Nineteenth century Dublin
Chapter IX Nineteenth Century Dublin  The 19th centu...
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Chapter IX Nineteenth Century Dublin  The 19th centu...
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Chapter IX
Nineteenth Century Dublin
Broadstone Terminus. (11206 bytes)
The 19th century opened inauspiciously for Dublin. The rebellion had been crushed, but embers of disaffection still smouldered, fanned to some extent by the general dissatisfaction with the abolition of the Irish Parliament and the consequent loss to Dublin of some of its social importance. The sale in 1802 of the buildings of the late Parliament House to the Bank of Ireland emphasised this feeling; and in the summer of 1803 the rebellion broke out planned by Robert Emmett, younger brother of Thomas Addis Emmett, the first of those abortive attempts at armed insurrection which characterised the Ireland of the nineteenth century.
Aid had been expected in Dublin from Kildare and Wicklow, but the country had been cowed by the events of ‘98, and the meagre county levies seem to have misunderstood the time and place of rendezvous, so that at the hour fixed for the rising 100 men only had assembled’ at the headquarters in Marshalsea Lane. With these Emmett, having sent up a rocket as a signal to his followers in the city, marched through Thomas Street to the attack of Dublin Castle.
Meantime a leaderless and undisciplined mob had engaged in aimless rioting, and on debouching into High Street chanced to encounter the coach in which Lord Kilwarden, the Chief Justice, a man of the highest character, was with his nephew and daughter proceeding to his residence in Leinster Street, having been alarmed at his country-house, Newlands, Clondalkin, by rumours of an outbreak.
The crowd dragged him’ and his nephew from the carriage; and the Chief Justice, relying on his well-known reputation for clemency, exclaimed ‘I am Kilwarden.’ ‘You hung my son,’ shouted a man named Shannon, and plunged his pike into the old man’s breast, who fell mortally wounded. The military arriving, cleared the street of the rebels, and the Chief Justice was found in a dying condition on the side-walk. He was removed to the watch-house in Vicar Street, where he lingered for about an hour, and thence his body was taken to his residence in Leinster Street.
It is said that’ his assailant had mistaken the Lord Chief Justice for Lord Carleton. the judge who had in fact sentenced his son. Lord Kilwarden’s nephew shared his fate, but his daughter was, according to one account, conducted to a place of safety by one of the rebels, popularly, but on no sufficient authority, believed to have been Robert Emmett himself.
Colonel Brown, of the 21st Regiment, and a few private soldiers were killed, but on the approach of reinforcements from the Castle the whole movement collapsed. Quigley and others of the leaders turned King’s evidence, and many of the misguided conspirators paid for their errors with their lives. Emmett escaped to County Wicklow, but his romantic attachment to Sarah Curran (Daughter of John Philpot Curran, and heroine of Moore’s poem, ‘She is far from the land.’) induced him to return to Dublin and linger in hiding, in a house still pointed out in Harold’s Cross, with a view of taking leave of her; and on 25th August he was arrested in his hiding-place by the vigilant Major Sirr, (He had held a commission in the 68th Regiment, but his title did not indicate military rank. It had reference merely to his post of town Major.) tried and convicted, and, on the 20th September, hanged in Thomas Street. His speech from the dock is a fine specimen of oratory; and he still retains in the affections of the Irish people a place above many whose careers afford a better title to esteem.
O'Connell Bridge. (2433 bytes)The general dislike of the Union found a more capable and saner exponent in Daniel O’Connell, a junior member of the Irish Bar, scion of a family of the minor gentry of Kerry, and afterwards to be known as ‘the Liberator.’ A sincere and zealous Roman Catholic he contended for the removal of the disabilities of his creed-fellows with ultimate success; and in his favourite phrase, ‘Agitate, agitate, agitate,’ he inaugurated that new policy of parliamentary activity which, after making an unwilling convert of so great an English statesman as Gladstone, still launches its tireless attacks on the Union, and continually reiterates its demands for an independent Parliament.
The march of improvement iii Dublin meantime continued unchecked. What the city had lost in prestige it strove to regain in social comfort; the policing of the streets was reformed in 1808, the Richmond Basin; Portobello, for securing to the growing southern district a satisfactory water supply, was opened in 1812, and six years later the General Post Office was provided with its present handsome and commodious premises in Sackville Street.
In 1825 the city was lighted with gas, and the following year the Wellesley Mart, Usher’s Quay, (Now occupied by Messrs. Ganly and Son, auctioneers.) for the encouragement of native manufacture, was the forerunner of many subsequent efforts in the same direction. Nor was there any relaxation of philanthropic enterprise. The Fever Hospital in Cork Street dates from 1804, and the Bedford Asylum for the reception of 1000 poor children, commenced in 1806, preceded by 30 years the Irish Poor Law Act. Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital in Denzille Street was founded two years later, and the Claremont Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, the Richmond Institution for the Industrious Blind, the Old Man’s Asylum, the Molyneux Asylum for Blind Females, in Peter Street, and the Kildare Place Society for the education of the poor, had all been established before 1816.
In that year the first steam packet started from Dublin harbour, nine years after ‘the total loss of the *Prince of Wales *Parkgate packet and that of the *Rochdale *transport at Dunleary, in which dreadful disaster 300 passengers were drowned.
A flicker of the eighteenth-century public social life may be traced in the laying out during the following year of the Coburg Gardens, comprising 12 acres, formerly the grounds of the town house of Lord Clonmell in Harcourt Street, opened to the public in 1817; and which after forming the site of the exhibitions of 1855 and 1872 are now absorbed in the private grounds of Lord Iveagh’s residence in St. Stephen’s Green South.
The facilities for communication between the northern and southern portions of Dublin continued to increase: Whitworth Bridge in 1816 reoccupied the site of Ormonde Bridge (1684) between Bridge Street and Church Street, and in the same year Richmond Bridge afforded another means of approach to the Four Courts by connecting Winetavern Street with Chancery Place; and Wellington Bridge, familiarly known as ‘the Metal Bridge,’ gave access from Liffey Street to the Commercial Buildings.
Dublin nevertheless steadily declined alike in manufacturing energy and in the brilliancy of its social life. The severe winter of 1814, during which the streets were for three weeks impassable through a heavy snowfall, caused great distress amongst the working classes, and weaving, which had been the staple industry, was already in sore straits in 1826. In that year £13,000 was raised for the relief of the suffering weavers, and in 1830 many of them were sent to England. Indeed as Ulster gained in manufacturing and trading importance, so Leinster proportionally declined; the linen manufacture of the former prospering after the Union as the woollen and silk industries of the latter commenced to stagnate; and Belfast, from the obscure fishing village of William III.’s reign, had become a flourishing seaport and commercial centre, already the rival of Dublin, and soon to become the superior in business enterprise and mercantile important.
