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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
O'Connell Street is at the heart of Dublin. It has been through name changes and revolutions, destruction and rebuilding and remained at the heart of the story of Ireland for centuries. Nicola Pierce explores the people, the history, the buildings and the stories behind the main street in our capital city. Packed with stories of the people connected to the streets, from the subjects of the statues, to the sculptors that created them, from those who owned and developed the street since the days of St Mary's Abbey in 1147, to those who worked and lived there through the centuries and all the drama and scandals that went on both on the street and behind closed doors. O'Connell Street will also feature more personal, anecdotal stories of the cinemas, meeting under Clery's clock, buying engagement rings at The Happy Ring House, witnessing motorcades such as the Apollo XIII coming down the street, the heyday of film stars staying at the Gresham, and scandals and murders on the street.
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1
REVIEWS FOR NICOLA PIERCE
Titanic: True Stories of Her Passengers, Crew and Legacy ‘A delightful book and a valuable resource in the Titanic canon’ RTÉ.ie
‘Everything by the master historical storytelling Nicola Pierce is sublime’ Writer and art historian Anne Louise Avery
Spirit of the Titanic ‘Gripping, exciting and unimaginably shattering’ The Guardian
Chasing Ghosts ‘A fascinating story about Arctic exploration, full of historical detail and interesting characters. Perfect for readers with adventure in their hearts’Irish Independent
‘There are two stories to Chasing Ghosts … equally vivid and gripping. Pierce has a gift for putting readers at the heart of important moments in history’Books for Keeps
Kings of the Boyne ‘The research into the Battle of the Boyne seeps through with unfading accuracy. The writing is utterly superb. Though it was over 300 years ago the reader is there. An incredible reading experience’ Fallen Star Stories
Behind the Walls ‘History as it really happened with its gritty depiction of the terror-struck city of Derry in 1689 … a vivid evocation of life in a city under siege’parentsintouch.co.uk
City of Fate ‘Will hook you from the start … historical fiction at its best’ The Guardian
‘A compelling novel’ Robert Dunbar, Irish Times
3
Dedication
Most of this book was written in lockdown and, because I live in Drogheda, I have not stood on O’Connell Street since March 2020. My last author event was in Eason’s just before the schools closed. Would this be a different book without Covid-19? However, a new year brought renewed hope and vaccines.
I would like to dedicate this book to those we lost and to those who fought to keep us safe.
Acknowledgements
This was one of those ‘middle of the nights’ ideas and I firstly want to thank The O’Brien Press for allowing me bring it to fruition.
I’m neither a historian nor researcher and, therefore, relied on the expertise of others in certain matters. I am particularly grateful to James and Lillie Connolly’s grandson Seán Connolly, historian Ronan Fitzpatrick, writer and curator of the An Post Museum Stephen Ferguson, biographer and researcher Eleanor Fitzsimons, Graham Hickey from the Dublin Civic Trust, Peter McDowell from McDowell’s Happy Ring House, writer and historian Sinéad McCoole and editor Rachel Pierce for helping me with my various enquiries. Thanks also to Naomi Ní Chíreabháin from Conradh na Gaeilge for her advice.
I want to thank freelance press photographer Gareth Cheney for going to O’Connell Street to take photographs when I was locked down in Drogheda by Covid-19.
Thanks also to publisher Mary Feehan for her generosity regarding a photograph from the Mercier Press archive, and John Sheahan for allowing us to include the photograph of his grand-uncle, Patrick Sheahan.
And thanks to publisher Anthony Farrell for his generosity regarding a photograph from the Lilliput Press archive, and to author Peter Costello for sharing his sources and images from his research on Clerys and Denis Guiney.
Other folk who kindly helped me source photographs are Breeda Brennan from RTÉ Archives, Riccardo Cepach from Museo Sveviano in Trieste, James Harte from the National Library, Colum O’Riordan from the Irish Architectural Review, Lynn McDonnell from the Department of Local Housing, Government and Heritage Photo Archive, James Grange Osbourne from Independent News and Media and Glenn Dunne from the National Library.
As always, I am indebted to designer and artist Emma Byrne. She has designed most of my books, and her email containing her gorgeous cover was, once again, a marvellous boost on a day when I really needed to believe that the end was in sight and that there would be a finished book.
My editor of the last ten years Susan Houlden was her usual incredible self. This is our seventh book together and it has been a privilege to have her fulfil several roles as guide, teacher and supporter. I cannot thank her enough for all her help. This was a challenging book to put together and she was with me every step of the way.
