Dublin

We spent three nights in Dublin during the week after Easter. Our first time in Ireland.

London Stansted airport is only thirty-five minutes by train from Cambridge. Ryanair may have a reputation for being brusque with its passengers, but they have always treated us alright and we got to Dublin airport without incident. There's then a choice of three buses for the eight miles into the centre of the city. I chose the cheapest at Euros 2.20. It takes an hour, twice as long as the one that costs six times as much, but you see more of the suburbs.

Our room was above a pub in Pearce Street, opposite one side of Trinity College and a bit less than half a mile from the main entrance to that college. An easy walk then to lots of sights and buses to more of them. The room itself was quaint. The TV, perched high on a bracket, had a broken remote control so you had to stand on tiptoe to change the programme. Reception was awful anyway. Sky News was best for reception, but I'd rather gnaw my foot off at the ankle that watch that. The two BBC channels were awful and the Ulster regional news seemed even more parochial than our home Anglian news. We never did work out when the local RTE news was, so never watched any of their programmes. Another quaint feature of the room was a hot tap on the sink that was set at right angles to where it should have been so you couldn't actually hold your hands under it. And when you turned the cold tap on it came very gently for twenty or thirty seconds and then gushed at a million gallons a second. This was accompanied (and presumably caused by) the noise of a pump which sounded as if it could empty the Irish Sea in ten minutes flat. This pump must have worked all the other taps in all the other rooms because a feature of our stay was the roar of this pump ever few minutes, continuing as long as the water was run. Perhaps this pump also supplied the shower. The shower was a wonder. It supplied an abundance of really hot water. So unlike most hotel showers I have encountered round Europe.

We'd booked a concert in the Dublin Handel Festival for the first night, at the splendidly named National Concert Hall which also turned out to be walkable. The hall is mid-nineteenth century but inside it is kitted out in the modern manner, reminiscent of the city concert hall in Birmingham. The programme was full of slightly unusual pieces which were fun to hear, but we wondered that the hall was only half full. The reason became clear when the choir began to sing. They weren't that bad, but they aren't top-notch (which is a pity because the orchestra and the soloists were). Our Lady's Choral Society has a choir of about a hundred and twenty, and it just wasn't rehearsed enough. Perhaps it is too big. But alright, it wasn't perfect but the music was jolly so we enjoyed our evening listening to Handel's Anthem on the Peace (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1749), Laudate Pueri Dominum, Sing Unto God (Wedding Anthem for Frederick, Prince of Wales, 1736) and other works. The tenor soloist, Robin Tritschler, and the bass, Jeffrey Ledwidge, had particularly lovely voices.

Next morning we went out earlyish (in the rain) to try and beat the crowds to the Book of Kells at Trinity College. The college is everything a college should be - old bits, very new bits, quadrangles etc. More satisfying actually than most of the Cambridge colleges. The exhibition of which the Book of Kells is the centrepiece is an example of how these things ought to be done. Lots of space, large, well-lit information boards, good information without being over wordy. The Book itself isn't as large as one expects it to be, but I suppose that is hardly the fault of Trinity College.

After admiring the Book itself one goes upstairs to see the library. A fine place, big enough to play cricket in were it not for the shelves and ladders which go right up to a very high ceiling. By the time we got out, round 11ish the world and his wife had come to see the Book so we were glad we'd been betimes. We now went to the Tourist Office (so badly signposted that we only stumbled on it accidentally) and bought Euros 25 bus tickets which entitled us to unlimited trips on the tourist buses which circulate the centre endlessly, rides on any other Dublin Bus urban service, and a fast bus to the airport, lasting 72 hours. We then got on one of these buses and went as far as Christchurch Cathedral.

Christchurch is one of two medieval Anglican cathedrals in the city. It was built in the late 1100s by the first Norman conqueror of Dublin, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke. It is a fairly impressive black-stoned pile on the top of a hill above the Liffey, but inside is dark and miserable. A video show in the crypt tried to put out the spin that it was an important place in the life of Dublin, visited by Presidents and the like, but methought they protested too much. The only item of any amusement is the chained and grilled iron reliquary which holds the heart of a previous archbishop, the unlikely named St Lawrence O'Toole. And that is only amusing since it hangs on the wall of this so protestant cathedral.







We then walked down the hill away from the river the couple of hundred yards to the other Anglican cathedral, St Patrick's, built not long after Christchurch by an archbishop who wanted to be free of the prevailing political powerbase which controlled the area Christchurch was built in. St Patrick's is a much happier place, housing the tomb of its famous Dean, Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver's Travels fame. Also the enormous tomb of the Boyle family, erected in 1632 by Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, which originally stood in the sanctuary before a very foolish Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford and viceroy had it moved to the back the next year. Boyle did not forgive or forget and eventually had the pleasure of orchestrating Wentworth's fall and execution.

