The Train Stations of Dublin

Coming Soon

The Stone Mansions of Dublin

This walk is a tour of the great eighteenth century mansions of Dublin. The genesis of these mansions is the calm and prosperity that settled over the country following the unrest of the 1600s and the resultant desire of the Anglo-Irish of Dublin, which included, as we shall see, many patriots as well as pro-British gentry, a city they could be proud of.

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The Libraries of Dublin

This post describes a tour of the historical libraries of Dublin City and notes some Irish literary sites along the way.

We start at the library of King’s Inns (number 1 on the map at the end) on Dublin’s Henrietta street. Henrietta Street was in a wealthy part of the city in the 1700s and, though it is now one of the poorer parts of the inner city, the atmosphere of that time can still be discerned in the street and its disintegrating grandeur. 

The Churches of Dublin

This tour will take us from the faded grandeur of the churches of the establised religion in Ireland in the pre Act of Union days of the 18^th century to the resurgence of the long suppressed religion of the majority following Catholic emancipation in the 19^th century and passing some churches of significant historical and architectural interest on the way.

The Bookshops of Dublin

Dublin is a literary city, the birthplace and home of world famous writers past and present, and the setting of some of English literature’s greatest works (Joyce’s Dubliners and Ulysses, of course, Yeats’ Easter 1916, ‘I have met them at close of day’ and so forth). It is no surprise, therefore, that despite their trepidations of online booksellers, the city retains some terrific booksellers whose shops, to the connoisseur, provide a very pleasant walk around the city.

Legal and Further Reading

References and further reading

Dublin: A Grand Tour / Jacqueline O’Brien with Desmond Guinness. Jacqueline O’Brien, London : Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1994

Dublin 1660 – 1860 / Maurice Craig. Maurice Craig, Dublin : Figgis, 1969.

Dublin: the making of a capital city. David Dickson, London : Profile Books, 2014.

Legal

Except where otherwise expressly stated, all text and photos copyright Brian McMahon 2012 – 2018. One copy may be made for personal, non-commercial purposes.