One picture stood out instantly, taken from here at Come Here To Me. 66-67 Great Strand Street were occupied today, but right next door at 64 occurred one of the most unusual events of the 1930s in Dublin, in the form of the storming of Connolly House following a rather heated mass at the Pro Cathedral.

Bob Doyle, who went on to fight fascism in Spain, was ironically enough among the crowd who stormed Great Strand Street. He wrote in his memoirs years later:

I had attended the evening mission on Monday 27 March 1933 at the Pro-Cathedral, during the period of Lent where the preacher was a Jesuit. The cathedral was full. He was standing in the pulpit talking about the state of the country, I remember him saying – which scared me – “Here in this holy Catholic city of Dublin, these voile creatures of Communism are within our midst.” Immediately after the sermon everybody then began leaving singing and gathered in a crowd outside, we must have been a thousand singing “To Jesus Heart All Burning” and “Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith”. We marched down towards Great Strand Street, to the headquarters of the socialist and anti-Fascist groups in Connolly House. I was inspired, of you could use that expression, by the message of the Jesuit. There was no attempt by the police to stop us.

We’ve already looked at the event in some detail before, over here, but with the day that is in it I thought I’d repost the image as it appeared in the Unlock NAMA history today. Below is a rare image showing two police officers alongside the petrol cans used during the burning of Connolly House. It came into my possession as a gift, and I’m chuffed to share it.

If you stand in the visitors centre in Dachau, you will see a large map of Europe on the wall. Over each country is a number,  indicating how many of their citizens were imprisoned in the camp. The number ’1′ is marked over Ireland.

John McGrath (c1893 – Nov 27 1946), was born in Elphin, Roscommon and educated at the Christian Brothers’ Schools in Carrick-On-Shannon. Joining the British Army, he saw action in France in World War One.

John McGrath. Sunday Independent, Apr 17, 1932.

Returning home safely he worked, as an administrative staff assistant, with the Gordon Hotel in London and then was involved with the organising of the Grand Prix Motor Race in the Phoenix Park and the Military Tattoo in Landsdowne Road in the late 1920s

He became the first House Manager of the new Savoy Cinema in Dublin in 1929, staying there for two years. When the Savoy Cinema in Cork was opened, he was sent down to manage it and worked there for a further two years. Returning to Dublin, in 1935, to manage the Theatre Royal on Hawkins Street, McGrath was recalled up to the British Army, as major, at the outbreak of war in 1939.

Theatre Royal, Hakins St. nd. (Picture credit -Damntheweather)

Landing with the Allies in Dunkirk in May 1940, McGrath was one of the ‘small Allied band’ who fought in France after the evacuation. He was wounded twice in battle near Rouen, Normandy before finally being captured by the Nazis. McGrath, now a Colonel, along with other captured POWs were then forced to march over four hundred miles to Germany. At least two hundred of the captured men died of exhaustion en route.

Brought to the Oflag (officers camp) in Luckenwalde, he was imprisoned there for just under twelve months.

McGrath was then transferred to the Friesack Camp, a special camp for Irishmen of the British Army. Here, the Irish were made various offers by the Nazis that in return for their freedom, they could become German agents and help sabotage the war effort in England, German and Scotland. “These men”, Col. McGrath said in a 1946 interview, “were continually being interviewed in secret, and all kinds of proposals, including very lucrative offers, were made to them. In not one single case did the Germans succeed…”

After nine months of trying, the Germans gave up trying to ‘turn’ the 180 Irishman in the camp.

Around this time, McGrath was caught attempting to pass information about the camp to the Irish legislation in Rome and sent to the infamous Sachsenhausen near Frankfurt

On arrival he was “stripped, searched and arrested by the Gestapo” and lodged in the prison section of the camp. For the next year, he was kept in near solitary confinement.

(For a full account of McGrath’s actions and imprisonment in Germany, read Terence O’Reilly’s Hitler’s Irishmen (2008))

Sachsenhausen camp. (Picture credit - holocaustresearchproject.org)

McGrath was transferred yet again, this time to the even more notorious Dachau concentration camp. One of the Nazis first prison camps, it would claim the lives of over 30,000 prisoners.

