My 1916

1916 Exhibition - Nightshot of Pearse St. Library
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I didn't set out to photograph 1916 in 2016 so all of these photos are opportunistic - a moment observed, a flash of inspiration, and CLICK.

When Michael Edwards set Remembering 1916 as the theme for this year's photo competition I wondered if I might have anything to enter. In fact an early version of the title (2016 remembering 1916) would have meant that any entry would have to have been taken in 2016. So I was scratching my head around the middle of the year and eventually identified the five shots below as being suitable. As it happens, they were all taken within that year and I ended up putting them in for the competition.

As you are not supposeed to put any writing on the picture mounts they are all anonymous as far as the adjudicator is concerned and the photo has to speak for itself.

So I thought I'd take the opportunity, now that the competition is over, to fill in a little of the background to the pictures.

Seomra 1916 - Coláiste Mhuire

This is the room in Parnell Square where nationalist leaders came together in September 1914 and decided to have a Rising. It was a broad decision in principle and the details were sketched in later over the course of the following year. The room was in what was then the headquarters of Conradh na Gaeilge, and it was both the library and the office of the Secretary General, Seán T Ó Ceallaigh.

The backstory is here.

The Foggy Dew - RHA

I am not an arty person and had never been inside the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). But I read in the Irish Times in January 2016 that there was a painting on show there of the RHA's old premises in Abbey Street on fire during the Rising.

I have an interest in the artist, Gordon Brewster, who lost two paintings in that fire and I got permission from Mick O'Dea, President of the RHA and the artist concerned, to go in and photograph the painting for a talk I was giving on Brewster.

Well, when I got in the door and saw the exhibition I was blown away.

The rest of the story is here.

Tarting Up - The Padraig Pearse Pub

I was heading into Pearse St. library one day when I saw the Padraig Pearse pub across the road in the course of being tarted up for the centenary year (better late than never). They were about three quarters of the way through the signage with one of Pearse's heads (the good side) still sitting on the ground waiting for a lift.

I wonder what Pearse would have thought of a pub being named after him just down the road from where he lived. Certainly in the few years run up to the Rising he was loudly proclaiming his denial of some of the pleasures of life, as here.

Two Volunteers - GPO

This pair caught my fancy passing the GPO one day. Two volunteers, one military, one social, the latter mopping up some of the mess not resolved since the Rising.

Who'd have thought the modern Irish State, a whole century on, would need soup kitchens for its poor and disinherited. Some shattered dream.

The GPO was restored but Irish society is still cracked down the middle and the soupers are still with us.

Clery's - O'Connell St.

Since I retired and started taking more photos around the city I'm inclined to look up more than I used to and it's amazing what you see sometimes.

On this occasion the flithered flag flying over Clery's really gave me a jolt. There is both cheek and negligence here, and that right across the road from the iconic GPO. Indeed, in its day Clery's was an icon in itself.

But this vista is a searing comment on what has not been achieved by the Rising or the State which followed it, when staff could be turfed out into the street while the moneybags scuttled off with pocketfulls of dosh gained from a disgraceful financial wheeze.

The tattered tricolour says it all.

So there you have it. Much to my surprise all five of the photos made it into the competition final in the individual (non photo club) category and Seomra 1916 came through as the overall category winner.

Thrilled I am.

THE DIOCESAN EXAM

John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin, 1940-72

As well as educating the poor, I assume the Christian Brothers were also expected to instill some degree of Christian morality into their pupils. As a pupil in a Christian Brothers' school, Coláiste Mhuire, however, I got very mixed messages. And the culprit here was the Diocesan Exam.

An Bráthair C. R. Ó Maitiú - Matty

To be fair we got the full range of "dos and don'ts". Do honour thy father and thy mother (and by extension the teacher in loco parentis). Do go regularly to Confession and confess ALL your sins, from dirty thoughts to the other thing. Don't let yourself fall victim to young ones who are only out to tempt you from the straight and narrow - that is before they grow into the holy mothers of Ireland. Be honest, and, by the way, honesty is not just the best policy, it is a principle. And so on.

Coláiste Mhuire. Chapel is behind granite frontage.

And then there was the diocesan exam.

