Myself and my friend Paula booked a trip across to Ireland’s Eye. It’s something I had long wanted to do. In fact, I once harboured (ha ha) the ambition to visit all islands off the Irish coast, but that hasn’t happened and probably won’t. Still, it might make a good series. I’ve been on the Aran Islands (Inis Mor and Inis Oir), the Great Blasket, Garnish Island, Achill and Valentia. Attempts on the Skelligs have been jinxed, though I’ve sailed to within touching distance.
Howth is served by Dublin Bus and Dart. The train station is adjacent to the harbour. Beneath the station is a pub, the Bloody Stream, serving good food and drink in its traditional interior, or al fresco on patios to front and side. The Bloody Stream plays host to annual birthday celebrations for Phil Lynott. Born on August 20th, 1949, he grew up in Crumlin, Dublin 12. As leader of Thin Lizzy, and sometimes solo, his singing and songwriting made him the top Irish rock star of the seventies. By the early eighties it all began to fade. Thin Lizzy disbanded in 1983. Philip’s solo career didn’t ignite, though the song Old Town, and its Dublin based video became iconic; something of a celebratory epitaph besides. He died in January 1986 and is buried at St Fintan’s Cemetery in nearby Sutton. The next bithday bash will be his seventy fifth.
Ireland’s Eye beckons. The island lies north of the Howth Peninsula, about midway along the coast of County Dublin. The name comes from the Danish for Ireland’s island. Monks built a church there in the eight century and for five hundred years this was the parish church for the inhabitants of Howth. Later a Martello Tower was built in 1803 to protect the coast from Napoleon. These days it’s for the birds, and day trippers.
Ferries to the island, and across the bay to Dun Laoghaire, leave from the West Pier. You can book ahead to secure your seats. The crossing takes ten minutes or so, and sailings are every hour. There are a number of options with different operators, averaging about twenty five euro, but if the weather’s fine plump for landing on and exploring the island.
The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, and Ireland’s Eye is truly an emerald isle sparkling in the choppy waters of the Sound. My friend Paula is waiting, and a busker is playing So Long Marianne as we get on board. Paula is a photographer and it’s amazing how a professional can organise the arbitrary molecules of life into coherent and somehow meaningful visual tableaux. So, I emerge from the pixels looking somewhat mercantile and derring do. There’s no hint of that inner fear in being suspended above a watery chasm while the descendants of predatory dinosaurs circle and dive from the skies. There’s Scandinavian blood in me for sure. Well, Scottish in truth.
I wish I was a fisherman
Tumblin’ on the seas
Far away from dry land
And it’s bitter memories
We transfer to a smaller craft for landing. It’s surprising how much larger the island seems when you set foot on it. Although several disembarked, we were quickly alone. We made for higher ground. It’s a good climb to the top and, once elevated, you get that giddy feeling of being marooned on a small island. We attempted to scale the heights but this old goat wasn’t as sure-footed as of yore. I nearly took the fast route down to the beach. The weather was good for our visit, though not exactly desert island disc good. There are beaches and coves, wonderful views, cliffs and plenty of birds. The enthusiast can search for guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, cormorants, puffins, gannets and gulls. Remember, this is their territory, and they know it.
We make it back to the jetty in time to catch the return boat. We’re in an envelope of peaceful blue and sunshine; it feels like floating on forever. There’s grey seals in the sound and the harbour doing just that. Back on dry land, or land anyway, there are plenty opportunities for your drinking and dining pleasure along the West Pier. You can go for the basic, yet always beguiling, fish n chips with a bottle of suds, or perhaps go for more exotic seashell confections. There’s Beshoff’s, Crabby Jo’s, the Brass Monkey, Octopussy’s, the Helm, Baily Bites and Aqua. Howth can be your oyster, quite literally.
Castin’ out my sweet line
With abandonment and love
No ceiling bearin’ down on me
Save the starry sky above
With light in my head
With you in my arms
Fisherman’s Blues was written by Mike Scott and Steve Wickham in early 1986. A busker’s favourite, and one of my own, it was the title track of the Waterboys’ 1988 album.
Howth Head frames the Northern extremes of Dublin Bay, rising to 170 metres. Howth is from the Danish, Hoved, meaning headland. So, Howth Head is something of a tautology. In Finnegans Wake, James Joyce imagined it as the head of the giant Finnegan, with his feet in Chapelizod, and the Wellington monument in Phoenix Park indicating some happiness in between.
