Image Credit: Luke Fallon.
Last week we posted an image from Croppies Acre memorial park, which commemorates those who fought in the United Irish rebellion of 1798. The image, showing a pile of used needles, was a pretty good insight into the life of the park today, which has been locked to the public for well over a year owing to anti-social behaviour and drug use. In recent days Luke Fallon climbed the wall and took a series of photographs for us to post on the site here. He was actually knocking around town experimenting with a film camera for something entirely different, but decided to hop into the wall and see if it was as bad as the image posted here made it seem. In his own words, it’s worse. The memorial itself is beautiful however and this post will hopefully give many readers their first glance inside the railings.
As is often the case with monuments to the republicans of the 1790s, the French language appears alongside Irish and English.
Image Credit: Luke Fallon
This interesting little Wolfe Tone memorial below grabbed my attention, as it’s dated to 1898. In the past we looked at Wolfe Tone on the site, and in that post noted that in 1898 a crowd of 100,000 marched to Stephens Green for the laying of a foundation stone for a Wolfe Tone monument. Is this it?
On 15 August 1898, ‘Wolfe Tone Day’, 100,000 people came onto the streets to see the laying of the foundation stone for a monument dedicated to Wolfe Tone. The foundation stone began its journey in Belfast, in many ways the ideological birthplace of Irish republicanism as it was there that the United Irishmen were formed.
Image Credit: Luke Fallon
It’s obvious that the park is actually dangerous in its present state, with needles abandoned in both the walkways and the grass. Along with the presence of human bodily waste, the risks to children, pets and others in the park is huge.
Image Credit: Luke Fallon
Image Credit: Luke Fallon
With so much talk of history at the moment and the centenaries aplenty, it’s an ideal time for the OPW to take control of this park again and open it to the public.
Image Credit: Luke Fallon
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
Comment censored by the commenter.
Ha! Article very much censored by writer too. Fuming isn’t the word.
[…] providing these images, we’ve posted some of his images before on the site (for example the Croppies Acre memorial) and it’s a nice dimension to the blog that looks at Dublin today and not just the historical […]
Hi there, just to confirm that that is indeed the Wolfe Tone foundation stone that used to stand outside where the Fusiliers Arch is now on the Green. It had been in storage in Collins Barracks before being installed in the Croppies Acre in the 1990s. After reading this blog post recently, I checked with an OPW landscape architect who shared this with me. Hope this helps and best wishes.
[…] reason it has been largely behind lock and key. Our own Luke Fallon jumped the wall for a look at the state of things in October 2013, and was shocked by the sight of used needles and more besides. In recent weeks, […]