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

The International Bar Revisited

I have a soft spot for the International Bar in Wicklow Street. It was a regular haunt of mine in my Post and Telegraph days. Wicklow Street is a busy shopping street connecting Grafton Street and Sth Great George’s Street. It was developed as part of Exchequer Street in 1776 having previously been a lane. This eastern branch was renamed Wicklow Street in 1837.

The International Bar dates from 1838 and is housed in a fine, early Victorian, gothic redbrick four storey on the corner of Andrew’s Street, which continues as South William St south of the junction. This was the venue I chose for my twenty first birthday party. Friends and workmates gathered round, and, of course, the divine Ms M. Gifts, besides copious pints, checked shirts and scabrous greeting cards, included some music of the day: Horslips second Celtic symphony the Book of Invasions, AC/DC’s debut High Voltage and Thin Lizzy’s breakthrough album, Jailbreak.

I’d imagine these were played full volume and the final verse of The Boys Are Back in Town lingers strongly in the memory. 

That jukebox in the corner blasting out my favourite song

The nights are getting warmer, it won’t be long

Won’t be long till summer comes

Now that the boys are here again

Near enough seven years since they were formed in Dublin, Thin Lizzy had at last scaled the dizzy heights of international fame. Jailbreak was Lizzy’s first album to go gold in the USA. Phil Lynott had adapted his poetic muse to powerhouse rock with spectacular effect. The following summer, myself and M would be amongst the tens of thousands at Dalymount Park to give the heroes a memorable return to Dublin town. The Boys Are Back! 

Happy days. I remember a wall poster that night in the International advertising Billy Connolly, the comedian posed in front of a Scottish Flag. Suitable backdrop, as my birthday falls on Saint Andrew’s Day, and I’m half Scottish; probably three quarters Scotch that night. The International would go on to host nightly comedy shows since the 1990s with live music downstairs. Dara O Briain from Bray is one of a generation of comics to cut their teeth there. Outside of the music and laughter, life at the International goes on as always, a jewel of an oasis, the best of times suspended in amber. 

Walk in off the street to the high ceilinged narrow room. The bar is spectacularly set off by an ornate hand carved mahogany reredos. Brass fittings, mirrors and optics are set ablaze by light streaming in the large windows. When the canopies are out, high arched transom windows allow solid shafts of light to stream diagonally onto the bar.

This scene captures that snapshot of heaven, and perhaps some of the more subdued stories in the weave. There is a slight allusion to a painting by Degas, In a Cafe, in the couple seated to the right. But this painting is phrased to convey a sense of warmth, and our heroes may be enjoying a moment of easy silence. Remembering those golden days.

Brussels – 2

After exit, I return to the lower city by way of the sloping plaza, past an exhibition on Breughel  through the ages to a busy cafe where I claim the one unoccupied seat on the terrace. I must eat, though I am still a bit hungover from Bruges and don’t feel particularly hungry. I order a small falafel as a concession to healthy eating and shrinking wallet. My waiter is both friendly and forgetful, bringing me the large falafel and, perhaps noticing my consternation at the size of it, immediately offering it at the lower price. There’s something of a Mr Bean moment here, as I scan furtively for places to hide parts of the feast, which, in truth, is rather stodgy. But the terrace is full, and empty of seagulls and other scavangers, just when you need them, so I must soldier on.

Well stuffed, I roll down the hill and enter the picturesque and winding Lower Town. An irregular square below the station, Place de l’Albertine, is thronged with people, entertained or ensnared by street performers, hawkers and other importuners. To one side, a more elegant and ordered avenue of pleasure and commerce gives shelter.

Galleries St Hubert opened in 1847 and was the first shopping arcade in Europe. Victor Hugo attended lectures here. Creator of Les Miserables and the Hunchback of Notre dam, he was a Brussels resident, exiled from Louis Napoleon’s France. Another contemporary exile was Alexander Dumas who was also an habituee of the Gallerie. Designed by Jean Pierre Cleysenaar in Neo-Renaissance style, the complex comprises three galleries, soaring impressively to a high, vaulted glass roof. It remains a popular venue after a hundred and seventy years, with luxury shops, a cinema, theatre, cafes and restaurants.

My bag is a cross to bear in the heat and the crowds. This boy is cracking up, this boy needs to sit down. I hobble through thronged ancient streets to the Grand Place where the buildings are spiked like stone meringues and tinted gold to boot. The Grand Place is well named. As the civic centre of Brussels, the square dates back eight hundred years or more. Around it have grown this selection of ornate Flemish buildings, civic, commercial and private. Most date back to the 17th century. Grandest of all amongst this jewelled crown of architecture is the Hotel de Ville with its teetering spire rising to almost a hundred metres.

There are numerous bars and cafes but even more numerous people sadly, or happily for them. The secret of bars: drink early, drink often is being well observed. However, an articulated vehicle like me needs room to park. I walk on by lively hostelries with no room to spare. I find the Church of St Nicolas which honours the patron saint of merchants. I’ll bet. Shops and houses cling to its outer walls, these, more than its modern gothic facade, manage to hint at the church’s ancient origins in the twelfth century.