The Chief-Secretaryship of Sir Robert Peel, 1812-1818, was marked by the formation of a police force for Ireland outside Dublin known as the Royal Irish Constabulary, its members more familiarly termed from its originator ‘Bobbies’ and ‘Peelers. He also reformed the public service, but incidentally Castle rule became more than ever imbued with English prejudice and with the doctrines of Protestant ascendency.
In 1821 Ireland received the unusual favour of a visit from Royalty. From the landing of Richard II. and of Henry V., at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, the only monarchs to tiead her shores had been James II. and William III., and these solely for the purpose of fighting out in Ireland their conflicting claims to the crown of England.
It might have reasonably been supposed from the widespread disaffection which existed, especially amongst the Roman Catholic population, that a representative of royalty so unpopular as was George IV. within a week of the death of Queen Caroline would have met with but a cold reception. But the Irish have always been royalist in their sympathies and loyal to the kingly office, and the welcome accorded to the ‘First Gentleman in Europe’ by the Irish capital was wildly enthusiastic. Even O’Connell bestowed on him as cordial a greeting to Dublin as did Sir Walter Scott later to Edinburgh.
George IV. landed at Howth on 12th August, and made his public entry into Dublin five days later, driving by the North Circular Road to the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park. For two nights the city was illuminated, and when the King left Ireland on the 3rd of September, the country was at his feet.
He sailed from Dunleary, the foundations of whose harbour had been laid four years previously, and which was henceforth to be known as Kingstown, a granite obelisk on the rocky shore, surmounted by a crown on a cushion, the subject of sarcastic comment by Thackeray, marking the site of his departure.
Six years afterwards a more substantial memorial of his visit was commenced in the iron structure known as the King’s Bridge across the Liffey, the most westerly crossing except Island Bridge at Kilmainham, which gives its name to the terminus of the Great Southern and Western Railway standing at its southern end.
Since then, English royalty has not been entirely a stranger to our shores, though the visits have been all too few. Her late Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria visited Ireland in 1849, in 1853, and again in 1861, and was much touched by the hearty and respectful welcome which, after an interval of welinigh 40 years, she received in 1900, within a year of her death.
On that occasion Her Majesty was received by the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Pile, at the city boundary at Leeson Street Bridge, where a temporary reproduction of one of the old city gates had been erected, and a loyal address of welcome was presented by him.
His Majesty King Edward VII., as Prince of Wales, paid four visits to the country between 1865 and 1885, on two of which occasions he was accompanied by Queen Alexandra; and signalised his accession by his visit in July 1903, acknowledging the enthusiastic reception accorded to him by his *Address to my Irish People, *and by a further less formal visit of their Majesties in the following year.
The visit of George IV. was followed by a bad harvest, and famine became acute, a foretaste only of the dreadful sufferings which followed the failure of the potato in 1845. The Irish Poor Law Act passed in 1837 had obviated the necessity of providing for the destitute by individual charity, but it had to be extended by a system of outdoor relief, to meet the necessities of 1848, and its operation fostered that wholesale emigration which has depleted Ireland of much of the best elements in her peasant population.
Again did an ill-conceived rebellion break out, once more an echo of a revolution in France: pikes were manufactured and stored, and the usual attack on Dublin Castle was arranged. In July, Dublin was proclaimed under the Crime and Outrage Act, and the Habeas Corpus Act suspended. But the proposed rising never took effect. Its leader, William Smith O’Brien, and his associates, John Mitchell and Thomas Francis Meagher, were arrested, tried, and condemned to death; but their sentences were commuted to transportation.
Again in 1868 a treasonable conspiracy was formed, on this occasion a kind of after-clap of the Civil War in the United States, and Dublin was the headquarters of its leaders. This plot, known as the Fenian conspiracy, culminated in an ill-conceived attack made by a handful of young men, chiefly assistants in Dublin shops, on a police barrack at Tallaght, eight miles south-west of the city. The leader of the conspiracy, a returned Irish-American named James Stephens, succeeded in effecting his escape from Mountjoy Prison; and Dublin has since been free from attempts at armed rebellion.
The year 1839 was unfortunate in the annals of Dublin. A storm on the 6th January inflicted great damage on buildings, the Liffey overflowed the low-lying portions of the city, while two destructive fires, one attended by loss of life, consumed property to the value of £70,000.
In 1853 was held in Dublin the first great Industrial Exhibition, generally known as Dargan’s Exhibition, from its promoter, William Dargan, an eminent railroad contractor, who munificently placed a sum of £26,000 at the disposal of the Royal Dublin Society for the purpose.
The buildings were erected on Leinster Lawn, where a statue of Dargan commemorates his generosity, and the exhibition gave occasion to the second visit of Queen Victoria, accompanied by the Prince Consort and other members of the royal family.
A second exhibition, on the site now occupied by the Royal University in Earlsfort Terrace, was inaugurated by the Prince of Wales in presence of nearly 10,000 visitors. In 1868 the new Vartry water supply was completed, and in 1872 an exhibition of arts, industries, and manufactures, promoted by Sir Arthur and Edward Cecil Guinness, now Lords Ardilaun and Iveagh, was held in the same premises as that of 1865.
The same year saw the inception of the system of street tramways, which by succesive extensions and improvements now renders Dublin in respect to internal communication second to no city in Europe. Towards the end of 1881 the much-needed South City Markets, at the junction of Exchequer Street with South Great George’s Street, were opened by the Right Honourable George Moyers, Lord Mayor.
Six months later the Phoenix Park murders, as is generally termed the cowardly and purposeless assassination of Mr. Thomas H. Burke, permanent Under Secretary, and Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, were perpetrated within sight of the windows of the Viceregal Lodge.
In 1887 Killiney Hill, with its command of beautiful coast scenery, was acquired as a public park and formally opened by Prince Albert Victor; and in 1892 the foundation-stone was laid in St. Stephen’s Green of the monument to Lord Ardilaun, commemorating his munificence in laying out and presenting to the Dublin public this now delightful resort. Four years later the line of electric tramway from the city boundary at Haddington Road toDalkey, a distance of eight miles, was formally opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin.
In the February of 1903 one of the most severe gales ever experienced on these shores passed over Dublin, causing serious damage to property, but happily without occasioning loss of life. The Phoenix Park especially suffered from its effects, 3,000 elms and thorns having been uprooted. In 1906 arrangements were completed for holding an International Exhibition on the beautiful site of Herbert Park, near Donnybrook, a piece of ground presented by Lord Pembroke to the township which bears his name, as a permanent public park, on the occasion of the majority of his heir.
