With a few spare hours to spend before the DHO Summer School, I decided to revisit Glasnevin Cemetery and check out the new interpretive centre. As you may remember from my earlier post, there was a grand, but damp ceremony staged to reopen the refurbished crypt of Daniel O’Connell late last year. When there I was impressed by this swoopy modernistic centre being built to welcome visitors to Glasnevin. Well, it opened a few months back and I finally got a chance to visit it.

A little background, to prove I actually visited the centre and took in a little of the knowledge they are dispensing. Glasnevin is a non-denominational cemetery that was opened in 1832 and is the largest cemetery in Ireland. Think Pere Lachaise in a less rolling and less forested surrounding. There are over one million souls buried in Glasnevin.

The new interpretative centre backs on the cemetery walls on Finglas Road. The cemetery itself is surrounded by high walls and even features watchtowers at the corners. The need to protect the inhabitants of the cemetery stems from the nineteenth century grave robbers that preyed upon the bodies of the deceased. The centre is a stunning new addition to the cemetery. The design, although modernistic does seem in harmony with the surroundings, the horizontal expanse fitting in well with the long walls surrounding the cemetery. The building is squat, and although a large edifice, the glass and stone sits well amongst the stone grave markers. There is a €6 entry fee to the museum. This seems a bit high given the paucity of exhibition content offered. There are basically two floors of things to see. On the lower floor (where you start) the theme is a journey under the ground of the cemetery proper…rather like a trip through the catacombs in Paris. The exhibits are well done, but brief. A short widescreen interpretative video is presented to establish the context of the cemetery within Irish history. There is an attempt to allow the guest to connect with the individuals buried in the cemetery through a collection of individual artefacts. The mood of the visit is established with lots of running water and a message relating to the multi-demoninational aspect of the cemetery is presented.

Taking an elevator to the first floor you get to play with some touch screens that take you through the life of Daniel O’Connell. Underneath a wall of windows that face the cemetery are a series of additional screens that choose from a select set of individuals buried at Glasnevin presented as a longitudinal timeline visualisation. As a visitor you can choose to explore biographies by choosing individual names using trackballs (remember those). Additionally (and I think this is rather cool) the timeline morphs into a social network visualisation of the person (node) of interest. Essentially the presentation presents a virtual community of the deceased, but allows you to explore the web of that society. Quite interesting.

The museum ends there. You proceed down the stairs to the ground floor and sandwiched between the two exhibit spaces is the obligatory museum shop and a lovely cafe. It’s a pleasant surrounding, but I am not sure that I have seen this level of heritage management at a cemetery. Quite fascinating.

The day was a fine one and I had a chance to tag along with one of the guided tours of the cemetery itself. Our guide was a very perky sort (in a positive sense) and expressed a wonderful enthusiasm for the history and the people buried in Glasnevin. She took us on a wide ranging tour of the grounds as well as Irish history and how much of it is bound up with the notable individuals buried here. The cemetery itself is a huge space and there are a number of very different spaces within it. Many of the spaces are wonderfully tree-lined in a way similar to Pere Lachaise. Many of the monuments are being restored by the Office of Public Works in Ireland and all in all this creates a very relaxing and specially spiritual environment. Obviously wandering in a cemetery is not for all people, but for those of us that find rooting in historical presence, Glasnevin is a very special place.

Although a rather ‘soft’ day yesterday, circumstances demanded a flying visit to Glasnevin Cemetery. The occasion was the public opening of the crypt of Daniel O’Connell, one of the great Irish figures of the nineteenth century. I felt compelled to make the journey, and with a small group of weather braving souls we paid a sort of tribute to the Great Liberator.