At the edge of this medieval labyrinth, the modern, neo-classical city emerges. The Belgian Stock Exchange, La Bourse, is an impressive Palladian palace from the 1860s. Designed by Leon Suys, the facade features an extensive frieze extolling the virtues of international trade. The French artist, Albert Carrier-Belleuse was responsible. His Brussels studio was a refuge for Auguste Rodin following the collapse of the Paris Commune in 1871, and many credit him with the section on the south wall representing Asia and Africa. However, local artist Antoine Van Rasbourgh is officially credited. Today, the building stands amidst a chaos of construction, which somewhat mute the joys of pedestrianisation.

I turn south on to Boulevard Anspach where I find O’Reilly’s Irish Bar with room to sit over a pint. Much put upon barman is commandeered by a pillock ordering eight Irish Coffees in a heatwave. More absurd still, there is only one barman. The street itself is edgy and crowded, though with that life and lust in its inhabitants to suggest the defining purpose of Brussels over centuries. There is all the mixture one would expect in the melting pot of Europe, a vibrant, if not always elegant, reflection of the sculptures on the Bourse.

Lone barman, dopey clients or no, I find my seat in the sunshine, and I force in two pints before five thirty when I must make my way back to Central Station to make my connection for the airport, and home to Dublin.

 

Phil Lynott awaits me in Dublin, outside Bruxelles.

Walkinstown’s Musical Roads – 5

 

A sting for the Alan Ladd western, Shane, from Jack Schaefer’s book, announced my pending arrival. Shane is Coming, Shane is coming, Shane is here! My mother claims this was a signal element in my Christening. My father opts for the more Nationalistically appropriate association with the rebel prince of Tyrone, Shane O’Neill. I will take both. They made a film of the fictional Shane of the Wild West, which I witnessed in the local cinema, an eery experience of identification and dismay at hearing my own name whispered hugely in the crowded, dark auditorium. I was being talked about and not being talked about. I was the hero in buckskins and the outlaw dressed in black. I was the star and I was dying at sunset. Nothing like seeing your life written large on a silver screen. Our metaphysical lives were being told beyond the aural dimensions of old. Images, from distant alien sources were painting new pictures for us. The picture house in question was at the far end of Bunting Road, central to the short stub of Harty Avenue.

Bunting Road

There many venues in Dublin 12 in the fifties. Suburbs are suburbs and have long functioned as dormitories, particularly where, as with Walkinstown, there had been little or no village nucleus prior to development. There was the Moeran Hall and there was the cinema, the Apollo. Since Apollo is the Greek God of music, the name was wisely chosen. He was also leader of the Muses, and God of poetry and light. All one might require of a cinema, so. The Apollo hosted the occasional variety show with bird warblers, yodellers, hypnotists and the like. For the most part though it was Movies, Movies, Movies! The Saturday afternoon matinee was a riot of screaming kids, acting out every action scene on the way home; a swift torrent of noise flowing up Bunting Road towards the Scheme and Greenhills. All those magnificent films: The Searchers, The Magnificent Seven, The Longest Day, The Haunted House, a jumble of Westerns, World War Two drama and British farce. The cartoons kicked off with Bugs Bunny or Woody Woodpecker, romantic interludes were lustfully whistled and booed, there were the folley-n-uppers, and action heroes of such sartorial elegance as Batman and Robin. Action scenes demanded audience participation which often developed independent of the silver screen.

Harty Avenue, looking towards where the Apollo used to be.

Within the walls was mayhem. Willie the bouncer ran as tight a ship as was possible; a ship of riotous pirates all the same. Willie was The Man. In truth, he was no more than a few years older than us, a wiry youth who modelled himself on Elvis. Elvis had been a cinema usher too, back in Memphis in the early fifties, with long sideburns and oiled back hair. Not a redhead like Willie. Willie did have the occasional horde of girl screamers though. Much famed for breaking up a fight in the girls toilet, his intrusion provoking an exodus of screaming pre teens. In the retelling, his name didn’t prove too helpful to his cause.

More mature fare beckoned as we turned into teenagers towards the later sixties. The Apollo was moving towards the light. There was the weirdly perverse 2001 – A Space Odyssey with its booming opening of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, and that  incongruous cosmic dance to Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube. I remember darkening stubble on my upper lip to bluff my way into the Graduate. Then there was Woodstock. I was fourteen or fifteen when the film came to the Apollo. Already, the cordite scented Rock of the late sixties had entered our blood. Our big brothers and sisters had Beatlemania, and the Rolling Stones. The Monkees were our teenybopper treat. Then came Flower Power and Freaks, free festivals of music and love. Drugs were a few steps down the road. These happy, hairy people were powered by more than a cup of Irel and a bottle of stout. They weren’t passing around Woodbines. But, the music was the message, after all.

Henry McCullough

The only Irish performer at Woodstock was Henry McCullough, guitarist with Joe Cocker’s Grease Band. Cocker was a mover and shaker, literally, in the British Blues Boom. Always a fiery performer, he was renowned for his throaty voice and his unique, spastic air guitar. At Woodstock, he performed the Beatles’ I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends.

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song,

I will try not to sing out of key.

I get by with a little help from my friends!

Alvin Lee with his iconic guitar Big Red.

Another Blues Boom light, Alvin Lee of Ten Years After actually had a guitar. In the nighttime climax of the movie, Lee launched into the frenetic finale, I’m Going Home, a headbanging celebration and a trip down the memory lane of good old time Rock n Roll. And then a divine spirit materialised from the Purple Haze to play us out. Jimi Hendrix coaxed magic from his upside down guitar. Excuse me while I kiss the sky! This was a different planet altogether.