The 19th century has added to Dublin most of its parish churches, Protestant and Roman Catholic, has seen the foundation of many more public institutions and some important additions to its public buildings, the rebuilding and alteration of four of the six previously existing bridges over the Liffey, and the erection of four new ones, the completion of a new and magnificent water supply, and the creation of a splendid system of internal communication.
In addition, numerous statues and other memorials have been erected in the leading thorough fares, the Phoenix Park has been laid out, and enriched with one of the finest zoological gardens in Europe, and a very complete system of main drainage and electric lighting practically completed. The construction of railways has brought Dublin into direct communication with every provincial centre, and the continuous growth of the suburbs and the erection of artisans’ dwellings has raised considerably the standard of comfort of the middle and lower classes.
St. George's Chapel. (2786 bytes)Of the additions to the city churches, the finest example is the handsome Renaissance structure of St. George’s Church, not in the old parish of that dedication still commemorated in the name of South Great George’s Street, but in that known as Little St George’s, formed into a parish by an Act of Parliament of 1793. The original parish church stood in Lower Temple Street, but the rapid growth of the neighbourhood as a residentiary district led to the erection in 1802-13 of the present church from the designs of Francis Johnston, at the enormous eventual cost of nearly £90,000. The edifice is completely cased with hewn stone, and the front as viewed from Hardwicke Street, is both striking and handsome. It is 92 feet wide, and consists of a central portico of four fluted Ionic columns approached by steps, and surmounted by an entablature and pediment.
On the frieze is the inscription in Greek capitals, ‘Glory to God in the Highest.’ Above and in the rear of this rises the beautifully proportioned steeple, 200 feet in height, consisting of five storeys, with a spire terminating in a ball and stone cross. A deep cornice runs completely round the building. The handsome single-span ceiling was saved from* *destruction in 1836 by the genius of a young engineer, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, named Robert Malet, who by means of bow-string girders succeeded in raising the roof without injuring the ceiling.
Projecting galleries run round three sides of the interior, the fourth being occupied by the chancel, erected in 1880, which contains an east window of three lights, by Meyer of Munich, the centre the gift of the Cosgrave family, the south light in memory of Emma P. Dix, and the north light in memory of Dr. Neilson Hancock. The peal of eight bells, originally erected in a belfry at the back of the house occupied by the architect, and which cost £1,300, was presented by him to the church in 1828.
Somewhat similar in general effect, though far inferior architecturally, is the church of St. Stephen in Upper Mount Street, built in 1825 from the plans of T. Bowden, designed largely on Athenian models. The portico is copied from the Temple of Minerva Polias, and the tower and dome rise to a height of 100 feet.
The beautiful Norman faacde of St. Ann’s in Dawson Street, facing South Anne Street, was erected in 1868-9 from the designs of Sir Thomas Deane. The employment of courses of stone differing in colour, recalls the Duomo of Florence. In the suburbs, the Early English Gothic edifice of St. Bartholomew’s, Elgin Road, is the most ornate of the Dublin churches. The design, by Wyatt of Lonon, consists of a nave, transepts, choir and apse. The admirably proportioned clock-tower above the choir, with its octagonal belfry, containing it carillon and peal of eight bells, was to have been surmounted by a lofty spire, since dispensed with as unnecessary.
A beautiful memorial screen of wrought iron, and some fine stained-glass windows, give richness to the interior, which is paved in handsome mosaic. The organ, which cost £1,000, is only surpassed by those of the cathedrals.
The Albert Chapel, or ‘Old Molyneux,’ in Peter Street, is interesting as having been the site of Astley’s Circus, and afterwards the chapel of the Molyneux Asylum for female blind, which occupied the house of Sir Capel Molyneux. This asylum has been transferred to Leeson Park, and the original building is now a retreat for aged females.
St. Mary’s Chapel of Ease in Mountjoy Street is commonly known as ‘the Black Church,’ less from its sombre outward aspect than from its gloomy interior. The latter is due to the great thickness of the walls and narrowness of the window-opes. These features , which it shared with the Church of Holy Trinity, Rathmines, before the latter was rebuilt, recall the episcopate of Archbishop Magee, predecessor of Whately; and grandfather of the late Archbishop of York, who believed in his later years that the Protestant population was in danger of massacre I by the Roman Catholics. In this idea he refused to consecrate any church which could not be utilised as a cannon-proof refuge in the event of a rising.
The existing Roman Catholic churches, with one exception, all date from the 19th century. The exception is the Church of the Discalced (or Barefooted) Carmelites in Clarendon Street, approached by Johnstone’s Court, off Grafton Street. This Order came to Ireland in 1626, and probably established themselves north of the Liffey. In 1749 they had a chapel in Wormwood Gate, and ten years later they removed to Dawson’s Court, off Lower Stephen’s Street.
In 1793 they purchased a plot of ground on the east side of Clarendon Street, and erected thereon the existing church, dedicated to St. Theresa. In 1877 a new transept, in Romanesque style, was added. The front is of Dalkey granite in coursed ashlar dressings of granite and Portland stone. The arcades and windows are elaborately moulded, and enriched with columns of polished Dalkey granite, the shafts of the pinnacles being of polished Newry granite. The ceiling, groined in plaister, corresponds with that of the older building. Set in the front face of the altar is ‘The Dead Christ,’ by Hogan, the celebrated Irish sculptor. (Born in 1800 at Tullow, County Waterford. He was sent to Rome as a student in 7824. ‘The Dead Christ’ was said by Thorwaldsen to be Hogan’s masterpiece, and ‘The Drunken Faun’ was pronounced by the same sculptor to be ‘worthy of an Athenian studio.’ He died in 1858, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in the O’Connell circle)
The other religious communities having churches in Dublin are the Jesuits, Vincentians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Capuchins, Calced Carmelites, Augustinians, and Passionists. The first of these Orders came to Ireland in 1560, and during the reign of Charles I. a handsome chapel was erected for them by Lady Kildare in Back Lane. After a somewhat migratory existence they took over in 1815 the chapel of the ‘Poor Clare’ nuns in Hardwicke Street, and in 1829-32 they erected, from the designs of T. B. Keene, their present handsome church of St. Francis Xavier in Upper Gardiner Street. The building is cruciform, and a granite portico of four Ionic pillars faces the street, surmounted by an entablature and pediment with the inscription in gold, *‘Deo Uni et Trino, sub invoc. S. Francisci Xaverii.’ *The interior is richly decorated, the Corinthian altar-screen, with its’ alto-relievo in the tympanum, and the altar-piece, commemorating the preaching of the great missionary Patron, being of exceptional artistic merit. The organ, in a gallery over the west door, was built for a music festival in Westminster Abbey, and the church music is deservedly celebrated.
