some of Dublin’s most influential 17th, 18th and 19th century families.

There are participants of the 1798 rebellion, the Sheares brothers, who met a gruesome end, they were executed by being partially hanged then drawn and quartered. What was left of them was brought to St. Michan’s. The mathematician William Rowan Hamilton rests here along with the Earls of Kenmare and there are highly decorated decaying coffins of the Earl’s of Leitrim on display. In the church graveyard are other notables, including Oliver Bond, who took part in the 1798 Rising.

But the most unusual remains are the mummified bodies on view.

Since Victorian times many visitors have descended the steps of the crypt to view the bodies. If you visit you will be in the footsteps of the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker. He may have gained inspiration for his masterpiece as he is believed to have visited the vaults in the company of his family.

The last time I visited in pre pandemic times, there were four dusty mummified bodies, in decayed open coffins to view. Their skin turned to a leather like parchment stretched across their skeleton. Some dried out internal organs could be viewed where the abdominal area had split on one of the bodies.

The legend is that these four comprised of, “The Unknown”, “The Thief”, “The Nun” and “The Crusader” dating from 800 years ago.

The “Unknown” is a female of which perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no information.”The Thief” has had his hands amputated, supposedly as a punishment for his robberies. There was a body of a “Nun” and most famously there was a body of a “Crusader” who because of his tall stature had his legs broken and crossed under him in order to fit into his coffin. Legend has it that if you stroke his leathery hand, it will bring you good luck. I did stroke his hand and it had a texture like polished leather but about the good luck, no lottery wins but happily I can’t complain.

These bodies have been preserved in the crypt of St Michan’s Church for centuries. The church was built in close proximity to what was then Oxmantown marsh, gases from the marsh, mainly methane coupled with the limestone brickwork of the vaults along with a dry atmosphere and an ambient temperature that rarely varies from 14 degrees has resulted in the remarkable preservation of the bodies.

There is some conjecture as to the actual age of the bodies on display with some arguing that they “only” date from the 17th century. But if they are of more recent vintage, they are still remarkably well preserved as normal bodily remains would have been reduced to skeletons or dust by now. Marshes and bogs are excellent at preserving bodies.

Very sadly in 2019 the crypt was broken into and desecrated. The body of the “Nun” was severely damaged and is now no longer on display. The “Crusader’s” head was torn off, stolen and was missing for some time. Outside of the vault in a normal atmosphere it was feared the remains would rapidly deteriorate. Fortunately, with local input and good investigative work by the Gardai it eventually led to the recovery of the “Crusader’s” head. After restoration work by the National Museum, it is now reunited with its original body.

So, for now, the vaults are currently closed due to the pandemic lockdown but when they reopen, for an interesting and macabre bit of Dublin history St Michan’s is well worth visiting.

All photos by Harry Warren

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

The Knockmaree Linkardstown Dolmen in Phoenix Park, known as the Devil’s Altar

The Knockmaree Dolmen.

Harry writes:

The Phoenix park in Dublin is always worth exploring and its nooks and crannies have some wonderful surprises. Here’s one you may enjoy.

Take a stroll along Chapelizod Village and enter the south western side of the Phoenix via the Park Lane entrance just off Chapelizod Road. Continue up along the pathway that brings you to Upper Glen Rd. As you cross the road you will see a small keepers cottage, Knockmary Lodge, on top of a hill. Adjacent to Knockmary Lodge in a very pretty woods at the top of Knockmaree Hill, you will find one of the oldest man-made creations in Dublin, the Knockmaree Linkardstown Dolmen.

Knockmaree is derived from the Irish name “Cnoc-Maraidhe” meaning the hill of the mariners. Perhaps the maritime name was associated the occupants of the tomb or with the nearby river Liffey The Knockmaree Linkardstown Dolmen or popularly known, perhaps with some justification, as the Devil’s Altar, dates from a time earlier than the pyramids of Giza. Dating from 3,500 to 3000 BC during the Neolithic period.

Linkardstown style cists, or burials, consist of an earthen mound, with a stone-built tomb at the centre. The remains found inside these tombs are usually adult males and may occasionally be accompanied by a child. The stones today at Knockmaree are all that is left of the original tomb, the earthen mound is long since gone. Archaeologists have identified centuries of water erosion on the dolmen’s capstone making it highly likely that the capstone was brought all the way up from the River Liffey to the tomb by our ancestors.

