Come Here To Me!

Surrey House, Leinster Road (July 2019)

Tomorrow morning, a new plaque will be unveiled on 49b Leinster Road, a house of enormous significance to the history of the Irish revolution in Dublin. As the home of Constance Markievicz, the house often operated as a sort of headquarters for the Na Fianna Éireann youth movement of which she was a founding member and important patron. The ‘Surrey House Clique’ was the name bestowed on a group of young Na Fianna activists who grew particularly close politically to the Countess, and who maintained a near constant presence at the home in the lead up to insurrection.

From October 1911, Contance Markievicz lived in this Rathmines house with her husband and their family. The coming and going of individuals from the home was often watched closely by the intelligence police operatives of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Markievicz was anything but discreet in her political pronouncements, with Fianna member James Nolan recalling seeing a tricolour flying from the home on his first visit there, something which may have been in contrast with popular political feeling in Rathmines at the time, a district which would even return a Unionist in the 1918 General Election. Mocking the feeling of the locals, Fianna member Seán Prendergast would recount:

The existence of such a noisy place as Surrey House, with its noisy callers and its equally noisy musicians and songsters, disturbed the peace and quietude of Rawthmines. Surrey House was an intrusion and a challenge to the dignity and respectability and “loyalty” of Leinster Road.

Theo Fitzgerald (left) who painted the flag of the Irish Republic at Surrey House, Leinster Road. Image: Na Fianna Éireann history blog.

At Leinster Road, the Irish Republic flag which would fly over the GPO at Easter Week was painted by Theo Fitzgerald (full-name Theobald Wolfe Tone Fitzgerald, a young Fianna Éireann activist), with accounts suggesting Poppet, the beloved dog of the Countess, made the task difficult. A Fianna activist recalled that “the flag was on the wall of the top back bedroom for about a week previous to Easter 1916.” It was perhaps unwise to keep such seditious items in a house so frequently raided by the authorities. Of a raid in early 1916, The Workers’ Republic newspaper noted that “no one was in the house except the servants and a few of the boys of the Fianna who make the place their headquarters. While the search was going on these boys and girls kindly entertained the police with songs, music and comforting remarks. Unfortunately, the G-Men have no ear for music.”

The house was frequented by labour leader James Connolly, with Seamus Reader (a leading light of Na Fianna and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Glasgow, centrally important to the importation of arms into Ireland) recalling:

Most of the talking I had with Connolly was in Surrey House in the morning or at night. He more or less told me about the Rising. In November and December, I knew definitely from the Countess and Connolly that there was going to be a rising or a tight. Connolly told me to be prepared for things that would be expected of me. He talked about Trade Unionism and how they were going to run the fight, what was going to happen and what to expect.

In the aftermath of the Rising, Surrey House was badly looted by Britsh forces, with a Fianna Éireann banner among the artefacts taken from the home, while much of its beautiful antique fittings were destroyed. As the biographer of the Countess notes, “furniture was broken, books, ornaments and pictures strewn everywhere. Someone had even taken the trouble to smash every single one of a collection of lantern slides. The garden had been dug in a search for arms.”