In the transepts are four paintings by Gagliardi, the elder, the greatest of modern Italian painters, illustrating incidents in the life of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. The first is ‘The Vigil of Arms at Monserrat,’ the second, ‘The First Vows at Montmartre, Paris,’ the third, ‘The Putting of the Great Question to Francis Xavier,’ and the fourth, a particularly fine piece, ‘Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, offers himself to Ignatius.’
The church of the Vincentians, or Congregation of the Mission, is the beautiful pile of St. Peter’s, Phibsborough, originally erected early in the last century on a commanding site on the North Circular Road, close to the present cattle-market. It was rebuilt about the middle of the century in Early Pointed Gothic. The increase of population in the neighbourhood necessitated a further rebuilding in 1868, interrupted for some time by a lawsuit concerning the adequacy of the foundations of the central tower.
It has since been partly completed from the designs of Mr. Goldie, and the building now consists of a tower and nave belonging to the earlier structure, transepts measuring 110 feet across, and a choir consisting of an apse of seven bays with seven radiating chapels, each terminating in a fine rose window, The stained glass, by Lobin of Tours, deserves special attention.
The Franciscan Order had in early times a friary in Francis Street, in the Irish suburb outside Newgate, as the Franciscan house was outside Newgate, in London, and the university established by Alexander de Bicknor in 1320 was chiefly under Franciscan direction. The Order was re-established in Cook Street in 1620. Their chapel known, from the sign of a neighbouring shop, as Adam and Eve Chapel, was built in 1715, but fell one Sunday and killed many of the congregation, who had assembled to hear a sermon from Sylvester Lloyd, Bishop of Waterford.
It was rebuilt, mainly by his exertions, contiguous to the chapel dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, in Rosemary Lane, and a convent established beside it in 1756. In 1832 the older chapel was demolished, and the present church of St. Francis of Assisi was erected on the joint sites, together with further ground acquired on Merchants’ Quay, the new building thus having entrances from Merchants’ Quay and Cook Street.
The Dominicans had a priory on the north bank of the Liffey at the southern end of St. Michan’s parish, founded for them in 1224 by William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, son-in-law of Strongbow. This site, ‘with the ruinous church thereof,’ was granted in 1612 to the Inns of Court. In 1749 the Order had a chapel in Bridge Street, in which Lord Kingsland occupied a pew adorned with his coat of arms. Fifteen years later this chapel passed to the secular clergy, as the parish church of St. Audoen’s, and was still in existence in 1846. All traces of it have disappeared in recent years, and the chapel-house is let in tenements.
The Dominicans moved to Denmark Street, and in 1866 the present church of St. Saviour, in lower Dominick Street, was built for them from the designs of the late J. J. M’Carthy. The church, a good specimen of Early Decorated Gothic, has a finely carved facade, and consists of a lofty central aisle, with large clerestory windows, narrow and low side aisles, and an apse in which is the beautiful high altar. At the western end is a stone organ-loft surmounted by a large and handsome window. The north aisle has side chapels, a later addition, and at the east end of the south aisle is an altar of coloured marble ornamented with a fretwork of white. The beautiful Pieta is a magnificent specimen of the work of Hogan: the upper figure of Christ is Italian.
In this aisle is a stained-glass window, erected by Earl Spencer in memory of Mr. Thomas Burke, the Under Secretary, assassinated in 1882. The adjoining Priory, extending towards Dorset Street, was built in 1885, from the designs of John L. Robinson, and is a fair type of Decorated Gothic. The buildings, of black County Dublin calp ashlar, with dressings of Doulton stone, are grouped round a cloister garth 100 feet by 80 feet. Amongst the houses demolished in dealing the site was that in which Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born.
The Capuchins came to Dublin in 1625, and established themselves in the neighbourhood of St. Audoen’s Arch. In 1720 they built a small chapel in Church Street, replaced in 1796 by a larger building. This again was taken down in 1864, and the handsome church of St. Mary of the Angels erected on the same site.
Carmelite Church, Whitefriar Street. (21906 bytes)The Order of Mount Carmel was one of the earliest of the regulars to have a local habitation in Dublin. In 1274 they occupied a convent in Whitefriar Street, standing probably on almost the identical site of the present church between Aungier Street and Whitefriar Street, reoccupied by them in 1825. They had been driven from their original convent in 1542, and, after many migrations, they occupied successively during the 18th century a site in Ash Street, adjoining the Coombe, and one in Cuffe Lane, off Upper Mercer Street. The present church, consecrated in 1827, is somewhat enclosed by buildings both in front and rear, those facing Aungier Street being the residentiary premises of the community. The southern side, extending along Whitefriar Place, is lit by circular-headed windows, the northern is unlighted. At the epistle side of the high altar is the interesting figure of the Virgin carved in oak, which formerly stood in St Mary’s Abbey, rescued from its desecration of serving as a pig trough by the late Reverend Doctor Spratt, by whose exertions the funds were procured for the building of the church.
The pre-Reformation Monastery of Augustinian hermits was in the neighbourhood of Crow Street, and was sequestrated by Henry viii. During the reign of James II. the Order had a chapel on the site of the church on Arran Quay, and later was housed in the neighbourhood of St. Audoen’s Arch.
About the commencement of the 18th century their Prior rented for their use as a chapel a stable on the western side of St. John’s Tower, a surviving fragment of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, which had been managed by the Crutched Friars or Trinitarians. (Crutched or crouched Friars, Fratres Cruciferi, or Fratres Sanctae Crucis)
About 1740, on the site of part of the Hospital, was erected a small church 60 feet by 24 feet, which was considerably extended 40 years later. The upper portion of the still existing Tower was demolished in 1800, and the lower part used as a pig-stye. In 1862 the community purchased houses on the west side of John Street and on the north of Thomas Street, and the foundation stone of the present imposing structure was laid by Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin, on Easter Sunday 1862.
The last traces of the Tower were removed in clearing the site for the new buildings, and above its foundations rises the present lofty spire. It was more than 10 years later that the church had sufficiently approached completion to admit of Divine service being held within its walls, and it was not finished till 1895.
