James Joyce Bridge

Named after the Dublin author James Joyce whose story “The Dead” is set in No. 15 Usher’s Island, on the south side of the Liffey facing the bridge.

Looking south, with 15 Usher’s Island on the right - taken Jan. 2017

The Joyce Bridge is a single span structural steel design, 40m (131 ft) long, with the deck supported from two outward angled arches, one each side of and above the deck. It is supported on piles in the river and adjacent to the quay walls.

Looking south from Blackhall Place

The deck provides double two-lane vehicular movement in each direction, and a pedestrian walkway is cantilevered from the deck on the outside of angled stringer supports between the deck and arches. This physical barrier between the pedestrians and traffic and the wide walkway (varies from 3 to 6m) are designed to attract people onto the bridge to view the city landscape and the River Liffey. The deck width between railings is 30m (98.5 ft). 

Sketch Design by Santiago Calatrava - Dublin City Council

Santiago Calatrava, the renowned Spanish Architect & Engineer, was appointed to design the bridge in 1998. The contract was commenced in April 2001 for a tender sum of IR£4.4m (€5.6m). Irishenco Construction Ltd were the main contractor and Harland & Wolff of Belfast the steel fabricator. The superstructure was fabricated in Belfast and assembled by welding on a temporary deck in the river.

Looking south, with No. 15 Usher’s Island in the background

Considerable delays were incurred as a result of extended piling due to a buried river and welding complexities with the steel fabrication. As a result, the actual construction time was 26 month with the bridge opening, appropriately on Bloomsday, the 16th June 2003.

Looking south, with No. 15 Usher’s Island in the background

This was one of two Bridges designed by Calatrava for Dublin, the other being the Samuel Beckett bridge, located further downstream, in the docklands.

The Samuel Beckett Bridge, by Santiago Cslatrava. Opened in 2009

Long before a bridge ever spanned the Liffey in this location, things looked very different.

Excerpt from John Rocque’s map of Dublin, 1756

Oxmantown Green, the last of the remaining undeveloped medieval commons in the north-west of the city still survived, with its artillery grounds, associated with the nearby barracks, and bowling green, dating from 1664. Where the Joyce Bridge is now was a small slipway known as the Gravel Walk Slip

View of the city from the Wooden Bridge (Bloody Bridge), 1698, by Francis Place - The National Gallery of Ireland

Intriguingly, we can see in Rocque’s map numerous yards with what looks like timber stacked in them. I can imagine boats arriving here from throughout the country, off-loading timber which would then go on to be used in the construction of Georgian Dublin,

Map of Dublin 1837-42 - Ordinance Survey Ireland

By the mid-19th century the Gravel Walk Slip has been filled-in, and Oxmantown Green had been bisected by Blackhall Place and the associated construction of the Blue Coat Hospital School. The original school, built further east towards Smithfield, was deemed to be in danger of collapsing by the early 1770s. Thomas Ivory, Master of the School of Architectural Drawing in the Dublin Society prepared a set of thirteen drawings in 1776 for a new design. In December 1783, the building was opened and the first boys moved into the school.

The Law Society, Blackhall Place - formally the Blue Coat Hospital School, 1773, by Sir Thomas Ivory

The Commissioners for making Wide and Convenient Ways, Streets and Passages in the City of Dublin was established by an Act of Parliament in 1757. The Commission had extensive powers with the authority to acquire property by compulsory purchase, demolish it, lay down new streets and set lots along the new streets to builders for development.

Plan indicating the proposed extension south of Blackhall Place to the Quays by the Wide Street Commissioners, date unknown - Dublin City Council

The Commission had an enormous influence on the city, creating Parliament Street, Westmoreland Street and D'Olier Street, widening Dame Street, building Carlisle Bridge (now O'Connell bridge), and extending lower Sackville Street (O'Connell) and Blackhall Place south to the Liffey, giving us the present-day street arrangement. The Commission was abolished under the Dublin Improvement Act of 1849 with the final completion of its work in 1851.

Map of Dublin, 1888-1913 - Ordinance Survey Ireland

The addition of the Joyce Bridge made the final connection linking Blackhall Place to the south of the Liffey, sitting right alongside Mellows Bridge, the 'old man of the river', the longest surviving structure of all the Liffey bridges.