Given that most of the religion classes during the year consisted of warnings about sexual predators (young girls from Scoil Caitríona) and the consequences of playing with yourself (blindness), we were usually ill prepared for this exam which covered catechetics, social ethics, church history and I'm sure a raft of other stuff I can't remember. So, during the two weeks immediately preceding the exam, most other subjects were abandoned and we sweated the religious stuff into our temporarily empty heads.

So far so good. And then came the day of the exam.

The priest from the Palace arrived with a big envelope stuffed with exam papers. He was welcomed most deferentially by the brothers, who may even have addressed him as your eminence for all I know. What I do know is that in the face of all this flattery and an invitation to come and see the beautiful chapel, the poor man failed to notice the brothers politely relieving him of his envelope.

Fast forward up three flights of stairs to the hall in the attic, where we are all assembled to take the exam. The brother extracts one exam paper from the envelope and proceeds to make sure we all understand the questions and the answers expected of us.

Even after this extensive briefing I was in some doubt about an ambiguity in one of the questions and approached the invigilating brother at the top of the hall. "Have you got your book in with you?" he enquired. "I have" sez I. "Well then, bring it up here". In handing me back my book he left his finger stuck in the page with the answer to the question.

We always got very good marks in the diocesan exam.

Mícheál Ó Doibhilín

There was once a black mark, however.

One of the questions one of the years read something like "What is wrong with the Welfare State?".

I should put this in context. The Roman Catholic (and Apostolic) Church, and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid in particular, were very wary of the State encroaching on what they saw as church matters. Their view of the Church's jurisdiction included education and virtually all of the social services, including any soup kitchens that might spring up (cf. the famine). This was also only a decade after the bruising conflict between Church and State over the Mother and Child Bill (qv.).

Pagan England's post war welfare state was, most definitely, anathema.

One pupil, above, replied to the question, pointing out that there was nothing wrong with the welfare state and that we could do with a bit more of it here. Well, all hell broke loose, and the rumour was that the Palace sought an apology from the school. Whether it got one or not is still unknown. What is known is that the pupil concerned was never asked by the school to apologise for his heretical writings. I suspect the school realised that this would be a waste of time and possibly escalate the dispute to even greater heights.

Remains of secularised and abandoned chapel

I am glad to say that, to this day, that pupil has remained a republican socialist, while the lovely school chapel is gone - turned into a classroom before the whole building had to be abandoned for health and safety reasons.

If, after reading this post, he confirms the story and allows his name to go forward for secular canonisation, I will name him. He deserves to be honoured. [Update: done]

Sic transit gloria ecclesiae.

SEOMRA 1916

Seomra 1916 - The 1916 Room
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There was no talk of any 1916 room when I was in Coláiste.

In fact, I never knew that there was any physical connection between the school and the 1916 Easter Rising.

I left in 1963 and I suspect that the 50th anniversary celebrations in 1966 made people more aware of these sort of connections. Sean O'Donnell, who came in 1965 and left in 1971, tells me that his class were made very aware of the connections and of the room.

One of the school buildings in Dublin's Parnell Square (No. 25) had been the headquarters of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) and the League allowed one of their rooms to be used in September 1914 for a meeting between those organisations which were working towards the ending of the British presence in Ireland

Extract from Seán T O'Kelly's witness statement.
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That room contained the Gaelic League's library and was also the office of Seán T O'Kelly, who was the General Secretary of the League at the time. You can read his full account of the meeting in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History.

The extract illustrated above is the critical paragraph relating to what ultimately became the 1916 Rising.

Steven Powell has drawn my attention to this article which fills in some further background.

1966 Commemoration Plaque

The above plaque was not on the school's front wall in my day. As I said we were oblivious to the 1916 connections. It was put there as part of the 1966 fiftieth year celebrations. In fact, in that year the whole geography of Parnell Square North changed with the opening of the Garden of Remembrance directly opposite the school.

Joe Ó Muircheartaigh and Pádraig Yeates checking out
a picture of those purported to have been at the meeting.

I had tried to get access to my former school some time back for purely nostalgic reasons. My intention had been to take some photos. Anyway, I was refused entry and that was that.

Sean O'Donnell & Pól Ó Duibhir in Seomra 1916
recalling memories of the Coláiste for posterity.
Photo: Shelagh Honan

Until today, when Joe Ó Muircheartaigh, who is compiling a feature on the school in the context of its connections with 1916, invited me and some other past pupils to come in to talk about our experience in the school.