Finally, credit must to go to my husband Niall Carney for listening to me talk about O’Connell Street for the last year or so.
Contents
8
O’Connell Street has proved itself as the prime location for momentous events in Ireland’s history.
Author’s Note
I have always believed that O’Connell Street tells the story of Ireland. Throughout its transformation from dirt path to the main thoroughfare of the capital city, O’Connell Street took centre stage, time and time again.
In 2016, retired architects Klaus Unger and Stephen Kane gave a lecture about O’Connell Street in Rathmines Library, in which they described its disentanglement from the warren that was medieval Dublin to establishing itself as the prime location for the momentous events of Ireland’s twentieth-century history, beginning with the 1922 funeral of revolutionary and politician Michael Collins. Other events named were 1923’s heavyweight boxing championship, that took place in La Scala Theatre, the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, the 1963 motorcade for President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s visit, not to mention several decades of St Patrick’s Day parades.
However, plenty of historic moments had been played out before Michael Collin’s funeral cortège slowly made its way down Sackville Street.
The architects pinpointed the street’s first appearance on a map in 1728 when it was known as Drogheda Street. It was renamed Sackville Street in the 1740s by the new landowner Luke Gardiner who, over the next twenty years, oversaw the realisation of his vision that transformed the street into something very beautiful and beloved by seventeenth-century aristocracy and Victorian Anglo-Irish. They clamoured to buy up the newly built lavish houses, appreciating the area’s architectural resemblance to London.
In 1814, Sackville Street saw the opening of a new General Post Office, in recognition of a growing population and economy. Just over one hundred years later, poet and headmaster Pádraig Pearse and his comrades chose this ornate building to make their stand for Irish freedom during the 1916 Easter Rising. How many soldiers lost their lives on this street?
Trade unionist James Larkin took to the balcony of the Imperial Hotel, unleashing hell one Sunday afternoon in 1913. Seven years after that, 11another dreadful Sunday in Irish history began with two shootings in the Gresham Hotel. Within a couple of years, the fires of battle returned, thanks to a civil war that, before it burnt out, wrapped itself around the hotels on O’Connell Street.
History is not buildings nor streets – at least, not by themselves. They only become important according to who they accommodate. So, history is people, and this street had a full cast: the very rich and the very poor – doctors, sculptors, architects, actors, writers, tailors, jewellers, booksellers, hoteliers, revolutionaries and lots and lots of traffic. In the 1990s, it even had its very own dancer in the always immaculate Mary Dunne who didn’t care what anyone thought as she dipped and swayed to music only she could hear, the brightest smile on O’Connell Street. She told someone that she hated the Spire being built.
In his compelling A Reluctant Memoir, Irish artist Robert Ballagh (b. 1943) mentions an RTÉ interview with newspaper and business tycoon Gerry McGuinness (1939–2018) – whose working life began as house manager of the Carlton Cinema on O’Connell Street – in which McGuinness proposed that all the statues on O’Connell Street be torn down and replaced with modern Irish heroes, that is, his fellow businessmen: Michael Smurfit, Ben Dunne and Tony O’Reilly. Ballagh disagreed with McGuinness’s list but was propelled to consider who he felt should be celebrated, which is how his portrait of the former Minister for Health Noel Browne (1915–97) came about.
For my part, I can only hope that, by the time someone else writes another book about O’Connell Street, there will be statues commemorating Irish women.
Nicola Pierce
12
The restored chapter house of St Mary’s Abbey.
Chapter One
A Brief Summary
ST MARY’S ABBEY
In perhaps its earliest guise, O’Connell Street was part of a vast estate belonging to St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin’s first Norse Christian foundation.
The Annals of Dublin record, for the year 1139, the founding of the Savigniac (Benedictine) Abbey of St Mary. The building was lauded as one of the finest in Dublin and its guesthouse the one favoured by important visitors to the city. Eight years later, it was taken over by Cistercian monks and, in 1156, was established as a daughter house (a dependant) of the Cistercian – formerly Savigniac – Buildwas Abbey in Shropshire, with the declaration (translated from Latin):
We commit and submit to you and house the care and disposition of our house of St Mary, Dublin, to be held in perpetuity.