I have been wanting to visit Glasnevin since arriving in Ireland and it had, until yesterday, eluded my grasp. The cemetery as you can read from the linked wikipedia article is the largest nondenominational cemetery on the island and it contains the last resting spots of some of the most notable public figures of the last two centuries. In fact, the article claims it contains the remains of over 1.5M souls. That seems a rather heady claim, but bears consideration. Existing during famine times the cemetery existed during a period when roman catholics were not permitted to maintain their own cemeteries and had to conduct what rites they could in protestant graveyards.
Certainly Glasnevin is on par with a place like Pére LaChaise in Paris as the national cemetery. However, the cemetery in Paris is rather lush and you have a feeling of creeping organic decomposition and a sense that you are at the portal to the underworld. At Glasnevin, there is a sense of reaching out towards heaven. The vast collection of monuments soar upwards and you feel surrounded and amongst the concrete remembrances, but clearly on a worldly plain.

The cemetery is hard to miss. As you approach you can see the magnificent round tower erected over the crypt of Daniel O’Connor for a great distance and on closer approach the towering walls and guard towers at the corners make the site unmistakable. Even on a dreary day one is in awe on approach. This feeling of great appreciation that one is in a special place is all the more heightened as you walk amongst the markers of figures that you may only be familiar with from the pages of history books or spoken in reverence. Casement, Boland, Devoy, Brugha, Collins, Maud Gonne Macbride, to but name a few. And only a few as the weather was filthy and I now look forward to heading out on a sunnier occasion to pay proper respect to the memory of the many more that are buried here.

The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, gave a very thoughtful and extremely poignant speech (in the driving rain) paying tribute to O’Connell as one of the first human right activists and connected his legacy directly to the ideals of the Irish people today. The visit was brief, but we did manage to get down to the crypt and actually touch O’Connell’s sarcophagus. The vault itself is decorated with motif’s rooted in the nineteenth century, fine celtic knot work and bold statements of the accomplishments of the great man. I hope that the pictures that I share can do this justice.

On another note there is a huge shiny new visitors centre nearing completion which promises to ‘tell the story’ of the souls buried at Glasnevin…I look forward to seeing the interpretation.

If you choose to visit Glasnevin, Bus 40 leaves from Parnell Square quite frequently and drops you right at the gates to the cemetery. Bus 140 is even better as it comes right from UCD down the dual carriage way, Leeson Street, Stephen’s Green and across the river right past the cemetery as well, so it is very easy to reach. For myself, I hope that I can find a nice dry day to revisit and experience the cemetery.

We work in a charming Georgian townhouse on Upper Pembroke Street at Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin. The DHO rents a series of offices in here and it isa very pleasant surround. The neighborhood is a busy one, but largely of pedestrians and of tourists. Over the past few weeks we have all been commenting on how many tourist photos we must now be appearing as they let off busloads to marvel at the colourful doors and ornate doorways. There is a large green area in the centre of the square with dense trees surrounding it and charming grassed areas in side. The Georgian terraces are quite impressive and give real sense of a Dublin of days past.

For all of the wonderful architecture, I had, to my chagrin, not dug any deeper into the historical connections with the area. That is, until today. There is a lovely closed park in the centre of Fitzwilliam Square, and I couldn’t figure out how to get in. Well…as it turns out, it is a private park only available to the householders surrounding the park. I am now trying to see if we qualify as such as I can get in. I have just heard back that we do and this feels all so clubbish.
However, when I was wandering about websites to discover the bye laws surrounding the park, I discovered that our address has some greater notoriety. Many of the buildings in the area have little plaques on them, noting famous personages that were born or lived in the the area. Our address is a little more tragic. 28 Upper Pembroke (as well as a couple other houses) were targeted by Michael Collin’s squads during the sweep of Sunday 21 November 1920. These early morning lightning raids were intended to decapitate the british intelligence efforts in Ireland. Throughout the city, british agents whose addresses and whereabouts had been obtained in the weeks previous were hunted down in homes, parks and cafe’s. In the case of 28 Upper Pembroke, a certain Captain Fitzgerald was killed here and papers were found in his possession detailing the movements of senior IRA figures. Apparently four agents were gunned down in this townhouse alone. For those of you that may have seen Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, these same assassinations were followed by the wanton slaughter of innocent civilians and players at Croke Park during a GAA match.
The War of Independence was fought right on our front steps. Perhaps I will give second thought to working late in the office here. Ohhhh…scary!