The Easter Rising began on Easter Monday – April 24th – 1916. The rebel leader Pádraig Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday, April 29th. This extract from Joseph EA Connell jnr's book Dublin Rising 1916 explores the city street by street. Here he looks at some of the key locations in Dublin 3 and Dublin 7.
Dublin 7
Cmdt Edward (Ned) Daly’s Volunteer 1st Battalion was primarily drawn from men who lived north of the Liffey and west of Sackville Street. Daly and his men knew their area intimately, which enabled them to pick positions for urban ambushes that confused the British. More than 40 women fought alongside the men. Their key positions were in Church Street, the Four Courts complex and North King Street.
1 King’s Inns Quay (between Richmond and Whitworth bridges): The Four Courts The 1st Battalion, led by Cmdt Daly, occupied the Four Courts and the adjacent streets on the north bank of the River Liffey, almost a mile to the west of the GPO. Because of Eoin MacNeill’s cancellation order, Daly’s command was greatly reduced in size. He reconnoitred his command area exhaustively and established his posts in positions allowing crossing fields of fire, cover and concealment.
The 1st Battalion was to occupy and hold the Four Courts area and to form a line from there to Cabra, where it was to link up with the 5th Battalion. This area controlled the main approach routes from the west of Dublin to the centre of the city. Daly placed his forces in areas that allowed them to intercept British troops coming from Marlborough Barracks and Royal Barracks towards the GPO. The first skirmish in the area occurred on Monday afternoon, when Volunteers in the Four Courts ambushed a party of Lancers escorting lorries loaded with munitions. On Wednesday the Volunteers captured two enemy positions in the area: the Bridewell, which was held by police, and Linenhall Barracks, which was occupied by unarmed army clerks.
By Thursday the South Staffordshire and Sherwood Foresters regiments effectively cordoned off the area. The fighting continued until Saturday evening, when the news of Pearse’s surrender filtered through.
2 131-142 Church Street: Capuchin Franciscan friary and Fr Mathew Hall Named after Fr Theobald Mathew (1790-1861), who preached against alcohol abuse throughout Ireland and the US. Cmdt Daly chose this area for the headquarters of his 1st Battalion. Daly’s troops engaged the British in a haphazard and widespread battle, and the area they were to hold presented many tactical problems to them as defenders, as well as to the attacking British.
The friars who attended those executed in Kilmainham Gaol lived here. Fr Columbus Murphy wrote a diary, later published, recording his experiences. The day after the surrender of the Four Courts garrison on April 29th, there was still confusion in North King Street and in other locations about whether this was a truce or a complete surrender. To clarify the situation Fr Columbus went to the Four Courts in an effort to retrieve Pearse’s note that had led to the surrender and went to see Pearse at Arbour Hill detention barracks, to ask him to rewrite the surrender note.
Pearse was seated in his cell with his head bowed and sunk deep into his arms, resting on a little table. He looked sad, forlorn and exhausted. Disturbed by the opening of the cell door, he slowly raised his head. He had the vacant, dazed look of someone waking from sleep. Then, recognising the Capuchin habit, he got up quickly, stretched out his hand and said: “Oh, father, the loss of life, the destruction! But, please God, it won’t be in vain.” Fr Columbus explained why he had come and asked Pearse to rewrite the surrender order. Pearse agreed, saying that his one wish was to prevent further loss of life and property.
3 4 Brunswick Street North: North Dublin Union A poorhouse north of the Four Courts, it was occupied by Ned Daly’s men of the 1st Battalion. Next door was the Convent of St John of the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul. The nuns supported the Volunteers, prayed with them and pleaded with God for their safe return. Daly’s men knew the sisters by name: Srs Brigid, Agnes, Patrick, Monica and Louise. Volunteer snipers operated briefly from its rooftops but left after protests that they were endangering the inmates’ lives. Residents of the area, particularly from North King Street, progressively evacuated their homes and fled for safety to the Union, which held about 400 refugees by the week’s end.
