There are some good (if brief) shots of the Irish House of Lords chamber in this Christmas ad for the Bank of Ireland, 0:35-0:45.

The former Irish Houses of Parliament on College Green in Dublin were the first purpose-built parliament building in the world, and were purchased by the Bank of Ireland after the parliament was abolished by the Act of Union in 1800.

Unfortunately a condition of sale was demolishing the elegant octagonal Commons chamber at the centre of the building, to prevent it being used in the effort to have the Act of Union repealed.

Sir Thomas Cusack (1505-1571) has the distinction of having at times served as the presiding officer of both the upper and lower houses of the Irish Parliament. From 1541-1543 he was as Speaker of the House of Commons, in which role some scholars argue he was a prime mover behind the legislation erecting Ireland as a kingdom.

In the following decade he served as Lord Chancellor of Ireland, presiding in the House of Lords, from 1551 until 1555 when revelations about his involvement in the creative finances of Sir Anthony St Leger’s viceregal regime brought about Sir Thomas’s dismissal and (temporary) imprisonment.

He returned to favour when the Earl of Sussex was appointed viceroy, but never again held high office.

Of course, all that was before this neoclassical building was erected, when Parliament met mostly in Dublin Castle.

For 175 years, the United States was a consciously anti-conservative country. But after the Second World War, that changed entirely. Daniel McCarthy looks at the mind of Russell Kirk and how the horrors of war led to the birth of American conservatism.

Twenty-first century scientists have described their collaboration with the remarkable thirteenth-century polymath Bishop Grosseteste in exploring some of the secrets of the rainbow.

Christopher Howse tells us what the tiny church of St Peter’s, Charney Bassett in Oxfordshire has in common with St Mark’s in Venice.

Alex Massie looks cold and hard at whether the Conservatives really could become the second-largest party at the upcoming Scottish Parliament elections.

After ninety years and comprising twenty-one volumes, the Oriental Institute’s dictionary of the Akkadian language has been completed.

The Irish Arts Review examines the curious case of Dublin Airport’s original terminal — a design far ahead of its time but the origins of which are murky.

If prices as well as almost every opinion poll show the public prefer traditional-looking homes, then why doesn’t the market respond by building them?

And finally, Margaret Thatcher’s former home in London is on the market.

Architectural historian Gavin Stamp argues that if Rhodes really was such a vicious baddie as his opponents claim, why stop with just removing his statue?

South African academic and Rhodes scholar R. W. Johnson has compared the campaign to remove Rhodes statues to ISIL’s destruction of antiquities in the Middle East while clerical commentator Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith recalls the damnatio memoriae.

Most interesting perhaps is the treatment of Rhodes not in the ivory towers of Oxford or Cape Town but in the land that once bore his name. Rhodes’s grave still lies in a prominent spot in the Motopos, but even President Robert Mugabe is against exhuming him.

From the Telegraph:

The last time that a call was made for the grave in the Matopos to be exhumed, Middleton Nyoni, then Town Clerk of Bulawayo, offered a telling response. “It is the Taliban who destroy history – and I am not a Taliban,” he declared. “After Rhodes’s grave, who is next?”

When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, the city fathers of Bulawayo shifted Rhodes’s statue from the town centre to the town museum, while covering up the plaque commemorating his indaba with the chiefs of the Matabele. But in 2010 the city council voted to uncover the plaque while last year the Zimbabwean playwright Cont Mhlanga provocatively suggested returning Bulawayo’s statue of Rhodes to its former place of prominence.

U.C.T. has dumped Rhodes – though he remains elsewhere on Table Mountain – and his statue is still at Oriel… for now.

– This time last year, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry asked if the Christian revival was starting in France. My pilgrimage to Chartres provided me with evidence that the faith across the Channel is deep, strong, and growing.

Now, looking forward to the year ahead, P.E.G. notes that Catholic France used to be old and rural — now it is young and urban: “In the major cities, all the churches are full on Sunday morning, something unthinkable even 10 years ago.”

– Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi visits Russia for the first time.

— All across the world, evidence shows that poverty is dropping dramatically. Why then, Fraser Nelson asks, is it so hard to believe?

Bicycle polo at the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park, 1938.

THE MOST RECENT series of the ITV detective drama “Foyle’s War”, though set in London, was filmed entirely in Dublin. (Ah, those Bord Scannán incentives!). I’ve noticed a phenomenon in which something set in England but filmed in Ireland suffers from English stereotype overcompensation. What this entails is unnecessarily sticking noticeably English ‘things’ (double-decker bus, red pillarbox) into the frame when, if filmed in England, the directors might otherwise be satisfied without these subconscious emblems reassuring the viewer that they are not in fact in the country the programme was actually filmed in.

So two characters meeting on a street of Georgian houses will have a red post box shoved into some arbitrary place on the street to remind us we’re in jolly old England. Despite this, any devotées of the Georgian style will recognise the Irishness of the houses because of the subtle yet noticeable difference between the Georgian styles of, say, London, Edinburgh, Bath, and Dublin.

