Ah… the hidden layers of a city. The Gigs Place, the late night eatery on Richmond Street South closed down to some dismay recently. A contender for one of Dublin’s longest running restaurants it was 42 years young when it closed, having opened in 1970. But before the Gigs Place sat Molly Tansey’s “Mayfair Café” which occupied the spot from 1956 -1969. The building work being done on the building has led to the facade to be recently stripped back, revealing a shopfront from a different era.
I’ve searched and searched online but can find very little about the place, only that it was run by a lady called Molly Tansey from 1956- 1969. Newspaper archives are throwing up nothing and I’ve Googled it to death. Any of our readers remember the place?
This upcoming event from the 1895 Trust is deserving of a plug. The trust is a relatively new fans iniativie at Shelbourne F.C, which serves in its own words as a “democratic, not-for profit organisation working to strengthen the influence of Shelbourne FC fans.” The event is a product of the brilliant and unique links the Supporters Direct organisation are facilitating between different Supporters Trusts in Ireland, the UK and Europe. The event page is here.
As small as Dublin is, and as much of it as I’ve covered traipsing around on my bike, the city never ceases to throw up surprises. Heading off on the bus to Dundalk from Dalymount on Friday evening (a beautiful evening on a hijacked double decker bus, ending in a rubbish defeat and getting home at silly o’clock on Saturday morning,) I spotted some graffiti at the entrance to the lane-way linking St. Peter’s Road with Cabra Park. Heading up for a look this evening, I wasn’t let down, with another trove of street art from some of Dublin’s finest. Sorry for the angles on some of the shots, the alley is so narrow as to make a head on shot impossible!
Hot Press advert for a series of Atrix gigs in the Project Arts Centre in 1980. Credit – u2theearlydayz.com
Irish Times journalist John Fleming has recently uploaded a 30mins broadcast from Dublin New Wave legends The Atrix. Recorded on 14 February 1983 at the Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire, the footage was first broadcast on RTE’s ‘Campus Rock’ on 29 February 1983.
The Atrix was John Borrowman (guitar/vocals), Dick Conroy (bass), Chris Green (keyboards) and Hugh Friel (drums).
Set List:
1. The Life I Lead
2. It’s Taboo
3. Sweet Memory
4. The 11th Hour
5. Treasure On The Wasteland
6. I Wonder Why
7. The Moon Is Puce
8. Procession
Most of the songs (bar The 11th Hour, Treasure On The Wasteland & The Moon Is Puce) come from the band’s album ‘Procession’ which was released on Scoff Records in November 1981.
On 17 February 2013, poet Pat Boran looked at The Atrix on RTE Radio show ‘Sunday Miscellany‘. You can listen to the episode on the excellent ‘Fanning Sessions’ blog here.
In response, an individual called Tony left a comment on the blog:
I was a very close friend of Johns. In fact i was by his side when he died, 15 years ago, here in Copenhagen.
I have copies of his two short movies and his solo album- “Stoned Circle”- which should be in the public domain.
Reply please- I need assistance putting these things out. Permission has been granted by family.
On 12 March, the ‘Fanning Sessions’ blog uploaded John’s solo album ‘Stoned Circle’ which was recorded in Copenhagen in the late 1980s. John passed away in the city in January 1998. You can listen to the album here.
I set up a Facebook page for the band a while back, link here.
A brilliant new Facebook page has emerged recently, entitled ‘Dublin Tenement LIFE’. It has posted a remarkable collection of photographs, primarily showing working class life in inner-city Dublin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of the photos have been collected by the North Inner City Folklore Project, and capture important moments in the history of the city.
The Ha’penny Bridge on the centenary of Catholic Emancipation (Posted by Dublin Tenement LIFE)
Inner-city women and children (Image posted by Dublin Tenement LIFE)
One particular photograph from the 1940s is very interesting for me though, and a bit touching. A relative realised while browsing the pictures that one of them shows the home of my grandmother at Cornmarket, near to the Liberties. I never met my grandmother, but her home can be seen in this image. We know that they had the two front rooms on the left on the first floor. The ones with the painted windows and curtains. Of course, this is all demolished now, but it’s a great image to have.