4 Arbour Hill: Arbour Hill Detention Centre Built in 1835 and redesigned in 1845, it was the smallest of Dublin’s Victorian prisons. The bodies of the 14 men executed in Dublin are buried here in a pit of quicklime; some DMP and British soldiers reported that they were buried in the order in which they were executed.
Upon his arrival to take command on Friday, April 28th, 1916, Maj Gen Sir John Grenfell Maxwell first issued a proclamation indicating that he would take all measures necessary to quell the Rising. His second command was to have a large limepit dug in the yard of Arbour Hill Prison, where those executed were to be buried. He had already decided to execute the leaders.
The executions of the 14 leaders in Dublin were carried out at Kilmainham Gaol from May 3rd to May 12th.
The bodies would then be removed immediately to an ambulance, which, when full, was to drive to Arbour Hill Barracks, where they were to be put in a grave alongside one another, covered in quicklime and the grave filled in. One of the officers with the party was to keep a note of the identity of each body that was placed in the grave, and a priest was to be available to attend the “funeral service”.
The stipulation about the burial of the bodies in quicklime came from the very top, because Maxwell was determined from the outset that the bodies of the executed men would not be released to their families, for fear that the men’s graves might become a place of pilgrimage or, worse, a rallying point for further insurrection.
The graves are located under a low mound on a terrace of Wicklow granite in what was once the old prison yard. Behind the pit where they are entombed is a wall bearing the Proclamation of the Irish Republic inscribed in Irish and English. On the prison wall opposite the grave site is a plaque bearing the names of others who gave their lives in 1916.
Dublin 3
With its open areas, Dublin 3 was perfect for drilling, and the Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army took advantage of Croydon Park and Fr Mathew Park.
5 Clontarf (Marino): Croydon Park The park had been taken over by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union several years before the Rising and was used by Capt Jack White for drilling the Irish Citizen Army. In October 1913 about 500 workers travelled here to enlist in the army that was being discussed.
After the 1913 Lockout, White offered Countess Markievicz £50 to buy shoes for the workers, so that they could drill and form a real army, and Croydon Park was the primary training area for the ICA. After James Larkin left for the United States in October 1914, the ITGWU sold the estate.
6 Philipsburgh Avenue, Fairview: Fr Mathew Park On Sunday, July 26th, 1914, four battalions of the Dublin Volunteers assembled in Fr Mathew Park. About 1,000 men formed up under their company commanders and an officer in uniform on horseback.
Almost all of the marchers were unaware of their destination or the purpose of the march. The march progressed through Sutton and Baldoyle before reaching its destination, in Howth, at about 1pm. The Volunteers had marched to Howth to accept the rifles and ammunition brought in by Erskine Childers in his yacht, Asgard.
The 2nd Battalion companies paraded here during Easter Week 1916. Fr Walter McDonnell, a Fairview curate, came into the park on Monday, heard Confessions and blessed the Volunteers.
7 31 Richmond Avenue, Fairview: Tom and Kathleen Clarke’s home at the time of the Rising She lived here after the Rising with their sons. Although Clarke stayed at Fleming’s Hotel on Holy Saturday night, he, Seán McGarry and Tom O’Connor returned to stay here on Easter Sunday night.
Kathleen Clarke was one of the best-known women of the period and one of very few privy to the plans of the Rising.
She was specifically given the responsibility to “carry on” the Irish Republican Brotherhood following the Rising, as Tom knew that many of its leaders would be killed or imprisoned. For her role, it was said that she was one of only two women (Una Brennan being the other) to be sworn into the IRB.
She was elected unopposed as a Sinn Féin TD to the second Dáil Éireann, in May 1921. Always adamantly against the Treaty, she failed to be re-elected in 1922; she was elected to the short-lived fifth Dáil, in June 1927, but again lost her seat in September 1927 and failed to regain it.
She was elected to the Seanad in 1928 and retained her seat in two subsequent elections, until the seat was abolished, in 1936. She was lord mayor of Dublin from 1939 to 1941. She unsuccessfully contested the 1948 Dáil Éireann election on behalf of Clann na Poblachta. Following her death, aged 94, in 1972, she received the rare honour of a State funeral. This is an edited extract from Dublin Rising 1916, published by Wordwell