The abbey proved a lucrative business thanks to its approximately 30,000 acres that spread out from the river Liffey to the Tolka, incorporating Grangegorman, Glasnevin and parts of County Meath, after King Henry 14II (1133–1189) visited Dublin in 1172 and gave St Mary’s ‘all the land of Clonlliffe as far as the Tolka’. Over a hundred houses, rented out to tenants, provided a steady income, while the abbey’s own private quay and harbour allowed the monks to trade very successfully in salmon as well as produce from the acres of farmland. Furthermore, they ran a hostelry for medieval tourists. It also housed the biggest library in Ireland. Quite quickly, the abbey became the wealthiest religious house in Ireland.
Disaster hit temporarily in 1304 when a fire destroyed a number of buildings, including the church and belfry. However, the monks could afford to rebuild whatever was necessary, although many of the city’s records were lost. Christine Casey, in her book The Buildings of Ireland, refers to the Abbey’s cartularies (legal documents), from the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, as being full of details about the numerous and grand buildings. Government papers were stored in the Abbey in the fifteenth century and, because there were no government buildings in Ireland, it also provided the location for the meetings of the Irish Privy Council, senior advisors to the king or his representative.
A more serious disaster occurred in 1539, when King Henry VIII (1491–1547) dissolved the big monasteries, paying off the abbots and monks whilst confiscating all their properties and businesses. In hindsight, this was inevitable considering that the abbey was making over £500 a year, drawing the biggest income in Ireland and the third biggest between Britain and Ireland. Compare that to the annual £195 allotted to the treasurer of Dublin.
The library was quickly dispersed and mostly lost to Ireland. However, one manuscript, produced in the Abbey in the fourteenth century, went on sale in 2014. This was the first public sale of a medieval manuscript in a hundred years and Trinity College, determined to have it, put out a call for donations to aid them in their mission. They were overwhelmed by the generous response they received, including from strangers, which 15enabled them to place the winning bid at the Christie’s auction and bring the manuscript ‘home’ to Ireland in 2015. It is made up of several writings, including those of the Norman archdeacon and historian Gerald of Wales’s (1146–1223) The History and Topography of Ireland. He first visited Ireland in 1183 and clearly found himself much inspired, as when asked by an appreciative reader, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury (1125–1190), about his research methods, Gerald replied that he had merely relied on God’s grace, which may explain various liberties taken regarding facts and figures.
Stephen Conlin artist’s impression of St Mary’s Abbey, c. 1450.
Today all that remains of St Mary’s Abbey is the twelfth-century chapter house (meeting room), a vaulted room beneath Meetinghouse Lane, off Capel Street. The room was rebuilt with strict adherence to its original detail thanks to the OPW (Office of Public Works). It is a hidden gem and is open to visitors. 16
In 1610, James I granted the land to Henry King, who held it for nine years. Following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, when Charles II (1630–1685) returned from exile in Europe, the estate was passed on in perpetuity to the 1st Earl of Drogheda, Henry Moore (d. 1676). Henry, who was made Governor of Drogheda in 1660 and, the following year, was created Earl of Drogheda, moved into the Abbot’s House and drew up plans to develop the area. Clearly wishing to be remembered, Henry had new streets laid out and named accordingly: Henry Street, Moore Street, Earl Street (now North Earl Street) and Drogheda Street. The land stayed in the Moore family for the next two generations until the death of the 3rd Earl of Drogheda, Henry’s youngest son, also Henry (1660–1714), brought about the sale of the estate by Moore’s trustees to Irish property developer Luke Gardiner (c. 1690–1755).
ALICE MOORE
Drogheda Street, the future O’Connell Street, made its first appearance on a map in 1728. Mostly residential, the street, which was typically narrow and short, was more of a lane and did not extend to the River Liffey. However, the street underwent a complete transformation in 1749 thanks to Luke Gardiner who ended up owning practically the entire area on the south side of the Liffey, as far as Fleet Street, following Sir Henry Moore’s death in 1714. The names will be familiar, of course, but the story of Gardiner’s acquisition begs to be told.
Rocque’s map of 1756 shows the The Mall down the middle of the then Sackville Street and the many Georgian houses with long back gardens that filled Upper Sackville Street.
17Like most things, it began with a woman. Alice Moore (c. 1622–1677) was Henry’s sister, and in 1667 she married the 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil, Lord Henry Hamilton (1647–1675). Henry’s hugely wealthy relatives were not in favour of the marriage, although Alice is described in their family records as ‘very handsome, witty and well bred’ just before she is declared immoral for entertaining all manner of men in her home, and bitterly criticised for her expensive tastes that almost bankrupted poor, besotted Henry. Three years later, in April 1670, a son was born, James, who lived barely two months before dying on 13 June.