The Passionists are established at the rear of Harold’s Cross Church, adjoining Mount Jerome Protestant cemetery in a handsome Romanesque church, designed by the late J. J M’Carthy, consisting of a nave and sanctuary terminating in an apse, side aisles terminating in chapels, two western chapels, and an open porch, with stone groined ceiling and flanking twin campanili 110 feet in height, crowned by bell stages of open arches, with moulded cornices covered by pyramidal roofs surmounted by gilt floriated crosses. The gable, bears a colossal statue of St. Michael the Archangel, clad in armour completely gilt. The interior is richly ornamented, the high altar especially, tinder an elaborate baldachino, a beautiful example of modern Italian art, is of various coloured marbles, malachite, verde antico and rosso, Mexican onyx, etc.
The dedication is Deo Opimo Maximo sub invoc. Santi Pauli a Cruce. The lofty site renders the church a conspicuous object, and a very musical carillon calls attention to its services. Processions take place here in May and at other special festivals.
Of the Roman Catholic parish churches, the most notable is the Metropolitan Church of St. Mary, generally known as the Pro-Cathedral. This building standing in Marlborough Street, opposite Tyrone House, was commenced in 1816, on the site of the town-house of Lord Annesley, purchased for the purpose for £5,100.
The design was furnished by an amateur artist living in Paris, (It is said closely to correspond with the Church of St. Philippe du Roule, by Chaigrin, Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, Paris. The principal front facing Marlborough Street, largely a copy of the Temple of Theseus at Athens; is 118 feet in width, and is approached by a portico of six fluted Doric columns of Portland stone, each 4 feet 9 inches in diameter;
The portico projects 10 feet by an extended flight of steps leading to the three, main entrances. Above it is an entablature, continued round the sides, supporting in front a pediment crowned by figures of the Virgin, St. Patrick, and St. Laurence O’Toole. The flanks of the building extend 160 feet in depth, and in the centre of each is a large recessed portico enclosed by a colonnade, on a lesser scale than the main portico, and, like it, surmounted by figures. The interior presents some features of resemblance to that of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. It is divided into a nave and side aisles by rows of clumsy pillars, at present coloured chocolate, which form a serious impediment to any side view of the apse. The latter forms a circular termination to the west end, and contains the high altar by Turnerelli of white marble, surrounded by a circular railing. Above it the roof is enriched with a basso-relievo of the Ascension. Statues of Cardinal Cullen and Archbishop *Murray, *both by Sir Thomas Farrell, stand on each side of the main entrance, and there are many other monuments. Some of the internal fittings, consisting of an ‘altar-piece carved and embellished with four pillars, cornices, and other decorations, gilt and painted,’ were taken from the chapel in Liffey Street, and are described in a manuscript of 1749 preserved amongst the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum.
The church of St. Andrew, Westland Row, commenced in 1832 and completed in 1837, is a cruciform structure with a central cupola, and has a heavy Doric portico, with an entablature and pediment. On the apex of the latter stands a figure of St Andrew. The high altar of four massive pillars, and the tabernacle and sarcophagus, are of beautiful Italian marble. Over the tabernacle is Hogan’s ‘Transfiguration.’
The church attached to the Catholic University in St. Stephen’s Green South owes its erection to the late Cardinal Newman. It was built (1854-56) by Messrs. Beardwood and Son of Westland Row, from the designs of J. Hungerford Pollen, Esq., the friend and co-religionist of Newman, on the model of the church of SS Cosmas and Damian in the Via Cavour in Rome, and is a good type of the Roman basilica church. It was dedicated on Thursday, 1st May 1856.
It is entered by a Romanesque doorway from St Stephen’s Green. The interior is Byzantine in character with an admixture of ornate Italian style, and measures, exclusive of the Lady chapel - a modern addition - 132 feet by 37 feet. The lofty ceiling is flat, divided into mullioned compartments, painted with a design of sprays of foliage. The pillars sustaining the end gallery are of Irish marble; the capitals are of alabaster carved in foliage, fruit and flowers. From this gallery, reached by a staircase on the right of the inner porch, spring six arches on marble pillars similar to those beneath. The organ choir, resting on six pillars of polished Irish marble, is on the Gospel side of the sanctuary, and is reached by steps from the vestry.
The high altar stands within a semicircular embrasure, beautifully painted in mediaeval style by J. Hungerford Pollen, the designer of the church. The, entrance to the Lady chapel is by two steps underneath the choir gallery. Opposite to it stands the pulpit supported on four pillars of polished marble, bearing the names of the four evangelists. It is approached by a handsome stone staircase, with a beautiful marble balustrade. The high altar comprises a series of panels of choice specimens of Irish marbles. The lateral walls are encrusted to a height of 16 feet with slabs of Irish marble, alternating with delicate semicircular mosaics representing patron saints. Above these, and separated from them by a rich moulding, are frescoes executed for Cardinal Newman in Rome, reproducing Raphael’s cartoons. In a niche on the right-hand side, facing the altar, is a bust of Cardinal Newman (1892), by Sir Thomas Farrell, R.H.A.
In the southern suburbs the fine Renaissance church of Our Lady of Refuge, Rathmines, with the dedication on the entablature, *D.O.M. sub invoc. Mariae Immaculatoe Refugii Peccatorum, *conspicuous by its large copper dome, is a cruciform structure built from the designs of Patrick Byrne, It. H.A., and finished in 1894 by J. J. Byrne.
The striking portico, completed at that date, consists of four gigantic Corinthian pillars supporting a massive pediment, surmounted by a statue of the Virgin and Child flanked by figures of St. Celestine and St. Patrick.
The increase of the Roman Catholic population in the township of Rathgar necessitated the erection in 1858 of the Church of the Three Patrons (SS. Patrick, Brigid, and Columbkill). with the dedication, *D.O.M. sub invov. Trium Hiberniae SS. Protector. *It consists of a nave with side-aisles and an apse, and was built from the designs of Dean Meagher, to whose exertions the erection both of this church and that of Our Lady of Refuge are due. The somewhat threatening projecting pediment, now surmounted by a white marble cross, is not without a certain impressiveness.
The Presbyterians have several places of worship in the city and suburbs, the most noticeable of which is the church standing on the site of the town-house of the Earl of Bective at the upper or northern end of Rutland Square at the rear of the Rotunda. It was built in 1862-64 at the expense of Alexander Findlater, a Dublin merchant, and is sometimes called ‘Findlater’s Church.’
It is a granite structure 90 feet by 50 feet, in late Decorated Gothic style, divided on either side by two stone piers which carry the roof-timbers, and is marred both as to its exterior and interior by the proximity of the houses on its western side. Looking northward from the Nelson Column, the graceful spire, 180 feet in height, is a conspicuous feature. The principal entrance is by the doorway in the tower. In the octagonal turret is a stair-way leading to the gallery which extends over the south end of the church. The east side, in North Frederick Street, unencumbered by buildings, is divided into three bays, marked externally by high gables and five light windows. The interior is effective, but somewhat wanting in acoustic properties.