I was very taken aback at the state of the place. I knew the school had moved out many years ago when the building was found to be unsafe. But I had passed it many times since and in more recent times, following the decision to relocate the central city library there, I had assumed that people had been beavering away inside and that the place must nearly be ready for occupation.

In fact it is falling apart and absolutely nothing seems to have been done with it since the school left in 2003 except for a few very minor safety precautions.

Looking out on the Halla at the rear.

I took the opportunity to have a look around while others were being interviewed and I have to say it was a sad perambulation indeed.

Not that the place had ever been in great nick or looked in any way classy, but it had been relatively clean and functional.

At the moment it would put a squat to shame.

The Halla - magnificent school theatre

The Halla (Hall/Theatre) was built soon after I left. In my time we had our annual school concerts/pageants in various halls around the city but mostly in the Francis Xavier Hall in Sherrard Street.

I don't know how this building fits in with the current plans but it would be a shame to see what was such a magnificent achievement for the school bite the dust.

The Clós - school yard

The yard is a mess. The area top right used to house the science building but I gather it eventually proved a problem for the Hugh Lane Gallery next door and was demolished.

Looking towards the former small hall
& access passageway to the main hall.

The photo above is looking towards what was the (small) hall in my day where we did drill and dancing and viewed films. The area above it, added after my time, is presumably the passageway which connected the existing hall directly to the front door in Parnell Square.

The Séipéal - former chapel

I thought I'd check out as much of the Mainistir (Monastery - Brothers' Residence) as I could get at while I was there, starting with the séipéal (chapel). I suppose I should not have been surprised to see that it had apparently been turned into another classroom. The number of brothers in the school towards the end of its stay in Parnell Square must have been rapidly diminishing and giving way to the vast majority of lay teachers.

Have a look at the two chapel windows above and spot the difference.

Well, it's just under the star. I had noticed, when passing outside over the years, that one of the windows was actually broken. I then noticed that it had been sort of fixed to the point of not being too noticeable just before Queen Elizabeth's visit to the Garden of Remembrance opposite.

Broken séipéal window 2007

It's amazing how noticeable the break was, particularly in bright sunlight.

As I entered the next room, the one with the wallpaper, a word shouted at me from somewhere deep in my subconscious - An Parlús.

The Parlús - parlour

This was the parlour, into which illustrious visitors, including parents, would be ushered by the brother in charge. Your whole life could change as a result of one of these visits.

Pasáiste - corridor

The school consisted of a series of joined up Georgian houses. You can get a sort of an idea of it looking down the corridor from the Mainistir towards Seomra 1916.

I had been warned not to go up any stairs, and having had a look around the ground floor, I decided that was good advice and I heeded it.

Still, I took a peek from below and it might give you some idea of the place's former "glory".

And then when I saw this, I decided that it was time to go.

Google map 3D view of area for development
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And before I leave you, a bit of good news from Parnell Square CQ via Twitter.

Coláiste Mhuire 2007

Hope they invite me to the opening if I'm still around then.

Related post: Coláiste Mhuire


Update 7/11/18: the planning application for the new central library has now been submitted and you can view it here.

Coláiste Mhuire

Rang '63 sa chlós
Version of photo with names
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In the Irish Times, 29/12/2015, Sean O'Donnell criticises the blinkered Catholic nationalism and the culture of violence of his schooldays, in the course of which he takes a pop at his, and my, alma mater, Coláiste Mhuire.

He seems to have got the short end of the stick when he was landed with Brother Kinsella. I don't remember that brother, who may have come after I left in 1963, but we too had our quota of violent teachers. In those days you got them everywhere, not just in Coláiste Mhuire.

As far as the Christian Brothers were concerned the country was divided into two provinces, north and south, with the split being on a line between Dublin (northside ?) and Galway. Brothers were rotated around within their own province, so a lot of other non-Coláiste, and probably non-Dublin, pupils would have had the pleasure of Brother Kinsella over his teaching career.

Maybe my class was lucky overall in the range of teachers we had.

An Br. Ó Maitiú

Our class brother was Brother Matthews and he was more given to psychological than to physical torture. Whether this was more damaging in the longer run is a matter for debate. He did, generally, look after his pupils, though.

Albert Folens

We had an exceptional French teacher in the person of Albert Folens (Froggy), who, in the absence of Irish, had to teach by the direct method, which was ultimately to our advantage. We were not aware at the time of some of the more controversial aspects of his past. To us he was just a good French teacher.