All those kids screaming their way home from the Matinee in the fifties were playing Batman or Cowboys ’n’ Indians in their heads; ten years later they were playing air guitar a la Joe Cocker, reliving the solos of Lee and Jimi Hendrix, dreaming of Rock Stars and the seductive release of sound and substance.

For years thereafter, passing down the gloom of Walkinstown Avenue, a regular tableau unfolded. With smog softening buildingd and streetlights, cloaking loitering figures in dangerous mystique, young men walked meaningfully, guitar cases slung across shoulders or held by the handle; Prohibition Era gangsters making for a hit.

The Musical Roads did not, so far as I know, yield more fledgling musicians or music stars than other more prosaically named estates. Amongst my classmates were a Frank(ie) Vaughan, and a John Lennon. Others included traditional musicians Eamon Lane and Sean O’Connell. Dublin 12 has produced an interesting spectrum of talented musicians. Fifties opera singer Dermot Troy, singer of modern folk, Rita Connolly, and that most musical ghost, our very own shadow of Jimi Hendrix, Philip Lynott. I wonder will he merit a road in his capital being named for him anytime soon. I don’t see why not.

Statue of Phil Lynott outside Bruxelles in Dublin.

In the later forties

When Diddy Levine lived with Eunice King,

He gave her the ring that she wore.

See Philip Parris Lynott, caught improbably in a sepia snap, walking the streets of Crumlin where he came to live as a child, in the fifties. All those genes jiggling there, just bursting to get out, and delivering something that is eternally the black man’s Blues, and quintessentially Irish too.

Inheritance you see,

Runs through every family,

Who is to say what is to be,

Is any better.

Over and over it goes,

The good winds and the bad winds blow,

Over and over, over and over and over …

Thin Lizzy lit a fire for a generation of Dubliners. As Beat merged with Blues Boom, a new strand of Rock was forming, merging American roots with localised experience. Kids in Dublin’s suburbs in the sixties were well in tune with this. Frank Murray, who grew up on Crotty Avenue, was one, becoming an important contributor to Dublin’s river of sound. Late in the sixties he saw a group called the Black Eagles play the Moeran Hall. Lead Eagle was Phil Lynott. They became friends and Murray went on to manage Thin Lizzy and, later the Pogues. Murray was a main mover behind the recording of Fairytale of New York, that perennial Christmas favourite from the Pogues and Kirsty McCall.

Frank Murray (right) with friend Declan Collinge on Crotty Avenue.

Christmas in Walkinstown is depicted in Youtube video: The Apollo Gang. Here Murray and friends ham it up, Beatles style, on a snowblown day in 1965 on Harty Avenue, to the refrain of the Animals’s House of the Rising Sun. This song must find a soft spot in the hearts of Walkinstown gangs. Our own crowd, hanging around the Cross, also used it, amending the lyrics to suit. There is a house in Walkinstown … to begin with, and becoming more unprintable thereafter. Yes, it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, and (thank) God, I know I’m one.

Dublin’s Circular Roads – 8

Kilmainham to Dolphin’s Barn

Moving on from the Patriots Pub, the road falls downhill from Kilmainham to the Camac River which flows discreetly under a high, short bridge. At the junction there’s a pleasant restaurant with outdoor seating housed in a modernist building with a certain Art Deco ambience. Called Union 8 from the Dublin 8 postal district it’s a busy spot, modelled, I think, on a notion of Brooklyn brassiere chique. 

The Old Kilmainham Road heads east towards the city. Further townwards, an early twentieth century housing estate is perched on its hill. Known as Mount Brown, there’s a whiff of Gothic romance off the place, home for the urban hobbit. It’s an early example of Dublin Corporation’s attempts to break out of the ghetto housing to which the working classes were once condemned. Designed by keen modernist TJ Byrne, it stands comparison with the Iveagh Trust terraced housing projects of that era. 

Inchicore stays off to our right by way of Emmet Road. Inchicore is from the Irish, sheep island. Shepherds used to gather their flocks here on land bordered by the Liffey and Camac rivers. Over the last century it has grown into a heavily populated working class suburb. 

Local club St. Patrick’s Athletic play out of Richmond Park, a pitch not renowned for its resemblance to a billiard table. It was said that the goalie at one end was unable to see his opposite number below the knees. Though, why a goalie would ever want to see the ankles of his opposite number is hard to figure. Founded in 1929 in the Phoenix Park, they set up house at Richmond Park the following year. They came of age in 1951 when they were admitted to the League of Ireland and are the only club to have maintained a topflight status ever since. In that time they have won nine League titles and three FAI cups.

Paul McGrath dallied with the side before departing for Manchester Utd. McGrath was a majestic centre back who became one of Ireland’s most loved footballers, featuring at European Nations and World Cup tournaments. Born in 1959 in England, spending his early years in an orphanage before returning to Ireland at age six. In 1981, while working as a security guard, he signed professional terms with St Pat’s, becoming Player of the Year in his first, and only season. Black footballers were something of a rarity in early eighties Ireland, McGrath was given the nickname the Black Pearl of Inchicore. He moved to Manchester United in 1982, fans adapting a chant which is now indelibly associated with him: Ooh ah, Paul McGrath!…

Rising with the road again, this section of the SCR holds a certain charm. The redbrick terrace with mansard roofs is dappled beneath the plane trees. Eurospar and the Natural Bakery have scattered chairs and tables providing a slice of cafe society for the passing boulevardier. I can imagine Phil Lynott strolling down from Dublin 12 with local lad, Brian Downey. There might even be a pre-echo of Parisienne Walkway.