The chapel of the Unitarians is also in Decorated Gothic, but is badly situated, being flush with the busy thoroughfare of St. Stephen’s Green West. Internally it consists of a nave with one side-aisle and one transept, and is dwarfed by provision for schoolrooms underneath. The Baptists have an unpretentious red-brick chapel facing the terminus of the Dublin, Wick low, and Wexford, now the Dublin and South-Eastern Railway, in Harcourt Street. The United Presbyterians have a church in Abbey Street, and the Wesleyan Methodists, besides many chapels in the suburbs, have the central Centenary Chapel in St. Stephen’s Green South, at the rear of which is the handsome brick building of Wesley College, a large boarding and day school.
College of Surgeons. (1647 bytes)Amongst the public buildings other than ecclesiastical which date from the 19th century, the most conspicuous are the Colleges of Surgeons and Physicians and the General Post Office. The Fraternity or Gild of Barbers (see Chapter vii) received from King Henry VI. a Royal charter dated 18th October 1446. That this fraternity included surgeons is clear from the renewal of this charter by Queen Elizabeth, preserved in the MS. room of Trinity College, Dublin, in which the following passage occurs:
‘And we having maturely considered how useful and necessary it would be for preserving the Health of the Human Body that there were more persons skilled in the Art of Chirurgery within the City of Dublin aforesaid, Sickness and Infirmities committing vast Havoc, for the promotion and exercise of which Art the aforesaid Fraternity and Guild of Barbers was created and established by our aforesaid most beloved progenitor Henry.’
From these lowly beginnings sprang the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland established by Royal charter of 24th George III. ‘inrolled in the Office of the Rolls of His Majesty’s High Court of Chancery of Ireland,’ 9th March 1784.(History of the Royal College of Surgeons. Sir Charles A. Cameron)
In order that the College should be lodged in a manner befitting its dignity and importance a sum of £4,550 was, in 1809, voted by Parliament, and expended on the purchase of a plot of ground, 60 feet in width and 250 feet in depth, at one time a burying-ground of the Society of Friends, at the junction of York Street with St. Stephen’s Green West. Towards the close of the same year the new building was completed at a cost, including that of the site, of £40,000.
This building formed the southern wing only of the present edifice, and consisted of a basement storey of mountain granite with a superstructure of Portland stone, having cut granite frontages towards St. Stephen’s Green and York Street.
In 1825 an additional site, towards the north, was secured, and the present handsome structure was completed in 1872. It consists of a rusticated basement storey supporting a facade in the Doric order. In the centre are four fluted columns surmounted by a triangular pediment, above which are statues of Aesculapius, Hygeia and Minerva, each 7 feet in height. The tympanum is charged with the Royal Arms sculptured in relief. The whole is completed by a graceful stone balcony continued round the building. The four advanced central columns of the upper storey are flanked on each side by three three-quarter fluted columns, two of them coupled at each end of the facade.
The entrance hall is adorned with busts of former Fellows of the College, and with a seated figure of William Dease, one of its founders, executed in 1886 by Sir Thomas Farrell, R.H.A. To the left is the hall of the original building.
The examination hall, having been found deficient in height, was enlarged by excavation in 1859, and adorned with a bust of the Prince Consort, from which it is known as the Albert Hall. There is a good medical library, two museums of anatomy and pathology, and an interesting collection of wax anatomical models, presented by Hugh Percy, third Duke of Northumberland, Viceroy in 1829.
The College of Physicians was incorporated under Charles II., but had in reality been founded by Dr. John Stearne, Fellow of Trinity College, who obtained, about 1640, the use of Trinity Hall, on the south side of Dame Street, as a meeting-place for the city physicians, and also for the use of the medical students of the University. In 1654 he founded there a body known as the President and Fraternity of Physicians, and on them Charles II. bestowed a charter in. 1667 as ‘The Colledge of Physitians in Dublin.’
The terms of this charter proving insufficient for its objects, a further charter, granting amongst other privileges to the College the curious right to receive annually six bodies of such malefactors as had suffered execution, was obtained in 1692 from William and Mary, hence the title King and Queen’s College of Physicians; and finally, in 1889, under charter of Queen Victoria, the college became the Royal College of Physicians.
The Society continued to occupy Trinity Hall until 1692, and its meetings, previously held in the houses of its Presidents, were transferred to the Boardroom of Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital on its erection in 1808; the members of the College of Physicians being trustees of the estate bequeathed by Sir Patrick Dun for the promotion of medical education.
In 1864 the College secured the site previously occupied by the Kildare Street Club whose premises had been burned in 1860. On this site, on which had stood the town-house of the Earl of Portarlington, on the east side of Kildare Street and north of the premises of the National Library, the present building with its handsome portico was erected from the design of W. C. Murray.
The building consists of two halls communicating by a corridor, and on the upper storey a small medical library. The first of these halls, known as the Statue Hall, is of the Corinthian order, and measures 60 feet by 30 feet, and 32 feet in height. The handsome coved ceiling springs from an enriched cornice. This hall contains statues of the following former Presidents: Sir Henry Marsh (1841), William Stokes (1849), and Sir Dominic Corrigan (1859), all by Foley ; and of Robert J. Graves (1843), by Bruce Joy; and several portraits, including one of John Stearne and of Sir Patrick Dun (1681-93), by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Under the latter hangs the original illuminated grant of arms, signed by ‘Richard St. George, Ulster King of Arms of all Ireland,’ the arms being ‘Party per fes argent and azure in the middle of the chiefe a coelestial hand issuing out of a cloud feelinge the pulse of a terrestrial hand all proper, in ye nombrill poynt ye Royall Harpe of Ireland as a fit distinction from the
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[Pages 295 to 298 are missing from my copy of the book – I am in the process of getting another copy. KF, April 22, 2000]**
clear day, a magnificent panorama of Dublin and its surroundings. The same thoroughfare contains the noble monument to Daniel O’Connell, standing immediately north of O’Connell Bridge. It was commenced by Foley in 1864; completed, after the death of that sculptor, by Brock; and unveiled on 15th August 1882. The life-like figure of the Liberator, 12 feet in height, clad in his characteristic cloak, stands pm a granite cylinder 28 feet high, surrounded by winged genii representing Patriotism, Fidelity, Eloquence, and Courage; and bearing allegorical figures in high relief emblematic of Erin casting off her fetters, and grasping the Act of Emancipation.
Sackvil]e Street also contains statues of Sir John Gray, by Sir Thomas Farrell, R.H.A:, and of Father Mathew, the Apostle of Temperance, by Miss Redmond. At the junction of Westmoreland Street and D’Olier Street is William Smith O’Brien, by Sir Thomas Farrell, R.H.A., and at the head of College Street the very inadequate statue of Thomas Moore.
