College Green, Dame Street

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SECTION VII** *

College Green and Dame Street *

As centuries go by, place names that were once highly descriptive lose their appropriateness. So it is with College Green. The college is still there, but the only trace of the ancient city pasture is the small, railed-in plot of grass where stand Foley’s statues of Burke and Goldsmith. Before the erection of Trinity the spot was called Hoggen Green from the “Hogges” or hog-backed hills in its neighbourhood. The builders of Nassau and Great Brunswick Streets levelled these hillocks, regardless alike of their historical Interest and picturesque effect.

College Green lay well outside the city wall, but was more important than the other suburbs, since it lay on the road to the harbour. Here an incoming viceroy was usually received in state by the Lord Mayor and Corporation arrayed in all the bravery of crimson robes, gold chains, and long, white wands of office. Here, too, before the erection of a regular theatre, the guilds of Dublin gave their rude performances on the great Church holidays such as Christmas and Easter. The entertainment provided was a curious medley of Scripture and the classics. To each trade was assigned a story suited to its special characteristics. The tailors depicted the nakedness and clothing of Adam and Eve, the vintners Bacchus, the carpenters Joseph and Mary, the smiths Vulcan, and the bakers Ceres.

College Green was long used as the place of public execution. In 1327** **Adam Duff O’Toole was burned at the “Hogges” for heresy. During Lambert Simnel’s brief tenure of authority a messenger, who had been sent by the loyal city of Waterford to bid defiance to the pretender, was hanged here by order of the viceroy, Kildare, who was a warm supporter of the impostor. “The bearer of unwelcome news hath but a losing office.”

After the foundation of Trinity College in 1591, the city began to stretch its arms towards the important institution outside its eastern gate. Commerce revived after the long wars of Elizabeth, and the harbour road became lined with houses. As Dame Street grew, College Green, the old free commons, where every citizen’s cattle might graze, was gradually curtailed until it reached its present proportions. Though the herbage has disappeared and the dimensions of the open space are smaller than of old, College Green is wide enough to form a dignified centre of civic life. Architecturally, it is the finest part of Dublin.

The college provides a fine background, while on one side lies the old Parliament House and on the other there is a succession of banks built in a stately, massive style, which harmonises well with the older structures. Four statues give that final touch of distinction, which it is the special privilege of sculpture to bestow. Three of these are artistic successes, the fourth has a long and troubled history, which partly accounts for the singular appearance it presents. The figures of Goldsmith and Burke inside the rails of Trinity, and of Grattan pleading with uplifted hand outside the Parliament House where once he triumphed, are from the chisel of Foley, and, like all his work, are both graceful and lifelike. Grattan’s figure is the very personification of eloquence.

kingwilliam1.gif (15874 bytes)The equestrian statue of William III. (pictured, left) is by Grinling Gibbons, an artist of great reputation in his day. It was erected in 1701** at the expense of the Corporation. The triumphant party in Dublin at that time idolised William. A parade round the statue, with volleys of musketry in the air as feux-de-joie, became an annual feature in the life of the city. The Jacobites, too weak for open resistance, revenged themselves by midnight insults. The “Trinity Boys” were the first assailants. Their zeal against the King was inflamed by the slight to their whole body implied in the position of the figure with its back towards their college. In 1710 they daubed it with mud and carried away the sword and truncheon. The guilty parties were discovered and expelled from the university. The outrages went on, however, marked often by that freakish humour which betrays the undergraduate all the world over. A common joke was to set a second rider, made of straw, behind the King. So, with orange ribbons and flags by day, and nameless indignities by night, the statue passed a chequered existence till 1779. **The Volunteers took William, the asserter of civil and religious liberty, as their prototype. College Green was the focus of their activity. Their quaintly named citizen regiments, the Castleknock Light Horse, Uppercross Fusiliers and South Circular Road Infantry, were reviewed here. The much enduring figure enjoyed a brief popularity. It soon passed away.

In 1798** **the sword was wrenched away, and a determined attempt was made to file off the head. In 1805, just before the annual celebration, the Catholic party, by a clever trick, gained access to the statue and succeeded in marring the intended festivities. At midnight on the eve of the holiday a man, dressed like an artisan, presented himself to the watchmen in their hut at the base of the statue, saying that instructions had been given to paint the figure overnight with its accustomed coat of white, lest mob violence might be excited if the task were done in the daytime. His story was accepted and he was allowed to begin his duties forthwith. After working for an hour or so, he left, in order, as he said, to procure more material. But he never returned, and the Orangemen of Dublin were horrified in the morning to see their King daubed from head to foot with a hideous mixture of tar and grease almost impossible to remove.

The last attack was only 70 years ago. An explosive was used, the King was blown from his horse several feet into the air and fell, half-shattered, into the roadway. William III. is now fading into the shadow of history, and his name no longer lets loose such a torrent of frenzied devotion on one side and passionate hatred on the other. The statue is now left in peace. But it is no wonder, after such experiences, that the horse seems quite unlike other animals of his race, and that the rider, despite his serenity of countenance, does not look altogether at home in the saddle.

