Christ Church to Kilmainham

SECTION IX* *

Christ Church Place to Kilmainham *

At its western end, Christ Church Place contracts suddenly into a narrow and crowded thoroughfare, the ancient High Street of Dublin. Its beginnings are hidden far back in Celtic antiquity. When Kings Conn of Ulster and Mogh of Munster divided Ireland between them in the second century, the High Street was the eastern end of the boundary between their dominions.

The cramped tortuousness of the old street attests its age unmistakably, but the same commercial considerations, that have swept away most of the old houses of Dame Street, have produced a similar effect in this busy, if not over wealthy, thoroughfare. Its associations are mostly municipal.

Here resided some celebrated mayors, notably Patrick Sarsfield, renowned for his profuse hospitality during his term of office in 1554. He entered on his year of duty with three barns of corn, the produce of any one of which would have kept his household for the full 12 months. “But now,” said he to a friend, “God and good companie be thanked, I stand in doubt whether I shall rub Out my Mayoralty with my third barne, which is welt nigh with my yeere ended.”

During Sarsfield’s time we are told that “neither the Porter nor anie other officer durst for both his cares give the simplest man that resorted to his house, Tom Drum, his entertainment, which is to hale a man in by the head, and thrust him out by the shoulders.” This genial character was an ancestor of the Patrick Sarsfield, afterwards Earl of Lucan, who achieved the finest exploit of the Jacobite wars. While besieged in Limerick by King William, he sallied out with a band of horsemen, eluded the blockading force and succeeded in intercepting and destroying the heavy train of artillery, which was on its way to take part in the siege.

The Sarsfields often supplied a mayor to Dublin, and seem to have been a good fighting stock. Another of them, during his term, rescued the wife of the Lord Deputy from Shane O’Neill.

At No. 56 High Street, Wolfe Tone was waked. The body was obtained from the prison authorities, and laid out in a room where it was visited by a great throng of persons. After this lying in state had lasted for two nights, it was ended by an order from the government that the funeral should take place at once, and as privately as possible.

On the northern side of the street, half hidden by the slope of the hill, is the ancient and partly ruined church of S. Audoen. Externally it turns a brave face to the road. The entrance is by an arched gateway under a dark and lofty battlemented tower. In the porch are two old sepulchral monuments, one to Lord and Lady Portlester, founders of a chapel in 1455, the other to an unknown bishop. The long, narrow chamber, now used for public worship, has been formed by cutting off an aisle from the main building and filling its Gothic arches with brickwork and plaster. There are remains of antiquity here also, an old Norman font of the 12th century and a very curious, undated mural monument, believed to commemorate the Cosgraves. It is in much the same style as the celebrated memorial to the Boyles in S Patrick’s. The figures of the kneeling parents with the rows of children, in this case very tiny, behind them on either side, assign it to the reign of Elizabeth. At the foot is the familiar memento mori of the “death’s head and cross bones,” with the remarkable added feature of a pair of wings affixed on either side of the skull. It probably typifies the resurrection from the dead.

Beyond the present church is the ruined part of S. Audoen’s. The parishioners in the early 19th century were too few to fill the edifice they had inherited, so the roof of the chancel and a great part of the nave was deliberately removed, allowing the weather to play havoc with the stonework of the interior, and to deface the ancient monuments, in which S Audoen’s was so rich. The main outlines of the architecture can, however, still be traced, the high altar raised by steps above the floor level, the niches in the east wall for statues, the row of arches of the nave, now blackened and storm-beaten, no longer supporting anything save their own time-worn frames ranged in dark silhouette against the sky. William Molyneux, the author of the “Case of Ireland,” is buried in the north-east corner of the chancel. The ruined aisle of the nave, which lies to the west of the chance], contains the Malone monument, dated 1592, in the same style as the Cosgrave memorial already described. Exposure has begun to have its effect here. Most of the quaint little figures are now headless.

S. Audoen’s was probably the first parish church erected in Dublin by the Norman settlers. Audoen, or Ouen, was a saint much venerated in Normandy, where he still has many churches dedicated to him. The square, undecorated tower and pointed arches of the Dublin S. Audoen’s assign the date of its erection to the 12th or 13th century. It had, for many years, a firm hold on the affections of the city and even of the occasional sojourners within its walls. In 1671, the Royal Regiment of Guards contributed £150 to a fund for its repair and beautifying. In return, the whole corps was admitted to all the privileges of parishioners for a term of 41 years. These Irish Guards of the past did not remain to claim their full rights. They adhered to James II. after Limerick and entered the French service, where, as being the soldiers of the legitimate King of England, they long continued to wear the traditional British scarlet. After the French Revolution they were permitted to return to Ireland. But the times were out of joint then in Dublin as well as in Paris. The old regiment found few friends and was soon disbanded.