Cornmarket. (Image posted by ‘Dublin Tenement LIFE’
You can find the page here, I recommend liking it for more great photos and stories.
This month marks the 75th anniversary of a very peculiar moment in the history of Baldonnel Aerodrome here in Dublin.
On 18 July 1938, an American aviator by the name of Douglas Corrigan landed in the aerodrome, after a 28 hour flight. This was all particularly unusual as Corrigan had flown off from Brooklyn in New York, supposedly destined for Long Beach, California! Corrigan returned to the United States to massive fanfare in New York City and California, and was honoured with a brilliant New York Post front page, reproduced below.He was only the eleventh person to fly across the Atlantic, and the parade that welcomed him home even surpassed that of Charles Lindbergh.
New York Post coverage of parade in NYC.
Douglas Corrigan was born at Galveston in Texas in 1907, the son of a Construction Engineer. In his younger years, he himself worked as a mechanic of the famed Spirit of St.Louis, the plane that his hero Charles Lindbergh would use to make the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris in May 1927. At the time, Corrigan was working at the Ryan Airlines aircraft manufacturing plant in San Diego. Lindbergh’s success and fame had a huge impact on the young Corrigan.
The plane Corrigan used for his incredible flight across the Atlantic in July 1938 was a nine-year-old Curtiss Robin, well below the standard required to fly across the Atlantic. Corrigan had repeatedly sought permission to fly across the Atlantic, but been refused on the grounds that his plane was considered incapable of such a flight. Indeed, Corrigan’s plane was in such a condition that authorities were even reluctant to allow him to fly back to California in it. As Mary Maher noted in an article on the fiftieth anniversary of the flight, it was said at the time that “the pilot had no radio, no parachute, and had overloaded his nine-year-old plane by half a ton. He’d wired himself into the cockpit with a few boxes of chocolate and fig bars, and when he discovered the knob had fallen off the cabin door, he closed it with some more wire hooked around a nail.”
The fact he had requested permission to fly across the Atlantic of course made his story of ‘accidentally’ ending up in Dublin a little suspect. Corrigan claimed that he misread his compass by watching the wrong end of the needle, and therefore headed east instead of west.
Newspaper coverage of Corrigan’s arrival noted that the nine-year-old plane Corrigan arrived in was “tied up with wire” and that “Mr. Corrigan stepped smiling from his machine at Baldonnel and was surrounded by a group of Army air officials, who were entirely mystified by his appearance. He explained what had happened and was taken to the officers’ mess, where he had a meal.”
Wrong Way Corrigan and the plane that brought him to Dublin from New York.
It was reported that after being questioned by Customs and Army officials at Baldonnel, Corrigan was taken to meet John Cudahy, then the U.S Minister to Ireland. Thanks to Cudahy, Corrigan was also introduced to Eamonn De Valera, then Taoiseach, as well as his two aviation experts John Leyden and John Walsh. Corrigan became something of a celebrity in Dublin, mobbed by autograph hunters in Dublin city centre, and even received by President Hyde at the Áras. This presidential reception attracted huge international media attention, with one American newspaper noting that:
Ireland’s new president honoured America’s new aviation hero by receiving him in Dublin’s imposing presidential palace.
Spick and span in new clothes, Douglas C. Corrigan drove from the United States Legation to the palace. There, the 78-year-old President Douglas Hyde and the young Californian animatedly discussed the latter’s amazing flight from New York to Dublin.
Irish Times image of the plane.
Following his flight to Ireland, the United States Bureau of Commerce suspended the experimental airport certificate of Corrigan’s plane, with the intention of keeping him out of the air. It was noted in newspaper reports that Corrigan had joked his next plan was to fly around the Eiffel Tower in Paris, but in the end Corrigan and his plane returned to the U.S by ship. He certainly capitalised on his fame, with an autobiography published within months, as well as endorsing a rather useless watch that ran backwards! Sadly, he became something of a recluse from 1972 onwards when one of his sons perished in a plane clash, but he did publicly mark the fiftieth anniversary of the flight on both sides of the Atlantic.