When the mound was excavated by archaeologists, they discovered the tomb was reused on several occasions. The tombs centre was found to contain the remains of two male inhumations (uncremated bodies) from the Neolithic age. Grave goods were also discovered, a flint blade, a bone toggle and a shell necklace. Later burials were cremations and burnt human remains were found in the tombs outer area. The remains were contained in four small sepulchral vases dating from the Bronze Age approx. four thousand years ago.

As the great megalithic tombs in the Boyne valley like Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth have shown us, many of these ancient burial sites like Knockmaree are astronomically aligned with an axial alignment towards the rising and setting of the Sun at the winter and summer solstices. As the burial mound that once covered the dolmen has been removed, I imagine the dolmen itself would have shifted somewhat over the centuries.

Next Solstice, perhaps a Broadsheet reader will visit with a compass and see if they can figure out any alignment, they won’t be disappointed as the sun shining through the woods is a reward in itself.

The alignments had a ritual significance and many sites were certainly ceremonial and spiritual in nature. The summits of prominent hills and mountains may have been symbolically important places to locate tombs and cairns.

There is archaeological evidence that Neolithic people believed in a multi-stage journey of the dead to the afterlife, the final leg of which took the deceased upwards through the roof of the burial chamber and mound (situated on a hill like Knockmaree Hill or a mountain summit) to the sky, where ‘the dead, now revived, joined the cyclic Sun, and very likely, a god or gods associated with it in the eternal rounds of cosmological life, death and rebirth’.

There is a timeless quality about these megalithic sites, even a modest one like Knockmaree, it gives them enormous power. They were here before us. They will be here long after we’re gone.

So, if you find yourself in the Phoenix Park, perhaps visit the tomb and take the opportunity to pay your respects to an ancient culture and some of Dublin’s earliest Dubliners.

All pics by Harry Warren

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

From top: King’s Inns and former tenement houses – including a museum at No. 14 (above), Henrietta Street, Dublin

Henrietta Street.

Harry writes:

The southside of Dublin has superb Georgian architecture in areas like Merrion square and Fitzwilliam square but the oldest and arguably the best designed Georgian street in Dublin is Henrietta Street on Dublin’s north side.

It has an elegant streetscape lined on both sides by fine Georgian mansions. The street itself is a cul-de-sac and it is capped at the top by the Honourable Society of King’s Inns buildings.

The King’s Inns were designed by James Gandon, construction began in 1795 and completed by his pupil Henry Aaron Baker in 1816. Henrietta Street has been featured many times as a location in TV shows and movies like Penny Dreadful, Foyle’s War, the Glenn Close movie Albert Nobb’s and John Huston’s The Dead to name but a few.

Number 12 has been used as a movie set and featured in over 40 different TV shows and films. Henrietta St is a favourite choice of period movie productions as it has the most intact collection of early to mid-18th century houses in Ireland.

Henrietta St was designed by Luke Gardiner. Work began on the street in the 1720s when mansions were built as homes for the upper tier of Dublin’s society. Gardiner a native of Dublin city, was an MP a treasury official and a wealthy speculative property developer.

In Henrietta St he designed a terrace of palatial townhouses facing each other across a broad street. It was once Dublin’s most exclusive residential address, being home to the country’s wealthiest and important figures from church, military and government.

Gardiner himself lived at number 10 in a house designed by Richard Cassels in 1730. Due to the Archbishop of Armagh owning a house on the street, the street became popularly known as Primate’s Hill. Later the bishop’s house along with two others was demolished to make way for the building of King’s Inns. The street was named for Henrietta, Duchess of Grafton whose husband was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the time.

The main rooms of the houses that were used for entertaining and living in was on the ground and first floors, these floors have the highest ceilings and highest windows. The servant’s rooms and the bedrooms were on the top floors.

All of the houses have a history to tell. The aristocrat Lady Kingsborough hired the proto feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, to be the governess of her daughters in Mitchelstown Castle, Co. Cork.