I remember Paris in forty nine,

Champs Elysees, Saint Michel and old Beaujolais wine,

And I recall that you were mine,

In those Parisienne days

Lynott would collaborate with Gary Moore on this 1979 hit. The trio had briefly formed a temporary Thin Lizzy in 1974 following the departure of guitarist Eric Bell, and prior to the foursome featuring the dual guitars of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson. The opening line alludes to Lynott’s birth year and his father, Cecil Parris, whose surname was grafted onto Lynott’s given name. 

Looking back at the photographs,

Those summer days spent outside corner cafes.

Oh, I could write you paragraphs

About my old Parisienne days.

The SCR turns sharply east, before the Grand Canal. On the southern side of the street, a handsome Victorian building stands out. Now known as Hybreasal House this was originally a convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Founded in 1883, Saint Patrick’s House was used as a nursing home for the elderly for more than a century, converted to apartments in 1993. The cut stone granite building was designed by WH Byrne architects who designed a host of religious buildings throughout Ireland in the late nineteenth century.

The term Hy-Breasal derives from Irish myth. The fabled isle in the Atlantic was said to appear only one day in seven years and was a land of idyllic perfection. Described by St Brendan the navigator, and others, as a circular island divided by a canal, it was something of an El Dorado, golden domes and spires set amidst great natural beauty. The name was appropriated for Brazil, on its discovery, although a convoluted rebuttal insists that the term Brasil derives from a local timber commodity. The perfection of navigation, saw the fading of such myths, as the reality which had informed them emerged from the mists. They are, I suppose, true, if inaccurate. For that matter, the Dublin of our odyssey is itself circular divided by a central waterway, the Liffey. Welcome so, to Hy Brasil. 

We return to the elegant residential streetscape typical of the Circular Roads, redbrick and treelined, implicitly packed with undiscovered narrative. This straight stretch of road culminates at the gates to St. James’s Hospital before crossing the Red Luas line at Rialto Bridge which gives its name to the area. 

Here the Luas is built on the old terminal section of the Grand Canal. Completed by the end of the eighteenth century, having begun in 1759, the crucial waterway connection with Sallins took twenty years. Within another five the Canal pushed through to the Shannon. The Grand Canal Basin served Guinness’s and the various breweries and industries of the Liberty of St Thomas Court. At the turn of the century, the Canal was extended in a loop toward Dublin Bay, and by 1810 joining the confluence of the Liffey and Dodder rivers at Grand Canal Docks. Which we’ll see at the end of our odyssey.

The song, the Good Ship Kalibar, is a fanciful ballad harking back to the intrepid lives of ancient navigators of the inland waterways.

Heave away me hearties, we’re bound for lands afar,

As we sail away from James’s Gate, aboard the Kalibar!

The Basin segment remained in use for almost two centuries, before being filled in as a linear park in 1976. It was the end of a most enthralling piece of urban fabric, an ancient industrialised zone reflected in its watery highway. It is again a new avenue of utility with the building of the Luas Red Line in 2004 from Connolly Station through here and on to the Square in Tallaght.

Rialto implies echoes of Venice, it does hug the Grand Canal after all. It seems that the bridge across the old Grand Canal at its intersection with the South Circular, built by Henry Roche, was reminiscent of Ponte de Rialto in Venice, somehow. But it was a good name, and it stuck. What Shakespeare would have made of it, one may wonder. 

Many a time and oft in the Rialto you have rated me, about my money and my usances. Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, for suffrance is the badge of all our tribe. You call me misbeliever, cut throat dog and spit upon my Jewish gaberdene, and all for the use of that which is mine own.

Rialto is an old working class suburb, housing those employed by the canals, breweries and distilleries as Dublin spread southwest from the Liberties. It has evolved its own character, something of an urban village. Although flanked by notorious housing projects, the SCR thoroughfare is characterised by the redbrick, woodframe ambience of Victorian design. A lovely Tudor revival terrace arcs along the northern rim of Rialto’s central plaza. The architectural style, sometimes called Mock Tudor, became popular towards the end of the nineteenth century and is somewhat incongruous, though picturesque, within the context of Ireland’s Capital.

Across the road the pub is named for the Bird Flanagan. William ‘The Bird’ Flanagan, born in 1867 lived beyond in Walkinstown and was a notorious practical joker. He earned his nickname from a prank he played on a local policeman. Buying a festive goose at a local butchers at the Barn, he had it hung outside the shop for collection later. Catching the attention of the unfortunate constable, the Bird grabbed the goose and ran towards Rialto. He was apprehended near the canal, whereupon he showed his purchase docket.

Behind the street lies Dolphin House, one of the housing schemes hugging the canal bordering Rialto, including Fatima Mansions. Seen in their day as an exemplary improvement on the slum conditions of the inner city, from the seventies on, the positive image waned. Fatima Mansions became a heroin supermarket and was demolished in the late noughties. Herberton Apartments replaced them, but the term Fatima persists in the local Luas stop. The Rialto Cinema is another echo of times past. It was a massive 1,600 seater auditorium. Built in 1936 its art deco frontage was a distinctive area landmark. It closed after nearly forty years, 1971, and was converted to an auto showrooms.

