Landscapes of Desire - The Heritage Council

Landscapes of Desire
Parks, colonialism and identity
in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland
Joanna Brück and Andrew Tierney
UCD School of Archaeology
November 2009
School of Archaeology
Report to the Heritage Council for
Project No. 16785
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................... 4
SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................ 5
CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT ................................................................................ 6
BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................................... 6
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES................................................................................................................... 7
PARKS, ARCHAEOLOGY AND IDENTITY ........................................................................................... 8
PREVIOUS WORK ........................................................................................................................... 8
THE STRUCTURE OF THIS REPORT ................................................................................................ 10
CHAPTER 2 – PARK DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE AND FEATURES .......................................................... 11
SUMMARY OF DATASET ............................................................................................................... 11
THE LAYOUT OF PARKS: THE VICTORIAN PUBLIC ‘DRAWING ROOM’ ............................................ 11
WATER FEATURES........................................................................................................................ 16
BANDSTANDS .............................................................................................................................. 19
LODGES ....................................................................................................................................... 24
PAVILIONS, KIOSKS AND SHELTERS............................................................................................... 26
IRONWORK.................................................................................................................................. 28
RAILINGS ..................................................................................................................................... 29
GATEWAYS .................................................................................................................................. 34
BENCHES ..................................................................................................................................... 36
DRINKING FOUNTAINS................................................................................................................. 40
STATUES AND MEMORIALS.......................................................................................................... 43
CHAPTER 3 – SOCIAL CONTEXT........................................................................................................ 48
DEBATES OVER THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC PARKS IN DUBLIN AND BELFAST ................................ 48
POLITICS ...................................................................................................................................... 51
IDEAS OF SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT ................................................................................................ 51
WORKING CLASS OBJECTIONS...................................................................................................... 53
PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE INNER CITY PARKS 1888-1900 .............................................................. 57
MUSIC IN PARKS .......................................................................................................................... 61
SPORT.......................................................................................................................................... 63
CHAPTER 4 - CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 65
THE POLITICS OF ORNAMENT ...................................................................................................... 65
LANDSCAPE, ARCHITECTURE AND IDEOLOGY ............................................................................... 66
CLASS, GENDER AND COLONIALISM IN VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN PARKS ............................... 69
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS................................................................................................... 72
HERITAGE .................................................................................................................................... 73
APPENDIX 1: A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY AND SOURCES............................................................... 75
FIELDWORK ................................................................................................................................. 75
HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS ............................................................................................................ 75
DRAWINGS .................................................................................................................................. 76
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MAPS........................................................................................................................................... 76
NEWSPAPERS............................................................................................................................... 76
COUNCIL AND COMMITTEE MINUTES .......................................................................................... 77
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Heritage Council (under the Archaeology
Research Grant Scheme 2009) and UCD School of Archaeology, without whom this research could
not have been carried out. Thanks are due to Paddy Ryan and John McCullen for advice on archives
and for information on their own research. For locating relevant historical sources and maps, we are
grateful to the staff of the Irish Architectural Archive, the National Archives and Blackrock Library, as
well as to Mary Clark at Dublin City Archives, Niall Brosnan at the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and
Chris Hillen at the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland. The Ordnance Survey of Ireland and
Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland provided digital versions of relevant maps and the National
Library of Ireland and National Archives of Ireland kindly permitted a number of photographs and
drawings to be reproduced here. Anna Drumm provided access to her thesis on French parks and
Sarah Drumm assisted with photographing the grounds at Christ Church. Stuart Kinsella furnished
information on source material for Christ Church while Charles Duggan suggested a number of
interesting lines of inquiry on the parks in Dublin City Council’s care. Finally, Conor McDermott, Rob
Sands and Aidan O’Sullivan of UCD School of Archaeology provided practical advice on various
aspects of the project.
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SUMMARY
Historic gardens have long been a focus of academic and popular interest in Ireland and beyond. In
contrast, there is little academic or public appreciation of the cultural significance or heritage value
of public parks of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. With notable exceptions such as the
Phoenix Park, conservation plans for historic parks are rare and both urban decay and
redevelopment have taken their toll on these landscapes.
The creation of public parks must be seen as a response to the social and political conditions of the
period. From the 1830s onwards, there was growing concern regarding the lack of green spaces,
clean air and recreational opportunities for those dwelling in towns and cities. The processes of
urbanisation and industrialisation resulted in dramatic social and economic changes. ‘Polite society’
attempted both to mark social boundaries and impose its own values on the working classes in the
face of social and political unrest. In an Irish context, such concerns were particularly acute because
of the complex relationships between class, religion and politics as the nationalist movement grew in
popularity and strength.
Public parks became one context in which such issues could be addressed. They created regulated
spaces of display and consumption in which both the natural world and the urban populace could be
objectified, domesticated and their moral worth evaluated. Through the performance of rituals of
polite display, colonial, class and gender identities were marked out. Park architecture and
monuments underpinned ideals of social and moral improvement, while planting and design allowed
those who created parks and those who used them to confront and think through concepts of order
and disorder, inside and outside, so that spatial relationships – paths, boundaries and vistas – came
to stand for the troublesome and often contested relations between people.
This research is the pilot phase of a longer-term project and provides an initial assessment of the
scale and character of this historic resource. Public parks in Dublin and Belfast have been examined
as case studies in order to explore the character of park landscapes in urban contexts with very
different historical trajectories. Surviving features in parks of Victorian or Edwardian date have been
recorded and catalogued in detail employing a combination of photography and textual description.
These include statuary, plaques and other monuments; buildings such as bandstands, shelters,
gatehouses and refreshment rooms; landscape architectural features such as ponds, terraces and
rockeries; and facilities such as benches and drinking fountains. The landscape setting and context
of use of recorded features is further explored through relevant historical maps, drawings and
photographs.
Archival research employing contemporary newspaper accounts and the minutes of parks
committees have been employed to reconstruct the histories of individual parks and to explore the
social context in which these landscapes were created. In particular, the role of public parks in
shaping class, gender and colonial identities in nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland is
considered.
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CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT
BACKGROUND
In 1981, the Victoria Fountain in Dun Laoghaire was seriously damaged in an act of anti-British
vandalism.1 This impressive piece of decorative ironwork was located on the seafront at the end of
Marine Road, but belongs to a class of monuments that were often erected in public parks. That a
public amenity could attract such hostility hints at its symbolic power. This project focuses on
Ireland’s nineteenth and early twentieth century public parks and aims to explore the ideological
role and significance of these landscapes and the buildings, monuments and features that gave them
their particular character.
Dublin is a city particularly well-provided with green spaces. Many of those in the city centre have
their origins in the eighteenth century as shared amenities for the wealthy occupants of the city’s
Georgian squares;2 originally, these were not open to the public and even today some are still
accessible only to keyholding residents. From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards,
however, a significant number of municipal parks were created. In addition, some pre-existing parks
were opened to the public. These were designed landscapes; they share some of the characteristics
of the private demesnes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such as serpentine pathways,
lakes and gatehouses, but in other respects have their own unique qualities. In particular, a variety
of buildings, features and monuments such as drinking fountains, benches and shelters catered for
the perceived needs of the public, but also helped to regulate behaviour. The highly elaborate
nature of many of these, and the effort and expenditure required to create, install and maintain
them, speaks of their importance: they were not solely functional but played a major role in creating
a public who both recognised and obeyed the rules of proper behaviour. The ideological significance
of parks is reflected in their prominence in documentary sources for the period too. Throughout the
nineteenth century, the provision of parks for the public was a matter of considerable interest and
sparked vigorous debate amongst politicians, the media and the general public in both Ireland and
Britain.3 After some years of discussion, the Public Parks (Ireland) Act, 1869, allowed town councils
to raise money by levying residents and borrowing to create parks.4 Parks committees were
established by city councils,5 while calls for the creation of new municipal parks and extensive
reports on their opening ceremonies occur frequently in contemporary newspapers (see below).
The considerable investment put into public parks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
can only be understood by considering the wider historical context in which they were created.
Processes of urbanisation and industrialisation, and events such as the famine, together created a
large, impoverished and increasingly mobile labouring class no longer linked by bonds of tradition to
1
Irish Times, 27 March 1981.
M. Clark and A. Smeaton, The Georgian squares of Dublin: an architectural history, Dublin City Council, 2006.
3
See below; for Britain, see H. Conway, People’s parks: the design and development of Victorian parks in
Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 50-60.
4
S. Ó Maitiú, Dublin’s suburban towns 1834-1930, Four Courts Press, 2003, 169.
5
E.g. R. Scott, A Breath of Fresh Air: the Story of Belfast’s Parks, Blackstaff Press, 2000, 9.