Opposite the battered monument of William of Orange is Church Lane, a short hill which leads from College Green to S. Andrew’s Church. This little rise has many historic associations. It is the remains of the “Hogge” or hillock which served the Danes as a seaward look-out place, and a Thing-Mount or hill of assembly. When they were driven out by Strongbow and returned to besiege him in Dublin, the hill was occupied by MacGilleMocholmog and his Irish troops, who were under obligation to preserve neutrality to both Dane and Norman until the day was definitely decided. During the Commonwealth some mutinous troops took up a defiant attitude here, but were subdued with the strong hand characteristic of Puritan methods. Eventually the knoll was levelled, and the soil used to raise Nassau Street to its present elevation above the College Park. The church, which crowns all that is left of the “hogge,” is modern, but contains in its churchyard an old statue of S. Andrew from the porch of its predecessor, which was long the parish church of the Irish Parliament.

Proceeding westward, the next street on the left hand is Trinity Street, called not, as might be imagined, after the college of that name, but after its only offshoot, the bygone Trinity Hall. This was, early in the 17th century, established as an overflow residence for the undergraduates of the college. But the authorities found it difficult to enforce discipline on these out-dwellers. They neglected chapel and lecture, pleading as excuse that they could not bear the summons of the great bell from their distant quarters. It was impossible to keep them from “town-haunting,” a heinous crime in a scholar. So, when Dr Stearne proposed to take the hall for a new College of Physicians, the Provost and Fellows gladly consented, with the stipulation that they should be allowed to nominate the President, and should receive medical attendance free of charge. The tie between the two institutions lasted until 1692,** **when the physicians obtained the special charter under which they still hold examinations and confer diplomas.

On the north side of College Green, just beyond the Parliament House, is an old building now occupied by the Yorkshire Assurance Company. This was formerly the fashionable Daly’s Club, where the “bucks” or dandies of the past used to assemble. It communicated with the Parliament House by a private way, so that legislators, bored by a long financial discussion or a succession of third-rate orators, might retreat unobserved to its luxurious precincts. Dicing, duelling, high play, and heavy drinking were frequent. Sometimes the watchmen would hear loud outcries in the club, followed by the opening of an upper window, and the precipitation of a human form therefrom. This was the summary method of dealing with a cheat.

There are stories, too, of midnight orgies that found their climax in blasphemous indecencies, such as characterised the notorious Hellfire Club. Certainly there was a good deal of wild revelry here. One of the leading bucks, named English, was almost led into repentance by an elaborate trick played on him by his fellow-members. While he lay prostrate after a night’s debauchery, they put out the lights and arranged to keep on talking in the darkness as if it were broad daylight and they were still gaming away.

When English woke, he fell into the trap, and imagined himself blind, since he heard men all around him apparently pursuing their ordinary amusement, but could see nothing, peer as he would. With exclamations of tender pity the players rose, bandaged his eyes, and led him away to a dark room, where he was visited by sham doctors at intervals.

The victim was thoroughly frightened and penitent. His outpourings gave the greatest amusement to the wags who attended him. At last his eyes were, literally, opened to the mockery of which he had been the subject. So far from turning over a new leaf, English for days was seeking the blood of the jokers who had brought him into such an edifying state of mind.

A fine ceiling in the boardroom is the only relic remaining of the bygone splendours of this famous aristocratic rendezvous.

Beyond Daly’s Club is Anglesea Street, connected with a strange romance of the peerage. The junior branch of the family which gives the street its name bears the Altham title. The fourth Lord Altham had a legitimate son, James Annesley, whose existence was very obnoxious to the paramour who had succeeded the lad’s dead mother in his father’s affections. He was at an early age sent off to harsh boarding-schools, from whence he ran away, and began to earn a precarious livelihood by running errands for the students of Trinity. A butcher named Purcell took pity on the boy, and rescued him from the street. Lord Altham soon died, and should, of course, have been succeeded by his son. However, his brother, the uncle of James, stepped into the vacant place, treating the true heir’s claim as negligible. But many people knew the story of young Annesley, and the usurper was so taunted at the Castle and elsewhere that he determined to remove his nephew from his path.

The first attempt was foiled by Purcell, who threatened to raise the market on the emissaries of Altham, when they tried to seize James in his shop. At last the boy was arrested by constables on a charge of having stolen a spoon, and was hurried away to Philadelphia, where he was sold as a slave. Mean-while Lord Altham succeeded to the Earldom of Anglesea. After 13 years of suffering, his victim escaped to Jamaica, and entered the navy as a man before the mast. Admiral Vernon took up his case, and the uncle was almost driven to a compromise, when Annesley was unfortunate enough to kill a man accidentally. Lord Anglesea now bent his energies to getting his nephew hanged for murder, but failed. The prisoner was acquitted, came to Dublin, and claimed the Anglesea estates. A jury decided in his favour, but the party in possession raised all kinds of side issues, and delayed matters in so many ways, that the suit became an Irish equivalent of “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.”