Looking west from Mellows Bridge, with the Joyce Bridge in the background

As an aside, on my way home from one of my recent rambles, I spied a fox making its way across…

Parnell Square

Located just to the North of O’Connoll St., Rutland Square (renamed Parnell Square in 1933 in honour of Charles Stewart Parnell who once lived there) was the first Georgian Square in the city, developed between c.1755-1795, as a series of residential terraces enclosing the grounds to the north of the Rotunda Hospital

Excerpt from John Rocque’s 1756 map of Dublin City & Suburbs

It is difficult for us now to imagine just how magnificent Parnell Square once was, before the encroachment of extensions to the Rotunda hospital in the 1940s, and the development of the Garden of Rememberence in the 1960s. Once, at its centre were a bowling green, lantern-lined walks, obelisks, a coffee room and terraces riding up the slope towards an Orchestra at the center of Palace Row, now Parnell Square north.
Undoubtedly it rivalled any of the later Georgian squares on the southern side of the Liffey.

Looking south over Rutland Square - an extract from “Dublin from the spire of St. George’s Church“, by James Mahony 1854 - Dublin Civic Trust

The square came about further to the establishment in 1749 of the New Pleasure Gardens. The gardens, designed by Robert Stevenson, acted as a fundraising enterprise of the Rotunda Hospital’s founder Dr Bartholomew Mosse, who attracted patronage through annual subscriptions and events held in the grounds.

Looking north-east over the Rotunda Gardens, with Findlater’s Church in the background, photographed by Robert French, between 1865 and 1914. The Lawrence Photograph Collection, the National Library of Ireland.

The maternity hospital was designed by the great Richard Castle, and opened on the 8th December 1757, the first charitable lying-in hospital in the country.

Parnell Square South, with the Rotunda on the left & the Parnell monument on the right, at the northern end of O’Connoll St.

Looking south towards O’Connoll Street, with the Parnell Monument in the foreground, unveiled in 1911 and designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, in conjunction with Henry Bacon of McKim, Mead & White and George P. Sheridan.

Half-way down O’Connoll St., directly opposite the GPO is the 120 meter high Spire, designed by Ian Richie, 2001-3

The hospital complex was added to with the construction of the Rotunda entertaining room in 1764 (now the Ambassador) to designs by John Ensor. In 1784 construction began on the Assembly Rooms, to designs by Richard Johnston, now the Gate Theatre.

The entrance to the former Assembly Rooms, now the Gate Theatre, Cavendish Row

The success of the Pleasure Gardens resulted in the development of the surrounding lands, with plots being laid out from the mid-1700s. Soon Rutland Square became one of the city’s most fashionable neighbourhoods. You can read some contemporary descriptions of the area in an interesting article by the Mapping Dubliners Project here

Map from 1837-42, Ordinance Survey Ireland

Map from 1888-1913 - Ordinance Survey Ireland

The townhouses surrounding the square contain some of the best examples of 18th-century interiors and decorative plasterwork in the city, many of which remain largely unaltered since their construction.

Rutland Square West, by James Malton - Dublin City Library & Archive

Parnell Square west, with the Spire in the background

The north-western corner of Parnell Square

Georgian townhouses to the north of Parnell Square west

The huge scale of these houses has allowed many of them to be adapted over time to a variety of uses including hotels, offices, schools and cultural institutions such as the wonderful The Hugh Lane gallery and the Dublin Writer’s Museum.

The entrance to No. 18 Parnell Square north, built by Thomas Sherwood and leased in 1770, now the Dublin Writers Museum

Looking east towards Gardiner Row, with the Dublin Writer’s Museum and Findlater’s Church on the left hand side on Parnell Square north

Looking east along Parnell Square North, formally Palace Row, with the Abbey Presbyterian Church (Findlater’s Church) in the background, 1862-4 by Andrew Heiton

The Hugh Lane Gallery, formally Charlemont House, by William Chambers, 1763. Remodelled as an art gallery in 1931-3 by the City Architect Horace O’Rourke

I hope to get access at some stage to document the interiors of some of these buildings, including the Rotunda itself, and will include them here when I get around to it.

Arial view looking north - Google Earth

Recently a significant amount of work was carried out with the intention to create a Cultural Quarter at Parnell Square, which would see the construction of a new city library, a 200-seat conference centre, a music centre, education facilities and a café and exhibition spaces across the northern end of the square.