2
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their social superiors.6 The Act of Union, 1802, resulted in the slow economic decline of Dublin city;7
Belfast, on the other hand, remained prosperous and its mills, foundries and shipyards provided
employment for the city’s expanding working classes.8 In both cases, however, it is clear that
changing social and economic conditions resulted in a growing sense of unease amongst the middle
and upper classes as old social boundaries and the conventions that upheld them were eroded. The
terrible living conditions endured by many of the working classes in the larger towns and cities
resulted in high levels of alcoholism, violence and prostitution as well as the breakdown of those
conservative values that underscored idealised age, gender and class relationships.9 Periods of
acute political unrest and ongoing sectarianism added to the concerns of the establishment.10 The
growth of nationalism over the course of the nineteenth century was countered by the bombastic
imperialism of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Conflicting ideologies were given material
form in such varying media as architecture, pageantry and dress. For example, the visit of Queen
Victoria in 1900 was marked by the erection of the drinking fountain in Dun Laoghaire, and
celebrated by – amongst other things – a children’s picnic sponsored by the Queen in the Phoenix
Park; in response to this, a rival ‘Patriotic Children’s Treat’ was organised a few months later by
Inghinidhe na hEireann.11
Against this backdrop, public parks were created with the overt aim of providing places of healthy
recreation for those who behaved in a respectable fashion. They were designed to act as spaces in
which the working classes could see and learn from their betters and as theatres of display for the
middle and upper classes.12 These cultivated and ordered landscapes would, it was hoped, inculcate
civilised values in those who used them and thus help to uphold the established order.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The current study is a pilot project for a longer term study that aims to record the surviving
architectural and landscape heritage and demonstrate the research potential of Ireland’s Victorian
and Edwardian public parks. Public parks in Dublin and Belfast were examined in the first instance
although the project will expand to include parks in other towns and cities across the island in future
years. In total, 31 parks were examined for this project, 9 in Belfast and 22 in Dublin. Only those
parks that were open to the public were included in this study. These include a number (such as the
Botanic Gardens in both Dublin and Belfast) which had previously been accessible only on payment
of a subscription or to those who lived in adjoining houses (such as St Stephen’s Green), as well as
the grounds of several churches (such as St Michan’s) which were opened as public parks during this
period. The initial aim was to record in detail all surviving architectural, monumental and landscape
6
M. Daly, Dublin: the deposed capital. A social and economic history, 1860-1914, Cork University Press, 1984; J.
Prunty, Dublin slums 1800-1925: a study in urban geography, Irish Academic Press, 1999.
7
Daly, op. cit.
8
S. A. Royle, Irish Historic Towns Atlas – Belfast, part II, 1840-1900, Royal Irish Academy, 2007.
9
Prunty, op. cit.
10
E.g. R. V. Comerford, The Fenians in context: Irish politics and society 1848-82, Wolfhound Press, 1998.
11
J. Condon, 'The Patriotic Children's Treat: Irish Nationalism and children’s culture at the
twilight of Empire', Irish Studies Review 8:2, 2000, 167-178.
12
Conway, op cit.; H. Jordan, ‘Public parks, 1885-1914’, Garden History 22:1, 1994, 85-113; H. Taylor, ‘Urban
public parks, 1840-1900: design and meaning’, Garden History 23:2, 1995, 201-221.
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features and to assess how much has been lost. Features such as bandstands, drinking fountains,
shelters, gateways and statues were described, photographed and their locations mapped so that a
comprehensive catalogue could be put together. Nineteenth and early twentieth century
photographs showing the parks as they appeared at the time have been obtained from a number of
sources, for example the Laurence Collection, National Library of Ireland, although some important
collections, notably that in the Ulster Museum, have not yet been accessed (the Ulster Museum was
closed while this project was being carried out). In addition, the histories of individual parks were
investigated employing a combination of contemporary newspaper accounts and city council and
town commission minutes. As we shall see below, this is an area which would repay further
exploration; for example, historic newspapers which can be accessed online – such as the Irish Times
– were consulted for this pilot project but time was too limited to search those that exist only in
paper format. At this early stage in the project, however, the aim was to illustrate the depth and
quality of information that can be acquired from such sources and to explore what these tell us
about the origins, use and significance of features that survive in public parks to this day. Further
details on the research methodology and sources employed are set out in Appendix 1.
PARKS, ARCHAEOLOGY AND IDENTITY
Although this project has attempted to explore the history of individual parks from documentary
sources, its overall approach is avowedly archaeological. Our premise is that the materiality of these
landscapes – their layout and design, as well as the buildings, monuments and other features that
give public parks of this period their unique character – reflected and underpinned important
elements of the ideology that gave rise to them. Although as we shall see below techniques of
historical inquiry have been of great value to this research, a principal aim of the project in the
longer term will be to explore how park architecture and landscapes gave material form to Victorian
and Edwardian concepts of identity, class and nationhood. As we hope to demonstrate in this
report, even at this early stage of the project, some valuable observations can be made regarding
the relationship between park design and the social and political concerns of the day.
PREVIOUS WORK
There is a small but significant body of research on the history of British public parks. Chadwick,
Conway, Jordan and Taylor have discussed the origins and development of public parks in Britain,
and have identified the key factors that led to their creation.13 In particular, the dramatic social and
economic changes resulting from urbanisation and industrialisation resulted in growing concerns
regarding the living conditions, health and morals of the working classes. Parks were seen by some
as a panacea for the physical and social ills of the poor, providing opportunities for rest and
recreation in the fresh air. The drive to create public parks was not purely philanthropic, however;
as we shall discuss below, these acted as a means of promulgating middle class values. This must be
set within the context of the sporadic political unrest that occurred over the course of the
13
G. Chadwick, The park and the town, Architectural Press, 1966; Conway, op. cit.; Public parks, Shire, 1996;
Jordan op. cit.; Taylor op. cit.
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nineteenth century. The ordered and civilised landscapes of parks sought to domesticate the
working classes, producing an obedient and healthy workforce who would conform to the needs of
their masters.
A number of important studies have also been carried out on the history of North American
municipal parks.14 These concur with British research suggesting that parks aimed to create order
within the sometimes alarmingly disordered world of the city. This need was perhaps particularly
acute in a multi-cultural context such as New York. Unfortunately, within the timeframe of the
current pilot project, it has not been possible to access and evaluate research on the development of
public parks in colonial contexts; work on Victorian and Edwardian parks in former British colonies
such as India and Australia will be sought out and examined in future phases.
Studies of Irish public parks are relatively few. The majority provide only brief histories of individual
parks.15 Perhaps most significant in the context of Dublin’s public parks is the newly published study
of the Phoenix Park by McCullen which includes information on the history of the Victorian People’s
Garden.16 For Belfast, Scott’s detailed social history17charts the development of the city’s municipal
parks, including information on their original design and facilities, opening ceremonies and the types
of activities that were encouraged and forbidden in each. To date, however, there have been no
studies to take a specifically archaeological approach to these landscapes.
In general, there is a lack of broader historical contextualisation in existing studies of Irish public
parks of the period. The way in which the economic, social and political conditions of the time
impacted on park design and development has yet to be considered. The historical geography of
Dublin, for example, has been charted in some detail,18 and this body of work doubtless has
significant implications for understanding the development of the city’s public parks. The rapid
economic decline of the city after the Act of Union resulted in terrible living conditions amongst the
urban poor;19 public health became a matter of considerable concern and was frequently a focus for
political debate over the course of the period in question. The majority of the poor lived in the
centre of the city while the better-off moved to the newly-established townships in the suburbs; this
spatial divide reflected differences in wealth, class, religious denomination and political persuasion.20
Attempts at municipal improvement over the later decades of the nineteenth century included the
provision of public parks, although many of these are in fact located in the relatively privileged
southern townships.
There is a considerable body of work on the development and character of other types of public
space during the same period which will also be of relevance to this study. Nineteenth century
garden cemeteries, for example, have been the focus of studies by landscape historians and
14
E.g. G. Cranz, The politics of parks design: a history of urban parks in America, MIT Press, 1982; E. Blackmar
and R. Rosenzweig, The park and the people: a history of Central Park, Cornell University Press, 1992.
15
A. Craig, St Stephen’s Green, 1880-1980: a centenary booklet, National Parks and Monuments Service, 1980;
M. Bowers, Dublin city parks and gardens, Lilliput Press, 1999; D. Shannon, A history of the parks of Dun
Laoghaire Rathdown, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council 2001.
16
J. McCullen, An illustrated history of the Phoenix Park: landscape and management to 1880, Office of Public
Works, 2009.
17
Op. cit.
18
Daly, op cit; Prunty op. cit.; Ó Maitiú op. cit.
19
Prunty op. cit.
20
Ibid.; Ó Maitiú op. cit.
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archaeologists, amongst others.21 These were picturesque landscapes in which monuments in the
classical style sought to create an aesthetic of contemplation and to inspire spiritual and moral
improvement. Work on the politics of public spaces such as the nineteenth century boulevards of
Paris and New York is also highly relevant.22 These studies have examined how the ritual of the
promenade helped to inscribe a particular moral and social order onto the urban landscape,
embodying the values of the middle and upper classes through displays of taste, fashion and
decorum. In addition, nineteenth century gender identities were constructed and negotiated on the
streets as much as in the home;23 the promenade provided an ideal opportunity for visual
consumption, creating women as objects for bourgeois male flaneurs, not least among them James
Joyce, whose novels are set in the later part of the period considered in the current project.
THE STRUCTURE OF THIS REPORT
This report provides a summary of the results of research carried out to date. Chapter 2 provides a
discussion of park design, with detailed comments on the principal types of buildings, features and
monuments in the parks examined. This provides insights into the principal concerns of those
involved in the design process drawn from sources such as parks committee minutes and
contemporary newspaper articles. Chapter 3 sets the parks in their social contexts, addressing key
concerns of the day, such as working class access to parks, and the role of parks in improving public
health. The concluding chapter 4 draws together the key themes discussed in the report and
comments on the heritage potential of the parks as they survive today. Detailed reports on each of
the 30 parks examined for the project are currently being finalised and include catalogue entries for
each surviving feature, as well as relevant historic maps and photographs. Two examples of
individual park reports (those for Palmerston Park and St Patrick’s Park) are included in this summary
report as Appendices 2 and 3. Appendix 1 provides further details on the project methodology and
historical sources consulted.