Here, even ‘important’ prisoners like McGrath had their heads shaved, were forced to wear the striped camp uniform and were subject to regular beatings from the brutal SS guards. (O’Reilly: 114)

For nearly two years, McGrath struggled and survived in the camp becoming its the first and only ever Irish inmate.

In the summer of 1945 with the U.S. 7th army sweeping through France and Germany, the SS marched the ‘principal captives’ of Dachau, which included McGrath, to Inssbruck and then to Tyrol in Austria.

"POWs from Dachau on death march to the South Tyrol" (Picture credit - scrapbookpages.com)

There, lodged in a hotel which had been closed for six years, McGrath and 130 other people were locked away in the bitter cold with little or no food. They were literally on the verge of death.

In an amazing turn of events, the U.S. army tracked the S.S. and the prisoners to Tyrol. Taking them completely by surprise, the U.S. took prisoner the 150 S.S. men who had guarded Dachau

From captured documents, it was revealed that McGrath’s party were not supposed to ‘fall into the hands of the Allies alive’. He had survived death yet again.

The liberated prisoners were then ‘speedily’ driven to Verona and then by plane to Naples. He then was brought back to Ireland via London.

John McGrath. The Irish Times, 29 Nov 1946.

A special reception, hosted by his employers in the Theatre Royal, in the Royal tea lounge marked his arrival back to Dublin in June 1945.

After a couple of months of respite McGrath, now decorated with an Order of the British Empire (OBE), returned to his job as manager of the cinema on Hawkins Street.

Never fully recovering from the physical and psychological trauma of his imprisonment in Germany, McGrath passed away, in his house at 38 Merrion Square, in November 1946.

Though he was only in his early 50s, he had lived a truly remarkable life. Having fought in two world wars, Lt. Col. John McGrath then managed to survive the brutal existence of four different concentration camps. The last of these was Dachau, one of the most horrific prisons of the whole war.

He should be remembered.

Sources:
+ The Irish Independent ( Jun 07, 1945; June 14, 1945; Nov 29, 1946), The Irish Press (Nov 29, 1946), The Irish Times (17 May 1945; 29 Nov 1946), The Leitrim Observer (Nov 30, 1929; June 16, 1945)
+ Terence O’Reilly, Hitler’s Irishmen (Dublin, 2008)

12 noon: Conor McCabe (author of Sins of the Father) on NAMA and Property Speculation in Ireland

2.30pm: Andy Storey (lecturer in politics and international relations) and Michael Taft (research officer, UNITE) on the Anglo: Not Our Debt campaign

4pm: Unlock NAMA: What buildings does NAMA have and how can we identify and gain access to them?

In we go....

Busy busy!

Media team at work...

Before....

After...!

Arty shot...

The inhospitable third floor...

The rotten floor... *insert joke about rotten NAMA here

Some history of the building...

Meet the neighbours...

Almost meeting time!

Connor McCabe giving his talk

Two interested punters arrive and are refused entry by the recently arrived Gardai

A brief sitdown protest ensued

Taking the banner in.... Hopefully this is just the beginning!

The building has an interesting history, dating back to the mid 19th century. It was originally opened by J Edmundson, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, as a Quaker’s Institute. From the 1870′s, the Strand Street institute became one of the few educational centres in Dublin not administered by the Catholic church.

The building now belongs to… or lately belonged to Hugh O’Regan, an investor in the Morrison Hotel, just around the corner. The building has since fallen into disrepair, despite its valuation of €20 – €25 million. In todays markets, can anyone see it going for anywhere near that amount? Especially given the state of the place… There’s a hole in the roof that has been left untreated, leaving rainwater to soak through three stories… Given the city’s homeless epedemic and with community groups crying out for space, seeing the building like this is stomach turning.

We here at CHTM! have spoken out several times against the wanton destruction of this city’s beautiful architectural heritage in the name of “progress.” The next few years are going to be challenging in that the danger no longer lies in careless developers re-writing this city’s skyline, rather than in buildings themselves falling into such a state of dereliction, that should this “recession” (God I hate that word) ever lift, that all they are fit for is bulldozing.

