Garden of Remembrance
Posted on October 6, 2006
Filed Under Politics, architecture, chancers, garden, history, pub | 3 Comments
The Garden of Remembrance is located in Parnell Square in Dublin 1. Lots of rallies, demonstrations and marches meet outside it before they make their way down O’Connell Street. It is dedicated to those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom. It is a calm and peaceful place in which to spend a few minutes. The loitering drunks are, well, drunk and just come in a little nap. The tourists are conscious that they’re in inner city Dublin so they keep their voices down as well.
Oddly enough, it’s enclosed on two sides by the Rotunda maternity hospital and on another by a Protestant church. The Hugh Lane modern art museum is squeezed in between the church and a now closed Catholic secondary (high) school, Colaiste Mhuire. The school’s playground was on the roof! The Gate theatre just about manages to stick a corner of itself into the Garden. Across the road from the Garden and the Gate is the now defunct Ierne ballroom.
Heroin ravaged inner city Dublin in the ’80′s and early ’90′s. If you parked your car or bike in the square, there was a 50-50 chance it would still be there when you returned. Women routinely got their handbags robbed when they walked through the area. The Gardai (police) in Fitzgibbon St Station were pretty inefficient (fat b**tards!). The robbers would steal the handbags, run away and take what they wanted, and then dump the bags in Hardwicke Lane. When the women went to report the crime, all the Guards would do was drive the women to the lane to recover their handbags. It took almost 15 years before gates were put on the lane!
My brother was born in the Rotunda while my cousin taught in the secondary school. A friend’s father used to own the Ierne and my parents would have gone there when they were courting. My mother went to school one street over in Dominic Street and she may well have sneaked into the Garden for an illicit cigarette with her friends. A play in the Gate ‘starring’ Mick Lally many years ago was the primary reason why I gave up on theatre as an art form. My uncle stayed in digs (apartment) in Parnell Square when he came up from the country looking for work as a young man. He would have woken up to the Garden every morning. And his wife – a nurse from the Rotunda!
Depending on whether the tribunals are in session, my uncle is/was a huge supporter of Fianna Fail. And where did Dublin City politicans recieve their backhanders and brown envelopes? In Conways pub in the south-western corner of Parnell Square, of course. At the time, the council HQ was on the adjacent O’Connell St, so the politicans just had to walk out of their HQ’s back door, walk up Moore Lane and enter Conway’s through it’s back door. There’s lots of snugs and private corners in Conways. I’m too young to have been there back in the day but if the tribunals want to find out who paid who, they could do worse than look at the till records of the pub from that time. Many a developer’s cheque paid for many an evening’s drinking and carousing! Of course, no favours were asked and none were given!
Such a small parcel of land – it would probably only take 5 minutes to walk the perimeter of Parnell Square. But so much history. I bet many Dubliners could stand in any spot in their neighbourhood and tell tales as they did a 360-degree turn.
What’s your favourite bit of Dublin?
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And lest I forget, there’s also the brilliant (but expensive) Chapter One restaurant and the Dublin Writer’s Museum, which I haven’t visited yet.
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Molly Malone’s statue. Actually I never have been over, I’m coming this spring.
The Molly Malone statue. Hmm! To be honest, it’s quite small and a bit overwhelmed by it’s surroundings. It’s quite small and, if you visit at the wrong time of day, it’ll be in shadow.
Trinity College Dublin and the Provost’s house are right behind it and the National Library is not far away either. I suspect you’ll be visiting both. P.S. TCD libraries can be hard to get into if you’re an outsider so make sure you’ve all your permissions etc approved in advance.
If you’re free for lunch, it would be nice to say ‘hi’.
We say hi once a week
but I’ll pop in. Probably won’t be ’till early spring though now.