Howth has a population of over eight thousand, though is still colloquially referred to as a village. The commercial centre nestles on the north facing hillside near the end of the peninsula, fronting a large harbour with a fishing fleet, small cruise boats, and a marina. There’s a startling view across the harbour and the narrow, choppy sound to the deserted island of Ireland’s Eye.
At the eastern end of the waterfront, the road rises towards the town centre by way of Abbey Street. St Mary’s Abbey and its graveyard commands the height above the Harbour. It was first established by Sitric Silkenbreard, King of Dublin, in 1042. In 1235 the parish church moved to St. Mary’s from the island, saving the locals from yet more boat trips on their day of rest. The present church dates back to late fourteenth century.
The Abbey Tavern is adjacent. This was a popular haunt of mine in the seventies. We translated that to the Happy Tavern, which with the drink flowing, the smoke blowing, and smiling friends all around, it certainly was. A decade earlier, it was one of the cradles of the Irish Folk boom of the sixties. As a singing pub, it required singers, and so Abbey Tavern Singers were formed in 1962 by publican Minnie Scott-Lennon. The group expanded to include a host of musicians playing fiddle, guitar, uileann oipes and spoons and an album was released on Pye records in 1965.
We’re off to Dublin in the Green, was their best known song. It was a renowned rebel-rouser, particularly at the time of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the 1916 Rising. But it was as a theme song for an advertising campaign by Canadian brewers Carling that brought it to wider notice. The song became a huge hit in Canada and also a US top 100 hit.
As for the Rising, Howth contributed to that event in the famous arms smuggling enterprise. On the 26th July 1914 Erskine and Molly Childers sailed their private yacht the Asgard, loaded with German rifles for the Irish Volunteers, into Howth Harbour. The Harbour Master reported the landing to the authorities and the Volunteers ran into a detachment of police and British soldiers, the Scottish Borderers, at Clontarf. The forces of law and order managed to seize twenty rifles, but had to return them after a court case established that police and army were acting illegally. And, after all, the Volunteers were supporting the writ of Parliament, unlike the British army, whose loyalties were ambiguous, to put it mildly. In total 1,500 rifles for the Irish volunteers were put ashore, 900 at Howth and the rest at Kilcoole in County Wicklow. Later a confrontation between a crowd of civilians and the Scottish Borderers on Bachelor’s Walk in Dublin, resulted in the death of four people when the soldiers opened fire. Three people were shot, one Sylvester Pidgeon, died of bayonet wounds.
The restored Asgard is on display in Collins Barracks, Dublin. The name lingered on here in Howth for a while. It was the name of a bar and hotel overlooking the tip of the peninsula on nearby Balscadden Bay. The Asgard was for a time run by Philomena Lynott, mother of Philo himself, main man of Thin Lizzy. There were regular gigs here in the summers of the seventies, though none, that I saw, with Lizzy. To one of these, sometime in the mid seventies, I brought M for our first date. It’s not the music I remember, but I’m sure it must have been heavenly. While the fire there kindled is still burning, the Asgard Hotel itself burned down in 1982 and was replaced by apartments. Lynott died in London in 1986, and there was a funeral mass in Howth. He is buried nearby at St Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton.
Balscadden Road hugs the rocky coast as it winds up towards the Summit. WB Yeats lived at Balscadden House for three years from 1880. He would later write of local ghost stories and a poem, Beautiful Lofty Things, mentions his own paramour: Maud Gonne at Howth Station waiting a train. The blue plaque on the house quotes from He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,
I have spread my dreams under your feet, tread softly because you tread on my dreams
Today, I meander through the town and on uphill to gain the summit. The town itself is much faded from how I remember it. The central hotel, once called the Royal and later the Baily Court, is long closed and gives Main Street a distinct feeling of desertion. However, the pretty Carnegie Library next door endures. The Church of the Assumption dominates the top of Main Street. This is the Roman Catholic parish church. It was designed by William H Byrne and built in 1899. It’s high square tower, topped by pinnacles and gothic gargoyles give it a sense of drama.
I fork right at the church; though left up Thormamby Road is more direct. Zigzagging upward through the steep and prosperous suburbia I am glad of the occasional bench to catch my breath, and absorb the wonderful vista that opens below. I manage to get lost halfway up, but am soon set right by a young man smoking an aromatic cigarette. He directs me towards the summit, which emerges from the fog in glorious sunshine.