21
E.g. S. Tarlow, ‘Landscapes of memory: the nineteenth century garden cemetery’, European Journal of
Archaeology 3:2, 2000, 217-239; S. O’Shea, Death and design in Victorian Glasnevin, Dublin Cemeteries
Committee, 2000.
22
E.g. D. Scobey, ‘Anatomy of the promenade: the politics of bourgeois sociability in Victorian New York City,’
Social History 17:2, 1992, 205-27; F. Edholm, ‘The view from below: Paris in the 1880s’, in B. Bender (ed.)
Landscape: politics and perspectives, Berg, 1993, 139-168; M. Domosh, ‘Those “gorgeous incongruities”: polite
politics and public space on the streets of nineteenth century New York City’, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 88:2, 1998, 209-226.
23
Domosh op. cit.
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CHAPTER 2 – PARK DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE AND FEATURES
SUMMARY OF DATASET
A total of 31 parks were examined for this project, 9 in Belfast and 22 in Dublin. These included the
following:
Dublin: Botanic Gardens, People’s Garden (Phoenix Park), St Stephen’s Green, St Patrick’s Park,
Queen’s Square, St Audoen’s Park, Christchurch, St Mary’s, St Michan’s, Blessington Street Basin, Hill
Street, King’s Inns, Palmerston Park, Harold’s Cross Park, Sandymount Green, Herbert Park, Ringsend
Park, Blackrock Park, People’s Park (Dun Laoghaire), Sorrento Park, People’s Park (Dalkey), and
Victoria Park (Killiney).
Belfast: Botanic Gardens, Ormeau Park, Falls Park, Alexandra Park, Woodvale Park, King William
Park, Victoria Park, Waterworks, Dunville Park.
In Dublin, there are a significant number of surviving features of Victorian and Edwardian date.
These include 6 drinking fountains (out of a probable original total of 10), 6 shelters/kiosks (out of a
probable original total of 11), 7 bandstands (out of a probable original total of 9), 7 lodges (out of a
probable original total of 7), 8 lakes/ponds (out of a probable original total of 9) and 3 fountains (out
of a probable original total of 5). Original lamps survive in 5 of the parks, railings at 12 of the parks
and benches at 10 of the parks
In Belfast, surviving features include 1 drinking fountain (out of a probable original total of 8), 1
bandstand (out of a probable original total of 5), 6 lodges (out of a probable original total of 11),
lakes/ponds (out of a probable original total of 9) and 1 fountain (out of a probable original total of
1). Original railings survive at 7 of the parks and benches in 1 park. In addition, there appear to have
been 2 shelters/kiosks which no longer survive.
The rest of this chapter presents describes and interprets these features as well as discussing the
overall design of the landscapes in which they were set.
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THE LAYOUT OF PARKS: THE VICTORIAN PUBLIC ‘DRAWING ROOM’
Figure 1. St. Stephen's Green, redesigned by William Shepherd in conjunction with Lord Ardilaun and opened in 1880
(Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland, L_ROY_01784, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland).
Victorian garden history is almost as complicated as Victorian architecture, a mixture of styles and
tastes, often fused and more often competing with each other. To disentangle the influences on any
one garden is no easy task and the compositions of urban parks reflect the wide range of Victorian
tastes. The reintroduction by Humphrey Repton in the late eighteenth century of flower gardens to
the area immediately surrounding the country house re-established the relationship between the
artifice of buildings and the artifice of their environment.24 Most of the thirty parks discussed in this
study are ‘garden parks’, a combination of the artificially informal eighteenth-century rococo style
and French formality, as revived by John Claudius Loudon.25 In Ireland gardeners such as Ninian
Niven, one time head of the Botanic gardens, introduced the style in country house settings for
private patrons.26 In England the provision of public parks was more advanced and as a result the
pattern for their layout had already been established by park designers such as Joseph Paxton.27 The
renewed popularity of the formal garden in the nineteenth century no doubt assisted the
development of urban parks in that the aesthetic lent itself to confined spaces in a way that the
eighteenth-century landscapes of Capability Brown and his followers did not. Unlike the open
parkland of the country house, the new urban parks were smaller, more rigidly planned and subject
to co-ordinated planting of shrubs and flowers as well as closer supervision. There is a recurring use
24
T. Mowl, Gentlemen and Players: Gardeners of the English Landscape, Stroud, Sutton, 2004, 186.
A. Jennings, Victorian Gardens, English Heritage, 2005, 31-32.
26
E. Malins and P. Bowe, Irish Gardens and Demesnes from 1830, Barrie & Jenkins, 1980.
27
Jennings, op. cit., 40.
25
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of certain design features - winding pathways, lakes, bandstands and pavilions - although these
features are by no means common to all public parks in Dublin and Belfast. While all might be
considered as gardens to a greater or lesser degree, there is a great range of size within these urban
and suburban parks. The hundred acre
Ormeau Park in Belfast is the largest if we
exclude the Phoenix Park as a whole and
consider only its People’s Garden, an
enclosed small area arranged as a flower
garden amidst the swathes of parkland
that constituted the larger park. If we
exclude the pre-existing Botanic Gardens in
both cities from the equation the People’s
Garden claims the prize as the oldest
‘people’s park’ between the two cities
having opened in 1864. In contrast,
Belfast’s earliest park, Ormeau, did not
open until seven years later in 1871.
Figure 2. Dunville Park (Lawrence Collection, National Library of
Ireland, LROY 08989, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
The large acreage of Ormeau demanded a
judicious combination of formal planting close to pathways with less cultivated areas of grass and
woodland. The latter however was mixed with the usual assemblage of non-native trees typical of
gardens during this period. Most of the suburban parks in both Dublin and Belfast were landscaped
according to a similar pattern of bedded flowers and shrubs, serpentine walks and wide areas of
lawn. But a few parks were laid out along more formal lines than the others with loosely
geometrical plans that give them more the look of a garden than park in its traditional sense.
There is a pattern of such formality amongst urban parks with prescriptively rectangular sites such as
Dunville Park, Belfast, St. Patrick’s Park in the Liberties of Dublin, the People’s Park at Kingstown,
Queen’s Square on Great Brunswick Street and Mountjoy Square on Dublin’s north inner city. With
the exception of Mountjoy, which was an early nineteenth century plan in an eighteenth century
square, these parks were late Victorian insertions into pre-existing urban environments. At St.
Patrick’s Park the spatial limitations were due both the Cathedral on the south side and the large
scale redevelopment of the streets to the north of the square by the Iveagh Trust.
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Figure 3. Geometric formality at St. Patrick’s Park, Dublin (Lawrence Collection, ROY 00304, courtesy of the National
Library of Ireland)
William Sheppard’s park at Palmerston on the south side of Dublin deliberately attempted to eshew
any such symmetry despite having a crescent shaped plan and an axial path through the centre. The
pathway had been imposed from without after a long dispute over access between Palmerston Road
and Ormond Road. 28 While a sub rectangular green was introduced on the west side, he left the east
side as open park land punctuated by largely pre-existing trees. His design at St. Stephen’s Green
contrasts a formally geometric layout at its centre (where matching fountains flanked the statue of
King George II) with the informal serpentine paths elsewhere in the park and has parallels with the
work of French Park designer Edouard Andre’s work at Sefton Park in Liverpool of 1867. The
constant intersection of paths at key nodal points throughout the park makes the plan remarkably
busy in contrast to those of other urban parks.29
28
29
Rathmines and Rathgar Urban District Council Minute Book, 5 April, 1893, 30.
See Brent Elliott, Victorian Gardens, Timber Press, 1986, 168.
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Figure 4. William Sheppard's park in St. Stephen's Green, 1880 (Ordnance Survey 25 inch, 1906-9, © Ordnance Survey of
Ireland/Government of Ireland, Licence No. MNE 0000210)
While St. Stephen’s Green bears the mark of professional planning and tightly executed design other
parks were put together in a more haphazard manner. This is perhaps most apparent at Ormeau in
Belfast where there is little evidence that Timothy Hevey’s winning design of 1872 was actually
employed.30 The design evolved through the efforts (and sometimes the whim) of the Belfast Parks
Committee over several years with professional input from both Thomas Dickson, the
Superintendent, and J.C. Bretland, the assistant city surveyor. The elongated stretch of land next to
the Lagan made the successful arrangement of paths difficult. As a result the narrow central section
of the park consists of four parallel paths all travelling in the same direction towards the wider space
to the north where they eventually intersect. Ormeau Park was widely regarded as being simply too
large for its purpose and this is reflected in its awkward layout. There is no comparable juxtaposition
of formality and informality such as Sheppard achieved in his Dublin parks. This formula reappears at
Herbert Park where the symmetrical arrangement of the lake is contrasted with a free-style
arrangement of paths to its west. Having laid out the park for the Great Exhibition, Sheppard also
had a role in planning its subsequent development though the final plans were worked out by a
confusing assemblage of architects and garden designers at the behest of Pembroke Town Council
(details and sources will be set out in the report on Herbert Park).
30
See Belfast Parks Committee Minutes of September-December 1872, 4-16.
P a g e | 16
WATER FEATURES
Figure 5. Blackrock Park, c. 1900 (From Liam Mac Cóil, The Book of Blackrock, Dublin, Carraig Books Ltd., 1981, 97).
