North Dublin’s Sandy Shore – 7

From the Sheds, we blink into the dazzling sun on water which vista extends past Clontarf to Dollymount. Clontarf pier is a little north of the village and it’s suburban housing along the shore from here on. A horse tram service was initiated in 1873 from the city to Clontarf, attracting more and more day trippers. Later catered to by the Howth Tram, this electrified service connected to Sutton and Howth stations via the Summit. On May 31st, 1959, the last tram took its final bow. The colourful, and most useful, tram era was gone, obliterated by conservative forces. Almost fifty years later, the powers that be were persuaded of the error of their ways, and the modern tram service, Luas, went on line in 2004. It doesn’t operate at this end of the city, but there is a frequent bus service all along the coast road.

In the distance, the straight line of the Bull Wall, and its wooden bridge, is apparent between our standpoint and the peninsula of Howth. The wide embrace of Dublin Bay looks the most natural and beautiful of havens for the ships of the ocean. More than a millennium of navigators have been welcomed. But there’s a darker side. The commodious bay is prone to silting and many’s the ship has been wrecked in these waters, or run aground on treacherous sandbars that form across the mouth of the Liffey, and the confluence of other tributaries of the bay such as the Dodder and the Tolka. In medieval and early modern times, the Liffey port was so treacherous that Dalkey to the South, and Howth to the North acted as port for the city. This couldn’t continue. 

In 1715 work began on the Piles, a wooden construction built to provide a channel past the southern sand bank. Later this would be cast in stone to form the South Bull Wall. In 1760 Sir John Rogerson funded the extension of this westward to meet the Ballast Office and the South Quays. But the problem persisted and in 1801 the Admiralty commissioned William Bligh to survey Dublin bay. Just a dozen years earlier, Bligh had featured in that mother of all adventures at sea: the Mutiny on the Bounty. His four and a half thousand mile voyage with his eighteen loyalists in an open boat is truly the stuff of legend. The waters of Dublin Bay were rather calmer, though treacherous enough, and the Captian of the Bounty, and future Governor of New South Wales, brought his talents to bear on them. The result of Bligh’s survey was the recommendation to built the North Bull Wall, from the Clontarf Coast pointing southeastwards into the bay. This, he calculated, would build up the silt on the Northern side of the wall, which is now evident in the creation of the Bull Island.

Ultimately the design for the wall was made by George Halpin, Ballast Board engineer and designer of bridges and lighthouses. He was the uncle of Robert Halpin, the famed Wicklow mariner who captain Brunel’s SS Great Western in laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866. George is known as the father of the Irish lighthouse service. He was appointed inspector of lighthouses in 1810, responsible for over fifty lighthouses, including the Skelligs, and the Baily Lighthouse in Howth. He died in 1854 and was succeeded as Inspector of Lighthouses by his son, George.

Work commenced on the North Bull in 1819 with the construction of the timber bridge. The crossing of this seems almost a rite of passage for a true blue Dub. Car traffic is one lane at a time, controlled by traffic lights. On one childhood trip, I recall our packed Morris Minor, stopped halfway out by a car coming in the opposite direction. An amber gambler, no doubt. My father got out to reason with the errant driver, who, on seeing him, reversed furiously back to the island. My father was a diminutive man, but imposing. He was a military man, Irish Army, but with something of a British accent. We had a good laugh at his quick resolution of the short impasse.

Over the bridge, there’s parking adjacent to a service area which includes pay toilets and picnic benches. There’s a windswept coffee and snack place called Happy Out. I throw out an anchor and lean into the gale, feeling the defrosting balm of americano seep through my veins. All the better to fortify myself on my walk out to the end of the wall. 

The wall itself was completed six years after the bridge and extended for more than three kilometres into the bay. The walkway is paved as far as Our Lady Star of the Sea, and the last stage is a rough breakwater, covered at high tide, with a green lighthouse at the end. As far as the statue, there are a number of public bathing shelters, designated male and female and designed by George Simms, Dublin Corporation housing architect. Star of the Sea was first mooted in the fifties and funded by subscription from Dublin dockers, sailors and port companies. The structure comprises three tall concrete pillars which merge to support a globe on which stands the statue sculpted by Cecil King. It was unveiled in 1972.

