IRISH ARCHIVES AT THE GATE

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It's more a question of Irish archives in City Hall alongside the Gate.

Archives: the launch of the 2018 Journal of the Irish Society for Archives.

Gate: an exhibition from the archives of the Gate Theatre.

In fact these blend harmoniously as the current journal is dedicated to The Gate Theatre at 90.

Raymond Refaussé

Raymond is Chair of the Irish Sociey for Archives (ISA) and he welcomed us to this event which was the launch of the Society's journal for 2018.

This year's journal has a graphic upgrade and appears in full colour thanks to sponsorship by Dublin City Council's Centenary of Commemorations.

Nial Ring

Dublin's current Lord Mayor, Nial Ring, launched the publication, though, as he commented, there is no specific protocol for the actual act of launching. Not like with a ship.

Anyway when he got to that point at the end of his speech he just declared it launched. I've done this myself and it's a funny feeling. Nothing happens, no trumpets, no thunder and lightening. The launched publication looks no different from the unlaunched one. A bit like transubstantiation and thank God we all understand that even if we don't fully subscribe to it.

Anyway Nial stressed the importance of archives and of respecting the past. He got a round of applause and "hear hears" when he underlined the necessity of ensuring the teaching of history in the schools. It's part of what we are.

I'm sure he won't mind me saying this - you might as well be listening to Bertie, the voice that is. However, where Bertie tended to talk in rambling riddles, Nial was a model of clarity.

Elizabeth McEvoy

Elizabeth is one of the two co-editors of the journal and in a substantial speech she went into the history of the Gate Theatre includingg the tremendous contribution of Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards to Dublin theatre in general.

I'm not going to labour this one but who did I find myself sitting beside but Sabina Higgins, who, thankfully, is still Ireland's First Lady. This sort of completed a mystical circle as the last time the Gate and the Presidency came into my life together was when a quartet of us pupils from Coláiste Mhuire played the presidential salute to welcome Dev and Sinéad to the opening of Féile Drámaíochta na Scol in the Gate around 1960.

That's Pamela McDermott (on the right) who took my photo with Sabina (centre) at the Photo-Detectives exhibition in Temple Bar last year. What goes around comes around.

And that's the pair of them with what I'll bet is the youngest version of Micheál you've ever seen.

Elizabeth with my favourite archivist, Ellen Murphy. Ellen has just moved from Dublin City Archive to the Registry of Deeds. While it's a step up for her she'll be missed at the archive where she has been doing trojan work for yonks. Anyway, congratulations Ellen.

Susan Hood who is the other co-editor of the journal. Susan took over as Librarian and Archivist at the Representative Church Body (RCB) Library from Raymond Refaussé when he retired in 2016. Belated congratulations to Susan.

Mary Clarke, Dublin City Archivist, has just spotted me taking a sneaky photo.

Brian Donnelly, from the National Archives, is Vice-Chair of the ISA. I must remember to approach him sometime to see if I can get full access to my grand aunt's records from Grangegorman and Portrane.

Raymond shares a joke with Nial.

But Nial still can't find his name in the journal.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch copies of the journal, that big pile in the middle, are being snapped up.

City Hall, at the moment, is also entertaining passer by with its winter lights.

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Snippets from the Exhibition

Clytemnestra from Agamemnon - Micheál's design

Micheál & Lady Friend

Our Lady of Connemara

Do drop in to City Hall and check out the exhibition and get yourself a copy of the journal which describes the many locations and content of the theatre's archive.

A Ha'porth of Tar

Mary Clarke

I'm still with the 200th birthday of the Ha'penny Bridge over Dublin's River Liffey.

In a previous post I covered the first of the two events organised by the City Council. This is the second event - a series of short talks in City Hall dealing with different aspects of the bridge. These will be published in a forthcoming book from Four Courts Press later in the year.

The session kicked off with an introductory overview of the history of the bridge from City Archivist, Mary Clarke.

The bridge replaced an earlier ferry in 1816. The fare/toll was the same, a ha'penny, but business boomed across the bridge, so to speak, and much money was made. In 1919 the toll was abolished after the bridge had paid for itself many times over. Now it is crossed by about thirty thousand people each day.

The bridge was conceived during the mayoralty of John Claudius Beresford, who Mary mentioned was considered the black sheep of the family due to some of his cruel and insensitive acts. I'm sure Mary must have confirmed that with his descendants earlier in the day.