The larger parks in both cities incorporated lakes and sometimes small rivers or streams. Belfast
parks had a much larger emphasis on water and there were nine lakes within eight parks compared
to seven in Dublin (plus two small ponds) in of a total of twenty-one parks. This contrast is starker
when we consider that the People’s Garden and St. Stephen’s Green accounted for four of the
Dublin total between them. The only Dublin park that had access to the sea directly was the People’s
Park in Dalkey where steps descended to a public bathing area on the rocks opposite Dalkey Island.
All the Belfast parks had lakes except the tiny King William Park in the city centre and the relatively
small Dunville Park in the inner suburbs. The massive terracotta fountain by Doulton & Co. at
Dunville, unmatched in any other Irish park, may be accounted for as an attempt to make up for this
water deficit. Two of Belfast’s parks were completely designed around water: the Waterworks
(1899) and Victoria Park (1906), while the city’s first park at Ormeau originally fronted onto the
Lagan. No such relationship with water existed in Dublin despite the proximity of both the River
Liffey and the sea. While Blackrock (1872) and Ringsend parks in Dublin were similar to Victoria Park
in Belfast in being constructed on reclaimed land the Dublin examples made little use of their watery
sites compared to that in Belfast. At Ringsend the Pembroke Town Council used rubbish to build up
the level of the land – leading to many grazed knees from broken glass (the locals called it ‘the
cinders park’) – but at Victoria Park the Belfast City Surveyors had the better idea of digging out
lakes and an encircling canal that would provide the soil to build up the centre and the
embankments against the sea. The result was termed an ‘aquatic park’ geared for ice-skating and
P a g e | 17
Figure 6. The waterfall on the west side of St. Stephen's Green (Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland, LROY
00756, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
boating and, despite its long development, has the most innovative and interesting layout amongst
the parks in either city.
In contrast the other Belfast parks, with the exception the Waterworks, might be regarded as sharing
quite comparable designs. The Waterworks, prior to its development as an official park in 1899, had
been available for the public to walk in and consisted of two large lakes, the lower of the two being a
rectangular basin, the upper a more naturalistic reservoir. Fine sandstone bridges allowed carriages
to cross tributaries into the upper basin and the perimeter pathway seems to have constituted what
would be described as a ‘ride’. Given the proximity of Alexandra Park (1887) to the site, it seems
strange that the Parks Committee should have taken the trouble to develop the southern end of the
Waterworks into a garden in 1899. On its opening Alexandra Park had been criticised as catering
only to the wealthier classes living along the Antrim Road and here was another park catering for the
same people. Whatever the reason the results were impressive and made good use of the dramatic
potential of the hollow below the lower basin where a cascading stream was constructed on the
hillside that disappeared under the Antrim Road. Certainly the new garden, despite its small scale,
formalised the entrance into the larger Waterworks area with the introduction of an Italianate
gatehouse and formal railings with fine intermittent redbrick piers facing the Antrim Road.
P a g e | 18
Figure 7. The park at the Waterworks. Note the circular ice house on the right with bridge over the stream. In the
foreground is the gate lodge. The large lower basin is visible on the left (Ulster Museum, after Scott 2000, 38).
Despite the prominence of lakes within the Victorian layouts of Belfast’s parks many have since been
removed. The lakes at the Botanic Gardens, Ormeau Park, the Falls Park and Woodvale Park have all
been filled in, while the great terracotta fountain at Dunville has been defaced. In contrast, Dublin
has lost none of its lakes, those at the People’s Garden, St. Stephen’s Green, Herbert Park and
Blackrock Park all surviving in fairly similar form to their original plan. The small pond at Palmerston
Park (1892) still survives though that at Harold’s Cross has unfortunately been recently remodelled.
The best designed of all the lakes in Irish parks were those in St. Stephen’s Green where their
arrangement was very satisfactorily worked out to create the most picturesque effects from certain
key viewing points. As bodies of water they were remarkably well integrated with the overall plan
and contrasted with the formal arrangement of fountains at the heart of the park. This geometric
centre is accessed by a rustic stone bridge which reaches over them and, in fact, pulls the two bodies
of water together into a unified composition. The environs of water features were often dominated
by rockwork or rustication and the best example of this is again at St. Stephen’s Green where at the
western end of the lake large outcrops of Pulhamite were used to create a wild, overhanging
cataract 31 (this was a technique already well established by the time the park opened and had been
most famously employed at Battersea Park in London (1866-70)32).
31
32
For a general description see Irish Times 1 May, 1880, 2.
See Brent Elliott, op. cit., 175-6.
P a g e | 19
Figure 8. View of People's Garden 1919 from a Pictorial Guide to Dublin and the Wicklow Tours, Ward, Locke & Co.
Figure 9. The rocky edge of the lake at Blackrock, changed in the 1930s.
The use of low rockery edging in lakes and ponds was a more emphatic feature originally, much of
this work having been swept away in subsequent years. The lake around the People’s Garden and
Blackrock were once finished in this way and some rockwork can still be seen around the former.
BANDSTANDS
Perhaps the most iconic feature of the Victorian public park was the bandstand, erected to host
musical afternoons and evenings and to decorate the park with flamboyant ironwork.
P a g e | 20
Figure 10. Clockwise from top left: St. Stephen’s Green; Blackrock Park; The Hollow, Phoenix Park (dating to 1890);
Herbert Park, Ballsbridge; Sorrento Park, Dalkey; People’s Park, Kingstown (dating to 1890).
The ornate cast-iron columns and brackets advertised their festive use and were generally executed
with skill. The example in the Hollow in the Phoenix Park was made in Belfast by Musgrave & Co.
who provided much of the ironwork for the parks in that city.33 It is unclear what firm made the
ornamental lamp on the bandstand at Kingstown erected in 1890 but it may have been supplied by
George Smith & Co. of Glasgow who supplied the cast-iron fountains there in the same year.34 The
classic octagonal plan of the bandstand was already well-established before appearing in Ireland and
all the Dublin examples conform to it. The stands were normally roofed – sometimes in swept
fashion (such as at Blackrock, for example) - and supported by slender cast-iron columns. However,
there are two major exceptions to this: at Kingstown, where a single four-branched iron lamp was
erected in the centre without roofing; and at Sorrento, where eight columns open to the sky
supported lights enclosed by open strapwork spheres of wrought-iron. The latter were made by
McFarlane & Co of Glasgow. The appearance of shamrocks on these lights is an unusual nod to the
Celtic Revival, particularly in a park frequented by the gentry and the British establishment.
On all the other examples the brackets supporting the roof were the main focus of decorative
elaboration, elaboration, typically arranged as scrolled foliage, sometimes suggestive of ivy stem,
such as found on the examples at Kingstown and the People’s Garden, Phoenix Park (here seen on
gas-pipe fittings extending inwards from the brackets); sometimes derived from the acanthus leaf as
at Blackrock. Leaf-designs also appear in a ‘sprouting’ form on the capitals of the cast-iron columns,
along with shaft rings (Stephen’s Green) and other motifs derived from Gothic architecture. The
33
34
National Archives of Ireland, OPW 5 HC/2/38 (2), signed drawing of bandstand, see figure below.
Township of Kingstown, Reports, Minutes &c for the year 1890, Dublin: Dollard Printing House, 135-6.
P a g e | 21
plainest of the bandstands was erected at Herbert Park in 1911 by T.W. Scott & Co. of Dublin under
the supervision of the architect Edwin Bradbury.35 Unlike the others it was built of timber and lacked
the delicate touch and ornamentation of the earlier Dublin examples but took its cue from the more
elaborate bandstand designed and built for the Irish International Exhibition in 1907, which, in a
controversially short-sighted move by Pembroke Town Council, was removed from the park along
with the other buildings following the exhibition. A second timber example in Dublin can be found at
the Botanic Gardens, now under-going restoration.
Figure 6. A drawing for the Phoenix Park bandstand by the Belfast firm Musgrave & Co. (National Archives of Ireland,
OPW 5 HC/2/38(2), courtesy of the Director of the National Archives of Ireland)
It remains unclear to what extent architects were contracted separately to design these buildings in
anything other than the sketchiest terms. The drawing provided by Musgrave & Co to the Board of
Works in Dublin for the bandstand at the Phoenix Park in 1890 would suggest the former designed it
– though perhaps according to specifications supplied by a board of works architect. Certainly the
bandstand erected in Ormeau Park in 1876 was designed by the assistant city surveyor, J.C. Bretland.
The contractor was a Mr. Ritchie who built it at a cost of £22.
35
Irish Times August 21, 1911, 5.