Dollymount strand is a good five kilometres long and is both a splendid public amenity for the huge city on its doorstep, and also an invaluable wildlife reserve. The Bull island on the landward side is occupied by two golf clubs, the Royal Dublin and St. Anne’s. The Royal Dublin was founded in 1855 and is Ireland’s second oldest golf club. It is a regular venue for the Irish Open Championship. A causeway links with the mainland further on at Raheny

And so to stroll the sands of the neverending beach that is Dollymount Strand. It can be all things at all times, a capsule of infinity, a panorama of the memory. Life is a beach. I recall another childhood trip to Dollymount. Taking the car without incident onto the beach, my father gave each of us three kids a turn at driving on the hard packed sand. This is also something of a Dublin tradition. Many’s the driver who cut their motoring teeth here. And returned for other pursuits. It was also a popular nighttime hangout. Motoring, music and romance; what more could a  body ask for? There were cars, their drivers, and passengers, otherwise occupied, marooned by the incoming tide.

I want to take you to the island

And trace your footprints in the sand …

And in the evening when the sun goes down 

We’ll make love to the sound of the ocean

The Island is a 1985 song by Paul Brady taken from his album Back to the Centre. Brady hails from the town of Strabane, not far from Dungannon, in County Tyrone. My father lived in Dungannon from when he was six, or maybe seven. He died in the late eighties. Near the end of his life he spent some time at a Convalescent Home near Sandymount Strand, across the bay. It was me that drove him home for the last time. We walked out along the corridor together, very slowly, and I recall the song playing was The Island. It refers to the greater island of Ireland, and caustically to the Troubles, but like any great song it applies across a range of human experience. Here, memory, belonging and isolation are evoked in the permanence, and transience of the tide across an expanse of beach. It seems apt now, on this sandy island, to let it flow, and ebb through the soul.

But hey don’t listen to me

This wasn’t meant to be no sad song

We’ve had too much of that before

Right now I only want to be here with you

Till the morning dew comes falling

North Dublin’s Sandy Shore – 6

Stepping off the Yacht, I turn left and northwards along the coast. At least I will ultimately head North, way up north. Right now Clontarf Road is curving away east, south east. But there’s no way of getting lost. It hugs the coast, so eminently huggable, all the way onwards from its starting point in Fairview, through Clontarf and on to the timber bridge connecting to the Bull Island at Dollymount. There’s a long grassy promenade as far as the bridge, after which the coast road will continue alone past Saint Anne’s Park in Raheny until Sutton Strand at the isthmus of Howth. 

Dublins docklands form a spiky tableau along the horizon, the twin chimneys above all. The road curves away past salubrious suburbia. A few hundred yards on at Castle Avenue there’s time for a detour to Clontarf Castle. Castle Avenue is a sylvan boulevard, lined with attractive nineteenth century terraces and some more modern flats and houses. It takes a sharp right at the top where there’s a stone gateway inscribed for longtime owners of the Castle, the Vernons: Vernon Semper Virit, and dated 1885. This entrance is now dislocated from the Castle grounds, whose modern entrance is a hundred yards or so further on.

The original castle was built by Hugh De Lacy, Lord of Meath, following Strongbow’s conquest in 1172. His tenant, Adam de Pheypo, took up residence. Ownership passed to the Knights Templar and subsequently the Knights Hospitaller until Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. 

By the mid seventeenth century, times were becoming ever more interesting. The War of the Three Kingdoms kicked off, with the Irish Confederacy of Gaelic and Old English (the Anglo Norman Lords) adding fuel to the fire with the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Avid Cromwellian, Sir Charles Coote, Governor of Dublin, burned the castle as part of a campaign to exterminate the Catholic rebels holed up there. The lands were subsequently granted to John Vernon, Quartermaster general of Cromwell’s army, and he set about rebuilding it and adding a parish church whose ruins endure.