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small
The Summit Inn is a good oasis for food and refreshment. Dating back to the nineteenth century. It boasts a traditional bar and turf fire, and there’s a good menu with main plates under twenty euro, and a pleasant outdoor terrace. The summit itself is accessible by bus and car, and offers one of those to-die-for views. Dublin city and the Wicklow Mountains are arranged across the blue waters of the bay, stilled with height and distance, too gorgeous to merely describe in word or pixel.
Amongst the many walks on the headland, the most well trodden heads down a steep and rugged path towards the Bailey Lighthouse below. The Bailey was first built in 1665, back in the days of the Restoration, by Sir Robert Reading. It had a square tower supporting a coal fired beacon. In 1810 this was replaced with a new structure on lower ground designed by George Halpin. He was Inspector of Lighthouses and considered the father of irish lighthouses; the Bull Wall, the Skelligs and Wicklow Head being amongst his work. In fact he increased the number of lighthouses fivefold to seventy two by the end of his career. He died in 1854 while inspecting a lighthouse. The Bailey tower is forty metres above sea level and the lightkeepers house is adjacent. It was the last Irish lighthouse to go automatic in 1997, though an attendant still lives there. The optic is on display in the National Maritime Museum of Ireland in Dun Laoghaire.
As I said, there are plenty of walks on the headland where you can free up your head with the unique balm of the great outdoors. A walk along the cliffs will take you back by Balscadden Road to the Harbour though I am taking a more direct path back to the station. First of all, a stop at the Summit Inn is in order. Food is available, but I am more inclined to feed my head, in honour of ancient days, and take my frothy pint into the sunshine.
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
White Rabbit was written by Grace Slick and features on Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 second album Surrealistic Pillow. It predates Lennon’s Lucy in the Sky with diamonds but is similarly of its time. Like that song it is heavily influenced by Lewis Caroll’s Alice, though Slick specifically uses Alice in Wonderland references as a metaphor for mind expanding drugs. It also, most potently, extols the formative value of reading, most especially when young. What a mind altering experience that is. Feed your head!
The walkway back down to sea level follows the old tramway, which ceased in 1959, to the head of Main Street. This is an easy, slow descent, well maintained. Occasionally, it gives elevated views of Ireland’s Eye, but by and large, the view is restricted by the hedging to each side. At a lower level, you can connect with the town, or continue on the marked path which skirts a housing estate before becoming a short forest trail along a rugged descent to the Station and the Bloody Stream.
January is cold and blear, a time for hibernation, especially for ancient Hibernians like myself. This painting is appropriate for the season in terms of climate and the hectic humdrum after the Christmas festivities, but there are harbingers of the joys of life too. The view is from the upstairs front seat of a bus barrelling down Amiens Street. Connolly Station and Bus Aras, the main train and bus stations respectively, are just behind us, ahead Dublin like crystals in the rain. Liberty Hall at almost sixty metres tall, considered a skyscraper when built in the sixties, really does scrape the sky on days like this. It is still the fourth highest building in Dublin. Off to our left the pyramid capped glass towers of George’s Quay Plaza, much the same height, line the far bank of the river. Straight ahead, the Customs House, Gandon’s late eighteenth century masterpiece, is shrouded in trees. Everything melts in the unrelenting rain.
But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
The photograph was taken by a friend of mine from Art College days, Paula Nolan. Back then, the late seventies, the Art College was in temporary premises on George’s Quay. Paula is a photographer of note, her work being shown at successive RHAs. Her photos can rise to the clouds above, but frequently, as here, feature the drama of ordinary life in the city as she put her morning commute to good use. Despite all the mayhem and the rain, it makes me almost wish to be commuting again.
Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
Joni Mitchell wrote Both Sides Now in 1967, and it was a big hit for Judy Collins the following year. Mitchell’s version is from her album Clouds, 1969.
From Raheny, Watermill Road leads to the Bull Island causeway and on via Bayside and Sutton, to Howth on the peninsula that brackets the north of Dublin Bay. Alternatively, you can take the Dart. The Dartline branches at Howth junction; the western branch following the Belfast line as far as Malahide, while the eastern terminates in Howth.