In the railed space in front of Trinity College are Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke; in the inner quadrangle, between the Library and the Examination Hall, the seated figure of W. E. Hartpole Lecky, and in College Green, facing the front of Trinity College, is the fine statue of Grattan. This, as well as those of Goldsmith and Burke, is the work of Foley.
As we have seen, William III., George I., George II., George III. and George IV. have all been commemorated in Dublin, but hitherto no memorial has been erected to Queen Victoria. (A sum of money was subscribed for the erection of a statue on Leinster Lawn facing Kildare Street, and the statue is now (1907) in the hands of the sculptor.) In the centre of the Leinster Lawn, facing Merrion Square, is Foley’s beautiful Albert Memorial, and statues of William Dargan, Sir Robert Stewart, the eminent musician, and Surgeon Parke, who lost his life as a result of the Stanley expedition in 1887.
In Kildare Place is the statue of Lord Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin 1884-97, by Hamo Thorneycroft, R.A. In St. Stephen’s Green, in addition to the equestrian figure of George II., there are statues of Lord Eglinton, Viceroy 1852-53 and 1858-59, and the seated figure of Lord Ardilaun.
In the Phoenix Park, overlooking the Kings-bridge terminus, is the great granite obelisk, 205 feet high, of the Wellington Testimonial, designed by R. Smirke, and erected in 1817 at a cost of £20,000. It is decorated only with the names of his victories, and with bronze panels on the four sides of its pedestal bearing bas-reliefs illustrative of those battles.
In the adjacent People’s Gardens is a statue of Lord Carlisle, Viceroy 1855-58 and 1859-64, and on the main thoroughfare a very striking equestrian figure of Lord Gough, by Foley, cast in 1880 in bronze from cannon taken in his Indian campaign. A neat and unpretentious memorial of the members of the 74th Dublin Company of the Imperial Yeomanry who fell in the South African War, was unveiled in the churchyard of St. Andrew’s on 5th May 1904, by H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Ireland. From a square pedestal of Portland stone rises a column of polished red granite surmounted by a crown. In three of the faces of the pedestal panels of polished granite are inserted bearing in gold lettering the names of those in whose memory it was erected.
At the junction of Hawkins Street and Burgh Quay a memorial was unveiled on 3rd August 1906 to Patrick Sheahan, of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, who lost his life on 6th May 1905 in an heroic attempt to rescue the foreman and two workmen from the main sewer of the new Main Drainage Works in which they had been overcome by sewer gas. The monument, in Celtic Romanesque, is 20 feet in height, of Ballinasloe limestone, relieved by pillars of Galway and Donegal granite, and by an ingenious development of the Cross and Crown in its design conveys the idea of sacrifice and triumph.
It is proposed to erect a handsome entrance to St. Stephen’s Green, facing Grafton Street, in memory of the officers and soldiers of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died in South Africa, and. the sum of £300 is now only necessary to complete the cost, of the proposed memorial.
‘The water-supply of Dublin from an early date engaged the attention of the citizens. On the 29th April 1244 (28th Henry III.), Maurice Fitzgerald, Justiciary of Ireland, issued a writ ‘commanding the Sheriff’ of Dublin without delay, with the advice of the Mayor and citizens, to make inquisition by 12 free men, as jurors, as to the place from which water could be best and most conveniently taken from its course, and conducted to the King’s city of Dublin for the benefit of the city and at the cost of the citizens.’
That this was forthwith done is evidenced by a mandate, dated 18th November 1245, enrolled in the Patent Roll of England, ordering that water be conveyed to the King’s hall (Dublin Castle), through a pipe from the Conduit of Dublin city. This Conduit stood in the High Street, opposite the Tholsel near St. Michael’s Church, which occupied the site of the present Synod Hall.
It is of more than passing interest to note that in excavations during 1787 in Castle Street, on the direct line frown the Conduit to the Castle, a leaden water-pipe was exhumed, said to have borne a 13th-century inscription. (Journal R.S.A.I. for 1890-91, vol. xx. P. 558) This water-supply was taken from the Dodder above Templeogue, the same stream from whose head-waters at Bohernabreena is now drawn the water-supply of the townships of Rathmines and Rathgar.
City Conduit. (2611 bytes)Previous to the writ of 1244 the Poddle stream, now covered over, seems to have sufficed for the modest requirements of the citizens of the circumscribed city of the 13th century. The ‘Head’ of water which supplied the Conduit can still be traced from the dam at Balrothery, opposite Firhouse, on the line of the Blessington steam tram, near Tallaght, through the grounds of Templeogue House (In the grounds of Bella Vista is an Artesian Well, bored by French miners in 1837.) and Kimmage House, past Mount Argus and Dolphin’s Barn, (From a Danish family named Dolfyn, one of whom is mentioned in connection with Kilmainham in a mandate to the Justiciary Close Roll, 21 Henry III. (1237).) along an elevated rampart called ‘The Ridges’ in a map in the City Hall, and commonly known as “The Back of the Pipes,’ constructed to carry the water to the present City Basin, near James Street, in the immediate vicinity of the ancient cistern of the thirteenth century. (*Journal R.S.A.I., *vol. xx. P. 561.)
This water-course also supplied the mills of the Abbey of St. Thomas at Thomas Court, and was a source of bitter contention between the citizens and the Abbot; the latter eventually agreeing to pay ‘yerly out of ther myllis without any contradiction, unto the Keper of the watyr of the cittie for the tyme beyng eyght busselis of corn, that ys to say four peckes of whet and four peckes of malt,’ for the use of the said water-course.
In the 18th century this water-course was regarded as the joint property of the City and the Earls of Meath, successors to the rights of the Abbots of St. Thomas; and was divided into two streams by a stone pier at a place known as the ‘Tongue,’ one-third of the supply belonging to the Corporation, and two-thirds to the Meath tenants of the Liberties of Thomas Court and Donore. A sketch in Indian ink, from which our illustration is taken, of ‘The Olde Conduit in the Corne market,’ exists in a volume of sketches entitled *Eblana Monumenta, *preserved in the office of Ulster King of Arms.
This Conduit, or it’s predecessor, is referred to in a memorandum in folio 7b 14 of the ‘White Book’ as ‘vas ex opposito theolonis civitatis juxta portam Sanctae Trinitatis*’ -i.e. *‘the reservoir opposite the city Tholsel near the gate of the Holy Trinity.’ A branch of the supply, known as Colman’s Brook, flowed on the north side of Cook Street, and passing through Dirty Lane supplied the mill of Mullinahack *(i.e. *Dirty Mill), and, flowing under Bridge Street, discharged into the Liffey.