George Handel is a noted visitor. In April 1742, the first performance of Handel’s Messiah took place in the Concert Hall in Fishamble St. The choirs of St Patrick’s and Christ Church Cathedrals were used, though the Dean of St Patrick’s, Jonathan Swift, was initially reluctant until informed it was to be a charity event. And hugely successful too. Such were the crowds clamouring to go, that gentlemen were required to leave their swords at the door, to facilitate more people. Handel stayed for a time at Clontarf Castle, where he formed a close relationship with the lady of the house Dorothy Vernon, whom he honoured in his music. She is also honoured by the Dolly in Dollymount further along the coast.

The Vernon’s owned the castle for three hundred years but the line extinguished in the 1930s and the castle and grounds fell into decay. In the late sixties the castle was reborn as a popular cabaret venue. It was completely renovated as an upmarket hotel in the 1990s. The current structure was designed by Irish Architect William Vitruvius Morrison in 1837, in a Gothic Tudor style. The Tower House being a replica of the original Templar structure.

Another probable visitor, in its derelict days, was Phil Lynott who left his home in Crumlin and moved into a flat at 28 Castle Avenue in the late sixties. The three storey Victorian house where Lynott lived was recently renovated as a private dwelling and worth an approximate four million. But it was the castle that caught the young musician’s imagination.

The friendly ranger paused

And scooping a bowl of beans

Spreading them like stars

Falling like justice on different scenes

Around that time, Lynott joined Skid Row, moving on to front Orphanage and forming Thin Lizzy at the end of 1969 with old pal, Brian Downey, and Belfast duo Eric Bell and Eric Wrixon of Them. Thin Lizzy’s eponymous first album opens with the song The Friendly Ranger at Clontarf Castle. The lyrics suggest the castle and grounds are deserted, a place where wild and ragged people go, which Lynott and friends may have used for a hangout. The friendly ranger is part tramp, part guru, and evening brings a rush of hope and wonder.

To feel the goodness glowing inside

To walk down a street with my arms about your hips, side by side

To play with a sad eyed child till he smiles

To look at a starry sky at night, realize the miles

Like Dublin’s other great musical bard, Thomas Moore, Lynott sings of love and landscape, of lost and living friendships.

Back down at the seafront, there’s a water outlet in the wall, which it is said, derives from the spring where Brian refreshed himself at the Battle of Clontarf. It is known as Brian Boru’s Well; although he wasn’t looking so good last time he left the place, dead.

Turning back onto the coast, we pass Clontarf baths, The bracing shoreline with its spectacular panorama of the bay saw Clontarf become a fashionable resort in the nineteenth century. Catering for the influx, the baths were constructed by a Mr Brierly with hot and cold seaweed baths. These closed in 1996, but are currently refurbished with bar and lounge, although access to bathing remains nebulous.

A little further on we reach the junction of Vernon Avenue where an urban village juts onto the coast road. The ancient manorial village of Clontarf grew originally in the vicinity of the Castle, but the population in the late seventeenth century was less than a hundred. An important fisheries industry developed on the coast further east. Processing the catch, including fish curing and oysters, was carried on in a group of buildings called the Sheds and the modern village grew around this. The fisheries are long gone, but the name, The Sheds, lives on at Connolly’s Pub on the seafront. The small village is an interesting enclave with cafes, eateries, shops and the pub.

From here the road begins to curve northwards, towards Dollymount and the Bull Island. Guarding the route is an imposing head which resonates of a very distant culture. This is the Easter Island Maoi replica statue presented by the Chilean government to the city of Dublin in 2004. It was carved from the volcanic rock of Easter Island in the Pacific, and forms an eerie, though appropriate, connection between island cultures on different sides of the globe. Rock and roll! 

To see the sun set behind the steeple

Clontarf castle, no king, queen or knightly people

A coal fire and it’s pouring rain

To wave goodbye to a very good friend, never meet again

Little thoughts bring little memories of you to me