It’s difficult for the average stroller-through-Dublin to fully appreciate the level of destruction wrought in the city in 1916. The subsequent Civil War meant that reconstruction of damaged buildings was taking place in earnest only in the mid 1920s, mostly taking place in O’Connell Street and the quays, giving us the streetscape familiar to us today.
Sackville Street Post-1916
Some moving images here:
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=79411
Look carefully and, even today, you will see telltale signs of bullet damage on buildings and sculptures caught in the crossfire.
Strangely the GPO’s façade, one of the places one would expect to be riddled with pockmarks, is entirely devoid of bullet damage. Holes in the columns have been confirmed by the Irish Post Office (and supported by Dublin History Guru Pat Liddy) as NOT being attributable to action in 1916.
.
So if they’re not on the GPO, where are the scars of the birth of the Irish Nation to be seen?
The most striking damage is seen on the Daniel O’Connell memorial in O’Connell Street. Sculpted by John Henry Foley and unveiled in 1882, it’s a miracle the structure survived 1916 at all considering that its surroundings were smashed to rubble in 1916 by the gunboat Helga, moored on City Quay and shelling the GPO without a clear line of sight.
The winged Victory figures represent patriotism, courage, eloquence and fidelity. The Victory representing Eloquence (with the book) sustained an elbow “wound”
The Winged Victory vanquishing the snake (Courage) has a hole in her breast.
T
he sword that one graced the statue of Patriotism quite recently had its blade broken off. I distinctly remember seeing it in situ in the 1970s.
Anyway back to bullets; Daniel O’Connell’s statue’s chest is quite peppered with battle damage as you can see here
Over to Stephen’s Green and you’ll see the Fusiliers’ Arch. Many people are blissfully unaware of its purpose as a memorial to the Dublin Fusiliers who fell in the Boer War. Perhaps its anonymity – being “hidden in plain sight” has saved it from the destruction meted out over the years to Dublin’s once-numerous equestrian statues. Here you can see more damage from rifle-fire – perhaps from troops firing at the College of Surgeons which held an IRA garrison – at the side.
Finally here is the College of Surgeons building mentioned earlier showing pock marks around the window. These probably resulted from an attempt to take out a sniper within the building as the marks are grouped together in such a way as to be near misses (or should that be Near Hits!)
The Four Courts is similarly pockmarked:
This evidence of history provides a real, thought-provoking, physical connection with history. A different experience to reading a book about the events in Dublin in 1916 (or indeed reading a blog about it!) these scars vividly bring home a sense of the events having
really happened.
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