Pat Keenan reports on happenings in and around the capital..
The Iveagh Markets on Francis Street and John Dillon Street in The Liberties closed in 1996, yet still lies derelict. Despite years of talk this historic building, despite being a protected structure still remains dilapidated, weeds everywhere, even trees now grow inside up into the rafters. It remains an open sore in our capital city. It should and could be one of our main attractions. Now as to all intents and purposes the talk continues, Ned Guinness, the fourth Earl of Iveagh has weighed in an attempt to resolve the debacle. It was his great-great-grandfather Edward Cecil Guinness that built the Iveagh Markets in 1906 and gifted the then gracious Edwardian indoor markets to Dublin. And to put him in context Edward Cecil Guinness would have been the grandson of the famous Arthur Guinness who founded the brewery
Ned, forgive my familiarity, lives on the family’s 22,486-acre Elveden Estate in Suffolk, England but has recently bought a house in the The Liberties, a typical two-up, two-down artisan’s terraced house near the derelict market. The Earl was Irish born at Farmleigh House, overlooking the River Liffey in the Phoenix Park and despite living in England, his one and only passport is Irish.
The Dublin City Council has now it says adopted ‘a number of measures’ to ensure the site will not deteriorate any further. The Minister for Housing, Local Government, and Heritage, Fianna Fáil TD Darragh O’Brien, just in February announced the use of further urban regeneration and development funds to carry out essential works: ‘seeing the works progress, the fabric of this beloved building restored, and its future secured.’ They now claim that work is likely begin in earnest in the third quarter of this year. It will, they say, take up to 18 months to complete, Fingers crossed.
Clery’s has partially re-opened with fashion retailer H&M having a sizeable presence
And good to see Clerys partically re-opened..
Good to see Clearys in O’Connell Street, closed since 2015, has partially reopened in March. Swedish fashion retailer H&M has opened 30,000 square feet on two floors of the former department store. Decathlon, the French clothing and equipment specialist is expected to open this July. While partly reopened it remains a work in progress.
Another reopening, Trinity College Dublin’s oldest purpose-built residential building. The 320 years old Rubrics has reopened following a major restoration. The rooms will be used to accommodate students and staff. Former famous residents included Douglas Hyde, Oliver Goldsmith, John McGahern. Infamously Edward Ford, a much disliked junior dean was murdered here in 1734. Students possibly under the influence of a few jars arrived and began throwing stones at the windows of his rooms. Ford armed with his revolver began shooting at them, wounding one. The students retreated but returned armed and shot Ford in the head as he stood at his window.
Four students were accused of his murder. They were James Cotter, who later becameBaronet of Rockforest and Member of Parliament for Askeaton, John Crosbie, 2nd Earl of Glandore later Member of Parliament for Athboy, Boyle and Scholes. They were acquitted by the courts, but expelled by the college. Ford’s ghost apparently still resides.
On a recent trip to northern Spain I renewed my acquaintance with John Banville and brought along his April in Spain on off-chance I might have time to read
Banville’s Dublin and Spain
On a resent trip to northern Spain I renewed my acquaintance with John Banville and brought along his April in Spain on off-chance I might have time to read. The novel set in Franco’s Spain, in the Basque coastal town of San Sebastian and back home in Dublin in the same times, the late 1950s, early 1960s, a Dublin I lived through. Banville has had many awards, the Man Booker Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize and appropriately in 2014 he became the first Irish author to win the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.
I used be on regular nodding terms with John as he would stroll past as I sat with friends sipping coffee outside Beshoffs on the sunny West Quay oF Howth Harbour.
Banville first memories of Dublin were of birthdays from the age of ‘four or five right up to the brink of adolescence.’ That date in Catholic Ireland was ironically the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a public holiday than more recognised in Dublin as ‘Culchie’ Day. The day when the city would be invaded by country folk doing their annual Christmas shopping. He moved to Dublin when he was eighteen to a flat in Upper Mount Street, an area much visited in his books.
It became the Dublin city that shaped his life and in 2018 he wrote ‘Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir’ with photographs by PaulJoyce, published by Hodder & Stoughton
Dublin’s moneyed enclaves
The property pages of our newspapers seem to have become more concentrated on the celebrity occupants rather than on the properties themselves, especially when it comes to one of the the most exclusive apartment development in the moneyed enclaves of Dublin 4. With 215 apartments available in a price range range from €825,000 to €6.5 million for sale on an almost seven acre site is at Landsdowne Place, where the Berkeley Court and Jurys hotels once flourished. It becomes viral when we learn Roy Keane, the former Republic of Ireland and Manchester United captain has signed up for an apartment. He will be no stranger to the area, the Aviva Stadium is just down the road.
His neighbours also signing deals here include former RTÉ star Mike Murphy, rock singer and songwriter Rod Stewart. Mike will be neighbours with his old pal Gay Byrne who some years ago quit his house on Howth Summit for an apartment in Shrewsbury Square, Ballsbridge
Roy Keane, Rod Stewart and Mike Murphy have reportedly bought properties in the Dublin 4 Landsdowne Place development
The Shelbourne changes hands again
The famed five-star Shelbourne Hotel, overlooking St Stephen’s Green since 1824, has changed hands. It’s been sold to Archer Hotel Capital, making it their second five-star hotel in Dublin, the Conrad on Earlsfort Terracе is already part of their vast portfolio, adding to their other 13 European hotels in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris and Stockholm.
The Shelbournes’s previous owners, the Beverley Hills-based Kennedy Wilson acquired the Shelbourne in 2014 and before that by an Irish consortium that included property developers Bernard McNamara and Jerry O’Reilly.
John and Jacqueline Kennedy were guests in the 1950s, Kennedy returned as President on his official visit in 1963. Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco were frequent guests. Stars of stage and screen from the Golden Age of Hollywood included Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Laurel and Hardy, Clark Gable, John Wayne, Rita Hayworth, James Cagney, Maureen O’Hara, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Redford and Paul Newman.
Remembering Rabindranath Tag Agore
There is a monument of The Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore ‘Bard of Bengal’ in St. Stephen’s Green near the Leeson Street entrance. It was a gift from the government of India, unveiled in 2011 by the then Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and India’s Minister for External Affairs, Preneet Kaur. A reciprocal bust of WB Yeats was unveiled in India at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai. The two writers met in London in 1912, both were established writers, both admired each other’s work. Yeats, always greatly captivated by eastern mysticism once referred to Tagore’s work as ‘untranslatable delicacies of colour.’ Yeats seemingly ignoring his own description later helped to arrange for translations of Tagore’s work to be published in England. T seems to have worked, the following year Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature with the English translation of his poems in Gitanjali. Ezra Pound and George Bernard Shaw also met Tagore but they were less enamoured taking the view that the English translations weakened the poetry. Tagore then received a British knighthood in 1915. He renounced it in 1919 following news of the Amritsar massacre in the Punjab back home in India. That indiscriminate slaughter took place on April 13, 1919 when the British Army killed hundreds of unarmed peaceful separatist gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh protesting the arrest of pro-independence activists and the Rowlatt Act. indefinitely extending detentions with imprisonment without trial, regarded to be emergency measures during the First World War.
