There is another variation of this legend, which states that Little John fired his arrow into a mound of earth in St Michan’s churchyard known as ‘the Giant’s Grave’. Like ScaldBrother, Little John is said to have met his end at the end of a rope at Gibbet’s Shade.
Grafton Street
Dublin’s premier shopping thoroughfare Grafton Street, recently described as one of the world’s most expensive places to rent retail property, was partially laid out during the late seventeenth century and it was originally called ‘the highway to St Stephen’s Green’. Before it was developed, the southern portion of the street was used for the cultivation of wheat and it was known as Crosse’s Garden.
Grafton Street underwent further development at the beginning of 1712 when the Dublin corporation allocated funds for ‘making a crown causeway’ through the street. It was initially developed as a residential street and during the eighteenth century many well-known Dubliners lived there. Louis Du Val, manager of the Smock Alley Theatre, lived there in 1733, as did the family of famous Gothic novelist Charles Robert Maturin.
With the opening of Carlisle Bridge (O’Connell Bridge) in 1792, Grafton Street gradually began to change to a centre of commercial activity and many of the houses were converted into shops. There were several taverns on the street including the Black Lyon and the City Tavern as well as a number of lottery offices, booksellers and private schools.
The street was given its current name after either Henry Fitzroy, first duke of Grafton, or his son Charles Fitzroy, second duke of Grafton and lord lieutenant of Ireland, who was once described by Jonathan Swift as a ‘slobberer without one good quality’.
The first duke of Grafton, Henry Fitzroy, is described in the Dictionary of National Biography as ‘the most popular and ablest of the sons of Charles II … with a strong and decided character, reckless daring and a rough, but honest temperament’. He was given the title of duke of Grafton in 1675. The duke had once been a staunch ally of James II but was one of the first to abandon him when William of Orange landed in Ireland in 1688. He was mortally wounded at the siege of Cork and died on 9 October 1690.
However, it seems more likely that the street was named after his son Charles, second duke of Grafton and lord lieutenant of Ireland from 1721 to 1724. Regarded by his peers as a dandy and a spendthrift, the duke had wildly extravagant tastes.
Grafton, who was also said to be extremely fond of ‘drinking and wenching’, displayed little interest in the world around him and he viewed those who discussed ‘depressing topics’ such as poverty or the education and health of the poorer classes as ‘unhealthy cranks, wild men, or perhaps even republicans’.
In 1706 he called for tougher measures against Irish Catholics and some years later gave his wholehearted support to a bill put before the Irish Parliament which proposed to banish all Catholic priests from Ireland on pain of castration if they refused.
Most commentators of his time had little regard for the duke, his business acumen or political abilities and many saw him as a downright liability. In his memoirs, Lord Waldegrave said that Grafton was a man who ‘usually turned politics into ridicule, had never applied himself to business, and as to books was totally illiterate’, while Horace Walpole described him as ‘a fair weather pilot that knew not what he had to do when the first storm arose’.
The second duke of Grafton died after falling from his horse while hunting at the age of seventy.
Red Lighthouse
The distinctive red lighthouse at the end of the Great South Wall at Ringsend is one of the most familiar landmarks in Dublin Bay. Officially known as the Poolbeg Lighthouse, it has appeared as a backdrop to many films, documentaries and television adverts. In the distant past, this area was known as Poll Beag meaning ‘little pool’ and it was – before the development of Dublin port – the main anchorage for shipping arriving in Dublin.
The current lighthouse has acted as a beacon for mariners since 1820. This replaced another lighthouse built in 1767 but even before that there were floating lights in some shape or form on the same site.
In 1731 the corporation of Dublin gave the Ballast Board the go-ahead to erect a floating light at the end of the south wall or ‘the piles’ as it was then known. However, another four years passed before the board was able to report that it was in a position to install a floating light to be built on the same design as a light ship at the Nore in England. At the close of 1735 the Ballast Board reported that ‘a great many masters of ships’ had met to approve the plan and all were in agreement that ‘such a floating light would be of great service for ships, for they then would be able to come into Polebegg in the darkest night …’
The floating light – which burned coal fires in braziers by night and displayed a flag by day – was in place in early 1736 and it was manned around the clock by two hands at eighteen pounds and sixteen pounds per annum and ‘two lusty boys’ who were each paid ten pounds per annum. The manager of the lightship was James Palmer and it was known as ‘Palmer’s Lightship’ or the ‘Dublin Lightship’.
By 1761 the floating lightship was in a bad state of repair and costing so much money to keep afloat that the Ballast Office decided to build a permanent lighthouse at ‘the end of the piles’.
An engineer named John Smith was asked to design and build the lighthouse and his first task was to construct foundations that could withstand the power of the Irish Sea. He achieved this by enclosing large stones in huge wooden casings and sinking them. Work on the lighthouse, a conical structure surrounded by an iron balcony and spiral staircase, was completed by June 1767. Exshaw’s Magazine described the new lighthouse as ‘a work of the highest utility, tending to the prosperity and increase of commerce, and to the preservation of her hardy sons, who lead her through every clime’.