The Northside Dartline is not so scenic as the Southside, passing through unremarkable suburbs between Clontarf and Bayside, but there are stories there too. The stop after Raheny is Kilbarrack, immortalised as Barrytown in Roddy Doyle’s trilogy: The Commitments, the Snapper and The Van. The Commitments was written largely in dialogue heavily spiced with f-words. The cinema version, written by Ian Le Fresnais, also responsible for the Likely Lads, kept faithfully to the book. This made it difficult to hear as Irish audiences collapse into helpless laughter at the dropping of f bombs, so drowning out subsequent dialogue. Doyle went on to win the Booker Prize for his fourth book, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha; also set hereabouts, in a standalone coming of age story.
Howth was remote enough for us to take a family holiday there in the early sixties. We didn’t have a car then, few families did, and public transport was nowhere near as frequent as now. A bus into town and a train to Howth was something of an odyssey. These days the Dart whistles around the bay every fifteen minutes or so, and the journey from Bray to Howth takes under an hour and a half. The first tram service to Howth was in 1873. From Clontarf it connected to Howth Rail station and the Summit. Irish coach builder, John Stephenson, is credited with inventing the tram in New York in the 1830s. A horse drawn vehicle then, but running on rails made it easier for the horse and increased passenger capacity. Dublin’s first trams were double deckers, with the upper deck open to the sky.
Early electric tramways used street level current collection which was dangerous. The overhead trolley made city electric trams feasible. Haddington Road to Dalkey was the first in Dublin in 1896 followed by Dollymount to Fairview, in 1897. Dublin Corporation objected to electric trams going through the city; as they still object to such diverse things as high buildings, late night opening and Garth Brooks. Boss of the Dublin United Tramways company, William Martin Murphy, pushed objections aside, and by the end of the century, electric trams traversed the city powered by a huge power station in Ringsend. The first electric tram to Howth was in 1900. On May 31st, 1959, the tram took its final bow. This was the last tram to run in Ireland until LUAS reintroduced the concept in the early twenty first century.
I visited Howth by Dart on the hottest day of all time. Temperatures in Phoenix Park were measured at thirty three degrees. I reckon they were a few degrees cooler in Bray and Howth, mid twenties, say, which is very pleasant. In truth, for now, it remains the second hottest day of all time. On 26th June, 1887, a hundred and thirty five years ago, a temperature of 33.3C was recorded at Kilkenny Castle. However, climate activists are determined this abberation, as they see it, must be written off, Apparently, if observations don’t support the theory, change the observation. Either way, temperatures in the thirties are very unusual in Ireland.
The Dart was filling up with daytrippers at Connolly, and by Howth Junction was sardine packed. It emptied at Sutton, the strand there being the destination of youngsters eager to experience the scarce joys of summer in the temperate zone. So eager, they dropped everything they were carrying before leaving the carriege. I was practically alone coming in to Howth where I managed to wade through the debris to the door and alight.
Picture yourself on a train in a station
With plasticine porters with looking glass ties
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile
The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes
Blinking into the sunlight at the station, some tumbleweed blowing past the entrance, it was two short flights of steps down to the Bloody Stream. This is a traditional Irish Bar with a restaurant serving seafood and other popular mains. There’s a mediterranean style covered terrace to the side, a sun terrace in front and the cosy interior has open fires and live music in the evenings. The sunken terrace is a pleasant place to bask and sip a cool beer. A father and son nearby discuss the weather, an age old Irish topic. Do you think you can stand this heat, da? the son asks with some irony. The elderly gent is of the opinion that media coverage is more science fiction than science. All agree that the ill effects of global warming are best kept at bay by frequent stops for cool beer.
The daunting name of the premises is historically based. In 1177, a Norman force under John De Courcey and led by Amory Tristram took Howth from the Danes at the Battle of Evora Bridge. Beneath the bridge the stream ran red with blood and was so named, passing it on to the pub under which it now flows. The heyday of the Danes in Ireland peaked in the tenth century, but even after the defeat at Clontarf, they ruled Dublin for a further century and a half until the arrival of their cousins, the Normans. The Normans defeated the Vikings at Waterford, Wexford and Dublin, but a force held out in Howth for a while. After the battle Tristram took the name De St Lawrence, the battle taking place on the saint’s feast day, and was granted the land and lordship of Howth. His original castle, a wooden structure, was on higher ground further east, but he later established his stronghold west of the station.
It’s a short walk along the main road from the Bloody Stream to the entrance to Howth Castle. First, some yards east of the entrance, St Mary’s church stands on its small promintory. This is the parish church for the Church of Ireland community of Howth. It was designed by JE Rogers in 1860 and is distinguished by an unusual spire which itself seems to grow from an older tower. The interior boasts a rich veriety of stained glass, including work by Evie Hone.