P a g e | 22
Although generally conforming to the octagonal plan the details of each bandstand reflect a
Victorian love of variety. While the bandstands at St. Stephen’s Green and the Phoenix Park have the
finest ironwork, particularly in their heavily moulded and finely tapered columns, they lack the
Figure 7. The very fine Victorian bandstand at St.Stephen's Green is closely ringed by boxed beds in a fashion
sympathetic to the late C19, though originally it was enclosed by a low iron fence (see Lawrence Collection, National
Library of Ireland, ROY 01645).
emphatically raised platform and elegant profile of that at Blackrock. The swept roof here is
paralleled only by that at Ormeau Park, but the latter is somewhat different in shape. Originally the
base of the platform was hidden by planting as depicted in Figure 13. It has much simpler columns
but the scrolled acanthus leaves of its brackets are more vigorously realised; otherwise its neglected
condition has cast it in a poorer light. Generally speaking the seven surviving bandstands (out of an
original nine) in public parks are the most characteristic Victorian features of Dublin’s parks and
attest to a high and consistent standard of maintenance through a century of renewal and
transformation. However, the total number of bandstands in late Victorian Dublin has not yet been
established but would have far exceeded the number cited here when other types of public spaces
are taken into account, particularly at Kingstown which had several sited in various spaces around
the town and harbour. In contrast Belfast has suffered great losses in this area, to such an extent
that any discussion of style and character is prohibited by lack of information about their
appearance. Only the Ormeau Park bandstand has survived though not on its original site and is now
much repaired and refurbished. Its steeply swept roof is nevertheless distinctive and its columns
suggest the rich ironwork embellishment of the Dublin examples were once well-matched in Belfast.
One curious feature of some Belfast bandstands was their square plan. Examples of this can be seen
on OS maps of Alexandra Park (1887) and Victoria Park (1906). Today there are square timber
bandstands at both Woodvale (1888) and the Botanic Gardens (1865) though neither of these seem
to be original Victorian or Edwardian structures, possibly dating to the 1930s or 40s.
P a g e | 23
Figure 13. The bandstand at Blackrock Park, as it was c. 1900 (Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland, L_ROY
04401, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland) and as it is today (seen from the opposite side). Slightly later a rail
was erected around the planting (see Lawrence, National Library of Ireland, LROY 04397). The swan-shaped weather
vane has been lowered, the seats removed, an ugly rail introduced and planting removed from around the base; vandals
have added their own embellishments.
The siting of bandstands in Victorian parks was dictated by
broader issues of design. For symmetrical parks such as that at
Kingstown the centre was the obvious choice. But they were
often used to punctuate the more freestyle layouts of parks such
as Ormeau or St. Stephen’s green, providing natural points of
intersection between winding pathways. In this sense their light
architecture and open designs facilitated the sense of free
movement and inter-visibility that characterised such layouts. It
is notable that the bandstand at Kingstown, as part of a more
rigid and geometric layout, took the form of a heavier walled
enclosure with broad coping and balustrade. We might infer
that the park’s designer, J.L. Robinson (who also headed the
council subcommittee on the park), having conceived the overall
form of the park, designed it specially to add weight to the plan.
Figure 14. The People's Park, Kingstown as it appeared shortly after
construction (Ordnance Survey, 25 inch, 1906-1909 , © Ordnance
Survey of Ireland/Government of Ireland, Licence No. MNE 0000210).
Bandstands were generally less common on small inner city sites though an interesting exception
was that built in St. Michan’s Park, a tiny urban space on the north side of Dublin, which appears in
an off centre position. The OS map of the 1880s clearly shows the octagonal plan of the building.
There was also a bandstand in Queen’s Square, the plan of which seems to be the round structure
depicted on the OS map in the centre of the park, though unusually it is not labelled as such.
P a g e | 24
LODGES
The most permanent and expensive architectural features of parks were the lodges built to house
superintendents and park rangers. In style a distinction might be discerned between the Dublin and
Belfast examples. The latter were generally the work of J.C. Bretland, assistant city surveyor, in what
might be described as a Puginesque Gothic style. Good examples can still be seen at Alexandra Park,
where the west gate onto Castleton Gardens is executed in a rather ecclesiastical manner, matching
the gateway next to it which has gableted piers. The defining feature is the shouldered-arch, a staple
characteristic of high Victorian Gothic, derived from thirteenth century architecture but employed
here in a Tudor Revival arrangement of gables and bay windows. The coursed rubble walls are
muscular and play against the sharply finished dressings. The architect evidently derived the design
from one he employed almost ten years previously at Ormeau, but there he executed it in brick.
Stone was again used in the fine gatehouse at Dunville Park, now demolished. The style this time
was classical though the identity of the architect is uncertain; possibly Charles Lanyon. In both cities
classical architecture generally only made an appearance within those parks laid in a formal or
geometric plan. Besides the lodge in the formal Dunville Park, the style appears in the bandstand at
the People’s Garden at Kingstown and in the raised terrace at St. Patrick’s Park in the Dublin
Liberties. Its appearance at the Waterworks in the form of the Italianate gate lodge (the only other
significant example) is perhaps surprising given the informality of the small park within. However,
here it was perhaps conceived as part of the unusually formal railing designed to front onto the wellheeled Antrim road. Other incidents of
classicism are seen in the pedestals to
the statues of Lord Ardilaun in St.
Stephen’s Green and that of Lord
Carlisle in the People’s Garden,
Phoenix Park; most prominent,
however, is its use in the Fusiliers’ Arch
of 1907, a work of imperial
commemoration that would be hard to
conceive of in any other style during
this period.
Belfast’s Botanic Gardens had a most
elaborate gatehouse of 1878 onto
University Road designed in the
Figure 15. The elaborate gate lodge at the Botanic Gardens Belfast, by
Venetian Gothic style by William
William Batt, 1887 (Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland,
L_ROY_00310, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland).
Batt.36 It had paired trefoil-headed
windows facing the road and at the
corner closest to the gate a large port-cochére under a two stage tower. The latter was topped with
a very steep hipped roof, almost pyramidal in form and topped with a delicate iron weather vane.
This constitutes the most elaborate architectural gesture in a gate lodge in either city and should be
seen as standing outside the scope of the municipal park – which of course the Botanic Gardens
36
Scott op. cit., 32.
P a g e | 25
were. The Dublin Botanic Gardens had flanking lodges in an astylar Georgian style with eaves
pediments, which though plain
impressed through their symmetry and
size.
Nevertheless, the municipal authorities
made an effort to create attractive and
sympathetic lodges inside the municipal
parks too. In Dublin their style is
certainly less formal than those in
Belfast, with an inclination towards a
more vernacular version of the Tudor
Revival cottage reflecting the rise of the
Arts and Crafts aesthetic. The use of
brick rather than stone was almost
universal here with attempts to imitate
half-timbered gable ends, particularly in
the later examples at Ringsend (1907)
and Herbert Park (1911) in the
Pembroke Township. The lodge at the
Blessington Street Basin is in a similar
Figure 16. The Lodge at St. Stephen's Green built 1880 by James
Franklin Fuller
style, though the park itself was opened
several years earlier in 1888. The finest surviving Dublin lodge is that designed in 1880 by the
prominent architect, James Franklin Fuller, for the southwest corner of the green, an attractive
arrangement of gables, dormer windows, mullions and bays. 37
He used a contrasting range of materials including brick
(principally), sandstone and timber and ornamental barge
boards on the gables. The latter were hung with terracotta fishscale tiles, a level of ornamentation which perhaps reflects the
park’s city centre location and a wish to impress. The estimated
cost at the time of its construction was £2,256 (Biographical
Index, Irish Architectural Archive), far in excess of lodges built in
other parks and probably included the cost of the shelters built
at the same time. The redbrick lodge at the People’s Park in
Kingstown cost £700 (Biographical Index, Irish Architectural
Archive), not far off the cost of the superintendent’s lodge at
Ormeau which came in at an estimate of £645 (details and
sources will be set out in report on Ormeau). The specialisation
Figure 17. Enoch Trevor Owen's
required for architectural work meant that the layout of the
elevations for the lodge in the
People's Garden, 1867, (National
park and its buildings were by the hands of different designers.
Archives of Ireland, OPW 5
Even at the People’s Park in Kingstown where the grounds were
HC/2/2/27), courtesy of the Director
laid out by the architect J.L. Robinson (also head of the parks
of the National Archives of Ireland)
committee), the gate lodge was designed by another architect,
37
See Biographical Index, Irish Architectural Archive; also Craig, op. cit., 7.
P a g e | 26
J.M. Mitchell.38
Overall this quality of build is not paralleled in the suburban parks, though these parks might claim
some very competent lodges in a similar style. The oldest and most curious of the lodges is that in
the People’s Garden in the Phoenix Park dating to 1867, only three years after the park opened in
1864. The architect was Enoch Trevor Owen, an assistant architect to the board of works.39 He made
much of the roof, apparently in an attempt to reconcile the occupant’s need for privacy with the
requirement of ornamenting the park. Built in the heart of the garden, the lodge was surrounded by
a tall enclosure of hedging making it largely invisible. But the elongated roof with its elaborate stone
ridge and tall stacks suggests the intention was to make the upper portion of the building not only
visible but notable (Fig. 17). There was nevertheless some fine timber detailing on the low gable-end
at the front, all of which has been removed in subsequent renovations. Only at the sides and in the
dormer windows can the original window frames still be seen.
PAVILIONS, KIOSKS AND SHELTERS
Overall, eleven buildings of this class can be traced amongst the various Dublin parks, six of which
still stand. In Belfast, there is evidence for two or possibly three, but they do not seem to have been
as widespread as in Dublin. None have survived.
Figure 18. The largest surviving park pavilion in Dublin at the People’s Park, Dun Laoghaire, 1890. The viewing area on
the roof is no longer accessible. An early view from the Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland, L ROY 03988,
courtesy of the National Library of Ireland; note the staircase to the viewing area on the roof on the left.
Whether there is any distinction to be made between the terms ‘pavilion’, ‘kiosk’ or ‘shelter’ is a
matter of debate but all were used in Victorian writing to describe what were generally open-sided
and roofed timber structures designed to provide cover on rainy days, as attractive eye-catchers
and, in some instances, to sell confectionary to visitors. None survive in the Belfast parks and only a
38
39
Biographical Index, Irish Architectural Archive.