Anyhow, not to reveal too much of the plot of this latest series, but Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle is recruited into a post-war British intelligence gathering organisation. The exterior shots of the building used as this group’s headquarters is the Custom House on River Liffey in Dublin, only the show’s producers have digitally removed the building’s prominent dome, presumably in order to make it less distinctive and identifiable. (more…)

WE START OUT at the usual Italian place, PH’s stammtisch despite his complaints that they’re stingy and never bring you a limoncello at the end of a meal, as is custom elsewhere. The usual verbal briefings are exchanged, updating each other on the scheme of things and the general banter. It’s warm enough to sit outside, which allows us the luxury of a cigarette with our coffee as we cast aspersions on passing strangers. This quickly moves on to casting aspersions on mutual acquaintances (we will not call them friends!) and extrapolating therefrom more general condemnations of the heresiarchs and heretics of our day (chiefly: liberals, Modernist clergy, fops, les Brideshead affectés, users of inappropriate typefaces, and all people who take life too seriously).

After the postprandial coffee, we head on to Doyle’s but, just as we arrive, Brian gets in touch directing us elsewhere. We meet up with him and his three friends on the street but PH and I do not take a shine to Brian’s temporary entourage and secede from the party. Where to? Lincoln’s Inn, end of Nassau Street. (more…)

The Physical Incarnation of Ireland’s Golden Age

THE OLD HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT in Dublin are probably at the top of my list of favourite buildings in the world. Now the headquarters of the Bank of Ireland, it has a long and varied history, and its exterior composition is one of surprising unity for a structure the components of which were designed by three architects. It is supposedly the first purpose-built parliament building in the world, and stands on the site of Chichester House, a stately home adapted for use by the Irish Parliament from the 1600s onwards.

The location, with a history dating back centuries, is just south of the Liffey river upon what was then known as Hoggen Green. A nunnery existed on the site which was supressed during Henry VII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. A large private house was then built on the site, set back from the street, eventually known as Chichester House. (It likely incorporated some of the old convent’s structure). Among the esteemed inhabitants of the house were Sir George Carew, sometime Lord President of Munster, Sir Arthur Chichester, after whom the house was named, and the Anglican Bishop Edward Parry is known to have had a lease on the place during his lifetime.

The building must have been seen as holding some public significance, not only because it was located adjacent to the University of Dublin (of which Trinity College is the sole constituent institution), but it was home to the Irish Law Courts for a time beginning with the Michaelmas legal term of 1605. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, no later than October 1692, the Irish parliament began to meet at Chichester House on College Green. (more…)

Ireland’s Mounted Presidential Escort

WHEN BRITAIN FINALLY granted dominion status to Ireland, her longest-held possession, in the 1920s it unfortunately also signalled the end to a long tradition of Irish service in H.M. Forces. Well, this is not entirely true — thousands of Irishmen from both Ulster and the Republic continue to volunteer for the Army, Royal Navy, and RAF (the Royal Irish Regiment and the Irish Guards receiving the lion’s share) with an exemplary record of service to the Crown. But numerous other regiments with long lineages rolled up their colours in a dramatic ceremony at Windsor Castle in 1922. (An aside: one of those five regiments was the Connaught Rangers whose former name — the 88th Regiment of Foot — inspired the later re-designation of a New York Guard unit as the 88th Brigade NYG, of which yours truly is a veteran and my uncle the former commander).

The forces which became the Irish Free State Army, given their irregular nature, lacked a ceremonial tradition (though, had I been around and Michael Collins invited me to do so, I would’ve happily manned the desk in the IRA Office of Protocol, Ceremony, and Feathery Hats). In 1932, Dublin hosted the International Eucharistic Congress — a big event in those days, sadly reduced in stature — which meant that dignitaries of great importance would take this opportunity to visit the Irish capital. (more…)

Image: GrahamH

On Upper Merrion Street at the end of Fitzwilliam Lane in Dublin sits a thoroughly Edwardian pile which has been given the thoroughly boring title of ‘Government Buildings’. The city ceased to be a legislative capital in 1800 when the Irish Parliament voted to abolish itself and join the United Kingdom, so government edifices constructed during the nineteenth century lacked the proud stateliness of the Grattan era. The Westminster parliament finally conceded the principle of Irish home rule in 1914 but disastrously suspended its implementation due to the First World War. In stepped the Irish Volunteers, Easter 1916, the IRB, and all that and by the time the Treaty of Versailles ended the conflict on the continent, Britain was up to her neck in troubles in Ireland. Events had intervened and the unimplemented concession of home rule proved insufficient to quell the dire situation.