In February 1787 Wollstonecraft accompanied the Kingsboroughs to Dublin, living in 15 Henrietta Street. She later wrote in a letter home that the ‘wild Irish’ Kingsborough daughters, aged fourteen, twelve, and six, were ‘unformed and not very pleasing’, but she was pleased with her Dublin residence, “I have much more convenient apartments here,” she wrote. ‘A fine schoolroom and the use of one of the drawing rooms where the harpsichord is and a parlour to receive my male visitors in’.

Ten years later one of the daughters, Mary Kingsborough, scandalised Irish society by having an incestuous affair with her own uncle resulting in his murder by her father, the enraged Lord Kingsborough. At the time the supposedly malign influence of Wollstonecraft’s feminist teachings was widely blamed for Mary’s affair. The scandal inflamed Irish society and Lord Kingsborough was duly acquitted.

After the Acts of Union 1800 came into force in 1801 uniting the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, Dublin lost its status as a capital, the country lost its own parliament and all power was transferred to London. Having lost its authority as a centre of legislation the upper echelon of Irish society now spent most of their time in Regency London and Georgian Dublin lost its grandeur.

During the 19th century the wealthy moved to the suburbs and their once elegant Georgian mansions were carved up by rapacious landlords and abandoned to the rent-paying poor.

Henrietta Street fell into disrepair.

For most of the 19th and 20th century it was a rundown tenement street. Each house was terribly overcrowded. Poor families and their malnourished children lived in squalid conditions resulting in rampant sickness with many children dying in infancy. Tuberculosis was a major disease. In Dublin alone, it killed more than 10,000 people a year, more than half of them children.

By 1901, Henerietta St. was home to 141 families, consisting of 897 people, on a street of only sixteen houses. In the mix were fish mongers, apprentice book binders, general labourers, corporation labourers, plumbers and housekeepers. By 1911, over 100 lived in one house.

At number 10, the Sisters of Charity ran a laundry housing more than 50 single women inside. Nineteen families comprising of 104 people resided in number 7. Among the 104 people who shared the house were ‘charwomen, domestic servants, labourers, porters, messengers, painters, carpenters, pensioners, a postman, a tailor, and a whole class of schoolchildren.’

Eventually in the latter days of the 20th century the residents of the tenements were rehoused and the dilapidated buildings were vacated.

Today some of the Henrietta Street buildings continue to need restoration but many houses have been restored. Their restoration is beyond the scope of this article but suffice to say the entrepreneurs, the voluntary and civic bodies involved should be supported.

When the pandemic restrictions are lifted, I would recommend a visit to Number 14 Henrietta St. It is an excellent museum that tells the story of the 300-hundred-year history of number 14 from its palatial Georgian origins to its time as a tenement, its occupants and of Henrietta St itself.

So, if you find yourself in that part of town reward yourself with a stroll up Henrietta St and in your mind’s eye you will find it very easy to be transported back to the vintage days of Georgian Dublin.

All pics by Harry Warren

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

From top: St Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street, where Robert Emmet was executed and his head severed on a butcher’s block; Kilmainham Gaol

Dublin’s Public Executions sites.

Harry Warren writes:

Walking along a pandemically deserted Hammond Lane in Dublin late at night, a shiver passed up my spine. One of those odd feelings, I turned around to glance behind me to reassure myself that I was on my own. I then remembered that Hammond Lanes original name was Hangman’s Lane. Knowing its history is enough to give anyone the shivers.

It was a medieval route that the condemned walked heading to ‘Gibbets Mead’, (gibbet was an old name for the gallows and mead was a field) located in an area around Smithfield square then known as Oxmantown Green.

Executions were frequent in those days and over the years hundreds walked or were carted to their doom along this route. Dublin had many other locations over the centuries where public executions took place and here are just a few of them.

During the 18th century the majority of Dublin’s public executions were in the area of St. Stephen’s Green. Ever sit in the shade of a tree in the Green enjoying a summers sunshine? Be mindful of what tree you are under as you could be beneath a branch of a tree where an executed body dangled above you…

On the day of the execution a horse and cart would parade the condemned to the Hanging Tree, friends and families of the condemned would accompany the carriage. Whilst the condemned were still in the carriage the rope from the Hanging Tree would be noosed tight around their neck.