Unlock NAMA is a campaign to access NAMA properties for social and community use and to hold NAMA to account. While NAMA is all about giving public money to private banks, we want to make public buildings available to the public.

NAMA’s bank bailout has been a complete failure: the banks have needed more hand outs and even nationalization yet they still are not lending… for more information, please check out: http://www.facebook.com/UnlockNAMA

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. With that in mind, I dipped into an old Come Here To Me article which was the popular review we carried out of the Jewish Museum in Portobello.

A small, touching plaque features upstairs in the restored synagogue to Ettie Steinberg. Herself and her son were to become the only Irish citizens to perish in the Holocaust. Ettie was raised in Raymond Terrace. The horrific figure of six million can be difficult to comprehend, but when the story of one individual is brought to life, not least a Dubliner born only a short walk from the Museum, the horror of those years becomes clearer.

Ettie’s family were oiginally from Czechoslovakia, and had come to Ireland from London in 1926. She married a Belgian man in 1937, and moved to Belgium with him before going on to Paris two years later. In 1942, Ettie and her young son, born in Paris, were transported to Auschwitz by the Nazis. In his wonderful work Jews In Twentieth-Century Ireland , Dermot Keough wrote that:

By a strange irony, the Steinberg’s in Dublin had secured visas for Ettie and her family through the British Home Office in Belfast. The visas were sent immediately to Toulouse but they arrived too late. Ettie and her family had been rounded up the day before and sent to the camp at Drancy, outside Paris. They were transported to Auschwitz and to their immediate death.

The map below shows that area that once made up ‘Dublin’s Little Jerusalem’, and was first uploaded to Come Here To Me by jaycarax here, at the time of a fascinating documentary on the murders of two Jewish men in the area in the early 1920s.

Brendan Behan famously quipped that “they certainly made history (as) they seemed to be the only army that went out to war, ever, and came back with more”. This is because a number of Irish men in the Spanish Legion(?) decided to get a lift home with O’Duffy and co. when they were leaving.

1937, Dublin, Ireland --- Irish Brigade Returns from Spain --- Image by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

- Lower Mount Pleasant Avenue, Rathmines shortcut:

Mountpleasant Sq. West entrance

Lwr. Mt. Pleasant. Ave. entrance

- Phibsborough Terrace shortcut:

View from North Circular Rd. down to Phibsborough Ave.

View from Phibsborough Ave. down to North Circular Rd.

- Clyde Lane, Ballsbridge shortcut:

View down Clyde Lane from Merrion Row

View down Clyde Lane to Merrion Row

- Warner’s Lane off Leeson Bridge, shortcut:

View down to Warner's Lane from Darthmouth Walk

View up to Darthmouth Walk from Warner's Lane

The below, almost entirely, come from the collection of my brother. The Behan biography is one of my favourite book covers of all time, but they’re all excellent in their one way.

If this is your thing, pop over to the hitone vintage Irish book cover blog from designer Niall McCormack, his collection is stunning.

Rae Jeffs, Brendan Behan: Man and Showman (Corgi, 1968)

Emmet Larkin- James Larkin (New English Library, 1968)

Micháel Ó hAodha- The O’Casey Enigma (Mercier, 1980)

Peadar O’Donnell- Islanders (Mercier, 1965)

Sean McCann- The Story of the Abbey Theatre (New English Library, 1967)

This looks interesting. This Saturday one of the NAMA buildings in the city centre is going to open its doors, with that temporarily occupied space playing home to a day of discussion around NAMA, its roles and functions and the possibilities around NAMA buildings. Unlock NAMA are the group behind this venture, and in their own words “Unlock NAMA is a campaign to access NAMA properties for social and community use and to hold NAMA to account”

There is a lengthy write-up from Unlock NAMA at politico.ie which you can read here, outlining more about Saturday.

The location of the building will go out on social media at 9.30am on Saturday morning, so keep an eye on facebook.com/unlocknama and follow @unlocknama on Twitter.

Full Programme:

12 noon: Conor McCabe (author of Sins of the Father) on NAMA and Property Speculation in Ireland
2.30pm: Andy Storey (lecturer in politics and international relations) and Michael Taft (research officer, UNITE) on the Anglo: Not Our Debt campaign
4pm: Unlock NAMA: What buildings does NAMA have and how can we identify and gain access to them?

