Arbour Hill

As part of Heritage Week, I wandered down to Arbour Hill cemetery for a small tour.

 

The site was historically a military prison, located just next to Collins Barracks.

 

And naturally the graveyard is the final resting place of many soldiers. Many didn't die in active service - one Lancer fell off his horse in the Phoenix Park; several drowned on a recreational cruise in Dublin Bay. This particular detail belonged to the stone of an Artillery soldier. The engraving around the icon reads "Anchored in the hope of Jesus".

 

The old schoolmaster's house is now home to the IUNVA - the Irish United Nations Veterans Association. A small but pretty garden contains a memorial to all those who were killed on service, in the Congo, the Lebanon, East Timor, among others. The house is a meeting place for old soldiers, and also contains a museum.

 

The real draw of Arbour Hill though, that which it is most famous for, is the 1916 memorial. It was here that fourteen participants of the Easter Rising were buried after being executed in the Stonebreakers' Yard in Kilmainham Gaol. Along with the seven signatories, seven other volunteers were executed, including Pádraig Mac Piarais' younger brother William. They were covered in quicklime, and interred in the corner of the prison's exercise yard. A British army officer kept a rough note of their position, and in 1956 a memorial was erected. It's a nice spot, despite the prison walls - it's still in use today, in a civil capacity. There is no military prison in Ireland.

There's another tour Tuesday 26th at 7.30pm, and on Sunday 31st from 11am-3pm, on the hour.

The Dodder

 

She's one of my many rivers - the mistress I always come back to, whom I always meet in the same place. Especially this weir - I pass it every day I travel to UCD, and then again on the way home. I always pause for a moment on the return journey.

 

It's not beautiful in my eyes, but something draws me to it. I've seen the water clean and I've seen it muddy. I've seen the water so high the weir essentially wasn't there. I've seen men fishing in it, dogs swimming in it, children wading in it, teenagers drinking beside it. I even once saw a body being pulled from it. It's like a little piece of home - something solid, something familiar. It goes through the seasons, but the essence of it remains the same. The same curve, the same flow.

 

Heroclitus said that you can't step in the same river twice (and someone else proposed that you can't step in the same river once), but this weir has remained the same for as long as I can remember it.