The stone built castle dates from the fifteenth century, with its keep and Gate tower. There’s a Restoration era tower from the 1660s and the complex was significally made over in 1738. Finally, a number of features were added by. Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1911 with a new tower housing the library, a loggia and a sunken garden.
Grace O’Malley stars in a well known incident. In 1576, putting in to Howth, she was confident of receiving the hospitality of the lord, but he, being at supper with his wife, barred the gates against her. Grace was furious, as in her own lands out west, the lord it was honourbound to offer hospitality to the traveller. The next day, the Earl’s grandson and heir, tricked into visiting Grace’s ship, was kidnapped and whisked off to Connaught. One can only imagine the teenager’s response to finding himself in the wilds of the west as prisoner of the notorious pirate queen. “It was sick, Dude!” or words to that effect. In response, the lord guaranteed to set an extra place at dinner table for the unexpected guest, a tradition upheld for four hundred and fifty years. Also, the gates to his Deer Park estate were to remain open to the public. As they are.
Adjacent to Howth Castle is the National Transport Museum. Run by volunteers, it features an interesting collection of various means of transport including a restored Hill of Howth Tram. Closed when I visited, its future is nebulous. Tetrarch Capital and Michael J Wright (The Bloody Stream) recently acquired the estate from the Gaisford St Lawrence family with plans to develop the property for tourism and retail with a luxury hotel and some resedential development.
The walk uphill past the castle takes me through mature woodland which opens onto startling greenery. Within the park, rhododendron gardens make for a spectacular summer walk. Planted in 1835, there are over two hundred species of rhododendron. Through April and May they provide an overwhelming kaleidoscope of colour and fragrance. Popular with us cosmic heads in the 70s, forming a shimmering background to many a pointless and swaying walk in the eternal summers of psychedelia.
In contrast, Deer Park golf course also adorns the flanks of the headland, with a modern bar in the clubhouse buildings. Having lost a lot of liquid on my walk, it being the hottest day of all time, I thought a few moments rest with cold liquid refreshment was in order. The Cafe Bar boasts a large and, surprisingly, deserted terrace. There are spectacular views over the golf course to the isthmus and North Dublin coast beyond. Behind, the serene blue sky is framed by the craggy summit of Howth Head. Heaven.
Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
The Beatles, from their 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although it has long been seen as LSD induced, even the title, Lennon was inspired by his young son’s drawing of a schoolfriend, Lucy O’Donnell. Lennon also drew on the imagery of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
This acrylic on board is based on a photograph. The photo was taken by M on a trip, many moons ago, to Skerries in North Dublin. Four of us found ourselves in Joe Mays which is located on the harbourfront and dates back to 1865. The upstairs lounge has fine views over the harbour. It was empty and dark, but strangely flooded with sunlight. We disported ourselves in the bay window and thought, in high spirits, to enact some Renaissance tableau, as you do. M arranged the scene with myself and our friend J. We were thinking of Venus and Mars. M is also known as Mars, which shuffles the roles slightly. Since we were having fun there’s no point in being too interpretative. The shoot would have called up a few references but this was the shot that worked best. Almost fifty years later the main thing it conjures up for me is our youth, and all that entails.
Sandro Botticelli painted Venus and Mars in the late fifteeenth century, c 1485. Botticelli was born in Florence in 1445 and lived there all his life. His Birth of Venus and Primavera reside at the Uffizzi, but this painting has found its way to the National Gallery in London. It is often seen as an allegory of sensuous love, or might be read as love conquers war. It is also funny, playful; all of which fit the mood of our carry on. Manet’s Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe, which I alluded to in my last post on Raheny, and Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam also get a look in; as do Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma and Led Zeppelin’s Presence. As a music theme however, I’ll go for This Wheels on Fire, the title being a pun which only the protagonists in our scenario will get.
If your memory serves you well, we were going to meet again and wait
So I’m going to unpack all my things and sit before it gets too late
No matter what, we’ll come to you with another tale to tell
And you know that we shall meet again if your memory serves you well
The song was written by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko and would eventually surface on the Basement Tapes in 1975, but first appeared on the Band’s album Music from Big Pink in 1968. It was a hit for Julie Driscoll and the Brian Augur Trinity in 1968 which was the first I heard it. The use of Hammond organ and electronic distortion gave it a very psychedelic feel. This aspect made it ideal as the theme song for the tv series Absolutely Fabulous in the early nineties. And there we are, young hippies of the seventies, frozen forever on the event horizon. Still friends and lovers.
