The Phoenix Park

SECTION XVII

The Phoenix Park

Very few cities can boast of a pleasure-ground so extensive and so little spoilt by artificiality as the Phoenix Park. It is a long oval in shape, touching Dublin at one extremity. Its further end is well three miles away, lost in the seclusion of Knockmaroon, Castleknock and Ashtown, quiet tree-shaded districts, to which neither train nor tram penetrates. The great charm of the park is its wildness. At the city end a few acres are laid out in the usual pretty style with flower-beds and ornamental shrubs, but this is soon passed, and ten minutes walking brings one to wooded knolls or great, open commons, where the deer lift their heads to gaze at the passer-by.

The history of the Phoenix Park goes back to nearly four centuries ago. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Priory of the Knights of S. John at Kilmainham owned the rich water meadows on either side of the Liffey for nearly a mile above Dublin. At the Reformation their lands were confiscated and their monastery, being a large and handsome building, was adopted as the official residence of the viceroys.

However, whether from mere caprice or the insecurity produced by the raids of O’Neill and O’Donnell, the new occupants soon relinquished their suburban home and retreated to the Castle again, leaving the Priory to go to rack and ruin. It was regarded as a white elephant, and the authorities were glad to dispose of the estate to a certain Sir Edward Fisher at the moderate yearly rent of £10. The new tenant, with a keen eye for the amenities of the situation, erected a stately mansion called the Phoenix House on the hill now crowned by the Magazine Fort. From this structure the whole park undoubtedly. took its name. There is a derivation of Phoenix from two Irish words fionn and uisge, signifying a spring of clear water. It is far more likely, however, that the builder of the new house was asserting the unique qualities of his home by an obvious classical allusion.

The viceroys, penned up in the Castle amid narrow streets and foul rivers and with a noisome prison under their very noses, soon regretted that they had parted so readily with the Priory estates. With the usual government knack of buying dear and selling cheap, they repurchased the property from Fisher for £2,500, only seven years after they had let it out for £10 a year. The Phoenix House was now the home of Cavalier and Roundhead governors of Ireland, including, among others, Henry Cromwell, the brother of Oliver.

The great Ormond is, perhaps, the real founder of the park. In the phrase of the day he “imparked” the estate, surrounding it with walls and establishing a herd of deer. He removed the viceregal residence to the King’s House at Chapelizod, where he set up his court and gave great hunting parties. For a long time almost every official person in Dublin, either in the civil or municipal service, was entitled to claim one buck annually from the herds in the park. In 1758 the King’s House was turned into a barracks for the Royal Irish Artillery, a corps which has since disappeared. The old mansion was subsequently destroyed by fire.

Until 1781, when the present Viceregal Lodge, the last of a long series, was bought, Their Excellencies had again to return to the Castle.

After passing the ornamental gateway, the pedestrian finds himself on a broad road with a splendid surface. This is the main avenue of the park and leads straight as an arrow to the Castleknock gate nearly four miles away. On the right hand is the ornamental plot known as the People’s Gardens, where some unknown genius of a gardener annually produces magnificent colour combinations. Great tracts of ground are sometimes ablaze with the scarlet of geraniums, sometimes dotted with the bright yellow of the daffodil, or tinged with the deep refreshing blue of the pansy.

Further along the main road the unimposing white front of the Viceregal Lodge comes into view on the right hand. It was originally a small two-story building, the residence of the chief ranger. Though it has been enlarged and improved, it still retains its former character. No one would imagine it to be the palace of a great governor. The old Dublin mansions of the Irish nobility, such as Leinster or Powerscourt House, would look the part much better, if they could be transported here.

On the road facing the Lodge, in broad daylight and in full view of the viceroy’s window, the dastardly murder of Cavendish and Burke, chief and under secretaries, was perpetrated. Several persons witnessed the crime from a distance, but thought it no more than a mere drunken brawl. The spot is not now marked in any way, though formerly there was a cross let into the ground. Perhaps the whole tragic business is best forgotten and forgiven.

Further along a wide and spacious common appears on the left. This is the famous Fifteen Acres, used now for the peaceful expenditure of powder at reviews and sham-fights. Once the shooting on its broad bosom was less in volume, but more deadly in character. It was the usual duelling-ground of old Dublin. Here, in the cold, grey dawn, the hot words and hot blood of the previous night at Daly’s Club or, perhaps, the House of Commons were atoned for at the point of the sword or, more often, at the muzzle of the long-barrelled duelling pistols, the triggers of which responded to the slightest pressure.

phoenix1.gif (23097 bytes)The Irish are a courageous and hot-blooded nation, so that these encounters were frequent. The very elite of the nation figured on the duelling-field here and elsewhere. Nor were the combatants always reckless, high-spirited youths. Chief Secretaries, Chief Justices, Attorney-Generals, Chancellors of the Exchequer, Leaders of the Opposition, and even Provosts of Trinity shot and thrust at one another. (Pictured is the Phoenix Monument).

In some families the murderous pistols used on these occasions were handed down as an heirloom from father to son. The purest air in the park is to be found on this breezy open, whose name, by the way, is quite inaccurate, for its acreage is nearer fifty, than fifteen.

After passing the Fifteen Acres, the next object of interest is the Phoenix Monument, standing in the very centre of the park in a circle of some extent formed by clearing away the woodland. During his term of office in 1745, Chesterfield erected this pillar, which bears an effigy of the unique classical bird, with which the park, not undeservedly, is compared. The Latin inscription, well-turned, but a trifle pompous, is characteristic of its elegant author.