Under the north wall of S. Audoen’s church is a narrow passage leading to an arch of the same name, which is really the only surviving gate of the city, believed to have been hastily erected when Edward Bruce lay at Castleknock, only four miles from Dublin, but probably dating back to a still earlier period. It is likely that the first walls ever constructed round the city ran by here. In course of time the enclosure was extended so as to reach the river bank. Audoen’s Arch remains as a mark of its former extent. It is low, and built in a massive style. In a room overhead the *Freeman’s Journal *over 160 years ago, entered on its long and consistent course of opposition to the powers that be.

Beyond is Cook Street, noted as a residence of some of those degraded clergymen called couple-beggars, who earned a miserable living by marrying without question any pair who came before them and were willing to pay the small fee of half-a-crown. Their registers have been carefully preserved, for the marriages, though irregular, were quite legal, and the heir to more than one great estate derives his title therefrom. The celebrant had an anxious time with his somewhat disreputable clients. Some tendered bad money in payment, others “behaved so unsuitably that I refused to marry them.” Once a whole party of soldiers and women came in drunk, demanding to be married, but the minister, in view of their condition and the danger of getting confused in the wedding of so many couples, declined to proceed in the matter.

In 1629, on S. Stephen’s Day, just after Christmas, a riot took place in Cook Street, caused by an attempt to arrest Carmelite monks while in the act of celebrating mass.

After passing S. Audoen’s church, High Street becomes the Cornmarket, named, like Fishamble and Cook Streets, from the chief business carried on there. Here formerly stood the Bull Ring, an iron ring to which the bulls were tied to be baited. There was once a custom in Dublin of electing annually a civic officer called the Mayor of the Bull Ring, whose special duty it was to attend to the morals and warlike efficiency of the youth. When a bachelor married, this mayor and his followers conducted him from church to the Cornmarket, there to pay his last homage to the Ring with a parting kiss.

At the end of the Cornmarket stood Newgate Prison. A part of the old building, lofty and circular in shape, is still visible over the roofs of the houses on the south side of the street opposite Webb’s. It was originally the western gate of the city, getting its name probably from being erected later than the other entrances. By this way the citizens made a sally against Silken Thomas and drove him in confusion from the walls.

Newgate, however, like its London namesake, is best known as a prison. The stories of the condition of the gaol and of the scenes that took place there, are almost incredible. Some of the cells were half under water. No provision was made for the maintenance of the prisoners, so that they were delivered over helplessly to the exactions of the turnkeys. Intoxicants could be easily procured by those who had money enough to pay the stiff price demanded. The night before the hanging or ” stretching,” as it was called, of a criminal was spent in a wild, reckless carouse in the doomed man’s cell.

Such an unhallowed revel is graphically depicted in the famous gaol song, “The Night Before Larry Was Stretched,” a verse of which may be quoted. The priest, coming to prepare Larry for his end, has interrupted a lively game at cards and is driven out with scant courtesy.

“Then in came the Priest with his book,

He spoke him so smooth and so civil;

Larry tipped him a Kilmainham look

And pitched his big wig to the Devil

Then raising a little his head,

To get a sweet drop of the bottle,

And pitiful sighing he said,

Oh! the hemp will be soon round my throttle

And choke my poor windpipe to death.”

As a rule, however, no chaplain ventured near the prison for years together. Wesley preached there, but found “no stirring of the dry bones.” Under such circumstances it was not strange that a regular fellowship of professional law-breakers grew up in Dublin with a special slang and a small ballad literature of their own. Most of these productions deal with the last painful event in the thief’s life, his final execution. This was usually referred to as “dancing the last jig” or the Kilmainham minuet.” Still hope was not lost when the rope was round the victim’s neck. There was a cherished belief that a hanged man might be revived by cutting the jugular vein in his throat. The friends of the deceased struggled for the body with the emissaries of Trinity College, who claimed it for dissection. Anatomists and phlebotomists fought it out under the shadow of the gallows.

The Cornmarket widens out into Thomas Street, a wide thoroughfare associated with two unfortunate insurrections. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was captured after a gallant struggle in No. 151, a house on the north side now marked with a tablet. He was in bed at the moment of arrest, but leaped out and commenced a most desperate effort for liberty. The first two officers to enter the room were badly wounded by Lord Edward’s dagger, but clung to his legs so as to prevent his escape. At that moment Major Sirr came up the stairs and, seeing the situation, fired at Lord Edward and wounded him in the shoulder. The young Geraldine was overpowered by numbers and carried away to prison, where he died subsequently of the wound he had received.

Close by this house is a narrow passage called Marshalsea Lane, leading formerly to the Marshalsea, or debtors’ prison, the wretched inhabitants of which literally begged their bread from passers-by. In this alley was one of the depots of Robert Emmet, another hapless rebel, whose attempt came five years after Lord Edward’s. Unlike his predecessor, he succeeded in lulling the vigilance of the police until the very night fixed for the outbreak. His arrangements for a simultaneous rising in several parts of the city and an attack on the government arsenals completely miscarried.