The Palace in Fleet Street is a genuine old style pub dating from 1823. The first proprietor was named Hall. The Ryan family from Tipperary took over in the first half of the twentieth century. The license passed to Bill Aherne in 1946, then to his son Liam and today the pub is run by his son William. It stands on the doorstep of Temple Bar, where the word genuine is oft traduced. I’m not curmudgeonly about it, I delight in most manifestations of the Bacchanalian muse, but the Palace truly remains uniquely oldschool; a place where the discerning soul can commute with the timeless spirit of the capital city.
Back in the day, Temple Bar was a bus queue, waiting for a station, doomed to demolition. Early examples of those things dear to the urban hippy: free love and free trade, were thinly spread on a faded streetscape. These days the whole place is hopping from lunchtime to the wee small hours. The Palace remains unchanged. Always something of an oasis, it rejoices in a literary theme, celebrating Patrick Kavanagh, Brian O’Nolan, Brendan Behan and Sean O’Casey. Patrick Kavanagh described the Palace as “the most wonderful temple of art”. Amongst the artistic regulars were Sean O’Sullivan, Patrick O’Connor and Harry Kernoff.
Kernoff became renowned for his paintings of Dublin streetlife and pub culture. The Palace was both a local and a gallery for Kernoff. He sold his paintings off the wall here through the thirties, forties and fifties. Renown at last recognised him in later years, and he died in 1974. Amongst his most famous pub paintings is A Bird Never Flew on one Wing. This was sold off the Palace wall for a tenner or so in the fifties and found its home in another famed hostelry, O’Briens of Leeson Street. There it hung for decades and I remember admiring it over many’s the liquid lunch back in my ad agency days in the eighties. It was sold to a private buyer for a hundred and eighty grand early this century.
Over the years the Palace has also become closely associated with the newspaper trade, the Irish Times in particular, with their premises just a short block away. Editor RM (Bertie) Smylie would repair here of an evening with a coterie of journalists, in that bygone era when journalism was the thirsty profession.
This acrylic is a snapshot of a sunny afternoon spent amongst friends. A brief lull in the conversation allows me to throw my eyes around the bar. I recognise a few of the faces, though things are getting a bit blurred around the edges; but pleasantly so. Perhaps I’ll have another.
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.
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
The station at Clontarf Road was an addition to the Dartline in 1997. The old Clontarf Station was at the start of the Howth Road, a bit further inland, which operated for a century from the eighteen forties to its closure in the 1950s. Dart dates back to 1984, and provides fast, frequent and affordable transport along the Dublin and North Wicklow coast. Clontarf Road is the last coastal stop between the city and Howth Junction, as the line plunges inland to serve the suburbs of Killester, Harmonstown, Raheny and Kibarrack. Aesthetically, the stop’s a dump on stilts, but function and convenience save the day. Numerous bus connections can be made along Clontarf Road itself, and I found the station ideally sited for visiting the Casino and the start of a few good walks north along the coast as far as Dollymount.
Escaping the station, one is rewarded with a nexus of parkland and seafront promenade. To our left lies Fairview Park and Marino which we’ve recently explored. To our right, the road curves along the coast with the well-to-do suburb of Clontarf inland, and a pleasant linear park laid out on the seaward side. It’s similar to the coastal stretch on the southside at Sandymount. Across the water we see industrial East Wall and Dublin Port and Docks, and a bit further, the dominant striped towers of the Pigeon House and the Incinerator on the South Bull. An urban streetfront of red brick two and three storey premises continues as far as St Lawrence Road and the Yacht bar and restaurant. Cafe society clings to the pavement, an uneasy but distinctive mix of environments; city street and seafront.
Clontarf means Meadow of the Bull, and is deeply resonant in Irish History and identity. This goes back a thousand years to the Battle of Clontarf, where, it is said, the Irish under Brian Boru, drove the invading Danes into the sea. There is an information sign for the Battle of Clontarf at the start of the esplanade.The battle took place in 1014 and was not the Ireland v Denmark match of our schoolbooks. Brian Boru, King of Munster and High King of Ireland, led a coalition of forces, mostly Gaelic, but including Munster Vikings whom he had subjugated. Ranged against him was the alliance of Danish Dublin and Gaelic Leinster, with a number of Danes from the Isle of Man and the Orkneys. Leader of this alliance was Sitric Silkenbeard. Sitric was born in Ireland around 970 and became King of Dublin in the late eighties.