Michael Judge

We also had the benefits of a wider literary education from Michael Judge (Judgie), who was our English and art teacher, and who died only recently.

Brian Devanney

And we had Brian Devanney (Babs) both as an English teacher and musical director. He was a most civilised and cultured man, and, like Michael Judge, wrote for external media.

And then there was Harry, an Br Ó Leathlobhair (Lawlor). He was a fierce enthusiastic and excellent teacher of physics and chemistry. And he'd have needed to be. There was no Irish language textbook for these subjects. Harry spent a lot of his time drawing and writing text on the board which we diligently spent most of the class copying into our science copybooks - illustrations onto the scaled pages on the left, text onto those on the right. I think this disgraceful gap may have subsequently been filled by Albert Folens & Co., but I had long left by then and don't know. [I initially left Harry out of this blog post as I hadn't a photo to hand, but I think I have one somewhere and will see if I can surface it.]

The School Orchestra
Version of photo with names

There was no shortage of extra-curricular activities. I was not involved in sport, nor was I a star of the mat drill, but I was in the school orchestra which was run by Babs. We not only played at school concerts, but we were externally assessed.

The orchestra also had an offshoot, the pit orchestra, which played in the pit, as opposed to onstage, to accompany the onstage gymnastics displays at the annual school concerts. This was a much looser arrangement than the formal orchestra

And we had a string quartet and subsequently quintet, which played Mozart and Beethoven at the school concerts, and even played the Presidential Salute in the Gate Theatre, for Dev and Sinéad, at the opening of Féile Drámaíochta na Scol. [Update: I was informed last night, 31/9/2020, that that particular occasion was for Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh and that we did the needful for Dev in the Francis Xavier Hall.]

Debaters: Pól Ó Duibhir, Alan Dukes,
Colm Ó Muircheartaigh, Naos Mac Cumhaill

Then there was the debating, admittedly confined to a relatively small number of pupils. The photo above is a press photo and it was taken when we won the Leinster championship in the Gael Linn national debates.

Obverse: 1963 Gael Linn
Díospóireacht Craobh Laighean
Pól Ó Duibhir

Remember these debates were entirely in Irish. You could not prepare for them as you only got the subject twenty minutes before the start. Debaters, however, could take individual positions for or against the motion. The team aspect only really came into play when the scores were added up at the end.

Me as St. Peter with two of the Marys

And the annual pageants. As Sean says, these were written and directed by Tomás Mac Anna. He did a brilliant job on them and any participant keeping his wits about him learned a lot about stagecraft, including sound and lighting which were operated by pupils on the night.

You can see a programme for the 1963 pageant here.

I had my own role in them. I didn't like being onstage, with or without a script, and eventually managed to hog the role of drummer (in the pit) when Brian Tuite, the resident brilliant drummer, left.

And yes, the school was very nationalistic. I suppose it was a combination of Irish language and Catholic church. But the whole 1966 commemoration of 1916 showed how naïvely nationalistic most of the nation was in those days. The proper evidence based study of history, as opposed to its ideological counterpart, only emerged gradually after that time.

Some members of my class reflected on the school in the context of a retrospective on Mise Éire released in 2013.

As far as my class is concerned, in more recent years we have had reunions, some of which were attended by a majority of the old class. We have a slightly broader mailing list, and I have a web page devoted to our class, past and present.

Class of 1971

By 1971, standards of sartorial elegance and hair styles had evolved somewhat from my day as a comparison of the two class photos in this post will testify. A skim through subsequent class photos will show this as a continuing trend.

So I'm sorry Sean had a bad experience. I enjoyed most of my schooldays in Coláiste and that's not because I was spared the leather, because I wasn't. But we were spared the hopefully few madly violent teachers, and ambient (normal) violence was part of the wallpaper at that time throughout the educational system.

Related post: Seomra 1916

Michael Judge RIP

Michael Judge playing second fiddle to one of his pupils
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Michael Judge was my English teacher in school. He taught the only subject that was taught through the medium of English in that school. That must surely be a distinction of sorts.

He had a very healthy attitude to what was the curriculum of the 1950s and early 1960s. While acknowledging the excellence of what was on the course, his attitude was to get through it as fast as possible and then go on to do something more interesting and exciting.