Section through the proposed City Library & Parnell Square North - Grafton Architects

The scheme also was to include the creation of a new public plaza at Parnell Square North, and the restoration of some of the finer Georgian houses, including the former Coláiste Mhuire, Christian Brothers school, in what was to be a catalyst for the regeneration of the north inner city.

Arial view of the proposed new plaza at Parnell Square north - Moore Ruble Yudell Architects and Planners

The project, however, seems now to have stalled due to soaring construction costs. There have also been long protracted discussions regarding the construction of a national maternity hospital, and moving the services of the Rotunda elsewhere as part of a re-organisation of maternity services in Dublin.

Proposed new plaza at Parnell Square North - Grafton Architects

Were this to happen, the Rotunda perhaps be adapted to cultural usage and the park area cleared and restored, I could imagine a time where the Georgian splendour of Parnell Square could one day be back on full display.

Super Flower Moon

May’s full moon is known as the Flower Moon, as it’s this time of year that flowers tend to bloom.

Other similarly seasonal names for May's full moon are Corn Planting Moon, Mother's Moon, and Milk Moon, from the Old English Rimilcemona which means Month of Three Milkings, when cows were milked three times a day. It looked like a Grapefruit Moon to me.

Whatever it’s name, it was a beautiful sight.

Big wheel keeps on turning…

Fitzwilliam place

I enjoyed my newly enlarged radius last night with a jaunt along the Grand Canal. This is a panoramic image of Fitzwilliam Place, comprised of six individual photos.

Fitzwilliam Place, from Leeson St. Lower

The building on the left is one I have long admired. No. 28 Fitzwilliam Place was built between 1854-5 to designs by the great Deane & Woodward for Hans Henry Hamilton, a lawyer related to Woodward by marriage.

Detail from above panoramic image at full resolution, indicating Hans Henry Hamilton’s initials in the brickwork

A nice detail to look out for are Hamilton’s initials in the brickwork on the southern elevation.

Stoneybatter

The derivation of the name Stoneybatter is interesting;

In the second century a 'Royal road', one of the five great roads of Ireland, stretched from Tara in Meath to Glendalough in Wicklow, crossing the river Liffey at the Ford of the Hurdles (near the present-day Liam Mellows Bridge).

Liam Mellows Bridge

Liam Mellows Bridge with the Joyce Bridge in the background

Looking north towards the Liam Mellows Bridge & Church St. beyond

Since this road was paved, which was a rarity at the time, it was known in Irish as Bothar-na-gCloch, or 'Road of the Stones'.

Walsh’s, on the corner of North Brunswick Street…back in happier times with the doors open.

Manor Street, with the Glimmerman (formally Lysters) - with its elaborate High Victorian facade, attributed to J. J. O’Callaghan

Georgian terrace on Manor St. - in the right is 83 Manor St., once the home of Austin Clarke, the celebrated Irish poet, now the home and workshop of luthier James Beatley

The corner of Manor St. & Manor Place

This subsequently changed over time, with the influence of the English, to become Stoney-Bothar, itself further corrupted to 'Stoneybatter'.

Kavanagh’s, by George L. O’Connor, 1901

Looking south on Manor Street

A Lazarus soul

A Lazarus Soul played to a packed-out Whelans last night, with a passionate performance that lived up to all the high expectations heaped upon it. They are a band at the very peak of their powers…it was a real pleasure to witness.

Brian Mooney provided support with a beautiful set of tunes, straight from the heart.

Macnas Halloween Parade

My head is still reeling from the experience of walking along the streets of Galway city last night, surrounded by the magic and mischief of Macnas and their ever-incredible Halloween Parade.

What sights and sounds, what a wonderous, magical atmosphere; more than 70,000 men, woman and children lined the streets…transfixed by the otherworldly vision passing by, like some dark cloud at the top of The Magic Faraway Tree.

Huge thanks to Lisa Regan for access, and huge thanks to Macnas for such a show. 🙌

I’ll be adding to this post over the next few days.

Yellow hose

In Liam's cow shed. Mullagh, Co. Cavan

Wolftone Square

 This space originally served as a graveyard for St. Mary’s church. In 1988 it was decided to open its grounds as a public open space. The space was gated and maintained by a caretaker until its redesign in 1998 by Peter Cody to commentate the 200th anniversary of the death of Wolfe Tone

Stacked headstones  

Underneath the bridge

The Liffey Rail bridge, to be precise.

Vertical support by Liberty Hall