I worked in Dolphin’s Barn in the eighties and spent many a lunchtime strolling around. I often had my lunch in the sitdown chipper on the south side of the street, which I think was called The Lido, across the road from the cinema. Many years later I reimagined the place in the narrative of Annie, a teenage girl who paints an unreliable picture of life in sixties Dublin.  

Many’s the time and oft through Rialto I did stroll. I’d listen to the songs of bargees sweeping under Rialto Bridge heading down to Portobello. The hawkers looking down from the banks, singing their response, like they were starring in a musical. Summertime, the boys would play wearing nothing but their Jockeys. They’d gather by the locks, plunging into the greasy water in turn.

A visit to the Horse Show with her father leaves her besotted by the Italian showjumping team led by Captain Raymondo D’Inzeo. Much like myself in fact, when my father used take me to the RDS. Mind you, Annie is the eponymous narrator in The Secret Lover of Capt Raymondo D’Inzeo wherein she describes how the Italians plotted their Aga Khan Cup campaign from a secret room in the chipper. It is here called Cassoni’s by way of tribute to the family whose original Irish business was in Thomas Street nearby.

Just past Cassoni’s I see the car, a red Alfa Romeo with the roof rolled down. Graciano is at the wheel, la Contessa Rossi languishing in the passenger seat. We had stopped by the cinema and I had turned my back on the road to read the coming attractions. I hear a car door close. As I turn I know I will see her approaching. She stands before us, her cigarette poised. She asks for a light. Robbie obliges, though she stays looking at me all the time. 

“You,” she says, “you have set your sight on the Captain. You are good. A young girl with well turned calf. But would he set his cap for you, the Captain? In all probability. He can acquire what he likes.”

   I can’t think what to say. “Will Italy win the Aga Khan?” I stammer.

   La Contessa puts her head to one side, like a bird looking at a worm. When she speaks, it is not by way of a reply. “I see your man there. He is within your reach. Don’t take me wrong for, believe me, we both have love in our hearts. And yes, we will win.”

Which they did. That was the early sixties and I last frequented these parts in the early eighties. We reach Dolphin’s Barn and cross the chaotic urban artery towards Cork Street and the City. Dublin 12 lies to the South beyond the Canal, but we continue our journey to the East.

Dublin’s Circular Roads – 5

Phibsborough to the Phoeno.

Heading west from Phibsborough, we keep left at St. Peter’s Church. This was built piecemeal from the 1830s as Catholicism asserted itself in post Emancipation Dublin. The present grand gothic structure incorporates the original Catholic school, betrayed by its more fortress like design. The imposing tower, rising two hundred feet, brought the project to fruition in 1910. The splendour of the interior is enhanced by the stained glass windows, including a Harry Clarke from 1919. From here, the North Circular takes on a more salubrious appearance. The street is tree lined and this lazy Sunday afternoon the dappled light grants the illusion of passing through a painting. It is an elegant, if shabby genteel, avenue from here to the Phoenix Park.

I’m just a Cowboy, lonesome on the trail,

Lord, I’m just thinking about a certain female.

Further on, we cross the railway track, laid in the late 1840s connecting Broadstone Station nearer the city with Galway and Sligo out in the wild west. The railway conveyed people and cattle from country to capital (and beyond) for ninety years. Few of either species made the return journey. Inevitably the well grew dry and the railway went into decline. The line closed in 1937, Broadstone station, a neo-Egyptian Victorian pile, remaining as offices and depot for CIE, the transport authority. Eighty years on, the cross-city Luas tramway at last came into being, and this portion of rail line is once more in use.   

To the south is the extensive area of Grangegorman. This was a manor estate during the middle ages with extensive orchards. Dublin city has crept around it but oddly not through it. Grangegorman remains as a large undeveloped slice of the crowded capital. The population of Dublin’s dowdy westside was largely poor and so the area was seen as suitable for siting a variety of the more sombre Victorian institutions. A House of Industry, basically a poorhouse, was established here and around this sprouted the Richmond Lunatic Asylum, the Richmond Hospital and a penitentiary. The area persisted under this cautionary cloud until recently. St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital, the largest such facility in Ireland closed its doors in 2013 after nearly two centuries. Major development is underway, incorporating a campus for DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology, or Didn’t get Into Trinity as the joke goes).

Oxmantown and Stoneybatter were other ancient settlements beyond the city walls. How ancient you can tell by the fact that Oxmantown rejoices in a weirdly Viking nomenclature.  A cluster of streets with such names as King Citric, St Olaf and more, hint that this was once the haunt of the Dane. Oxmen denotes East-men, which relative to these latitudes is from whence they came.

For all the Nordic associations, the area’s one mention in song is more Mediterranean.

I’ve wandered north and I’ve wandered south,

Through Stoneybatter and Patrick’s Close,

Up and around by the Gloucester Diamond,

Back by Napper Tandy’s House.

The song is The Spanish Lady and it’s sung by the usual suspects. There’s a touch of the salacious in the places namechecked. The Gloucester Diamond was in Monto, the notorious red-light district back east beyond Summerhill. Stoneybatter has always been edgy in name and nature. Whack for the too-rye, too-rye, lady – indeed. As for Napper Tandy’s house, this was hardly a fixed abode, the eighteenth century revolutionary being inclined to change address a lot to evade the authorities. He was eventually run to ground in Hamburg, taken back to Ireland and sentenced to be hanged. However, at the intervention of Napoleon, he was allowed flee to France, and died in Bordeaux in 1803. 