After it had lasted sixteen years, James Annesley died, leaving his uncle still in possession. This story, with its kidnapping of the heir, his return, his accidental manslaughter and false imprisonment, bears a remarkable resemblance to Scott’s “Guy Mannering,” and may have been in the author’s mind when he was constructing his plot.

After Anglesea Street is passed, College Green becomes narrower, losing its character of an open space until it finally merges into Dame Street, one of the oldest thoroughfares in Dublin. Its name appears in the records as “Damask Street,” “Dammes Street,” and even “Dam Street.” The derivation is not from the “Dame” in “Notre Dame,” but from a mill-dam in the Poddle, close to the Castle wall.

Rebuilding goes on so fast in a commercial centre that ancient houses have little chance to survive. So it is that Dame Street bears small resemblance to its forerunner, as shown in old prints. On the north side, however, and more especially towards the western end, the characteristic high-peaked gable of bygone domestic architecture has, in several instances, remained to this day. The little side streets running down to the river have been less touched by the hand of change. Heavy decorated doorways and windows, crowned with triangular or bow-shaped mouldings, occur frequently. The houses here, now occupied by solicitors’ offices, agencies and stores, formed at one time a fashionable residential quarter.

Fownes Street received its name from the philanthropist, who persuaded Swift to leave his money to found a hospital for lunatics.

Crow Street, opposite Hely’s, dark and narrow as it is, was once nightly thronged with people resorting to the theatre, which stood on the site of the Catholic University Medical School. The Dublin audiences were almost all that could be desired from an actor’s point of view. Quick comprehension, cultivated taste, ready and generous recognition of merit, characterised all parts of the house. The subtleties of dramatic art were at once appreciated and applauded. Native talent, from Peg Woffington downwards, flourished in this fertile soil, until it was transplanted across channel to win even greater celebrity in London. But Dublin playgoers had one incurable fault. They were very turbulent.

When their wrath was aroused, they would wreck the theatre and bring the manager in a single night from prosperity to ruin. Crow Street theatre impoverished six men in succession. The proprietors were accustomed to spend so much money in trying to excel their older rival in Smock Alley that the extra expense of refurnishing the house after a tumult brought them over the narrow margin of solvency.

If one theatre made a hit, the other must come out immediately with the same piece, or as close an adaptation as possible. Once Crow Street spread abroad for several weeks its intention of presenting, in a certain Chinese play, the exact costumes of the country, made in London from models imported from China at great expense.

Smock Alley answered the appeal to luxurious taste by an appeal to patriotism. It suddenly issued bills announcing the production of the identical piece that very evening with characters dressed exclusively in garments of Irish manufacture. This clever move put Crow Street under the stigma of not encouraging home industry, as it ought. Smock Alley forestalled its competitor by some days, and the rival venture, when it did appear, was a costly failure.

Barrington gives a curious account of the drama in his time. The actors, when not speaking, turned aside occasionally to snuff the tallow candles, which were the only means of illumination. The actresses wore great hoops, and made a point of changing sides at the end of every speech. Two soldiers with fixed bayonets stood at the corners of the proscenium to preserve order, a necessary, but often ineffective, precaution. At some of the scenes recorded a whole battalion would have been required.

A manager named Crawford fell into monetary difficulties, from which he tried to extricate himself by rigid economy. The orchestra struck for the arrears of their wages, the actors rebelled against “property” suppers of pasteboard and coloured water. The climax came in the minuet scene. “The Duke” remarked that he would have to whistle the air himself for lack of music. “Stand away,” said the disgusted “gods,” “and we will provide the tune.”

With that they hurled everything they could wrench up or tear down - benches, chandeliers, rails, and bottles - on to the stage. Another manager, Jones, irritated the audience by his pretence at gentility and his open espousal of the unpopular side in politics. In this case the riots continued night after night until Jones was compelled to relinquish altogether his connection with the theatre.

Crow Street has sad memories of the times of confiscation. Here in 1657 Petty drew up a great survey of Ireland in order to discover the exact extent of the estates deemed forfeited by rebellion.

Further westward, Eustace Street commemorates the Lord Chancellor, whose lands were sold to the government to form the Phoenix Park. The dark grey mass of the Commercial Buildings, itself a century old, stands on the site of Shaw’s Court, the first regular home of the Royal Dublin Society. Crampton Court, near the Empire Theatre, was the unofficial ‘Change of Dublin, before the regular Exchange, which is now the City Hall, was erected. The old Custom House was close at hand, and vessels were moored along the quays, to which these north-ward turnings off Dame Street lead. The merchants found Crampton Court a convenient place in which to meet and make their bargains. In fact, they were somewhat loath to leave their alley, even when a proper building was provided for them.

Almost opposite the present Empire Theatre stood Dame Gate, attacked by John the Mad and his Northmen in 1171**. **Close by Henry II. set up the wickerwork pavilion, in which he feasted such of the Irish chiefs as came in to make their submission. The two nations looked on each other with critical and unfriendly eyes. The English mocked at the long robes and unkempt beards of the Irishmen. The natives marvelled at the love of feasting shown by the invaders, especially at their eating cranes, which the Irish did not deem fit for human food.

To Chapter 8. To Chart Index