At the end of the century he was obliged to submit to Brian Boru, becoming Brian’s ally in helpng him assert his rule over Ireland as High King. As part of the deal, Sitric married Brian’s daughter, Slaine, while Brian married Sitric’s mother Gormlaith. In marrying Brian, Gormlaith was on husband number three. She is cast as the femme fatale of her age, exercising a magnetic attraction at the apex of sex and power; a Celtic Cleopatra. But, hey, that’s the way the gals are in Dublin.
She was the daughter of Murchada King of Leinster and brother of his successor, Mael Morda. She first married Olaf Cuaran, King of Dublin and York, with whom she had Sitric. Olaf abdicated following defeat at Tara in 980, and died in exile. The victor Mael Seachnall, High King of Ireland, aka Malachy II became husband number two.
Gormlaith’s ardour waned with the arrival of a new force of nature. Brian Boru had by century’s end established himself as Ireland’s ruler and then captain of Gormlaith’s heart. Well, maybe. Things turned sour in a war between the sheets and Gormlaith left the ageing King. She also coaxed her brother and son away from their allegiance. The Gang of Three were now in open revolt. Sitric enlisted help from offshore Viking adventurers. Brodir and Ospak were Danish Manx brothers whom he hoped to persuade to join him at his day at the races. As it turned out they fought on different sides in the battle, Ospak finding Brian too good a king to oppose. Sigurd of Orkney supported Sitric.
The battle took place on Good Friday, 1014. A day, you will be aware, the pubs were all shut. It could have ranged all along the coast from the Tolka River as far as where the North Bull now stands. Slaughter was huge on both sides. As many as ten thousand died. Brian’s son, Murtagh, and grandson Turlough were slain. Mael Morda also fell.
By the end of the day, the numerical superiority of the Irish forces began to tell. Many Vikings were marooned by the high tide and were drowned or slain. Sitric led what few remained of his forces back to Dublin. Brian, seventy years old was in his tent where Brodir found him and killed him, before himself being killed by Brian’s bodyguard. Legend has it that Brian was on his knees in prayer, giving thanks to God for his victory. Although he could have been trying to get the cork out of a bottle. Either way he was dead, as was his son and heir, Murtagh. This was a pyrrhic victory for Brian’s kin.
Malachy resumed his High Kingship. He had brought his forces to Dublin, but they hung around the back smoking and playing cards, having forged a secret non aggression pact with the Dubs. He reigned until his death in 1022. Sitric, meanwhile, remained to rule the Fair City for a further two decades. Skilled in the not altogether disparate arts of piracy, pillage and politics, he is best known as patron of the church, establishing Christchurch Cathedral in a fit of piety after a pilgrimage to Rome in 1028. After almost fifty years in power, he was usurped in a palace coup in 1036, and exiled to York where he died in 1042. Gormlaith, the beautiful schemer, had died in 1030, in her seventieth year.
It’s thirsty work contemplating the legendary battles of yore. The wanderer, Dub or Dane, Gael or Gall, is welcome at the Yacht, a rare oasis in this seafront suburbia. They serve a good lunch, with battered fish and chunky chips the appropriate choice, either in the lounge of gleaming wood and glass flooded with seafront light or the windswept patio to the side. There, the cool wind blows, the seagulls call, and sometimes you’ll hear the echo of an ancient battle cry.
We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
How soft your fields so green
Can whisper tales of gore
Of how we calmed the tides of war
We are your overlords
Immigrant Song, was written on a visit to Reykjavik by Led Zeppelin, and opens their 1970 album Led Zeppelin III. Sitric would have loved it.
Cleary’s Pub lies in the shadow of the Loopline where it crosses Talbot Street. It is packed with the glinting brass and gloomy wood of the genuine, olde worlde Irish pub. With genuine passenger and freight trains hurtling overhead. I have stopped there on my way to concerts in Croke Park and in bygone days to slake my thirst after a hard day’s night in the Sheriff Street Sorting Office adjoining Connolly Station. Or even before the working night. The zombie shift could be tedious, but with hazardous interludes, so it was no harm to soften the sharper extremities of perception with a couple of pints before closing time. There were times too, in the wee small hours, when the Sorting Office would ring empty and hollow, the workers having repaired to some early opener to put in a round or two. I’d need to solve whatever task they’d set for me, some devious and booby trapped blockage, before sloping off into the dawn to herd them home from whatever watering hole they were hiding in. Grainger’s and the North Star being most likely.