Returning to Dublin in 1988, he met with some of the army officials who he had encountered at Baldonnel, spoke at Trinity College Dublin and even returned to Clery’s department shop, where he had gone fifty years earlier. Once again, he captivated Dubliners with his story, though many felt not even he believed it!
In 1988, Corrigan talked about his incredible journey on an American news channel:
William of Orange depicted inside the Bank of Ireland, College Green.
The week ahead of us sees the twelfth of July upon us once more, with marches across the north of Ireland in honour of King William of Orange and his victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Many Dubliners may be surprised to hear of the huge tapestry commemorating this event that sits in the centre of our city to this day, inside the Bank of Ireland on College Green.
A postcard showing the old Irish Parliament building and the monument to King William of Orange.
The old Irish Parliament building on College Green remains one of the finest bits of architecture in Dublin, and its place in architectural history is well and truly secured, serving as an influence for the British Museum and U.S Capitol Building among with other buildings internationally. While many know of the doomed statue of King William of Orange that sat outside of this parliament from the early eighteenth century until it was bombed by republicans in 1929, few wander inside of the building to see the old House of Lords, and a large-scale tapestry depicting William’s victory in 1690. The tapestry is joined by another which commemorates the Siege of Derry in 1689, and was originally intended to be one of a series of six tapestries.
The tapestry today.
In his groundbreaking history of Dublin, first published in 1861, the great Dublin historian J.T Gilbert wrote that:
The tapestry in the House of Lords was manufactured by Robert Baille, of Dublin, at the rate of three pounds per ell, inclusive of the expense of the designs. When set up in the House of Lords in September 1733, this tapestry was considered equal to that made at Brussels to commemorate Marlborough’s victories….
Baille, an upholsterer, was actually tasked with producing six tapestries, they being:
1: The Defence of Derry in 1689.
2: The landing of King William and his army at Carrickfergus.
3: The Battle of the Boyne.
4: The entry of King William into Dublin.
5: The Battle of Aughrim.
6: The attacking of Cork and Kinsale.
Ultimately, only the first and third of this list were commissioned for the House of Lords.
“Sectional engraving of the Irish House of Lords by Peter Mazell based on the drawing by Rowland Omer, 1767.” (Wiki)
While the correspondence quoted by Gilbert and others talks only of Baille, the work of others proved central to the task, with the tapestries being designed by Dutch landscape painter William Van der Hagen, and woven by John Van Beaver. It is noted in A Dictionary of Irish Artists (1913) that:
In 1728 Vander Hagen was employed by Robert Baillie to take “prospects” of the places to be represented in the tapestries which Baillie was commissioned to make for the House of Lords.* He appears to have been living in Dublin at that time, as the parish registers of St. Andrew’s record the baptism on the 22nd May, 1730, of “John and Thomas sons of John Vanderhagen.”
According to a 1913 letter to The Irish Times from W.F De Vismes Kane, John Van Beaver resided on Great Britain Street, and he noted that “Van Beaver was probably of a Dutch Protestant refugee family, who brought to Dublin during the reign of King William III the knowledge of their craft.” The writer claimed that by examining the leases of homes in the area Van Beaver lived, there was a clear Huguenot presence in the area, with names like Du Val and Le Sac in the immediate area.