Eibhlin Roche

Next we had Eibhlin Roche, from the Guinness Archive, recalling memories of the Guinness barges that plied the river well into my time.

It was always great fun to watch them going under the bridges at high tide when they had to fold down the funnel. This produced a great puff of smoke as the barge went in under the bridge. I suppose we were really watching to see would they remember to fold the funnel in time. To our disappointment, they always did.

Logan Sisley

Logan Sisley, from the Hugh Lane Gallery, beside where I went to school, brought me up with a start.

He was talking about the controversy over the location of the gallery which Hugh Lane insisted be built for the priceless collection of paintings he proposed leaving to Ireland.

The relevance to this session is that the Ha'penny Bridge was one of the locations which was very strongly pushed. It would have been designed by Edward Lutyens and would have seen the end of the Ha'penny Bridge.

There were many places suggested as a location for the gallery, but what actually drew me up short was Logan's cartoon by Gordon Brewster of his conception of how it would have looked on top of Nelson's Pillar.

I have an interest in Gordon and had not seen the cartoon before. It's a sort of interesting piece of trivia that Gordon's only known extant painting is actually in the current Hugh Lane Gallery in Parnell Square, though not on display,

Seán Harrington

Seán Harrington was talking about design aspects of the Ha'penny Bridge and how these inspired him in undertaking the design and construction aspects of the adjacent Millennium Bridge, for which he won the competition, and subsequently the Rosie Hackett Bridge further downstream, which he also designed.

The man was talking poetry, and to an enraptured audience.

Then he produced his wee model to demonstrate the technique for flattening the curve of the bridge while maintaining safety. He used the same technique as the designers of the Ha'penny Bridge but improved on it for both the Millennium and Rosie Hackett bridges.

Patrick Gorman

Patrick Gorman was involved in the refurbishment of the Ha'penny Bridge from the City Council's bridge department. He recounted the various technical challenges facing the Council and his own particularly ingenious solution to one of them.

Over and above his involvement with the actual restoration of the bridge, Patrick was responsible for submitting the project as an entry in the prestigious Europa Nostra heritage competition in 2002. The project was awarded a diploma in the conservation section which Patrick duly picked up in Brussels in May 2003.

I am well aware of the prestige associated with the Europa Nostra awards having been involved in submitting the 2014 entry for the restored Martello Tower in Killiney, which got a special mention from the Jury.

Paul Arnold

Patrick didn't have a conservation architect on the job and at one stage he was told to get one pronto.

That's where Paul Arnold came in. His primary task was to ensure that as much of the original material as possible was preserved in the refurbishment. Following surveys it was determined that most of it could be kept but would need extensive restoration work done on it. Much of this was undertaken by Harland and Wolff in Belfast.

Annette Black

Annette Black was to give a social history of the bridge and her acrostic approach looked promising. Unfortunately I had to leave at that point and didn't get to hear her talk.

I'm sure you can catch up on Annette's contribution when the book comes out.

I have titled this post A Ha'porth of Tar, not just because of the Ha'penny connotations but because it is clear from its durability that the ha'porth of tar was not spared on the Ha'penny Bridge.

Related post: Happy 200th

Dubliners

Dublin: One City, One Book is an initiative of Dublin City Libraries, where a different book with links to the capital is chosen each year. Citizens are encouraged to read the book during the month of April and a number of events are organised around it.



This year's choice is James Joyce's Dubliners: fifteen stories about the lives, loves, small triumphs and great failures of the ordinary citizens of Dublin.



One such event is a series of lunchtime lectures in City Hall on the theme, Dubliners - in their own words. They are held on four Tuesdays in April starting at 1pm.



City Hall is now in prime nick and entering though the grand foyer, in the august company of the likes of Thomas Davis and Daniel O'Connell (above), instills a great sense of awe and anticipation.



It's only a small step then into the intimacy of the Council chamber, where, last Tuesday, Dr. Criostóir MacCárthaigh, was preparing to give his talk on Tales from the Tenements - The Dublin Folklore Project. This is part of the wider Urban Folklore Project in the UCD Department of Irish Folklore (now the Delargy Centre).



The chamber was packed, the talk very interesting and the Q&A very lively. A good way to spend a lunchtime and well worth skipping lunch for.

Two talks remain: 17/4/2012 - The North Strand Bombing, and 24/4/2012 - Tales from Dublin's Liberties.