In the end, at about 8 o’clock in the evening, the leader himself and some 80 followers sallied out from Marshalsea Lane and hastened along Thomas Street towards the castle. The mob soon got out of hand and commenced to maltreat the stray loyalists whom it encountered. Emmet lost all control of his adherents. While the confusion was growing, a coach was heard lumbering along the street. It contained Lord Kilwarden, an eminent judge, who, with his nephew and daughter, was returning home from a visit to the country.

The two men were pulled from their seats and stabbed through and through with the long pikes of the rebels, though Kilwarden, whose humanity on the bench was well known, called out his name aloud in hope of mercy. The unfortunate girl escaped unmolested and fled, in a distracted condition, to the Castle, where she brought the first tidings of the rising and the murder.

Meanwhile a party of soldiers, emerging from Cutpurse Row, now the western end of the Cornmarket, had dispersed the rioters with a few volleys. Emmet was captured subsequently, and was hanged outside S. Catherine’s Church on the south side of Thomas Street, close to the spot where Kilwarden was killed.

He is said to have left directions that his epitaph should not be written until Ireland should be free. But it would appear that, even in that event, his wishes could not be fulfilled, for no one knows where he is interred. Almost every old churchyard in Dublin has been, at one time or other, declared to be his burial-place. The zeal of inquirers has gone so far that several vaults have been searched, and unnamed coffins found therein opened to see if their contents could be identified by comparison with the descriptions of Emmet.

Thomas Street, as might be inferred from its width, so unusual in an old thoroughfare, was originally an open market place outside the city walls for the sale of country produce. The tolls levied by the Corporation on the farmers, who came in to sell their superfluous stock, were considered a grievous burden. They were paid in kind, a measure of corn from each sack, a pound of butter from every firkin and so forth. These dues were let out to the highest bidder, whose direct interest it therefore was to use every means of extortion so as to earn the highest possible profit on his outlay. The most odious of Dublin tax gatherers was a woman, Kate Strong. The people erected an effigy of her, armed with a toll-dish of utterly unfair proportions.

James’s Street succeeds to Thomas Street. Here the enormous brewery of Messrs Guinness begins to dominate the district. Ireland is a land of slow growth and gradual progress, even in commercial matters. There have been fortunes made in business in Dublin, but their acquisition has been spread over very many years. Even a manufacturing firm like Guinness’s has a history of close upon a century and a half.

At the end of James’s Street the road divides near an ancient stone pillar. The right-hand branch, Bow Lane, goes down hill, while the road to the left remains on the higher level. Off Bow Lane is situated S. Patrick’s Hospital for Lunatics, founded by money bequeathed for the purpose by Dean Swift. It was the first institution of its kind in Ireland, but, unfortunately, it has had many successors. Irishmen are prone to insanity, doubtless for the same reason as applied to the founder himself, namely, that - *

” *Great wits are, sure, to madness near allied.”

This asylum was built when chains and cruel restraints were the only treatment for the insane. Its thick walls and small windows, now being replaced by larger openings, show the influence of this idea. Its fine wards are a remarkable feature. They run the whole length of the building, are 345 feet long by 14 wide, and terminate in old-fashioned, small-paned windows. The bedrooms or cells open off these corridors.

Among the curiosities here are a walnut escritoire which once belonged to Swift himself, and also the wooden benches from the old House of Parliament, high and solid, uncushioned, and, one would think, very uncomfortable. Just after the pillar is passed, Basin Lane turns off to the left from the upper of the two branches. Its name is not, as would at first appear, derived from the familiar household utensil. It leads to the old city reservoir, or “basin,” as it was then called. An ornamented doorway, in which is set an iron gate, gives a glimpse of a very considerable stretch of water, bordered by walks and adorned by some trees at the further end. Pleasure was mixed with utility here.

The city fathers, in or about the year 1308**, **constructed a watercourse from the Dodder at Templeogue to Dublin, whither it flowed by gravity, and was dispersed in pipes down the chief streets without the difficulties involved in a system of pumping or well-sinking. However, the supply was so uncertain, when drought reduced the volume of the Dodder, that, 200 years ago, the Corporation built a reservoir to store the water in time of plenty. This “basin” became the popular resort of the 18th century. Fashionable assemblies were held here every evening. Bands, concerts, and fireworks provided amusement for its frequenters. Even now it retains some trace of its former amenities. Its tranquil waters ripple pleasantly now and then under the breeze, which sweeps down from the distant blue hills visible to the south. Dublin still gets its water from the mountains, but from Vartry, many miles beyond the old source at Templeogue.

After leaving Basin Lane, gardens and fields begin to appear among the weather-worn houses of Mount Brown. The tower of the Royal Hospital, “embosomed high in tufted trees,” shows that the traveller has arrived at the suburb of Kilmainham.

To Chapter 10. To Chart Index