From the positive message of the ‘They Are Us’ collaboration with Damien Dempsey, which raised money for the homeless of the city, to his recent contributions to major art exhibition Dublin Contemporary, Maser has brightened the walls of the city, always paying tribute to those who inspired him and helping to open doors for the next lot by including the youth of Dublin in a lot of his work.

He’s an all around decent bloke, a good ambassador for the city and handy with a brush. Enjoy the below. The questions, fittingly for the site you’re reading, all deal with the city and how he relates to her and takes inspiration from her.

1) Most Dubliners would probably have first stumbled across your work through ‘They Are Us’. Did that project, and working with Damien Dempsey, change how you saw Dublin at all? Did you see new things around you, for example visiting Mountjoy?

The ‘They Are Us’ project was addressing things I was already aware of. The idea was to possibly educate and show different aspects of Dublin that maybe some people aren’t too aware, for example the historic sign writing trade, the homeless, graffiti art. The funny thing is, I ended up probably learning the most.

An element of it for me was understanding homelessness, it led me to Mountjoy and St.Pat’s prison, where I painted murals, shared lunch and hung out with the inmates for three weeks. That beats any textbook education.

2:) You seem to do a bit of sign writing professionally on occasion. That tradition is sadly dying in Dublin but it used to be very common here. Would you take influence from that old tradition, as well as the medium of street art?

I’d be fully aware of the technique they used and materials.

I use the material most appropriate for the job, so if it’s large scale, like Ballymun, well spray paint is the best option. If I’ve time, or want to spend extra time on pieces I’ll use brushes with gloss. I really enjoy the act of painting, the end piece is just the result.

Maser and Damien Dempsey's Ballymun piece made the front of The Dubliner.

3) The ‘They Are Us’ show included portraits of James Connolly and ‘The Liberator’ O’Connell. Is Dublin’s history something you’re becoming more and more influenced by do you think?

The more I learn the more I realise how much more I want to know.

There is a wealth of history in this city and country that can supply an extensive body of visual work for any artist. There are still a lot of people, places and situations I need to paint and talk about.

4) One of the best things about following your work is the outreach to working class Dublin kids, getting them involved in a lot of your work. How important is all that to you?

It’s just the way it went. By painting a piece, I’m putting it out there for everyone to see. It’s available to all social classes. When painting I’m not doing it for a target audience. Maybe certain locations dictate that because the piece might be in their area.

I do however, get kids involved through workshops, classes when I can. I understand what it’s like for a kid growing up in Dublin. It’s a confusing time, per pressure, being full of energy and not knowing how to release it, sometimes resulting in those kids going down the wrong path. I’ve worked with kids in schools across Dublin, also getting them involved with my own projects, for example the kids from Crumlin who helped me with the set up of the They Are Us exhibition.

5)Would you see ‘Dublin Contemporary’ as a big leap for yourself? Is it still as much fun to hit up Windmill Lane as a massive exhibition?

I still consider them two different worlds. It’s great to have the opportunity to do both because it adds variety.

Saying that, the indoor would not survive without the outdoor pieces. Outdoor work is the core of what I do, and the the piece interacts with the outdoor space, whether that be the piece getting damaged, fading off the wall, pissing people off or putting a smile on their face as they walk to work.

Nothing beats painting Windmill Lane, it used to be my playground years ago, going down 5 times a week to drop pieces and stay up in the space. They sand blasted the whole lane clean in ’99, that didn’t last long. The piece below is by TML (The Missing Link, Maser’s old crew)

TML piece at Windmill Lane

6) Did you think this would ever happen as it has, or that you could make a living from spraycans?

I started painting outside approximately 16 years ago. I didn’t even understand myself why I did it. I didn’t think that much ahead to “what could be?”

As I don’t now, I’m just enjoying what I do and taking one day at a time.
I work hard at what I do because I love what I do.

7) It’s sometimes forgotten that the man who gave us the iconic ‘Che’ image was Jim Fitzpatrick, a Dubliner. Then there’s the likes of Robert Ballagh and his amazing images of Connolly and other giants of Irish history. Were you aware of the great history of art like that in this country starting out or is it something you came to later?