The Dodder was the only source of the water-supply of Dublin up to the year 1775, when it became inadequate for the steadily increasing population. Application was made by the civic. authorities to the Grand and Royal Canal Companies, and two additional reservoirs were excavated at a cost of £30,000 - one at the extremity of Blessington Street, communicating with the Royal Canal supplied by Lough Owel, and the other at Portobello in connectjon with the Grand Canal. The first, 6 feet above the level of the City Basin, supplied the northern suburbs, and the second, on the same level as the Basin, the southern district. In 1868 the Vartry water-works, commenced in 1863, designed and carried out by Parke Neville, C.E., at a total cost of £550,000, were completed, and the old canal supply discontinued.
The storage reservoir near Roundwood, County Wicklow, covers an area of 410 acres, and can contain 2,500 million gallons, equal to seven months’ supply. After passing through filter-beds the water is brought by pipe to the Stillorgan reservoir, 250 feet above the level of the city, and capable of holding 84 million gallons.
The Chairman of the Waterwork’s Committee, Doctor ‘John Gray, to whose initiative and energy the success of the scheme was largely due, received the honour of knighthood from the Earl of Carlisle, Lord-Lieutenant Once only, in the unprecedented drought of 1893, did the great Roundwood reservoir show signs of exhaustion, and the Grand Canal supply had once more to be resorted to on October 16. In consequence of this it was proposed, in September 1906, to construct an additional reservoir at an estimated cost of £130,000. (On the 6th December 1906 an inquiry was opened by the Local Government Board, on the application of the Dublin Corporation to borrow £134,842 for this purpose.)
Almost all the Irish railway systems have their termini in Dublin. The first railway in Ireland was the Dublin and Kingstown, with its terminus in Westland Row, commenced in 1833 and opened the following year. Ten years later the line was extended to Dalkey by the ‘Atmospheric, afterwards converted into a steam railway and continued to Bray.
In 1844 the Dublin and Drogheda, now the Great Northern Railway, was opened, having been six years in building. Two years later the ‘Cashel’ railway, now the Great Southern and Western, was completed to Carlow; and the following year the Midland Great Western Railway, completed to Galway in 1851, was opened for traffic.
The Great Northern terminus is a handsome stone building with a lofty Italian facade towards’ Amiens Street, and a slanting approach from Store Street for vehicles. The Great Southern and Western terminus, Kingsbridge, in a striking situation unobscured by surrounding buildings, has a, fine Corinthian front flanked on each side by wings surmounted by clock towers. The Midland or Broadstone terminus is a heavy and somewhat gloomy building, combining in its architecture a Grecian style with some Egyptian features.
The terminus of the Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford Railway, opened to Bray in 1854, a massive Doric building in Harcourt, Street, with a fine colonnade and broad flight of steps, is deficient in interior accommodation. It effects a junction within a few miles of Bray with the Dublin and Kingstown line, whose system is leased by the Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford directorate.
The other lines are connected by the Loop Line which, starting from Westland Row, passes over the Liffey, by the unsightly viaduct close to the Custom House, to Amiens Street. Proceeding thence over the Great Northern line to Church Road it reaches the landing-stage for the steamers of the London and North-Western Railway at North Wall, effects a junction with the Midland at Glasnevin, and running through a tunnel over a mile in length under the Phoenix Park, joins the Great Southern and Western at Island Bridge.
The canals anticipated the railway lines as means of internal communication. The Royal Canal, incorporated 1818, which runs parallel to the Midland Railway from the Broadstone terminus to Mullingar, and communicates with the Liffey by its docks at the North Wall, brings the metropolis into direct water communication with the Shannon.
The Grand Canal, commenced in 1765, also connects with the Shannon at Shannon Harbour near Banagher, and with the Barrow navigation at Monasterevan, thus affording facilities for goods traffic with Waterford and other southern towns. It joins the Liffey by the embouchure of the Dodder at Ringsend. Passenger-boats, known as ‘Fly-boats,’ formed a common mode of travelling at the beginning of the 19th century, those on the Grand Canal starting from Portobello Hotel, now a private hospital.
These boats ate referred to in the novels of Lever, and in the *Travels *of Mr. and Mrs S. C. Hall. They were long and narrow, were covered in, and divided into two classes. Each boat was drawn by two or three horses, and travelled at the rate of seven Irish miles (Nearly nine English miles; the Irish miles = 2,240 yards) an hour - no despicable rate of progression in those days.
The electric telegraph, laid down to Holyhead, was opened 1st June 1852; the street tramways were opened in 1872, and electric light inaugurated in 1881.
Amongst literary and artistic associations the Royal Hibernianian Academy for the Fine Arts was incorporated in 1821, and its premises in Lower Abbey Street, erected at the expense of Francis Johnston the architect, its first President, in 1821.
The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland was founded in 1849 as the Kilkenny Archaeological Society; and the Royal Irish Academy of Music was founded in 1856 and incorporated in 1889. The first show of flowers by the Horticultural Society took place at Donnybrook in 1817.
In educational matters the Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland, known as the Kildare Place Society, the forerunner of the Irish system of National Education, was instituted in 1811. Its premises have been occupied and rebuilt by the Church of Ireland Training College for National School Teachers, and now form an imposing pile of brick buildings in Kildare Street with an entrance from Kildare Place.
The abortive Catholic University, founded by Cardinal Newman in 1854, survives as a feeder of the Royal University. This latter was created, in succession to the Queen’s University, by Letters Patent in 1880, and occupies part the site in Earlsfort Terrace, and some of the permanent buildings, of the exhibitions of 1865 and 1872. The Alexandra College, opposite the Royal University buildings, may fairly claim to be the pioneer of higher education for women, as its foundation (1866) antedates that of Newnham or Girton.
Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Grand Canal Street Lower, 1808, and that known from its dedication as the Mater Misericordiae, Eccles Street, 1861, under the care of Sisters of Mercy, were added to the long list of Dublin’s asylums for the sick poor; and the Lying-in Hospital in the Coombe shares, since 1829, the charitable work of the Rotunda Hospital.
The great cemeteries of Mount Prospect, Glasnevin (R.C.), on the north side, and Mount Jerome, Harold’s Cross (Prot.), 1836, on the south, replaced the crowded parish graveyards, and are each beautified with monuments: the most noticeable in the former being the O’Connell Tower, and the statue of Barry Sullivan in the character of Hamlet; and in the latter the beautiful statue in white marble of Thomas Davis, by Hogan.