OPW HC/4/939; Biographical Index, Irish Architectural Archive.
P a g e | 27
small number were built – for example, the summer house erected in Alexandra Park in 1887 at the
time the park was opened, and the temporary shed erected to shelter people from inclement
weather at Ormeau two years after it opened.40 Whether this was the same building as that marked
‘pavilion’ by the OS on their 25 inch map of 1902 seems unlikely as the pavilion was of a substantial
length and overlooked the main northern green in the park.
In Dublin a number of very fine examples of this type of park building can still be seen. The fashion
for them seems to post-date the openings of many of the parks. For example, the large kiosk on the
edge of the lake in St. Stephen’s Green was not built until 1898,41 some eighteen years after the park
opened, while the small octagonal Tudor Revival structure in the Phoenix Park (designed by the
Board of Works architect, James Higgins Owen 42) was not built until 1895, thirty one years after the
People’s Park next to it had been laid out. However, James Franklin Fuller had designed two circularplanned shelters for St. Stephen’s Green in 1880, which were placed symmetrically at either end of
the crescents flanking the centre of the park.
The pavilion at Kingstown was completed at the same time as the park itself in 1890 43 but it is
unclear whether its designer was J.L. Robinson, the architect who laid out the park, or J.M. Mitchell
who designed the gate lodge (see above). It is the largest of the surviving pavilions and stretches
along the west end of the park on a raised piece of ground (see Fig. 18). The broad eaves are
supported by a series of ornamental cast-iron brackets under a flat roof topped by an enclosed
viewing area, which is now unfortunately inaccessible. One of the original cast-iron staircases can
still be seen in a dilapidated state at the rear on the north side.
Of the smaller shelters, the kiosk at the People’s Garden by is far the finest. It has a terracotta
shingled roof with gableted louvres surmounted by ball finials on each side. The structure is made up
of a blackened timber post frame with broad, cambered-arch windows on each side, from post to
post with a door on the south side. Originally the south side of the kiosk was open as seen in Fig. 19
and it is likely that it then provided refreshments as it does today. The railed octagonal enclosure is
still there today. A second shelter, on
the southwest of the People’s Park was
removed but it was quite different,
much larger and rectangular in plan with
a hipped roof with a projecting centre
similar to the kiosk in St. Stephen’s
Green (details and sources will be
provided in report on People’s Park).
Figure 19. Phoenix Park kiosk built in 1895 (Lawrence Collection, L
ROY 05472, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
40
If the bandstands of Dublin’s parks are
an instantly recognisable through their
shared plan, the pavilions and kiosks are
notably diverse in form - if similar in
spirit. Another distinctive example
see Belfast Parks Committee Minutes 31 July 1873, 37
OPW HC/4/939.
42
see Biographical Index, Irish Architectural Archive.
43
Township of Kingstown, Reports, Minutes &c., August 28, 1890, 135-136.
41
P a g e | 28
survives at Blackrock Park, close to the southwest gate. It has a rectangular plan in a half-timbered
Tudor style with bonnet roof. The outer perimeter forms a veranda sheltering fitted benches, the
posts of which are fitted into rockery-style granite boulders at the base. The bonnet-roof is covered
in fishscale patterned asphalt and probably replaces original slate or tiled roof.
Figure 20. Pavilion at the People's Park, Blackrock
In the late 1890s it was occupied during the day by a Mrs. Jones who sold cakes, sweets, mineral
waters and tea amongst other things.44 In England kiosks seem to have been established first in
those parks run by the County Council but Gladstone was hesitant in allowing their erection in royal
parks such as Hampton Court and Hyde Park.45 An article of 1896 described the novelty of the
‘refreshment kiosks’ being built in Hyde Park in London, which were after the French model having
been manufactured in Paris.46 This would suggest the idea of selling refreshments in parks was fairly
new at this time and the Phoenix Park kiosk may have been designed specifically with this purpose in
mind; other shelters or pavilions may subsequently been adapted for refreshments.
The small suburban parks on the south side tend to have smaller shelters, such as the identical
pavilions at Harold’s Cross and Palmerstown Parks. Roofed with terracotta tiles, these are finely
executed in brick and fully open on one side. Their gables are styled in a half-timbered fashion again
indicating the supremacy of an Arts and Crafts Tudor style in Dublin’s park architecture even at the
smallest scale.
IRONWORK
Out of all the materials used to construct the municipal parks of Dublin and Belfast the most
characteristic is iron. This was used all over the park in railings, lampposts, bandstands, fountains
and seating. In that sense it is a subject that permeates almost every aspect of the design of parks.
There is generally great variety of design between ironwork between the various architectural and
ornamental features within parks though within each type there is much conformity.
44
Irish Times March 20, 1896, 2.
Irish Times May 31, 1895, 6.
46
Irish Times April 25, 1896, 6.
45
P a g e | 29
RAILINGS
Railings are the most extensive ironwork features in municipal parks and were important in
establishing the character and status of the enclosed space. Most parks were outwardly defined by
their railed enclosures and Dublin’s park railings have survived relatively well and where replaced
copies of the originals have often been made.
There is much variation in railing design between both the individual parks themselves and between
the parks in the distinct areas of Dublin and Belfast. Firstly, it should be pointed out that Belfast’s
parks have lost most of their railings. Alexandra, Dunville, Victoria and Falls parks all lack their
original railings making it difficult to assess their original quality and level of ornamentation. In most
cases the gates alone have been preserved and these provide some indication of the railing that was
once in place. At a number of these parks the posts of smaller pedestrian gates in the existing railing
have a Victorian character and share similar moulded ball-finials at the top. However a question
mark should remain over whether these are original as they are quite distinct from the treatment of
pedestrian gateways in Dublin (with one or two exceptions), which are rarely given such pronounced
posts. Most noticeable is the height of the pedestrian gates:
Ormeau: 1.92m high at gate C (railing 1.76 high)
Dunville: 2.28m high at gates b and d (replacement railing 2m high)
Falls: 2.3m high at gate b. (replacement railing 2m high)
Victoria: 2.5m high at gates a, b and c (replacement railing 2.27m high).
Little photographic evidence survives for the outer railings of Belfast parks but it is unlikely the
original railings were as high as those presently in situ. Where original railing does survive such as
that at the east side of Ormeau it seems these posts have been inserted. The railing here has
elegantly long spike finials with a circular moulding at their base and regularly interspersed with
larger, more emphatic but identical stabilising posts. Other examples of Belfast railing can be seen at
Woodvale Park where it is of an original type (recently restored), clearly visible in an early
photograph of Alexandra Park.47 This is distinct from that at Ormeau due to the small ball-finials that
crown each spike. That part of Ormeau Park fronting the Ormeau Road is the most ornate railing to
survive in Belfast’s municipal parks and here the posts are enriched with wrought-iron scrollwork
brackets.
In Dublin, parks have a diverse range of railing types though some patterns can be discerned. To
what extent the choice of railing might be understood as part of a single designer’s vision for the
park is questionable. A number of the parks designed by William Sheppard share a Gothic style of
wrought iron rail formed through the repetition of the ogee arch – at Palmerston, Harold’s Cross and
Herbert Park (where he acted as an advisor). However, it would appear that Sheppard was not
actually involved in choosing the railings in his parks. At Harold’s Cross in 1893, his costing was
exclusive of railings (and buildings) and the Township Commissioner’s asked the Parks Committee to
‘further consider the question of railing, with power to adopt what they consider most suitable and
47
See NLI LROY 03864.
P a g e | 30
to report to the Board’.48 The tender submitted by McGlouglin & Co. for £860 (see Fig. 22) was
accepted while a separate firm – Abraham Rice – provided the granite base at 2/6 per foot.49
McGloughlin & Co. were also responsible for the railings and gates at Herbert Park some fifteen
years later where they employed the same design again.50 The design is a successful one and
featured some elaborate embellishments around key entrances, most notably at Palmerston where
the lightly arched entrance way is surmounted with
a repetitive scroll motif. At Herbert Park there is an
unusual square-headed entrance on the east side of
the park (onto the Dodder path) where scrolled
brackets support a row of finials.
Cast-iron railing allowed more complex finials to be
used such as those at St. Patrick’s Park where a
fleur-de-lis motif is employed. The Corporation
enclosed the grounds of Christ Church as a public
park using railings topped with crosiers, a rare
instance of the employment of a figurative motif.
The simplest use of cast-iron is the flower head
motif at the base of a plain spiked finial as at
Blackrock (Fig. 25) or Sandymount (Fig. 24). The
railings at Blackrock are given a Gothic touch
through the use of ring-shafts in the centre of the
vertical bars.
The best work is generally in wrought iron rather
than cast iron though sometimes cast-iron detailing
is added to wrought-iron work. Where stone and
brickwork might be employed to signal the grander
entrances, smaller gateways were often articulated
through some variation in the detailing of the ironwork itself. In Dublin parks the most ornate
wrought-iron work is found in box piers that flank pedestrian and smaller double gates, most notably
at Palmerston Park (Fig. 27) and the gate next to the lodge at St. Stephen’s Green. At the
Waterworks in Belfast the entrance to the lodge on the Antrim Road has very fine box piers. More
subtle means of registering the transition from railing to gateway are found in simple panel piers by
the doubling of the stabilising vertical as at St. Patrick’s (see Fig. 23) and St. Michan’s. A different,
more solid type is found in the People’s Garden, and perhaps reflecting its relatively early date,
square and octagonal posts are used on the pedestrian entrances into the park. These have cast-iron
moulded heads (gates e and f), some with ball finials. Something similar is found at Herbert Park,
though much later in date (gate f - onto Clyde Lane).
