Come Here To Me!

Cork Hill is, to my mind, pretty much unrivaled when it comes to architectural views in Dublin. On one side of it, Thomas Cooley’s City Hall (once the Royal Exchange) has stood proudly since 1779, while opposite it sits the former Newcomen Bank building, now the City Rates Office. The work of architect Thomas Ivory, the building is of great architectural importance, as noted by the Dublin City Architects:

It is an exquisitely made neo-classical building of sharply detailed Portland stone, the material reserved for the best public buildings in the Georgian city. Records show that James Hoban, the Irish architect who went on to design the White House, worked for Ivory on the design for Newcomen.

The City Rates Office, Cork Hill (Image Credit: Dublin City Public Libraries, Fáilte Ireland Collection)

A more recent addition to the side of the City Rates Office, dating from 1886, is perhaps the most lavish street sign in Dublin, reading ‘Lord Edward Street. A.D 1886’.  A plaque below it notes that the street was ‘opened’ by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, T.D Sullivan MP.

T.D Sullivan, Lord Mayor of the capital from 1886 to 1888, hailed from Cork’s Bantry. He was a journalist, poet, songwriter and politician. A member of the Parnellite Home Rule League, he was elected to the Westminster parliament in the 1880 general election, “convinced that without self-government there could never be peace, prosperity or contentment in Ireland.”

As a songwriter, he is most famous for penning ‘God Save Ireland’,a song honouring three Fenians hanged for their involvement in the 1867 Fenian year of revolt. The Manchester Martyrs had played their part in freeing captured Fenians from police custody on the streets of that northern English city, only to be hanged themselves. The words ‘God save Ireland!’ were defiantly shouted in court by one of the three men, and their deaths became a rallying call for nationalist Ireland. Sullivan’s song first appeared in print in December 1867, on the eve of the funerals of the men. While buried in an English prison,mock funeral processions were hold all over Ireland in their honour. An empty grave in Glasnevin awaited the men,though their bodies were never returned to Irish soil.

“God save Ireland!” said the heroes;
“God save Ireland” said they all.
Whether on the scaffold high
Or the battlefield we die,
Oh, what matter when for Erin dear we fall!

In a pre-1916 world, when it was eventually eclipsed by ‘The Soldier’s Song’, this song was sometimes refereed to as the ‘Irish national anthem’. Certainly, for Irish separatists, it was nothing less. That it was written by a constitutional nationalist was something of an irony, but when it came to commemorations and the like, constitutional parliamentarians could sometimes turn on the separatist charm, and Sullivan was no exception.

The opening of the new street in 1886 connected Dame Street to Christ Church Cathedral, clearing the warrens there before. Its proximity to Dublin Castle, the historic seat of British rule in Ireland, no doubt influenced the nationalist tone of naming the street in honour of revolutionary leader Edward Fitzgerald. The Freeman’s Journal commented on the new street “lying under the shadow of Dublin Castle, the centre of all that is saddest and most dreary in the bitter page’ of our country’s history.”

The street unveiling drew huge crowds, and it was reported that “many of the residents of the neighboring streets had green flags displayed from the windows of their houses”, a display of nationalism that would have been unwise in Fitzgerald’s own day, but which reflected the changing political atmosphere.It wasn’t all about politics, and Sullivan noted that “it is a work not only of the beautifying of our city, but also a work of great public utility.” The area was long synonymous with severe poverty, and the improvements were widely welcomed. The street, the Mayor noted, was not only named in honour of “a great Protestant Irish patriot”, but “the materials used in the paving of the street are, we have been informed, exclusively Irish products.”

The plaques could easily be missed, a portrait of Edward Fitzgerald can be found just around the corner however gracing the front of The Lord Edward public house (which very much has the CHTM seal of approval), while a plaque in his memory adorns the stunning sandstone facade of St. Werburgh’s Church, his final resting place. If he’d embrace the street name is perhaps open to debate, with Fitzgerald proudly casting aside the title of Lord in favour of citizen. His sister would recall after his death, “he was a Paddy and no more; he desired no other title than this.”