He brought us through Beckett and the War Poets (Owen and Sassoon). He gave us a feel for Owen's para-rhyme and Hopkins's sprung rhythm. While we lacked a context in those days for WWI in the trenches, largely due to rejection of the Irish fighting there, there was no gainsaying the sheer savagery of Owen's poetry.

And not forgetting Harold Pinter, whose writings hot off the press came streaming into Judgie's classroom.

Nor did Judgie exclude music from his own personal curriculum, as you can see above. In fact, he was a bit of an all-rounder and was also our art teacher, which I'm sure he taught through the medium, though I don't remember at this remove.

I never had any contact with his writing for RTÉ radio or television, or for the Abbey, though I gather he was very good at it.

For me he will always remain an innovative and dedicated teacher of English and I hope my own writing over the years bears testimony to this.

Those were the days.

---

I attended Judgie's final class today - his farewell service at Mount Jerome cemetery.

I was standing outside the chapel, waiting for the hearse to arrive when I sort of felt someone looking over my shoulder. I turned around, and who was it but the bould Sir William Wilde, Oscar's daddy. I smiled, and thought to myself, Judgie would have loved that.

Oscar's Daddy

The service was well attended and the Garden Chapel was packed. Standing room only, or even a space in the porch. God be with the days.

The breadth of the attendance was wide, but the ceremony centered very much on the family - four generations of them. Family members recalled aspects of Judgie's life and character. There was much joy and love in the air, and many tears too. Tiny tots of great grandchildren were carried up to place sunflowers on the coffin. Tributes read out included those from former pupils, many of whom had left school half a century ago but turned up to honour a man who left a lasting mark on their lives.

In keeping with Judgie's love of theatre, as the final curtains slowly inched across to a close, we were treated to a fabulous foot tapping jazz number, which could only make you smile. A lovely script. A writer to the end.

In what was, I suppose, a throwback to the 1960s, I became aware of the absence of any Christian Brother at the service. But I suppose that community barely exists in the modern world. Then it struck me to wonder if Judgie would get a job in a faith school today. An ironic thought about a man who had been one of the shining educational lights of the Coláiste.

He's gone now.

But it was clear from today's service that he is not, and that his legacy lives on, not least in his family and in his former pupils.

May he rest in peace.

---

Joe Ó Muircheartaigh & Judgie (le déanaí)

Joe Ó Muircheartaigh, Iarscoláire and journalist, recently interviewed Judgie in relation to the Coláiste's connections with the 1916 rising. He expects the material to surface in a radio programme he is currently working on. His extensive comment on the Iarscoláirí Facebook page is reproduced in a comment below.

Today's Irish Times (18/9/2015) carries an obituary which is a great tribute to Judgie, as a teacher, writer and human being.

What Nelson Saw

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Five views from the top of Nelson's Pillar will give you some idea what Nelson saw at the dawning of every day. While the camera was not of great quality the fact that they cannot be retaken may make them worth a look.

The first one above looks towards the Liffey as it flows past the relatively newly constructed Liberty Hall, the Custom House and the Gasometer. To the left you can see Michael Scott's Busáras.

I don't want to dwell too long on the first photo at the expense of the others, but, I gather there was fierce opposition to the construction of Busáras on the grounds that it would dominate the Custom House (front of, presumably). Nelson must have died laughing, from his vantage point, when he saw Dublin's first skyscraper rising on the west side of the custom house. Clearly a no contest in his eye.

The second one looks across at the Pro-Cathedral and the Department of Education. For me, it emphasises the backstreet location of the cathedral, compared, for example, to Christ Church or St. Patrick's.

The third shows the buildings on the north-east side of O'Connell St. with the landmark spire of St. George's church and the back of the houses in Cathal Brugha St. Note the shadow of the Pillar itself which we might have used as a sundial instead of the Millennium Chime in the Slime had Admiral Nelson not taken his leave of us by then.

The fourth one looks straight up the middle of the street, clearly showing the public toilets and mid-street parking as well as bringing in Findlater's church and the Rotunda tower.

The final shot moves a bit westwards, retaining Findlater's but showing the full of Parnell Square, including the imposing frontage of the historic Georgian buildings where the Rising was planned and which subsequently housed Coláiste Mhuire where I went to school. You can see Phibsborough church and also the spire of the Black Church where legend had it that if you ran round it three times and then went in you'd meet Old Nick himself.