The cart would be moved on and the condemned would be left dangling experiencing an excruciating and lingering death from strangulation. The last hanging in Stephens Green was of Patrick Dougherty in January 1782, for the robbery of Thomas Moran.

Dougherty assisted by his partner in crime George Coffey, had mugged Moran and stole his watch, a seal, a key, a pen-knife, and a pair of silver shoe buckles. The stolen goods were worth £15 and Dougherty, found guilty, swung for the theft.

Not only did the condemned suffer capital punishment their executed remains often ended up in the hands of the anatomists in the Royal College of Surgeons or other Dublin medical schools for public dissection.

“Very often the corpse of a murderer was followed to the College gates by his weeping relatives or by a howling mob. A small portion of the anatomical theatre was set apart for persons who might desire to witness the dissections of malefactor’s bodies.”

The good anatomy professors loudly bemoaned that they were restricted to only six corpses a year of convicted murderers who were hanged for their crimes.

The area around Stephens Green began to be developed for buildings. As a result, public executions were relocated to the now demolished Newgate prison on Little Green now the present-day St. Michan’s Park near Smithfield.

Another concurrent location was Gallows Hill in what was then Kilmainham commons. Before Kilmainham Gaol was built on the site of Gallows Hill, the last hanging carried out there was on the double, two brothers named Connolly received the death sentence for the stealing of a cow and were duly hung.

Speaking of Kilmainham, most Dubliners would be aware of the heinous ‘executions’ of the leaders of the 1916 Rising inside Kilmainham Gaol in the Stonebreakers yard, but how about the public executions that took place just outside the entrance door?

The condemned were publicly hanged on the gallows, now designed with a trap door for the condemned to drop through to snap their neck, above Kilmainham Gaol’s entrance doorway.

The new gallows worked so well that in 1798 a virtual copy was installed in Newgate Prison in the city centre. Enjoy the photograph of the Kilmainham Gaol entrance and note the sculptures above the door, the many-headed serpent represented the five worst crimes that resulted in capital punishment, murder, piracy, rape, theft and treason.

Watch out for the two small granite insets in the recess overhead that are visible in the entrance door photo. This is where the gallows used to be attached for public hangings. If a noteworthy or famous person was to be hung, thousands of spectators, men women and children, would visit Kilmainham on the day of execution.

Hawkers sold alcohol and food and the army and cavalry were at hand to control the milling throng. It was truly a ‘Gala Day’. The expression Gala Day is derived from the Anglo-Saxon gallows day when crowds would visit a public hanging. The last public execution in Kilmainham took place in 1865 when Patrick Kilkenny was hanged for the murder of Margaret Waugh.

The young revolutionary Robert Emmet had a particularly grisly end after he was accused and found guilty of high treason. Shortly after 1 o’clock on 20 September 1803, Emmet was publicly executed in front of St Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street, Dublin.

Emmet was hanged and then beheaded. It took thirty minutes for Emmet to die by hanging as there was no ‘long drop’ to snap the neck, he slowly died of strangulation being of light build. His executioner then clumsily severed his head with a large blade on a deal block borrowed from a local butcher.

Displaying the blood dripping head to the crowd the executioner exclaimed: ‘This is the head of a traitor, Robert Emmet’. According to eyewitness accounts his blood seeping into the gutter was hungrily lapped up by dogs.

‘The remains were brought to Kilmainham Gaol and left for some time in the court of the prison where the prisoners might view it from their cells’.

The blood-stained butchers block was displayed to the public for two days at Thomas Street after the execution.

The block itself has an interesting history. It came into the ownership of Sir Thornley Stoker, a leading surgeon and brother of Bram Stoker the author of Dracula. It was later sold at an auction to support the Volunteer Dependents Fund held at the Mansion House on 20–21 April 1917 and presented as a gift to Mrs Margaret Pearse, mother of the Pearse brothers. It is now to be found in the excellent Padraig Pearse Museum in St. Enda’s Rathfarnham.

There are many more locations in and around Dublin where public hangings and executions took place. So, the next time you are outdoors in Dublin, hopefully enjoying some nice weather, you may be relaxing at the site of a long but not forgotten gallows.

All pics by Harry Warren