I’m good friends with Jim, I’ve named him ‘the modest gentleman’

I was wearing his design before I even knew who Che was, never mind knowing who Jim was. Jim himself is an Irish icon! I’ve huge respect for Ballagh, his works and technical skills are immense. You’ve coincidentally named the two artists I aspire to most. I’m glad we are on the same page.

Maser's tribute to Jim Fitzpatrick.

8)Have you had any funny run-ins with Dubliners while painting? Do you ever wonder what an older-generation of Dubs might see in the art?

Yeah I get mixed reviews, it’s part and parcel. Sure I hate half the stuff I do myself so don’t blame them if they don’t consider it ‘art’.

Because I paint outdoor the majority of the time, I interact with a lot of people, situations. To be honest mostly good, even the bad situations at least have a good story to tell. The side streets in the city centre provide the most interesting characters.I’m laughing here even thinking about some of the heads I’ve met.

These experiences are what make up 80% of the piece I do, the memories. The final mural is my bookmark for the memory of that day.

9) How would you like Dublin to remember you?

As a positive person.

10) Lastly, will Dublin rise again?
We are a stubborn nation, we will rise again. Respect to those involved in Occupy Dame Street and all the others involved with the Occupy movement.
-
Love Maser

Line-up: Clash Jam Wallop, The Lee Harveys, Found On The Floor and Complan. €10, 8pm doors.

Poster by Tommy Rash

From The Irish Times, December 18 1961. A fine base for Lord Gough, but no sign of the man himself.

We’ve looked at plaques in considerable detail on the site, and one thing I really want to get around to in time is the statues of Dublin. ‘All the fellas between Charles Stewart Parnell and Daniel O’Connell’, with the exception of William Smith O’Brien, have gone unexamined. How many Dubliners can name all the statues on O’Connell Street?

We looked briefly too at the loyalist bombing of the Daniel O’Connell statue in 1969, and jaycarax had a fascinating photographic history of Henry Grattan’s statue, the Trinity graduate facing his Alma Mater at College Green.

Of the statues no longer with us, Lord Gough’s has always been particularly interesting to me for a few reasons. Like Victoria, he is a Dublin statue which has ended up many miles from home, though not vanished quite as far as herself (she’s in Australia, for anyone who doesn’t know). The statue was the site of Winston Churchill’s earliest childhood memory, and it is a statue that was in and out of the newspapers for a long time prior to its ultimate removal from the Phoenix Park. It also inspired my favourite Dublin poem, which for a long time was falsely attributed to Brendan Behan, for example even in Ulick O’Connor’s biography of the man, but was in fact the work of quintessential Dub Vincent Caprani. The statue is the work of the great John Henry Foley, responsible also for Daniel O’Connell’s statue at the top of O’Connell Street and the Trinity duo of Burke and Goldsmith among others.

John Henry Foley

Winston Churchill recalled in his autobiographical work My Early Life 1874-1904, that his earliest memories from childhood were set here in Dublin. Asking “when does one first begin to remember?” he went on the write about the unveiling of John Henry Foley’s equestrian statue to imperial war hero Lord Gough at the Phoenix Park in Dublin in 1878. Churchill spent some of his earliest years in Dublin where his Grandfather had been appointed Viceroy and employed Churchill’s father as his private secretary. Churchill’s earliest memory was of his grandfather unveiling the doomed statue.

A great black crowd, scarlet soldiers on horse-back, strings pulling away a brown shiny sheet, the Old Duke, the formidable grandpa, talking loudly to the crowd. I recall even a phrase he used: ‘And with a withering volley he shattered the enemy’s line.’ I quite understood that he was speaking about war and fighting and that a volley meant what the black-coated soldiers (riflemen) used to do with loud bangs so often in the Phoenix Park where I was taken for morning walks.

While the manner in which Gough’s time in the park came to an abrupt end is a well-known Dublin story, it’s often forgotten there had been other attempts on the statue prior. Ulick O’Connor noted in the prior mentioned Behan biography that there had been an incredible five attempts on the statue before that attack.