Even so, the Government of Ireland Act 1920 partitioned the island and created a separate government for ‘Southern Ireland’ and ‘Northern Ireland’, each with its own devolved legislature. The old Irish Parliament House had been sold to the Bank of Ireland so there was a question as to where the two houses of the new Southern Irish body would convene. Eventually the government decided upon this building, the Royal College of Science, and it was commandeered for that purpose. (more…)

THOUGH THE BORING brains of tawdry metropolitan Londoners are all too quick at relegating Dublin to the provincial periphery of the mind, the Irish capital is a perpetual treasure trove for the old-fashioned and right-minded. A number of items of interests have recently been sold at the auction houses of the fair city, including two ceremonial uniforms (above) of that famous Dubliner, Sir Edward Carson QC. Carson was the lawyer and statesmen who passionately, but without bigotry, opposed the cause of Irish home rule. He was the defending barrister in the Archer-Shee case and led the Marquess of Queensberry’s team in Oscar Wilde’s doomed libel action. Carson and Wilde had been at Trinity together (where — little known fact! — Carson was a keen hurler), and the famous wit quipped of Carson “I trust he will conduct his cross-examination with all the added bitterness of an old friend.”

Having a fine mind for the law and being politically active meant that Carson moved through several layers of British government, holding numerous offices and positions. He was a Privy Counsellor twice over (of both Ireland and the United Kingdom), a Queen’s Counsel, served in the House of Commons as leader of the Irish Unionists, and held portfolios in the British Cabinet. The two ceremonial uniforms auctioned at Whyte’s of Molesworth Street are from his appointment as Solicitor General for England & Wales in 1900. (He had been Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1892, and was later Attorney General for England & Wales, in which position he was succeeded by the F.E. Smith of Chesterton’s famous poem).

The two black wool morning coats feature gold bullion trimming and buttons, and are sold with a pair of trousers with gold filigree stripe matching the lesser uniform, and knee breeches & silk stockings for the greater uniform. The vellum appointment as Solicitor General was also included, in a red leather box with a gilt impression of the royal arms. Whyte’s estimated a sale of €50,000-€70,000, but the lot’s realised price was €42,000. (more…)

Founded in 1592, the University of Dublin is the youngest of the ancient universities of Britain. (It’s ten years younger than the next youngest, Edinburgh, and nearly five-hundred years younger than the oldest, Oxford). On Archiseek, an Irish internet forum dedicated to architecture, there is a user named ‘grahamh’ who posts, from time to time, photographs he has taken from around the fair city of Dublin, of which those presented here are a selection. The University of Dublin is much more commonly known as Trinity College, Dublin, as the university has just the one college, unlike the multi-collegiate universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere. (more…)

UPDATED Peter Henry’s article from Trinity News corrects my errors.

Persuant to our previous photograph of the Union Jack proudly snapping from Dublin’s General Post Office, one of our dear friends & loyal readers, a former editor of Trinity College’s newspaper, sends this photo of the 1919 Victory Parade through the streets of Dublin after the end of the Great War. The red, white, and blue here flies from the top of Trinity College, and the view looks down D’Olier Street (if I recall correctly) towards O’Connell Street in the distance. The classical portico on the left marks the entrance to the Irish House of Lords.

It is worth remembering that a great deal more Irish served in the forces of the Crown than in any republican armed forces or groups. The memory of Ireland’s great sacrifice during the First World War was shamefully neglected from the 1930s until about ten or fifteen years ago. It was a pity that the famous old Irish regiments were disbanded when independence came in 1921, rather than being continued under a native Irish command. Gone the Connaught Rangers and Dublin Fusiliers, and all the great battle honours won by Irishmen from Waterloo to far off India. (Two Irish regiments still exist in the British Army, the Royal Irish and the Irish Guards). Still, in remembrance of the dead of the First World War, one can visit the War Memorial Gardens by the banks of the Liffey, beautifully designed by Lutyens and completed after independence. The cost was split between the Irish and British governments, and, in the post-war downturn, half the workers were Irish veterans of the British Army and half were veterans of the formerly rebel forces.

Ireland remained neutral during the Second World War but declared a state of emergency, which is why the time of the war is often known in Ireland as “the Emergency”. Allied and Axis soldiers who washed up or crash-landed in Ireland found themselves interned in camps, but the Irish soldiers guarding them were only armed with blank ammunition. (Allied internees were often allowed to escape). The law of the day forbade any Irish citizen from joining a foreign military, but many soldiers of the Irish Army, policemen of an Garda Siochana, and many Irish civilians left for Britain to join the Allies in the fight, and were not punished on their return. When the port of Belfast suffered a German bombardment, fire brigades from Dundalk to Dublin were sent north irrespective of the border in order to help quell the flames.

Returning to Trinity, flying the Union Jack in 1919 would not have proved controversial in the slightest (after all, it was still the official flag of the land), but the crowds gathered again on College Green in 1945 to spontaneously celebrate the news of Germany’s surrender. The flag of Ireland with those of all the Allied nations were flown from the flagpole of Trinity, but some tactless student had placed the Union Jack at the top and the Irish Tricolour at the very bottom, below even the Soviet hammer-and-sickle. The crowd noticed this and began to howl, but some more thoughtful Trinity man swiftly took the colours down and raised them again with the Tricolour to the fore. The joyful spirit resumed.

(more…)

O’Connell Street, Dublin, United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland.

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