Alice, it seems, was not content to be merely linked via marriage to Lord Henry’s property because she convinced him to draw up a new will, making her the sole beneficiary. Henry’s mother tried to caution him, warning that if he did what Alice wanted, he would end up prematurely lying beside his deceased father and brother. Henry should have listened to his mother. He died on 12 January 1675, leaving Alice fabulously rich and under suspicion of poisoning her husband in order to nab his estates. According to the family records, Henry died three months after changing his will and, furthermore, was disembowelled five hours after taking his last breath, just before a private burial in Christ Church. However, in an essay on seventeenth-century women in Louth, local historian Harold O’Sullivan points out that Henry’s new will was dated 27 March 1674, ten months before he died in January 1675. The Hamilton family records are definitely far from objective; they really disliked Alice. In truth, we will never know if she was responsible for her husband’s untimely death.
Her in-laws moved quickly to stymy her inheritance, claiming that an earlier will, written up by Henry’s father, was the only valid document regarding the family property. Alice hung in, and a lengthy, expensive court case ensued, made especially more expensive when Alice sought to bribe anyone who might be of use to her. Her father, Henry, died almost a year to the day after her husband Henry, on 11 January 1676. That same year 18Alice married again, this time to Scottish widower John Hamilton, 2nd Lord Bargeny (c. 1640–1693), but her new husband’s brand of politics and hatred for King Charles II cost her a fortune. A payment of 50,000 merks (a Scottish silver coin) was made, either as a bribe or fine, to the king on 11 May 1680, to keep Bargeny out of jail. Furthermore, it cannot have been a good relationship since, following her own death in 1677, Alice left everything to her brother Henry, including the ongoing campaign for the Hamilton estate, which would result in seventeen more years of litigation. Henry proved as stubborn as his sister and, consequently, in 1681, spiralling legal costs obliged him to mortgage his estate to fellow developer Luke Gardiner. Finally, Alice’s court case was concluded in the Hamiltons’ favour. In other words, when her brother Henry died in 1714, Luke Gardiner inherited his property and a new age was born.
LUKE GARDINER
In The Best Address in Town: Henrietta Street, Dublin and its First Residents, 1720–80 Melanie Hayes provides an engaging portrait of Luke Gardiner (c. 1690–1755). A self-made man, details about his early years are scant and, therefore, presumed humble. His father was either James Gardiner, from the Coombe, or merchant William Gardiner. Initially, it was believed that Luke began his working life as a footman for Mr White in Leixlip Castle. However, this has been disputed by historians who find this too fantastic considering his exceptional prowess with figures and paperwork. It is more reasonable to assume that he must have been a secretary or clerk of some kind.
Luke Gardiner, a man with a vision.
One of his earliest employers was John South, an English commissioner of the revenue in Ireland, who probably got him his first revenue post in 1708. From there, Gardiner worked his way up to secretary of the Dublin Ballast Office, before being promoted to hearths tax inspector (house owners were taxed on the number of fireplaces they had).
He married well, which suggests that he was accumulating wealth that 20afforded him to move in aristocratic circles. This surely explains his marrying the fourteen-year-old niece of a viscount, the Honourable Anne Stewart (1697–1753) in 1711. The following year, he opened up his own bank with the Right Honourable Arthur Hill (c. 1694–1771), which had a successful run until 1738 when Gardiner decided to concentrate on politics.
By this stage, he had a stream of positions and titles to his name, including his 1722 appointment as trustee of the Royal Barracks (now Collins Barracks). As a patron of Dublin’s art and culture scene, he joined all kinds of boards and public bodies, which served to expand his social standing in the community and resulted in his inviting lord lieutenants to dine with him.
Success followed him wherever he went. His entrance into politics in 1723, becoming MP for Tralee and then Thomastown, culminated in his taking a seat on the Privy Council in 1737.
His first excursion into real estate involved buying up land around the South Lotts, in 1712. The North and South Lotts were reclaimed marshlands that had been created with the embankment of the River Liffey in 1711. What followed over the next forty years was a string of property deals that saw him acquiring tracts of land either side of the Liffey. The enormous acquisition of the Moore estate put him into debt, and Melanie Hayes surmises that this was why he did not develop the land for another twenty years.
Hayes portrays him as an indulgent parent to his four surviving children, two sons and two daughters. Neither son showed much interest in business, though they enjoyed the life of luxury provided by their father. However, Luke’s grandson, and namesake, Luke (1745–1798), would continue on with his grandfather’s work.