A detour at Prussia Street, along Manor Street takes us to Stoneybatter. This is a bilingual stew of the original Irish: Bothar na gcloigh. This means Road of Stones, mangled over time to become Stoney-Batter. The irish word for road, bothar, also tells a tale. It literally means cow-path

When I was a cowboy out on the western plain

I made a half a million, working on the bridle reins

Come a cow-cow, yicky come a cow-cow, yicky, yicky, yea!

The area is also known as Cowtown, the Dublin City Cattle Market being held here for over a century until 1973. I fancy there’s a wild west ambience here, if you just squint your eyes, suck on yer cigarillo and tie your horse to the sidewalk rail. Saloon of choice for me is the Glimmer Man. Full of quirks, niches and western charm, there’s a good yard at the back to spark a lucifer and wallow in the ambient gloom of an Irish pub.

The glimmerman of old was a dreaded functionary of the Gas Company in the Emergency years. He could check if the gas was being abused in defiance of wartime rationing. The prevalence, indeed the existence, of this ogre is probably greatly exagerrated in Dublin legend. The reference has expanded to include all types of unwelcome bureaucratic intrusion. Listen to the Radiators sing:

Rattled by the glimmer man, the boogie man, the holy man.

Living in the shadows, in the shadow of a gunman.

This particular oasis abounds in more moderate paraphernalia, from the Labour Party to Players Navy Cut and a suitably retro soundtrack. I’ll drink to that. I prefer to think of the more hopeful implications of the name. A glimmer of hope.

Leaving the Glimmer Man, we return to our circular path. The final section is sylvan and suburban as far as the Phoenix Park. The avenue, lined by elegant if well worn Victorian houses, stops at the park gates, but the vista culminates further on at the Wellington memorial. The giant obelisk, rising to over two hundred feet, is a notable landmark of the city. It was built in homage to the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, after his success against Napoleon at Waterloo. Wellington is alleged to have disparaged his birthplace by saying that being born in a stable doesn’t make one a horse. The phrase derives from Daniel O’Connell by way of lampooning the Duke’s pretensions. I imagine the thought must have crossed Wellesley’s mind once or twice, all the same.

Bringing the northern semi-circle of our odyssey to a close offers a few alternatives. Technically, the route descends via Infirmary Road to Parkgate Street, where a sharp right onto Conyngham Road takes us along the walls of the Park, above the Liffey valley to Islandbridge. Alternatively, a meander through this quadrant of the Park is very pleasant. The Phoeno is worth a section to itself, so I’ll leave that for another day. I’ll finish with Philo:

Roll me over and turn me around,

let me keep a-spinning till I hit the ground.

Roll me over and set me free,

the cowboy’s life is the life for me.

Dublin’s Circular Roads – 4

Mountjoy to Phibsborough

Independence memorial at Phibsborough

Flying with the jailbirds west from Mountjoy, we approach the top of the clock in Dublin’s circular tour. High noon, do not forsake me now. In the shadow of the jail, there are some small terraces of redbrick cottages. A plaque commemorates local boy, aeronaut Colonel James Fitzmaurice, navigator of the first flight to cross the Atlantic from East to West. Fitzmaurice had enlisted in the Irish Volunteers aged sixteen, but his da, a prison officer, found out and hauled him home. Towards the end of the war, Fitzmaurice joined the RAF. With Irish Independence in 1921, he returned home to join the nascent Irish Air Corps, rising to Commandent by 1927.

With the birds I share this lonely view …

In April 1928, Fitzmaurice was taken on as part of the three man crew of the Bremen, joining two Germans, Captain Herman Kohl and Baron Von Hunefeld. The plane landed on the icebound island of Greenly in Quebec after a flight lasting thirty six hours. The men were hailed as heroes, here and in America, but the fame was transient and Fitzmaurice died, forgotten, in 1965. Seventy years after the event, in 1998, his daughter and granddaughter unveiled a plaque marking his birthplace here on the North Circular Road.

Across the road is the Mater Misericordiae hospital. The Hospital was founded in 1867 and is a major teaching hospital. The name, Mother of Mercy, refers to Our Lady and derives from the hospital founders, The Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters were founded by Catherine McCauley,  (1778 – 1841) who determined to use a large inheritance to care for homeless women and children. Originally a lay order, pressure from the Church resulted in it becoming a religious community in 1831.

Oh the Sisters of Mercy they are not departed or gone,

they were waiting for me when I thought that I couldn’t go on,

they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song,

I hope you run into them, you who’ve been traveling so long.

McCauley featured on the last Irish fivers, designed by Robert Ballagh, who lives nearby in Broadstone. The Mater’s main Eccles Street elevation also features on the note which was withdrawn from circulation after ten years in 2000 with the advent of the Euro. Ballagh, asides from his fame as an artist, also had a hand in the saga of Irish rock. A face with the Chessmen beat group, he quit the music scene in the late sixties and sold his bass guitar to a young Crumlin lad by the name of Phil Lynott.

If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off to condemn,

they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

The old State Cinema beside the park.