It was originally called the George Lighthouse and was officially opened on 29 September 1767. It was the first lighthouse in the world to use candles instead of coals to provide light, and twenty years later the Poolbeg Lighthouse attained another first when it became the first lighthouse to use spermaceti oil lamps.
In 1768 Smith was thanked by the city assembly for his efforts and was awarded a piece of silver plate and twenty guineas. Local tradition says that his wife should have been given the prize, as it was she who had suggested the sinking of the wooden casings loaded with stones. The George Lighthouse remained in use until it was replaced in 1819– 20 by the present structure designed by George Halpin, Inspector of Lighthouses. The Poolbeg Lighthouse had a live-in lighthouse keeper until December 1968 and it went automatic on New Year’s Day in 1969.
Fyan’s Castle
No one can say with any degree of certainty when exactly Dublin became a walled town, but it is known that the city was defended by a wall fortified by at least twenty towers and defended by gates.
One such tower was Fyan’s or Fian’s Tower, which was also known as Proudfoote’s Castle. The tower – located on Wood Quay at the bottom of Fishamble Street – was first mentioned in 1456 when it was leased to John Marcus for a term of thirty years at a rent of six pence per year. At that time it was described simply as ‘the tower over the fish slip’. The tower was described in a report written for lord deputy of Ireland, John Perrot, in 1585 as: ‘Mr Fian’s Castell … a square towre, fowre storie hie, 38 foot sqware one way and 20 foote another way, towe [two] spickes or lowpes [defensive slits] in the loer storie and windows in every of the other rowmes, the wall fowre foote thicke and 42 foote hie, and the grounde firme 8 foote hie from the channell within the castell.’
The tower was named after the Fyan family who first occupied it during the fifteenth century. In his book on Irish surnames, More Irish Families , Edward McLysaght states that the now extremely rare surname of Fyan was first recorded in Dublin during the fifteenth century. Father Patrick Woulfe in his Irish Names and Surnames says that Fyan is a variant of Fagan which is derived from the Latin paganus , meaning the ‘pagan’ or the ‘rustic’.
; The Fyans were an eminent Dublin merchant family during the Middle Ages and they figure prominently in the municipal records for the city from as early on as the fifteenth century. Gilbert’s Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin records that several members of the Fyan family held high office in the city throughout the ages. John Fyan was mayor of Dublin in 1472 and 1479, while his descendant Richard Fyan held the same office in 1549 and 1564. Another family member, Thomas Fyan, was sheriff of Dublin in 1540.
In 1623, it was recorded that one Alderman Fyan, a member of Dublin city council, was named, along with several other prominent citizens, as one who had given aid and shelter to several ‘Jesuits, Friars and Popish priests’ who had come to Dublin for a religious conference. As a consequence, the Council of Ireland issued a proclamation ordering all such persons to leave the city within forty days.
In 1550 one Richard Fyan described as a ‘merchant of the city of Dublin’ and a former mayor of Dublin made an application to the English Privy Council for permission to build ‘six looms of linen and woollen yarn’ on the site of the former nunnery of St Mary of Hogges, which, Fyan said, would give employment ‘to a great number of persons now idle’.
The Barry family, who later became lords of Santry, owned Fyan’s Castle from 1614 until about 1660, when they sold it to a tanner named Francis Sleigh, who in turn sold it on to Philip Carpenter just three years later. Carpenter had the castle fitted out for use as a prison and in 1666 the Dominican priest, Father John O’Hart, was incarcerated there along with two other members of the order.
For a great part of the seventeenth century Fyan’s Castle was known as Proudfoot’s Castle. Although its not clear if he ever owned it, Richard Proudfoot reclaimed land in the immediate vicinity of the castle and developed it between the years of 1605 and 1607.
The castle seems to have been intact until the middle of the nineteenth century and its foundations were uncovered during road works in 1974.
Thomas Crawley
On the night of 17 February 1802, police were called to a lodging house at 9 Peter’s Row in Dublin. When the police entered the building they discovered the bodies of two women, Catherine Davidson – proprietor of the lodging house – and her maid Mary Mooney. Both had been bludgeoned to death.
Eight days later, an apprentice solicitor named Thomas Radcliffe Crawley – a lodger at the house – was arrested in Newry in connection with the double murder and taken back to Dublin to face trial.
The trial, presided over by the infamous ‘hanging judge’, Lord Norbury, began on 1 March at Green Street Courthouse, where Crawley was accused of causing the deaths of the two women by hitting them repeatedly over the head with a hammer. Crawley, who had no previous convictions, was an apprentice attorney and also held a commission in the Roscommon militia for a period.
At his trial, which created huge public interest, Crawley was defended by the well-known lawyers John Philpot Curran and Leonard McNally. Crawley was brought to the courthouse in heavy chains and McNally immediately asked the judge to have them removed. A blacksmith was called in to remove the heavy manacles, but he was unable to remove them within a reasonable amount of time so Crawley was forced to wear them in the dock for the duration of the trial.
Curran tried to have the trial postponed on the grounds that there had been so much ‘public excitement’ in relation to the case that it would be impossible to bring witnesses for the defendant into court because their lives would be at risk.