Figure 21. Ormeau Park, Belfast
Iron paling was often used inside the parks to surround young trees (particularly in the Botanic
gardens and to fence off walkways, ponds and lakes. The most common type is the light round48
Rathmines & Rathgar Board Minutes No.6, 23 August, 1893, 29.
Ibid., 4 April, 1894, 82.
50
Irish Times June 15 1909, 5.
49
P a g e | 31
headed variety most extensively used around lakes (see Fig. 30). More ornate wrought-iron railing is
unusual in the park interior but can be seen at St. Patricks where it is used to separate the steps
from the ramp on the east side of the park (see Fig. 23). This is perhaps in line with the more formal
aesthetic of this park where we also find the use of balustrades.
The People’s Garden in the Phoenix Park is notable for the distinctive paling used on the various
stepped pathways rising to the higher ground on the south side of the lake. Various different types
co-exist in a patchwork of repair but the oldest would seem to be that by Kennan & Sons of Dublin
with the posts bearing moulded caps – recently replicated around the lake by the Athy Coop
Foundry.
Figure 22. The ogee design of the outer railing
at Harold's Cross, Dublin by McGlouglin & Sons.
Figure 24. Sandymount Green, Dublin
Figure 23. Railing next to ramp inside St. Patrick's Park
P a g e | 32
Figure 26. Panel pier at St. Patrick's Park, Dublin
Figure 25. Blackrock Park, Dublin
Figure 28. Surviving railing on
the south east side of Ormeau
Park, Belfast
Figure 27. Box pier at Palmerston Park, Dublin
P a g e | 33
Figure 29. Outer railing at St. Patrick’s Park, Dublin
Figure 30. Alexandra Park (Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland LROY 03865, courtesy of the
National Library of Ireland). Note the round-headed paling around the lake.
P a g e | 34
GATEWAYS
The most elaborate displays of iron were reserved for entrances as might be expected and some
quite sumptuous examples stand out from both cities. The south gateway from the Ormeau Road
into Ormeau Park in Belfast is the most elaborate to have been built in either city. In 1879 the
Belfast Parks Committee made the decision to create a new gateway next to Ormeau Bridge (see
report) but it was not until 1895 that eventually the highly ornate gateway was installed by the firm
of Thomas Brown & Co.51 It was a grandiose scheme in the French Renaissance style set back from
the road and forming a widely spaced entrance court met by curved railings to the sides. Two double
entranceways flanked arched pedestrian openings, in which were hung very fine wrought and castiron gates with details in gold. The ashlar piers were of red sandstone, the central one free-standing
with chamfered corners projecting into short composite pilasters, half-fluted; above them is a frieze
of swags. In the centre of the pier were emblazoned in low relief the arms of the city, and
surmounted on its top were a set of four embellished brackets, set diagonally from each corner.
The flanking pedestrian archways have smaller piers of similar style but plainer and capped with a
double architrave, cornice and plain pilasters; at their top, they were surmounted by a plain parapet
over the arch. The ironwork is particularly fine: there are two double gates either side of the central
pier, each bearing a central panel with a blank escutcheon surrounded by scrollwork and flanked by
two panels of closely-set vertical bars. The meeting point of each set of gates rises into an elaborate
finial of ascending scrolls set upon three decks of gilded balls.
While Dublin, of course, has its grand Fusiliers’ Arch in St. Stephen’s Green, the ironwork there, by J
& C. M’Gloughlin,52 is remarkably plain, possibly so as not to conflict with the sobriety of the Tuscan
order employed in the archway. In contrast, the entrances designed by James Franklin Fuller some
twenty five years earlier have more ornate cast-iron gates. However, there are some fine ironwork
entranceways in other Dublin parks, most notably at the People’s Park in Dun Laoghaire (Kingstown).
At the south-west corner, meeting the intersection of Park Road (formerly Longford Terrace East)
and Summerhill Road are grand double gates of wrought and cast-iron with flanking pedestrian
entrances. Set between them are high channelled piers of granite topped by large ball finials. The
cast-iron gateways have openwork side panels with scrolled shamrocks and rounded tops. The
vertical bars of the gate itself are twisted and surmounted with waved spikes. Imposed over the bars
on each of the gates is the monogram of the Kingstown Commissioners who built the park in 1890.
The grand gateways to the Phoenix Park are of very high quality but should not be compared to
those on the municipal parks as their purpose was to access the Viceregal Lodge and the Zoo
amongst other things. However, their presence at either end of the People’s Garden meant that the
entrances into the park itself there are very low key compared to elsewhere.
51
52
Scott, op. cit., 16.
see Irish Times, August 14, 1907.
P a g e | 35
Figure 31. Ormeau Road gate, Ormeau Park, Belfast
Figure 32. Detail of Ormeau Road gateway
P a g e | 36
Figure 33. People’s Park, Dun Laoghaire. Main gateway.
BENCHES
Park benches were an important part of the park furniture but unfortunately their survival rate has
been particularly bad. For this reason those which have survived should be jealously guarded. In
Belfast only the Botanic gardens retains examples of seating dating to the late Victorian and
Edwardian periods. Benches by Belfast foundries such as J. & J. McKeown, James Gilmour & Son, and
Ruddell Harvey & Co. Ltd can be all still be seen. Some designs were evidently repeated over several
years and appear with various modifications by different firms. The use of timber seating is recorded
in Ormeau Park in the early 1870s, constructed by the park superintendent and a carpenter with
materials from the park itself (details and sources will be set out in the report on Ormeau), while
individual timber chairs can be seen in early views of the People’s Garden in the Phoenix Park.53
However, cast-iron seating for two people or more was much more common place throughout parks
in both cities.
In Dublin occasional examples of original Victorian seating can still be enjoyed. The best ones (and
the most typical) can be seen along the main thoroughfare in the People’s Garden in the Phoenix
Park. Here are five late-Victorian benches; formal in character, they have four heavy cast-iron legs
(those at either end extending into arm rests) embellished with scrolled acanthus leaves. A further
example is presently located on the east side of the kiosk in the Hollow. In 1878 the seating in the
53
NLI L ROY 03087 and 03088.
P a g e | 37
park was deemed insufficient by the Board of Public Works and increased by twelve seats – but how
many there were to start remains unclear.54 Now only six original benches survive (dimensions:
3.67m long with back rests 0.87m high). Shorter benches with very similar (but not identical)
decorative detailing still survive at Herbert Park – on the west side only. The Pembroke Town council
had also been slow to provide sufficient seating, drawing criticism from users of the park in 1912,
the year after its opening,55 who feared children might become ill from having to sit on damp grass.
At the time of writing three benches in this style of bench can also be seen outside the west gate at
the Botanic Gardens in Belfast, though nowhere else in the park. Originally this was the most
widespread type of late Victorian bench and photographic evidence from the Lawrence Collection
(NLI) shows them in the Falls Park, Woodvale Park, Alexandra Park, and Ormeau Park, though no
examples survive there. It is likely that they were used in other parks too but no photographic
evidence has yet emerged for it.
The second most important type of bench was common to Dublin rather than Belfast - the smaller,
lighter, rustic design in which the cast-iron legs are fashioned as branches. These can still be found in
several Dublin Parks: Blackrock, Dun Laoghaire, St. Stephen’s Green, Palmerston and Harold’s Cross.
There is also photographic evidence that they were used in the People’s Garden at the Phoenix
Park.56 This rustic type took three forms: firstly, as single benches short in length (e.g. St. Stephen’s
Green 1.07m wide); secondly, the same type constructed in lengthy curvilinear sections around
some landscape feature, as seen at both Blackrock (marked ‘Wexford’ foundry – only the legs
survive) and Dun Laoghaire (the best surviving examples) where they still encircle the bandstands
(also an arrangement seen originally at Stephen’s Green;57 see Figs 35 and 36). A third variant can be
seen in Harold’s Cross, Palmerston and in 1950s photographs of St. Stephen’s Green and, most
importantly, in abundance at the Dublin Botanic Gardens (see Fig. 39). There are also a number of
other bench types that do not seem to have been so common, most notably the rather exotic snakeleg design seen in a multitude along the west side of the central green in the Belfast Botanic Gardens
and at Alexandra Park, Belfast.58 Most parks, if not all, had a mixture of different bench types in use
at any one time as can be seen in late Victorian photographs. Though, occasionally parks featured
designs not seen in other parks, such as those visible in early photographs close to the fountains at
Dun Laoghaire, which no longer survive (see L CAB 02904). At Blackrock there were two benches of a
distinctive design on the terrace above the small pond, one of which survives in situ, a gift of the
Blackrock Band Committee in 1891. The seat is of a type commonly reproduced today but not much
seen in early views of Irish parks. It consisted of three uprights which split the seat in two in the
centre. The line of the uprights is gently curved around the arm which is split by a pendent and filled
with ivy leaf embellishment. Another example can still be seen in St. Patrick’s Park, Dublin.
54
Freeman’s Journal May 18, 1872, 4.
Irish Times Apr 30, 1912, 6.
56
NLI L ROY 05473.
