AN OFFICE of Public Works file on the visit by Queen Victoria to Ireland in 1900 has unexpectedly turned up in a Dublin auction house and is to be sold later this week.
Previously unseen official documents shed new light on preparations for the visit in April 1900 and reveal chaotic last-minute planning, cost overruns and a breakdown in communications between officials in Dublin and London.
The file contains some 200 letters, memos and telegrams generated by staff in the Office of Public Works (OPW), Dublin Castle (the headquarters of the British administration in Ireland) and the Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) Harbour Commissioners.
Whyte’s auctioneers said the file had been consigned for sale by an Irishman living in the United States who inherited it from his father. It will go under the hammer in Dublin next Saturday with a pre-sale estimate of €400 to €600.
Queen Victoria, who reigned for more than 63 years, made her last trip to Ireland in April 1900. By then long-widowed, and aged 80, she travelled on the royal yacht to Dún Laoghaire, then called Kingstown, arriving on April 4th. It was her first visit to Ireland since her holiday in Killarney, Co Kerry, in 1861.
The documents – never published – include a series of telegrams between officials in Dublin and London that reveal the admiralty (Royal Navy headquarters) temporarily “lost” the royal yacht – just days before the queen was due to sail.
The construction of VIP landing facilities at Kingstown Harbour resulted in cost overruns and squabbling among officials. An OPW official described building work carried out by contractors, which had continued “all night and almost to the moment of the queen’s landing”, as “most unsatisfactory”.
The queen spent three weeks in Ireland and left on April 26th. Dublin Castle informed harbour staff at Kingstown that they could relax – a little – for the departure ceremony and did not need to wear “levee dress or uniform”. They were told that “morning dress, i.e. frock coat” would suffice.
One document describes official anxiety over the “very high” cost of decorations for the pier provided by Switzer and Co department store.
The harbour commissioners sent a telegram to a maritime flagmaker in Southampton ordering special flags but received a curt reply, by telegram, from Messrs SW Wolff: “We are quite unable to make the flags required, we are so busy.”
