It may indeed be little but the museum is big on the history of Dublin, with many pictures, drawings and artifacts bringing the story to life. Our tour guide, Trevor, was engaging with those in the group, as he pointed to various items in the collection before telling of their background, and often with a humorous tale to add to its importance.
The museum is ten years old, and many of the exhibits have been donated by Dubliners who wished for them to be seen in such a place. These treasured items – movie posters, road signs, a milk bottle from the 1988 one thousandth year celebration of Dublin’s beginning, and many more – have now found a fine home, and they help ‘flesh out’ the city’s history in a way that is accessible, and fun.
Harry Clarke’s glass is class!
We found out about the history of St Stephen’s Green, its development, and the part it played in the Easter Rising. After a few questions from various group members I was amazed to find out that during the fighting in and around The Green there was a one-hour ceasefire each day during hostilities. What for, we thought, only to find out that the time was used by Park Rangers to feed the local ducks! That, not surprisingly, got a warm response, as did many of the other stories we heard.
There are signed papers by Eamon de Valera, Countess Markievicz and a beautiful piece of stained-glass by Harry Clarke, that shimmered in the sunlight. I noted a key to The Green that a resident would have owned, before the place was bought by Lord Ardilaun (Sir Arthur Guinness) and opened to the public on the 27th July 1880.
You can see photographs of Dublin from over the years, and of many of its native sons and daughters and their contribution to the world of arts, sports and beyond.
He was a man of many talents and was born in 5, Rutland Square (now Parnell Square) on 17th August 1878 the eldest of four children. His father, Henry, was a successful physician and his mother, Margaret, who was from Galway. Henry died when Oliver was eight years old, and he was sent to school in Mungret College in Limerick before transferring to Stonyhurst College in Lancashire which he described as ‘a religious jail’. He returned to Ireland in 1896 and attended Clongowes Wood College, Kildare, before studying medicine in Trinity College, and graduated in 1907. He went to Vienna to finish his studies and specialised in otolaryngology (Ear, Nose & Throat). Later, he had consulting rooms in Ely Place and was a member of staff at the Meath Hospital until he went to America.
Plaque outside 5, Parnell Square East, Dublin
A keen sportsman he enjoyed cricket, football (he played for Bohemians FC) and a fine swimmer who saved four people from drowning. He wrote poetry and his poem Tailteann Ode won a bronze medal at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Among his friends he counted WB Yeats, AE Russell, James Stephens and James Joyce. When Gogarty rented the Martello Tower at Sandycove in 1904 he invited Joyce to stay. He, however, stayed only a few nights, but used the place in the opening scene of Ulysses and immortalised Gogarty in his character Malachi ‘Buck’ Mulligan.
Martello Tower in Sandycove, Dublin
A close friend of Arthur Griffith he was an early member of Sinn Fein, and became a Senator. In 1922 when Griffith died on 12th August 1922 he performed the autopsy, and did the same for Michael Collins who died less than two weeks later.
In 1917 he and his wife Martha Duane, who was from Galway, bought Renvyle, a large house in Connemara. It was burnt down in 1923 but was rebuilt and operates to this day as Renvyle House. He moved to America where he spent his final years, and he died on the 22nd September 1957 in New York. He is buried in Ballinakill cemetery, near Renvyle.
Lavery was born in Belfast on 20th March 1856. His father was an publican who was drowned when his son was only three years old; and not too long afterwards he also lost his mother. Orphaned at such an early age he was raised on a farm north of the city by an uncle, until he was ten years old when he travelled to Scotland where he was cared for by other relatives.
He went to the Haldane Academy and it was his ambition to become a painter and he studied at the Glasgow School of Art. By twenty-three he set-up as an independent artist. In 1888 he won the commission to paint Queen Victoria’s State Visit to the Glasgow International Exhibition. He was then granted a sitting by the Queen and from then on his position as a much sought-after painter was assured.
Lavery married Hazel Trudeau in 1909, although the beautiful Irish American was almost thirty years his junior. During the First World War he, like William Orpen (from Stillorgan, Dublin), was appointed as a war artist by the British Government and he was knighted in 1918, with Hazel becoming Lady Lavery.
During the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations the Laverys lent their home, a palatial residence at 5 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, to the Irish delegation who they often met. Due to his assistance and hospitality the Irish Free State, in 1928, commissioned Lavery to design the artwork for the new banknotes. He painted Hazel as Caithlin ni Houlihan, the female personification of Ireland, and her image was on all notes issued until 1977.
Lavery eventually returned to Ireland and lived in Rossenarra House Kilmoganny, Co. Kilkenny where he died on 10 January 1941, aged 84. He was later interred in Putney Vale Cemetery, London where Hazel had been buried six years earlier.
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