Not alone did Van Beaver produce the tapestries within the House of Lords, he also provided a tapestry of King George II for the Weavers’ Hall constructed in the Lower Coombe in 1745. It is noted on the excellent history page of the Irish Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers that:
The Weavers’ Hall was demolished in 1965. Indeed, the only original guildhall still standing is the Tailors’ Hall in Back Lane. The tapestry of George II woven by John van Beaver, which hung in the Weavers’ Hall, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
Portrait of George II. Originally in the Old Coombe, it can today be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Image Credit:http://www.metmuseum.org/)
After the Act of Union in 1800, the tapestries in the House of Lords were taken down from the walls, with the aim of their being sent to England. The Irish Independent claimed in a 1931 article on the tapestries that “the representatives of Francis Johnston…induced the Bank directors to retain them.” Francis Johnston was the architect tasked with converting the building for the use of the bank following the shameful act of self-abolition in 1800. Johnston remains one of the most important architects in the history of the city, as he was responsible for the General Post Office on O’Connell Street, the Chapel Royal of Dublin Castle and several other great Dublin buildings.
Anyone can walk in off the street and have a look at the tapestries for free during regular banking hours. It’s a hidden Dublin gem worth a few minutes of your time if you haven’t. The staff who look after the building are always more than willing to have a chat about the House of Lords from our experiences.
The image above is one of my favourite Dublin images, capturing a mix of famous faces at a rather unusual ceremony, which took place at the Trinity College Boat Club at Islandbridge in 1924. W.B Yeats, William Cosgrave and Oliver St.John Gogarty are all visible, as Gogarty ‘gifts’ two swans to the River Liffey. If the image is interesting, the story behind it is equally so….
Oliver St.John Gogarty is a remarkable figure in Dublin history. A one-time Bohemian F.C player, he was a doctor, author, well-known raconteur and an Irish nationalist, not to mention a vocal anti-Semite on occasion and even the inspiration for the Buck Mulligan character in Ulysses. Born in Rutland Square (now Parnell Square) in 1878, Gogarty was shaped by the city he lived and wrote in, and counted Arthur Griffith and William Butler Yeats among personal friends, with Yeats describing him as ‘one of the great lyric poets of the age.’ Gogarty was active in the Sinn Féin movement from its very inception, indeed he even spoke at the inaugural meeting of the organisation, and in his Dictionary of Irish Biography profile it is noted that “Gogarty took the Sinn Féin headquarters’ files into his house when the party was banned in 1919, and sheltered men on the run”, including a certain Michael Collins.
Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Gogarty sided with the emerging state, and became a Senator to the Free State. This brought him into conflict with the Anti-Treaty IRA, who singled out Free State senators for attacks and intimidation. In February 1923 alone, the IRA attacked 37 properties belonging to Free State senators, and others were targeted for kidnapping and attempted assassination. On January 1923, armed republicans came to the home of Oliver St.John Gogarty to kidnap him. The story of this incident is told well in Ulick O’Connor’s biography of Gogarty, where he notes that
Gogarty was having a bath in his house after his day’s work, when he felt a revolver pressed into his ribs. Using a woman as a decoy, by pretending that she was a patient, armed men had gained entry into the house. They demanded that he should accompany them. As he was dressing, he glanced towards the chest of drawers where a revolver lay concealed, but calculated that the chances of getting it out in time before his captors shot him were negligible…..AS he got into the car, the revolver was pressed hard into his back. ‘Isn’t it a good thing to die in a flash, Senator?’ one of the gunmen said, as they sped out along the Chapelizod Road.
Gogarty was taken to a safe house on the banks of the Liffey, near to the Salmon Weir, and convinced his captors that, in O’Connor’s words, “his bowels were loosening with fright”. Gogarty was said to use this opportunity outside to throw his coat over the head of a captor and jump into the freezing Liffey, swimming to safety, before stumbling shocked into the police barracks of the nearby Phoenix Park. This account is somewhat at odds with one given by Gogarty himself, when he claimed (see the comment below, which is what I’m quoting) “to have asked before they shot him if he could say some prayers and they agreed. He knelt at the side of the river apparently praying and then suddenly dived into the river, swam under the water and reached the other side.”
Gogarty, according to his biographer, made a vow “while immersed in the swirling torrent, that he would present two swans to the Goddess of the River, in thanksgiving, if he reached the bank in safety.” Gogarty relocated himself to London for a period following this kidnapping and further intimidation against him by the IRA, but in 1924 he fulfilled his promise to the Liffey.