A man of vision and creativity, Gardiner set out between 1748 and 1750 to develop Upper Drogheda Street, which was, at that time, a narrow, dingy street. He tore down the houses on its west side in order to widen the street 21to over 150 feet (45.7 metres), making it twice the width of neighbouring streets. Next, he built approximately 400 houses, big and small, around the upper end of Sackville Street, from Henry Street to Parnell Square, and would have liked to extend this development as far as the Liffey but he did not own any property south of Sackville Street. At this time, the street was closed at the south end with no direct way through to College Green. In 1750, he built a 890-yard (814-metre) long, 492-foot (150-metre) wide mall, enclosed by a 4-foot (1.21-metre) wall, down its centre. This enclosed promenade was for ladies and gentlemen who wished to take exercise in safety from the potential dangers of carriage wheels or runaway horses. Initially, the game of mall would have been played here, whereby players, equipped with a heavy wooden mallet, hit a small ball through an iron hoop. The winner achieved this with the fewest hits. When the game fell out of fashion, trees were planted to fill out the space. The tree-lined mall was decorated with obelisks, globes and lamps that must have made it a pretty sight on a winter’s evening.
Gardiner had created a prestigious private estate.
SACKVILLE STREET AND THE WIDE STREETS COMMISSION
Signalling a new era, Gardiner changed the name Drogheda Street to Sackville Street in the late 1740s in tribute to English aristocrat Lionel Sackville (1688–1765), two-times lord lieutenant of Ireland and the 1st Duke of Dorset. He also named one of his sons Sackville (d. 1796), which suggests that the families were close. Meanwhile, the new houses that he built were being eagerly claimed by the best sort of people, the upper class, professional men and members of parliament; for example, the architect and Deputy Ranger of the Phoenix Park, Nathaniel Clements (1707–1777), who built a Ranger’s Lodge for himself in the park, which has since become Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the President of Ireland. 22
Lionel Sackville (1688–1765), two-times Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
23Other prominent Sackville neighbours included Alderman Richard Dawson, a prosperous banker, revenue commissioner and MP for Kilkenny, who lived in a splendid mansion that encompassed numbers nine and ten, with highly decorative rococo interiors and statues of eagles on its roof. When he died in 1766, his son sold his house for £5,000 to Charles Moore, 6th Earl of Drogheda (1730–1822), who racked up fierce gambling debts as a member of the elitist Hellfire Club, a social club for rich, pleasure-seeking young men. His new house became known as Drogheda House, and Charles may have appreciated the stone eagles on the parapet as a discreet nod to his social life, considering that the Eagle Tavern in Cork Street was the favourite meeting place for the Hell Fire crowd.
Charles’s famous ancestor, Henry Moore, the 1st Earl of Drogheda and 3rd Viscount Moore, had previously built himself a mansion between Earl Street and today’s Cathedral Street.
Another neighbour was MP of Randalstown John Dunn, whose private art collection included The Holy Family by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640).
In 1750, MP for Louth Henry Bellingham (c. 1713–1755) and his wife Margaret Henry moved into number 18 Sackville Street, which was designed by Richard Cassels. Mrs Bellingham outlived her husband and died in April 1764, after which the house became the town residence for Peter Browne, 2nd Earl of Altamont (c. 1731–1780), an Irish landowner and MP. He was clearly a wealthy man since he kept fifteen servants in his Sackville Street house, which was five more than most other houses. This is where the English writer Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) stayed on his visit to Dublin, just before the rebellion in 1798 and his breakout success in 1821 with his addiction memoir, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
One of the houses destined to become part of the original Gresham Hotel was home to Sir Thomas Yeates, who assisted the master and surgeon Dr Bartholomew Mosse in the Rotunda. Its interior was reputed to be the most beautiful in the city and one of the most social, hosting the best parties. 24
Lady Catherine Netterville (1712–1784) moved into Sackville Street in 1771. Four years later, eight or nine armed men broke in and abducted her granddaughter Catherine Blake. A reward was offered for her safe return and the story ended well as young Catherine went on to marry Anthony Atkinson (d. 1815). Furthermore, on 27 March 1771, a warrant was issued for the arrest of a James Mulcail Moore, alias James Mulhall, and companions, for ‘forcibly carrying away’ Catherine from her grandmother’s home.
The abduction appears in the 1907 book The Story of Dublin, by historian David Alfred Chart, who uses it to highlight the inefficiency of the city’s community watch.