Entering Phibsborough, the North Circular crosses what was once a lively city artery. In the late eighteenth century, Dublin’s two canals, the Royal to the north and the Grand to the south, were Ireland’s principal national highways. The Royal Canal initially flowed north south here, passing Blessington Street Basin before terminating at Broadstone. The Royal pushed through to the sea in the early nineteenth century and this branch was ultimately abandoned. A linear park has been laid out along the original route. Looking north, you’ll see Phibsborough Library from the 1930s. You can imagine it as an island, it is in a sense; a concise red brick art deco in a river of grass.

Phibsborough Library

Phibsboro, you can drop the ‘ugh’, has plenty by way of cafes, at least after the semi-desert of Mountjoy. There’s a queue outside Two Boys so it could do with more. I could do with a caffeine or beer hit myself, but feeling Beckettian, I must go on. There’s a few decent pubs. Doyle’s, I remember, used to attract us over to gigs in the mid seventies. The 23 bus was a cross town service and conveniently linked Drimnagh and Phibsboro. In popular parlance the name of this nexus is always Doyle’s Corner.

Doyle’s Corner

Phibsboro is a place where universes collide in time and space. Fin de siecle sylvan redbrick terraces intersect with the brutalism of seventies urban excess. The concrete low rise of the shopping centre still endures. The sixties office tower has long made a curious exclamation mark on the vista from inside Dalymount Park.

Dalymount is home to Bohemians Football Club. Once considered the home of Irish soccer, internationals and FA cup finals were played here until the seventies when Landsdowne Road became the venue. I have strong memories of ancient match days at Dalymount, most with my friend Bill and his dad. That was Billy Mulville, a player of renown during the Emergency. He graced the pitch for Bray Unknowns, St. Patrick’s Athletic and Drumcondra. He transferred his love of soccer on to our generation. The walk through the redbricks and into the stadium in the gathering roar is a deeply embedded montage.

Dalymount Park and the joys of sixties architecture

Bohemians were, along with Shelbourne, the founders of the league of Ireland when, after Independence, it broke away from the northern dominated Irish League. The club is nick-named the Gypses, speaking of earlier unsettlement. They’ve been established here a century, but a sense of desperately hanging on pervades. The stadium looks sadly dilapidated. Bohs supporters are a loyal bunch, and packed houses are assured in Dublin derbies against main rivals Shamrock Rovers, a more peripatetic club who have roved from Ringsend to Tallaght, via Milltown.

Classmates Kevin Moran and Gerry Ryan were league winners here in the seventies. Moran was one of the first players to escape the GAA ban, playing both codes to the pinnacle of national success. With Bohs and Dubs they took the League and Sam Maguire trophies on tour, and I drank from both in the Submarine Bar beyond in Walkinstown.

Guess who just got back today?

Those wild eyed boys that’ve been away

Haven’t changed, haven’t much to say

but man I still think them cats are crazy!

Dalymount began hosting concerts in the late seventies. In 1977, Thin Lizzy had at last hit the big time and headlined here with such varied support as Fairport Convention, Graham Parker, Boomtown Rats, the Radiators and Stagalee. Up the road in Croke Park on that day, Dublin defeated Kerry in a famous semi-final on their way to All Ireland glory in the days of Heffo’s Army. The news brought on the Dalymount roar, and the new wave in the old wave’s arms, got ready for the sundown, and some serious Dancing in the Moonlight.

Friday night they’ll be dressed to kill,

Down at Dino’s Bar and Grill,

The drink will flow and the blood will spill,

And if the Boys want to fight you’d better let them.

This is the image of Philo the ruffian, all leathers and switchblades, freeze-framed under flashing neon. It was the image to which young guns cleaved, that typical rock and roll catharsis giving us license to be heroes, in our dreams at least. But Lynott also waxed poetic, was truly the romantic at heart. He was our king, whichever suit he wore. King of the world that night in Phibsboro, as universes collided in time and space.

St Peter’s Church

We’re top of the clock here. About a quarter way around our circular tour. The North Circular begins to arc south westward, heading past the imposing Catholic gothic of St. Peter’s Church, into a more sylvan, suburban environ.

Early Modern Dublin

Dublin can be heaven

With coffee at eleven

And a stroll in Stephen’s Green

By the seventeenth century Dublin was spreading beyond its walls. The Liberties were established to the south and west. Settlements sprang up on the north bank of the Liffey. At the end of a tumultuous century, the Liffey was lined by redbrick gable-fronted houses and the quaysides had been constructed as thoroughfares. The trend was for enlargement to the east, which became the prosperous part of the city. Between the crumbling medieval Old Town and Georgian Dublin of the mid eighteenth century, the winding streets and lanes of today’s social and commercial heart developed.

Dame Street is one of the defining thoroughfares of the city, from City Hall to Trinity College and the old Parliament Buildings. Temple Bar lies to the north, to the south lies the shopping, strolling, cafe Capital centered on Grafton Street. Dame Street is the main street of banking and commerce, its palaces of commerce capturing the exuberance of the Belle Epoque, imposing facades topped with picturesque turrets. Recently, expanding city nightlife has colonised some of these premises for drinking and dining pleasure, old trades living on in such names as the Mercantile. Running parallel, Dame Lane stretches from the Castle’s Lower Yard, across South Great George’s Street, through Dame Court and past the Stag’s Head, eventually emerging into city traffic by Trinity Street.. If indeed you do pass the Stag’s Head, and you shouldn’t, it’s near enough the definitive old style Dublin pub.