What of the men who kidnapped Gogarty? One of the men has been covered before on the site here, Thomas O’Leary of Harolds Cross. He was later to die at the hands of Free State soldiers, and a small memorial on the Upper Rathmines Road at the gates of the Tranquilla Convent marks the location where his body was found. Gogarty was said to remark of his passing that “The fellow who had led the raid on me was found riddled with bullets outside the Tranquilla Convent in Rathmines; at appropriate place for a quietus.”
Back to the image, don’t the swans appear a little unusual?
An excerpt from Ireland of the Welcomes (1988) posted here gives an idea of why:
Apparently the swans didn’t come willingly out of their container, and when they were finally persuaded to do so with a good kick to the box, they took off at top speed up river. The tranquil swans in the background of the photo are pretty obviously introduced by an artist’s hand.
A fantastic twenty-seven minute documentary from RTÉ on Cork-born Michael O’Riordan. He is described by presenter Patrick Gallagher as a “respectable middle-aged leader of our respectable middle-aged Communist Party”.
Thanks to Michael’s grandson Luke for passing this on. He uploaded it onto Youtube yesterday:
Highlights include a family history of Cork (3:30), reasoning for joining the International Brigades (07:00), talk of his election campaigns (11:00), footage of CPI meeting (12:00), discussion of CPI’s branch structure (14:00), denial of Moscow funding (17:00), discussion of recent events in the six counties (20:00), footage of anti-Internment rally and clash in Dublin (23:00) and the closing images of him on a rowing boat with the Internationale played in the background.
Michael O’Riordan, Morry Levitas and Peter O’Connor. Credit – O’Riordan family
Incidentally, I have only just realised that my own grandfather Kevin grew up (in Sarsfield Terrace) just down the road from Michael (on Pope’s Quay) in Cork City. There was only four years between them so they might have been in the same school together.
At the moment, I’m reading and enjoying Arthur Flynn’s book The Story of Irish Cinema. One film which grabbed my attention was Ireland, A Nation, a 1914 production which originated in the United States and dealt primarily with Irish history between the rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798 and Emmet’s Rebellion in 1803. While the film contained many inaccuracies, it still enjoyed some success. It is noted in the excellent Cinema and Ireland that the film “had a remarkable run in Chicago, where it was shown for 20 consecutive weeks to huge crowds.” The film was heavily censored in Ireland, and the first print of the film bound for Ireland sunk with the Lusitania in 1915.
A scene from the film, showing a letter handed by Robert Emmet to Napoleon.
In Cinema and Ireland, we learn that when the film was first shown here, it was noted by an officer from Military Headquarters that the film was “likely to cause disaffection, owing to the cheering of the crowd, at portions of the film, the hissing of soldiers who appeared in the film, and the cries made by the audience.”
Today, we can watch 43 minutes of Ireland, A Nation thanks to the excellent work of the Trinity College Dublin Irish Film and TV Research Online team.
The film was later amended to include newsreel footage from the Irish revolutionary period of the early twentieth century.
After history, League of Ireland football is one of our great loves you could say.
Central to the beautiful game here is fan culture, be that the great travelling support enjoyed by some clubs or actions in the stands. Briogáid Dearg, the ultras group at Shelbourne F.C, turn ten this year, having been established in 2003. On Friday night, they marked their birthday with a true spectacle, a brilliantly executed show of colour and passion. Congratulations to them on ten years.
’24hr Community’, a NCAD art collective formed earlier this year, and the ‘May Day for Thomas St.’ initiative have joined forces to temporarily take over two vacant buildings on Thomas St. for the purpose of an exciting new history project.
Next weekend (June 29th to 30th) they are asking local women to come to their new studio at Emmett House with photographs, documents or other artefacts they may have, with a view to compile an archival history of the Liberties from the perspective of the women who inhabit it.
On hand will be scanners, audio recorders, and cameras to document whatever in by locals. All items will be treated with great care and will be returned immediately after the documentation process.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 