The July 1957 edition of the Dublin Historical Record series includes an essay by Mrs JF Daly, entitled ‘O’Connell Bridge and Its Environs’. She references the eighteenth-century journal, the Dublin Chronicle, of May 1787, which tells of an enormous statue of Neptune (the Roman God of the Sea) that was presented to Sackville, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Plans were submitted for the construction of a fountain in Sackville Street and the statue was to be a feature. Furthermore, in October 1787, a meeting was held to discuss the possibility of having a statue of the River God created for Sackville Street. It was not to be as the council could not reach an agreement on its design or location.
However, the fountain was built where the Parnell Monument stands today. In 1789, a guide to Dublin was published in which the author, Lewis, describes the fountain as ‘elegant’ and ‘remarkable’. It lasted until 1807 when the Pavement Commission had it removed following several accidents during the winter months when the residual water iced over, making the area hazardous for pedestrians and horses alike.
In their lecture about O’Connell Street, architects Klaus Unger and Stephen Kane used the word ‘amenity’ to summarise Gardiner’s Sackville creation, referring to the street’s unique look thanks to the houses differing in size and appearance. They quote Irish architectural historian Maurice 25Craig (1919–2011), who described Gardiner’s mall as an ‘elongated square’ because the residents would have enjoyed complete privacy from the rest of the city and its inhabitants.
The houses were like showpieces for their owners as their exteriors conveyed grandeur, hinting at the riches within. One house which has survived from this time, number 42 Upper O’Connell Street, allows the architects to point out the use of Portland stone and decorative touches around the front door that provide an immediate ‘impression of elegance’. The need for another bridge became obvious once those grand houses filled up in Upper Sackville Street. Several of the new residents were parliamentarians and were obliged to make a long detour to cross over the Liffey at Essex Bridge in order to reach Parliament House in College Green.
Later on, the Wide Streets Commissioners, established in 1757, added their own improvements, opening up the south end of Sackville Street and extending it to meet the new Carlisle Bridge (now O’Connell Bridge) that replaced a ferry in the 1790s.
Indeed, the travel writer John Bush, whose book Hibernia Curiosa was based on his tour of Ireland in 1764, and included his complaints about heavy drinking and shambolic public transport, believed that had Sackville Street stretched all the way to the river, it would easily be one of the most beautiful streets in Europe. In any case, it was the first boulevard built in Ireland and the British Isles.
The names of the gentlemen commissioners will be familiar to those with an interest in Dublin’s history: Arran, Burgh, Clanbrassil, Kildare, Leinster and so on, all bound together by an interest in architecture, wealth and a desire to beautify the capital city according to their tastes which were largely inspired by Paris and London. In fact, they had a map of London on the wall of their meeting room. Nothing impeded their vision. For instance, the first street they worked on, now Parliament Street, was home to some folk who had changed their mind about selling up and moving out. 26Most were in bed when the commissioners’ demolition team arrived. First thing the residents knew about it was when the roofs were torn from their houses, sending them running outside, in the belief that the city was under attack – which in a way it was, albeit in the name of progress.
The commissioners had the law on their side, with several acts of parliament extending their powers to do as they saw fit, including a 1790 Act that actually regulated the proper style in which a house was to be built; that is, it was to blend in with the neighbours. Thanks to them, Sackville Street was rejuvenated, not least because of its new status as an integral part of the rite of passage from the Rotunda Hospital all the way to St Stephen’s Green. Three of the commissioners were also governors of the hospital, resulting in its own transformation that included a new entrance specifically designed to be seen from Sackville Street.
Gary A Boyd in his book Dublin, 1745–1922 writes that some saw the commissioners’ redevelopment of Sackville Street as proof of an underlying desire to create an elite and separate Protestant city within the city of Dublin. The architecture, the newly arranged streets of like-minded neighbours that were now linked without obstacle, along with the likes of Gardiner’s Mall, reflected the wealth and culture of its dominant resident, the affluent and influential Protestant. Is it coincidental that during this time the word ‘Ascendancy’ was now applied to the Anglo-Irish ruling class? Irish merchant and Catholic radical John Keogh (1740–1817) quipped that one could recognise a Catholic Dubliner from how he ‘slunk’ up a street that probably felt alien to him. In any case, the commissioners did what they set out to do. When the artist James Malton visited Dublin in the late 1790s, he declared Sackville Street to be ‘the noblest street in Europe, inhabited by persons of the first rank and opulence’.