In a 1969 article on Dublin’s vanishing statues for The Irish Times, John Armstrong wrote that the Gough statue was often praised, stating that “The Gough was, from all accounts, the finest piece of work in the country and reputedly one of the finest Equestrians in Europe.”

In happier times.

The beheading of the Gough statue on Christmas Eve 1944 led to a very funny Cruiskeen Lawn column by the unrivaled Myles na gCopaleen in early January 1945. In it, Myles wrote that:

Few people will sympathise with this activity; some think it is simply wrong, others do not understand how anybody could think of getting up in the middle of a frosty night in order to saw the head of a metal statue.

Myles went on to write that:

The Gough statue in question was a monstrosity, famous only for the disproportion of the horse’s legs, its present headlessness gives it a grim humour and even if the head is recovered, I urge strongly that no attempt should be made to solder it on.

After some time, Lord Gough’s head would be found. Where? In the River Liffey, at Islandbridge.

The bombing of the statue in 1957, which resulted in its placement in storage, is a very well known story among Dubliners of course. It joins a list of monuments including Nelson’s Pillar, King George II and William of Orange which can claim the dubious honour of being deemed ‘unfit for Dublin life’ by militant Irish republicans. Following this assault, an anonymous poem began to circulate in the city, which Ulick O’Connor would write was written by Behan who “kept his authorship of this poem a secret. There were still groups in Dublin who could take it out of him if they knew he had written it.”

The poem was frankly hilarious, become popular among Dubs. My own favourite lines from it are the below:

There are strange things done from twelve to one
In the hollow at Phaynix Park,
There’s maidens mobbed and gentlemen robbed
In the bushes after dark;
But the strangest of all within human recall
Concerns the statue of Gough,
’Twas a terrible fact, and a most wicked act,
For his bollix they tried to blow off!

The poem was the work of Vincent Caprani.A Dub of Italian descent, his books of poetry are essential reading for those who love the city.

In 1986, the statue of Lord Gough was purchased by Robert Guinness from the government of Ireland, and with that an incredible work of John Henry Foley’s was lost. It stands today in the grounds of Chillingham Castle, Northumberland. Remarkably, a September 2011 article in The Irish Times looking at hopes to designate the Phoenix Park a world heritage site noted that, among proposed changes for the park that “the OPW is to pursue the return of two statues by sculptor John Henry Foley blown up by the IRA.”

Dublin lacked any equestrian statues for many years, as a result of the republican bombing campaign against ‘imperial’ statues in the city. The Break For The Border nightclub of course have changed that, with the arrival of their Indian on horseback, but more interesting is Misneach in Ballymun, John Byrne’s beautiful statue which places a modern young female Dubliner on top of a more traditional and almost majestic horse.

Incredibly, the mould for the horse was made from the Gough memorial at Chillingham Castle in the United Kingdom. There’s a little bit of the Gough statue in Ballymun today then.

Glad to see that Dundalk’s finest Jinx Lennon is coming back to the capital in February, with a gig on Thursday the 16th at Bewleys Cafe Theatre. I’ve not been to a gig in the venue yet believe it or not so I’m looking forward to it, and I loved the recent effort Hungry Bastard Hibernia from Jinx, and I saw him around the time of its release playing live on Dame Street in the freezing cold.

(c) David Hawgood

From Frank Hopskin’s great Hidden Dublin:

(Scottish-born) Dunlop came to live in Dublin in April 1891, (first in) Mount Merrion and then 46 Ailesbury Road where he lived for the reminder of his life. He resigned as director of the Pneuematic Tyre Co. and Booths Cycle Agency in 1895 and sold the bulk of his shares in the company … Dunlop, whose invention revolutionised the bicycle and motor car, died on 23 October 1921 and is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery.

Appoinment of Official Liquidator: Kate’s Cottage Limited
16 January 2012

P J Lynch of 5-7 Westland Square, Pearse Street, Dublin 2 was appointed official Liquidator on 16th January 2012
Petitioner: Collector General
Solicitor for the Petitioner: Marie-Claire Maney, Revenue Solicitor
Registered address: 1 Store Street, Dublin 1
Last accounts filed: 31/05/2010
CRO number: 403192