However, Curran’s objections were quickly dismissed and the trial went ahead. The first witnesses called were physician Henry Roe and Joseph, a surgeon. Both men had examined the bodies of the two women on the night of the murders and both were in agreement that they had died from wounds inflicted with a heavy iron instrument.
Next to give evidence on behalf of the prosecution was John McCullough, a cobbler who lived at Bow Lane close to the scene of the murders. McCullough stated that some time between six and seven on the night of 17 February, Crawley had come into his workshop and asked him for the loan of a hammer to fix some shelves. McCullough said that he was using his own hammer at the time but gave him the loan of a coal hammer instead. The hammer was produced in court as evidence and McCullough’s son William verified that it was the same one that Crawley had returned to him later that same evening.
Another witness, clergyman Joseph Elwood, who also lived at the lodging house on Peter’s Row, gave evidence that Crawley – who had only moved into the house four weeks earlier – had asked him if Mrs Davidson had kept any money on the premises and had also questioned him as to his own financial state.
Elwood told the court that on the night of the crime he heard ‘violent shrieks and moans’ coming from downstairs but said he didn’t do anything about it because he had often heard Mrs Davidson quarrelling with her maid. About an hour after the shouting had stopped Elwood said that he met the highly agitated Crawley, who asked him for a drink and a loan of some money. He found the bodies of Catherine Davidson and her maid in the parlour soon afterwards.
After listening to all of the evidence, the jury was sent out to consider its verdict and returned to pronounce Crawley guilty after an absence of only ten minutes. Norbury donned the black cap and sentenced him to death and Crawley was hanged in front of Newgate prison on 12 March 1802.
Olympics
When the Dublin Fine Gael TD and MEP Gay Mitchell proposed holding the Olympic Games in Dublin some years ago, he wasn’t the first politician to make such a suggestion. In early February 1933, the first commissioner of the Garda Síochána and leader of the Blueshirts, General Eoin O’Duffy, floated the idea of staging the Olympic Games in the Phoenix Park.
O’Duffy was deeply involved in Irish sporting organisations at the time. He was head of the NACA (National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland) and was president of the Irish Olympic Council. O’Duffy was involved in sending an Irish team to the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928 where Pat O’Callaghan won the first of his two medals and he helped secure government funding to send a four-man Irish team to the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Ireland won two gold medals at the Los Angeles games and one of the winners, Bob Tisdall only got onto the team after writing a letter to O’Duffy early in 1932 asking to be allowed represent Ireland in the 400 metres hurdles even though he had never actually competed in the event before.
In a series of interviews given to the national newspapers in February 1933, O’Duffy suggested that Ireland should apply to the Olympic Council for the right to stage the 1940 Olympic Games in the Phoenix Park.
O’Duffy claimed to have approached the president of the Olympic Council, Count de Baillet-Latour, with his idea and he was ‘agreeably surprised to find that the suggestion was well received’. O’Duffy based his optimism on the grounds that Ireland had done well in the 1932 Olympics and the fact that over one million people had attended the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, proving, in his opinion, that the city was capable of hosting a massive event like the Olympics.
Speaking in his capacity as President of the NACA in a review of the overall state of athletics in Ireland, O’Duffy complained that Dublin was the only capital city in the world without its own athletics stadium. He also said, ‘An athletic stadium in our capital city, which will be the home of our Irish athletes is a national necessity … Were it not for the kindness of the Gaelic Athletic Association, and other sporting organisations who oblige us with the use of their grounds … we could not run a sports meeting in Ireland.’
O’Duffy’s plan involved the building of a national athletics stadium on the Fifteen-acres in Phoenix Park and he proposed that the project be funded by the government through the use of one or more sweepstakes.
He proposed to build a stadium encompassing five or six acres in the park, describing it as an ideal situation for an Olympic stadium where Ireland’s athletes could train under proper conditions ‘and where we can stage the athletic section of the Olympic and European Games.’ O’Duf
fy claimed that if the stadium was given the go-ahead by the government, there was no doubt in his mind that Ireland would get an early opportunity to host the European Games even if it failed to secure the Olympic Games for Ireland.
O’Duffy was obviously flying solo on the issue as his plan was not discussed at the NACA’s national conference in mid-February that year and he was removed from his post as Garda Commissioner shortly afterwards.
O’Duffy’s grand scheme came to nought, and judging by the astronomical amounts of money it costs to host the games these days it’s going to be a long time before we see the Olympic flag hoisted over the Fifteen-acres.
Larry
‘De Night before Larry was Stretched’ was one of at least six versions of a popular Dublin street ballad that was doing the rounds in the late 1780s. All of the songs tell the tale of a condemned prisoner’s last night on earth in his cell in Newgate Gaol or Kilmainham and all of them were written in the popular jail slang of the day.
The songs – although written in a highly dramatised fashion – are valuable in that they shine a light on the Dublin criminal classes who lived their lives in the shadow of the scaffold and the ‘anatomy men’, and they give some insight into the condemned man’s last hours before execution.
One version of the ballad, written in 1788, is thought to have been penned in commemoration of the botched execution of an infamous Dublin criminal, Frederick Lambert, on 30 October 1788.
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