Following the Act of Union in 1800 and the termination of the Irish Parliament, Ireland would now be ruled from Westminster, a number of aristocratic residents sold up and moved back to London. 27
Sackville Street, c. 1750s, by James Malton.
Twelve years later, nineteen-year-old poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), an English aristocrat, his sixteen-year-old wife, Harriet (1796–1816) and her twenty-nine-year-old sister, Eliza, arrived in Sackville Street on 12 February, determined to rouse the natives into throwing off their colonial shackles. The Shelleys abhorred their country’s harsh record regarding Ireland. Making their home on the first floor of 7 Sackville Street (now the Bank of Ireland), Shelley went in search of a printer for his pamphlet, ‘An address to the Irish People’. Impatient to be of service to the working class, he flung copies of his address from the window of his lodgings as well as posting it to all important persons and having bundles of it delivered to local pubs and coffee houses. 28
Percy Bysshe Shelley lived on Sackville Street for two months in 1812.
In her essay, ‘The Shelleys in Ireland’, biographer Eleanor Fitzsimons provides several reasons for Shelley’s devotion to Ireland, including the fact that he had been a neighbour of Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s (1763–98) half-sister in Sussex. Irish parliamentarian, and United Irishman, Fitzgerald had helped organise the 1798 rebellion but was fatally wounded mid-arrest the night before it was to take place. The only Irish person to take Shelley seriously was Catherine Nugent (b. 1771–1847), a seamstress who had taken part in the rebellion. An ardent and committed nationalist, Nugent had read Shelley’s pamphlet and arrived at number 7 Sackville Street to acquaint herself with its author. She and Harriet would become firm friends, while she encouraged Percy to branch out from his fixation with the lower classes and endeavour to win the minds of Dublin’s intellectuals.
In any case, he accomplished little, being out of step with those who mattered. His pamphlet was too long and found patronising in tone, whilst his warnings to steer clear of the demon drink were not appreciated. The poet and his family returned to England two months later, frustrated by their inability to affect any kind of change but proud that they had at least tried.
When poet Oliver St John Gogarty’s Galway home, Renvyle House, was burnt to the ground during Ireland’s Civil War, he reflected upon its loss in 29his memoir, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street, remembering the variety of guests he hosted, from the Welsh artist Augustus John (1878–1961) to William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) and that the house was haunted. One night, Evan Morgan, a Welsh psychic, along with six others saw the ghost of Percy Shelley ‘with his long, white open neck, high forehead, chestnut hair and aquamarine eyes’.
There is, it seems, always unfinished business for those who love Ireland.
In 1813, the popular Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) records her guests’ comments about Dublin. Wealthy industrialist and philanthropist Joseph Strutt (1765–1844), from Derbyshire, thought Dublin to be far prettier than London.
Two years later, in 1815, another visitor to Sackville Street, William Gregory, complimented the street for its resemblance to London, writing that ‘a stranger from that city might imagine he was in London’.
The grandeur of the GPO and Nelson’s Pillar is emphasised by the unpaved street in this early photograph.
30Gary A Boyd suggests that the construction of the GPO and Nelson’s Pillar, which happened after the 1800 Act of Union, was a discreet act of imperialism. Yes, they were very beautiful but, in reality, the post office was built to house British administration, while Nelson had no connections to Ireland. Early nineteenth-century Sackville Street, he feels, even as it bloomed with these marvellous additions, was celebrating Dublin losing its status as an Irish capital city and, therefore, becoming something less than that.
An intriguing description of Luke Gardiner’s Mall appeared in a society paper in August 1809:
Here the rich and the poor and the giddy of each sex resort – here they take the dust by way of taking the air, straining their eyes to gaze at Nelson.
That mention of the ‘poor’ is a reminder of those others who lived within walking distance of MPs and bankers. Dublin was a busy city after all. In his article about prostitution on 1870s Grafton Street, historian Donal Fallon quotes from a letter written to the Freeman’s Journal at the time, in which the author suggests a solution that worked well the previous summer on Sackville Street, whereby six men from G-Division (Dublin’s intelligence police) should patrol Grafton Street between four and six o’clock every day.
By 1850, Sackville Street was undergoing another transformation as more businesses moved in and erected gaudy shopfronts to advertise their wares, thus dismantling Gardiner’s, and the Wide Streets Commissioners’, original vision of a united front of grand houses. One consequence of this was that the street felt more inclusive and so the beggars now frequented the street, while prostitutes solicited their wares beneath the portico of the GPO.