Why the Anglicans should hold onto both these cathedrals and not give one to the Romans is a mystery, but I don't suppose you can expect much of a church which cannot even agree to have just one cathedral for their diocese. The Romans have to put up with a nineteenth century pro-cathedral (which we did not have time to visit).

Somewhere else we failed to visit (we didn't realise the first time we were there that it is in the grounds of St Patrick's) was Marsh's Library, the earliest public library in Ireland, built in 1701 by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh. (Narcissus! I ask you!)

But we did get on the tourist bus again to go to Kilmainham Jail built in 1796 and used against the enemies of Britain until the formation of the Irish Free State in the 1920s. Our tour was led by a fervent Irish nationalist who laid on quite thick the sufferings of the Irish under the British. The story more or less finishes with the execution of a dozen or so of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising by firing squad in the courtyard. Nearly a hundred were sentenced to death, but after the callous shooting of the badly injured James Connolly, kept alive by the doctors so he could be judicially executed strapped to a chair, the resulting world revulsion forced the British government to commute the sentences of the rest to life imprisonment. The irony is that though the majority of nationalists had not supported the Rising, the treatment of the surrendered participants by Britain brought many of them round to the rebels' side, and independence was achieved within six years. The visit to the jail was moving.

The afternoon was finished by riding the rest of the tourist bus circuit to Trinity College and having supper in our pub (I tried Guinness just in case it tasted any better in its home town, but it didn't) before getting on yet another bus to St Audoen's Roman Catholic Church almost next to Christchurch Cathedral where we heard another concert in the Dublin Handel Festival. St Audoen's, which is 19th century and now has a Polish congregation, should not be confused with the medieval St Audoen's Church (Anglican) next door. Religion in Dublin really is quite mad.

Handel and the Golden Age of the Triosonata was presented by the Irish Baroque Orchestra Chamber Soloists, consisting of two violins, cello, theorbo and harpiscord. Their playing was exquisite. We were somewhat distracted however by the fact that the theorbo player, Richard Sweeney, is so like our younger son that they could be brothers - right down to mannerisms and facial expressions. It was quite unnerving. But a really good concert.

Next day it really rained, so we did inside things. In the morning it was the National Museum, full of Celtic gold. Not a very big museum, but well laid out. In the afternoon we went round the corner to the National Gallery. Lots of good stuff including a famous Caravaggio, the Taking of Christ which was discovered in the 1993 in the dining room of a Jesuit house in the city, misattributed and fairly unloved. I don't like Caravaggio much and this one didn't move me, but there was lots more good stuff in the gallery for me to enjoy.

By the time we had finished it was later afternoon and still raining so we got on the tourist bus yet again, and did the full circuit of Dublin, in the rush hour. The driver did have the sense to use some back streets between the official stops so as to avoid some of the worst holdups. We passed the Guinness experience again, and didn't go in again. When we got to the stop for the Jameson's Whiskey Distillery the crowd who got on smelt so highly of the liquor that I am surprised the poor driver could still drive us safely. The whole bus reeked.

We hadn't managed to get tickets this night for the big Messiah at Christchurch, so we ate leisurely at a restaurant in the Temple Bar area where there are lots of eating places and touristy things. The dish we both had was boxty, a delicious potato pancake. Mine was filled with Irish stew, Rosalind's with bacon. The picture is of a pub near where we ate the boxty.






This building is by the entrance to the castle.







Friday morning was our last, and there was unfinished business in the form of places yet to be visited, including St Michan's (mummified bodies in the crypt) and the Marsh Library I mentioned before. However, we decided to go to the nearest place first, the Chester Beatty Library. I had heard the name Chester Beatty in connection with early New Testament texts, but that was my only knowledge of the man. The library, hidden behind Dublin Castle, which we did not bother visiting, was so good that we spent the whole morning there, so missing the other possibilities on our visiting list.

Sir Alfred Chester Beatty was an American mining engineer who made a lot of money and liked collecting things. This was a good combination since he had not only money but taste, and a willingness to consult the experts on what was best. There are two galleries to visit. The Arts of the Book has manuscripts and bindings from ancient Egypt, China, Japan, India, the Middle East and medieval Europe, all stunning in their beauty and rarity and displayed in well designed and well lit showcases.

The Sacred Traditions gallery has writings and pictures of the major religions, including the famous NT texts from the second and third centuries A.D. Chester Beatty was born in New York in 1875 but from 1911 lived in Europe, first in London and then in Dublin. His fame as a collector was so great that he was offered all sorts of manuscripts, including a hand-written letter by Jesus. He apparently declined that one.

That was the end of our trip apart from the return, which was much like any other return journey. Dublin was good, and we now want to see more of Ireland.

It looks like quite a few people cycle in Dublin. It was particularly nice to see the Garda on their bikes around the city. But everywhere you went there were notices like this. Depressing.