Sheriff Street itself heads seaward before the Loopline, skirting the back end of the IFSC before crossing the Royal Canal to end off in the distance at East Wall Road. Our path continues northwards. A little further along Amiens Street we cross the line of the North Circular Road. Seville Place is on our right and Portland Row slopes up to our left towards Summerhill from where it continues on as the North Circular Road proper. At the five point intersection stands a notable Dublin landmark: the Five Lamps. This famous monument was erected in 1880 to fulfil the wishes of Lieutenant General Henry Hall who died five years earlier. Hall, from Athenry in County Galway, served with the British Army in Bengal and wanted his memorial to encourage sobriety. The cast iron fountain at its base provided clean drinking water, not available in the surrounding tenements.
The Five Lamps miraculously survived the North Strand Bombing of May 1941. WW2 was phrased the Emergency in neutral Ireland, but bits of war intruded. Three hundred houses were destroyed and twenty eight people died in this rare and brutal assault by German planes. Whether it was a mistake or a warning by the Luftwaffe we don’t know. Dublin had sent firefighters up to Belfast to deal with the aftermath of German bombings there, and Ireland’s neutrality was always slanted toward the Allies. Ireland remains neutral, though not passive, at time of going to press.
Continuing along North Strand Road, we cross the Royal Canal at Newcomen Bridge which is also the site of the first lock of the Royal Canal. The Royal Canal was the northside riposte to the Grand Canal on the southside. In 1790 construction began and soon the canal flowed westwards from Phibsborough to the Shannon River at Longford. The city extension of the Royal, as with the Grand, followed in the nineteenth century to link the Shannon with the Irish Sea. The Dublin Mullingar railway from the mid nineteenth century runs alongside the canal for much of its length.
Looking westward from the bridge, through the chaos of canal, railway and cityscape, Croke Park frames the horizon. The eighty thousand capacity stadium is the third largest in Europe. A feature of a stadium visit is the Skyline Tour. Way up in the eaves, it gives an elevated, dizzying, view over Dublin City. Croke Park has been the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) since its foundation in 1884. The major finals in hurling and football are played there. It is also, betimes, a concert venue. U2, Bruce Springsteen and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are amongst those who have headlined, and whom I’ve seen.
The Strand Cinema on the eastern side of the road was built in the mid thirties, becoming briefly a music venue and a bowling alley, before closing down along with so many suburban cinemas. The art deco facade was preserved and has been tastefully adapted as the frontage of an apartment complex.
Once more beneath the railway, this one also heading west, we continue through the dingy city outskirts to reach the Annesley Bridge crossing the Tolka River. Upstream, the river has enjoyed a pleasant suburban sojourn through The Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin and Drumcondra. But, off to our right, the murky Tolka seeps towards the docklands before taking a sharp left to join with the waters of the bay. East Wall Road continues straight into the docklands and eventually meets the Liffey at the East Link Bridge.
I worked in a factory down on East Wall approaching the Millennium. Planart made components for computers, bound for Finland mostly. It was a small operation, so I could follow through from darkroom to the final, messy business of etching. Urban spacemen in protective gear, the acid got everywhere. Not a place of love stories, so. Still, a young woman working production took a shine to the guy I worked with in the darkroom. I love a man with an accent, she said. Mac was from Arklow. I was appointed matchmaker, but such hints that I dropped, clanging from a height, went unheard by the Adonis of Arklow.
We argued regularly over music. There was wall to wall radio on the shop floor, strictly commercial, while one hip hop comrade was confined to the canteen for his aural hit. Rock music prevailed in the darkroom where I worked with Mac. The Cranberries were coming on strong just then. Their song, Zombie, stood out. Dolores Riordan wrote it in response to the death of two English boys in the IRA bombing of Warrington in 1993. Riordan’s enraged yodel fed directly into the zeitgeist. Mac quibbled with its political naivety, as he saw it. But it was a passionate vindication of light, and of leaving behind the dark, the heroic dead, and the persistent undead. No Need to Argue was the album, their second, released in 1994, and a global multi million seller.
It’s the same old theme Since nineteen-sixteen In your head, in your head, they’re still fighting With their tanks, and their bombs And their bombs, and their guns In your head, in your head, they are dying Zombie, zombie, zombie! What’s in your head?
xxharrison 