In the late 1800s an earnest attempt was undertaken to ‘make’ Dublin 31more Irish. Dublin Corporation turned its attention to Sackville Street, voting in 1884 to rename it in honour of Daniel O’Connell. However, irate residents put a stop to this plan with a court injunction. Twenty-seven years later, the corporation succeeded in renaming Rutland Square and Great Britain Street after Charles Stewart Parnell. More of the same would only occur following independence in 1921 and, incredibly, three more years would pass before Sackville Street became O’Connell Street.
LONG-RUNNING RETAIL HISTORY
In his 2001 essay about Sackville Street, geographer Doctor Joseph Brady is critical of the street both then and now, claiming that it lost something when it was widened and joined up with the south part of the city. He offers the year 1911 as a highlight in the street’s history, thanks to the likes of Clery’s Department Store and Eason’s, alongside a variety of businesses on Lower Sackville Street such as chemists, opticians and The Happy Ring House jewellers. Many of these shops had an upmarket sibling branch on Grafton Street in recognition that there were two types of customers, northside and southside. Hotels included the Metropole, the Waverley, the Grand and the Imperial Hotel, which shared a building with Clery’s.32
Findlater’s headquarters at 28–32 Sackville Street.
The Christmas rush, Findlater’s, in the 1960s.
33Upper Sackville Street might have appeared sedate in comparison, with fewer retail outlets aside from Tyler’s shoe shop at number 1, which makes its first appearance in Thom’s Official Directory in 1902, and Lawrence photographic studio at numbers 5–7, which opened opposite the GPO in March 1865. More than a few doors away, at numbers 28–32, was Findlater’s headquarters, their large anchor shop, to which was added, in 1927, a delicatessen and a confectionary. Established in 1774, they sold imported teas, wine, beers and spirits that were stored in large cellars beneath Sackville Street. It is interesting to note that John Head, who worked there for thirty years before becoming a senior partner, chose to live on the southside of the city, renting different houses in the Leeson Street area. The consummate shopper was obliged to go to Henry Street because Upper Sackville Street had little to offer apart from financial institutions such as the Northern and Royal Bank and insurance companies. Other inhabitants were social clubs like the Sackville Street Club and a range of religious societies including the Presbyterian Association, the Catholic Truth Society and the Hibernian Bible Society. Hotels-wise, the Gresham and the Hamman were the best known but only the Gresham would survive the Civil War. Until then, however, the Hamman Hotel boasted about their in-house Turkish Baths.
Other businesses included A&R Thwaites & Company, who claimed to have invented soda water. Set up in 1799, at number 57, this company may also have instigated the first example of recycling when they advertised paying two shillings for every dozen returned bottles.
O’CONNELL STREET TODAY
Over two hundred years later, the street is looking tired and neglected. In 2019 plans were submitted to redevelop Upper O’Connell Street and its empty, some derelict, buildings. Ironically, it is a UK property company, Hammerson, who were given approval to transform waste ground beside the Carlton unit. Their plans for the upper part of O’Connell Street also stretch back to Moore Street. They are working with three Irish architect firms, Grafton, MOLA and RKD, and plans include restoring number 42, the last Georgian building to survive on the street. Built in the 1750s, its original owner was former State Physician Robert Robinson (1713–70), who, as Professor of Anatomy in Trinity College, had his students discreetly crash a wake in order to rob the corpse for class. The deceased was the Tipperary giant Cornelius Magrath (1736–60), and Robinson had chosen him as he longed to dissect a figure with such a massive frame. 34
Number 42 Upper O’Connell Street, the last remaining Georgian house, now a protected building.
35Mindful of the surrounding area’s role in 1916, Hammerson also plan to create a historical trail about The Rising, as part of their effort to change yet preserve the historical context of O’Connell and Moore Streets.
The closing of Clery’s was a crucial loss to the street but, Covid-19 restrictions aside, construction has begun that will see the building converted into a state-of-the-art multiplex with office and retail space, a hotel and a restaurant. So, while retaining its iconic façade, Clery’s will reopen but in a new way, just like the trams returned to O’Connell Street in 2017, albeit via their thoroughly modern descendant the Luas.
These developments will return long absent people to the area – shoppers, tourists and office workers. Some may worry that O’Connell Street will lose its authenticity, that the modern facelifts aspire to compare favourably with major streets in other capital cities and, perhaps, this is inevitable. But change is needed and surely it is an acknowledgement of the street’s importance that these plans were ever sought?