St Andrew’s Church is Dublin’s tourist HQ and as good a reference point for the city centre as you’re likely to get. Setting up stall outside is a bronzed woman with fetching cleavage. The statue of Molly Malone by Jeanne Rynhart dates from Dublin’s millennium celebrations in 1988. In just a quarter of a century it has achieved iconic status. Molly steps from the air of a song to become flesh, or bronze at least.

In Dublin’s Fair City

Where the girls are so pretty

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone.

As she wheeled her wheelbarrow

Through streets broad and narrow

Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-oh!

The song is of obscure provenance. First recorded as a music-hall ballad of the 1880s, attributed to Scottish songsmith, James Yorkston, though it may be derived from an older ballad. It has become the anthem for the capital city; the refrain Alive, alive oh! being suitably valedictory. However the song, as is the case with many an Irish song, finishes on a mournful note.

She died of a fever,

And no one could save her,

And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.

Now her ghost wheels her barrow,

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying: Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh!

In old Dublinese, fever and save her would rhyme. She can still wheel her wheelbarrow, all the same. Last time I saw it ‘twas at the bottom of Grafton Street, now it stands outside Saint Andrew’s Church. Mythology has accreted to the song. The story goes that Molly was a seventeenth century barrowgirl who earned a bit on the side plying the oldest profession. The song certainly alludes to sex. Cockles and mussels (or muscles) has salacious connotations. The refrain has a bawdy singalong quality. Young lovers and visitors to the Fair City have taken the photo opportunity the statue offers. It is traditional to grasp one or both of Molly’s breasts, giving them a sunburst emphasis, fulfilling the myth’s premise.

Top o’ Grafton Street

A few yards further east, Grafton Street runs at a right angle to Suffolk Street. Now Dublin’s principal shopping street, a bustling pedestrianised way thronged with shoppers and tourists, lined with buskers and street theatre.

Grafton Street’s a wonderland, there’s magic in the air.

There’s diamonds in the lady’s eyes

And gold dust in her hair.

East of this line is where Enlightenment Dublin begins, with a rationalist street plan and regular, symmetrical facades. To the left you’ll notice the streets, still narrow, offer straight vistas. Anne Street towards St Ann’s Church, dating to 1707, is a fine example. To the right narrow alleys like Johnson’s Court tunnel back to the medieval. The Court provides a rear entrance to Clarendon Street Church, an oasis of spiritual calm.

At Bruxelles Pub near the top of Grafton Street, another lifesize statue vies with Molly for popularity. Phil Lynott was black and Irish as Guinness, leader of Thin Lizzy, kings of the Dublin Rock scene of the early seventies. Lynott took a rocked up version of Irish trad balled, Whiskey in the Jar to the British charts. The ballad records the misadventures of a seventeenth century highwayman. The protagonist’s lover, or whore, in Lynott’s version is called Molly, so no accident that they’re still close.

But me I like sleeping

Especially in my Molly’s chamber

But here I am in prison

Here I am with a ball and chain.

Lynott died in 1985, aged just thirty six. The video for his song, Old Town, features him swanning about Grafton Street, a tradition he’d maintained since the late sixties. Captain America’s near the top of the street would have known him and holds some of his and other Rock memorabilia. Captain A’s featured artworks after Lichtenstein by Jim Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick, famed for his depictions of Celtic myth and Che Guevara, recasts Captain America as a crusader against fascism. We came for their Mexican burgers and red wine. It was the hip hangout of the early seventies. Lizzy’s traveling coterie, Horslips, Mellow Candle and Chris De Burgh hung out here. De Burgh was resident singer, resplendent in star spangled suit. Probably helped to clear the joint.

Nearby, the Dandelion Market developed into Dublin’s hippy flea market. U2 cut their teeth here, before the whole thing was subsumed in the frothy Stephen’s Green Centre. At the top of Grafton Street, we emerge blinking into daylight dappled by trees. Saint Stephen’s Green in the seventeenth century was a commonage on the outskirts of the city. Those granted the title Freeman of the City, still maintain their right to graze their sheep on the Green. As Bono recently insisted.

The Green was walled in 1664 with access restricted to owners of adjacent properties. The surrounding houses would have been gable fronted properties, known as Dutch Billys. This style gave way to Georgian by the middle of the eighteenth century. Vestiges of the earlier style can be discerned. Look above street level and you will see, here and there, an asymmetrical window layout on the upper storeys, indicating where a gable frontage once was. The Green was restricted to residents until 1877 when Sir A E Guinness, Lord Ardilaun, campaigned to put the park into public ownership. The park was newly laid out to the design of William Shephard, Lord Ardilaun contributing the extensive planting of exotic trees and shrubs.

Entering through Fusiliers’ Arch, pathways flow around the ornamental lake. Young Dubliners and visitors occupy the grass, taking time out from the commercial hustle of Grafton Street. If Dublin can be heaven, and this is heaven’s heath. Beyond the park’s southern extent, the centre city starts to ebb. The rational expanse of Georgian Dublin takes over with its wide regular streets. Find a quiet elevated spot past the kip of the serenes, by Moore’s statue of WB Yeats. It looks nothing like the man! Slip into a boulevardier dream, slide back into another time.

Toora loora loora laddy, toora loora lay,

I know the Dublin pavements will be boulders on my grave.