It runs somehow thus : -” To delight the citizens, Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, viceroy, ordered this rough and uncultivated plain to be neatly set out.” The open space around was a fashionable promenade during the period when the court resided at Chapelizod. Chesterfield’s taste effected another improvement in the park. He planted a fine elm avenue from one extremity to the other, following very much the course of the present main road, but serpentining so that on the city side of the Phoenix Pillar it lies to the right of the main road, while beyond, it appears on the left. The trees were arranged in successive clumps, not in single or double file. Some of them are still standing, despite the storms of nearly two hundred winters.

After the Phoenix Pillar is passed, the park becomes delightfully wild. The road seems like a highway through a forest. On every side there are the beautiful vistas characteristic of sylvan scenery. The best direction to take now is to break away after a while from the main avenue towards the left, travelling to the south-east. Eventually the Furze, or Furry, Glen is reached, a deep hollow lined on either side with furze bushes and innumerable hawthorn trees. Beautiful always, it is at its best twice in the year, first when it is golden with the furze blossom and the air is heavy with its rich oily perfume, again when the trees are powdered thick with the white may, and the glen seems one huge bouquet from the hand of the Creator.

strawberry1.gif (46410 bytes)A road winds through the bottom of the ravine, leading to the Knockmaroon gate, from -beside which there is a fine view of the upper Liffey, stretching away in long, placid reaches through a country of brilliant verdure and fertility. The river here is as different from the river at O’Connell Bridge as the Thames at Richmond from the Thames at Westminster. On these sunny waterside slopes are the strawberry beds (pictured left), from which the village below takes its name. A walk along the bank here will reveal to the visitor why Ireland is called the “Emerald Isle.” The fields are almost vivid in their bright, living green, and the foliage is nearly as gay in its hues.

To this district Dubliners once went for health, recreation and rest. A few miles up the valley ate the sleepy towns of Lucan and Leixlip, fashionable resorts in the remote past, when the sea coast was thought only fit for fishermen and coastguards. Their tall, grey stone houses look despondently on empty streets.

At Lucan their was, and is, a spa, the waters of which contain sulphur, and are still drunk, as of old, for various complaints. The district is associated with the heroic Sarsfield, who once lived here, and received from James II. in exile the title of Earl of Lucan.

The demesne walk from Lucan to Leixlip beside the Liffey, is perhaps the most delightful, certainly the most tranquil and soothing, piece of woodland scenery in County Dublin. The wooded heights around here are studded with old castles and ruined churches, so that the river seems like a miniature Rhine.

At Leixlip again there is a beautiful natural picture to be seen, the cascade known as the Salmon Leap. Here, at certain seasons of the year, the fish going upstream, by herculean efforts, jump from the lower to the higher level. Apparently they have been doing the same thing these thousand years, for the Danes, who settled here long ago, were so impressed by their performances that they called the settlement Lax-Hlaup (Leixlip), from two Norse words meaning salmon and leap. In mediaeval Latin, too, it appears as ” Saltus Salmonis.”

On return to the park by the Knockmaroon gate, another route may be chosen for the homeward journey. After passing through the Furry Glen, it will be necessary to keep to the right along the southward boundary wall. The Hibernian Military School soon appears on its hill to the left, and just opposite is the gate giving access to the old-world village of Chapelizod. Here, just as at Lucan and Leixlip, the houses have an air of faded gentility. They seem to have been built for grander inhabitants than they lodge at present.

Chapelizod, the chapel of Izod, or Isolde, was the residence of that auburn-haired and passionate Irish princess, immortalized in Malory’s romance and Wagner’s opera. While Tristan, loyal knight and true, was escorting her to her destined husband, King Mark of Cornwall, a love potion drunk by mistake bound them for ever in a wild and frenzied passion, which only found its end when Tristan lay dying in his lonely Breton castle, and Isolde came over the sea to perish on his corpse.

The village now shows no memorial of this famous old story, but its association with the fair Isolde is probably well-founded. In Dublin city there was long an “Izod’s Tower” on the walls. The site has been inhabited from prehistoric times, for, on a little hill within the park, some yards to the west of the Hibernian School, is an ancient grave marked by the usual huge slab of stone resting on several small supports. Here were found skeletons and utensils of remote antiquity, the latter of which are preserved in the Dublin Museum. The square tower of the church, which lies on a hill off the main street, is fourteenth century work. The body of the building is modern though it contains some ancient inscriptions.

Returning to the park road, and leaving the Hibernian School on the left, the traveller passes along a winding and undulating way, that sometimes sinks into wooded hollows, sometimes rises into elevated grassy platforms, looking out over the boundary wall to the spires of Dublin in one direction, and the peaceful river in the other.

After another mile the Magazine Fort appears on the left, a monument of a bygone style of fortification. The loopholed “demibastions,” the grassy glacis, the ditch with its edge protected by chevaux-de-frise formed of close-set iron spikes projecting outwards from the centre so as to form a series of S. Andrew’s crosses, all take the mind back to the days of Vauban and Kohorn and the great sieges in Flanders. The erection of this fort called forth the last effort of Swift’s genius. During his final illness he was being driven through the park, and, passing here, inquired during a lucid interval the nature of the work which he saw going on. His attendants told him, whereupon the Dean dashed off a characteristic epigram.

“Behold a proof of Irish sense! Here Irish wit is seen.

When nothing’s left that’s worth defence, We build a magazine.”

The last noteworthy object before leaving the park is the Wellington Memorial, or Testimonial, as it is called, a huge obelisk with an unfortunate resemblance to a gigantic milestone. Situated close to the main entrance, it affords a conspicuous landmark to anyone who may have lost his sense of direction during his ramblings. It is an easy matter to miss one’s way in the wide “Phoenix.”

To Chapter 18. To Chart Index.