57
NLI L ROY 01645.
58
L ROY 02377 and L ROY 03866.
55
P a g e | 38
Figure 34. An original late Victorian bench at the People's
Garden, Phoenix Park
Figure 35. Conjoined rustic benches around the
bandstand at Dun Laoghaire (Kingstown)
Figure 36. St. Stephen’s Green (Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland, L ROY 01645, courtesy of the National
Library of Ireland). In the foreground is the most formal and ornate of Victorian park bench styles, common to most
municipal parks. In the background, encircling the bandstand, are conjoined benches in a rustic style, less formal in
character and lighter in build.
P a g e | 39
Figure 37. Benches at the Botanic Gardens, Belfast in the snake-leg design (Lawrence Collection,
National Library of Ireland, L_ROY_02377) , courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. No
known examples survive.
Figure 38. Rustic benches at St. Stephen's Green, today and in the 1950s (Neville Johnson 1952-3). The same style can
be seen in the park in photos of c. 1900 see Fig. 36.
P a g e | 40
Figure 39. A rustic bench in the Botanic Gardens c. 1900 (left), a detail from Lawrence Collection,
National Library of Ireland, L ROY 01782, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland - a different
type to that in Fig. 38. It lacks the twig-work bracket and has only a single plank on the back.
One of many surviving examples in the Botanic Gardens today (right).
DRINKING FOUNTAINS
Figure 40. Five drinking fountains, four in Dublin, which still survive, and one from the Botanic gardens in Belfast, partly
visible in a Lawrence Collection photograph, National Library of Ireland (L_ROY_10098, courtesy of the National Library
of Ireland).
P a g e | 41
The provision of drinking fountains in Irish parks was seen as part of their public utility, particularly
as some of the poorer visitors did not have easy access to clean water. The most common type (see
Fig. 41) was made of cast-iron in the form of a short fluted shaft and, in most cases, a fluted cap with
a small moulded finial. The most complete examples are to be found in Sandymount Green and St.
Stephen’s Green, both of which have their bases and caps still intact. Those at Victoria Park, St.
Stephen’s Green and Palmerston Park are distinguished by lions’ head spouts on one side. Only that
in Stephen’s Green bears the name of its manufacturer, which is Glenfield & Kennedy Ltd,
Kilmarnock. Only a single example of this type is known in Belfast, in the Botanic Gardens, and we
only get a glimpse of it at the edge of an old photograph as it has disappeared. Whether the type
was once as common there as in Dublin is hard to say but maps and historic photographs indicate
that there were once at least seven drinking fountains between all the Belfast parks of which only
one partly survives, in very bad condition, as part of the larger fountain at Dunville. This type is not
comparable to those in Fig. 41 though, being a much more elaborate structure.
The Dublin examples have fared
better though some have clearly
been moved. That at Palmerston is
not the original one on this site,
having replaced a more elaborate
basin-type fountain at some point.
The original one is visible in an early
photograph and stood at the
junction between two paths rather
than to the side.59 This more
elaborate type formed a substantial
ornamental feature in the park.
Similar types (though different in
detail) can be seen at Herbert Park
and the People’s Garden in the
Phoenix Park. They are distinguished
by having a moulded stem
supporting a wide bowl into which
the water would pour, in turn
surmounted by an ornate finial.
Figure 41. The lion’s head on the drinking fountain at Victoria Park on
Killiney Hill
59
see NLI L ROY 05954
P a g e | 42
Figure 42. The drinking fountain at Alexandra Park, Belfast (left – after Scott op. cit., 139) was very similar in design to
that at Herbert Park, Dublin (right).
In Belfast drinking fountains tended to be more ornate than
in Dublin. This appears to have been due to the fact that
many were presented to parks from private patrons, such as
that in Ormeau Park gifted by Councillor Ewart or that
installed into Woodvale Park which was of the bowl-andstem variety and had a majestic cast-iron canopy. Both are
now gone.60 A fountain was erected in the Falls Park through
the donation of Alderman Bernard Hughes - not to exceed
£50 in cost - for which plans were submitted by George Smith
& Co and others. 61 Whether these plans were considered in
conjunction with those submitted by the city surveyor is
uncertain.62 He was subsequently asked to prepare plans and
seems to have been in charge of the project. He was
authorised to acquire granite for it from Mr. A. McBain.63
However, it was the Parks Committee who decided that it
should be erected on the north east side of the park near the
bridge.64
A fine pedimented terracotta and glazed tile drinking
fountain was also attached to one side of the grandiose
fountain at Dunville Park, which still survives in part, though now much defaced.
Figure 43. The canopied drinking fountain in
Woodvale Park, Belfast – after Scott, op. cit.
60
Scott op. cit.,, 16 and 139
Belfast Park Committee Minutes 12 Sept, 211
62
ibid, 2 January, 1878, 224
63
ibid, 30 January, 1878, 226
64
ibid, 8 May, 1878, 235
61
P a g e | 43
Figure 44. The defaced drinking fountain at
Dunville today.
Figure 45. Children around the Dunville drinking
fountain in 1908 (after Livingstone 1999, 33). Built in
1892.
STATUES AND MEMORIALS
There were surprisingly few statues or monuments erected in Irish Victorian and Edwardian parks.
Where they were erected they tended to be of concern to the park itself such as that in the People’s
Gardens where a statue of Lord Carlisle, the Lord Deputy, was raised to honour his role in providing
the park, or at Stephen’s Green where a statue of Lord Ardilaun was erected to remember his gift of
the park to the people. There was some resistance to turning parks themselves into memorials.
During the negotiations to open St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin Corporation had strongly resisted
proposals by the Prince Consort Memorial Committee to name the park in honour of Prince Albert.65
Similar resistance to honouring members of the colonial establishment was encountered elsewhere
as The Irish Times in 1910 reported: ‘The park at Fairview is sufficiently advanced to provide us
already with a squabble. This time it is over the name. The official proposal seems to be to call it
Aberdeen Park, but others think it should be named after some distinctive Irish character’.66 Lord
Ardilaun, stepping into the fray, said he regretted the lack of public consultation on the issue and
suggested they use the name Fairview, that being the old name of the area.67 It is interesting to see
Lord Ardilaun opposing the official decision to name the park after Lord Aberdeen who at that time
was serving his second term as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.68 Although Ardilaun had been heavily
involved in establishing Victoria Park in Killiney as part of the Jubilee celebrations in 1887 he did not
pursue such a royal name for St. Patrick’s Park which was conceived at the same time (though
completed many years later).69 The erection of a monument in his own honour in St. Stephen’s
Green was due to the intervention of Sir Charles Cameron, the city’s chief medical officer who
65
E. Patricia MacDonald, The Historic Parks of Dublin: Towards a Conservation Policy, 27-8
Irish Times June 18, 1910, 4
67
Irish Times June 25, 1910, 15
68
Their political stance would have been very different, however. Lord Ardilaun was a staunch Unionist, while
Lord Aberdeen was a supporter of the Home Rule Movement.
69
Irish Times, May 6, 1887, 5; May 20, 1887, 5.
66
P a g e | 44
thought it scandalous that his generosity had not been recognised. This initial lack of
commemoration stood in contrast to the Pembroke and Palmerston families both of whom had
parks named in their honour in the affluent suburbs of south Dublin. The existing statue of George II
in St. Stephen’s Green long predated its opening to the public; it was retained as an act of
conservation more than anything else and was removed in 1937 after being badly damaged by a IRA
bomb.70 In contrast, the use of public parks in Ireland as memorial spaces became much more
common post 1922 when the erection of commemorative statues propagated the notion of a shared
national identity.
The reluctance of the authorities to erect statues in ‘people’s parks’ during the Victorian age partly
arose from the very notion of them as a spaces ‘belonging’ to the people rather than the State. Even
the parks founded to celebrate the Royal Jubilee, Alexandra Park in Belfast, Victoria Park in Killiney
and St. Patrick’s in Dublin, avoided including any large sculptures of the monarch (such as already
existed in St. Stephen’s Green to George II). Was there a fear that such monuments would be
defaced? Resistance to royal interference with public parks had already been established in Britain.
When in 1850 it was suggested that the Queen and her ministers were intending to slice a section of
St. James’ Park off to create larger gardens for Buckingham Palace, Punch magazine responded
savagely referring to the park as ‘St. People’s Park’ and describing it as an attempt to “purloin the
people’s property”.71 Those liberals in Dublin agitating to get the Botanic Gardens opened to the
public had approved of a similar anti-monarchical attitude amongst the French artisans in Paris. One
reported stopping to talk to an ouvrier he met in the Tuileries Palace and remarked to him how kind
it was that the emperor allowed the people to use the building. To which the man replied with
surprise: ‘Kind? The building
belongs not to the Emperor, but
to France; he has but the loan of
it while he pleases us; when he is
gone it will be still here for France
and the French people”. It was
then proposed that the people of
Dublin adopt a similar attitude of
ownership to the Botanic
Gardens.72
It may have been fear of such
contention from the public that
the Parks authorities refrained
Figure 46. Unveiling of the statue to Lord Kelvin, the Botanic Gardens Belfast, from introducing monuments of
1913.
imperial power in Dublin in the
same way as they did in London, for example at the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park. With the
exception of the Fusiliers’ Arch, which will be discussed below, Dublin’s parks had no monuments to
British imperial campaigns or victories besides those which pre-dated their opening as people’s
parks such as the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park – which was not actually within the
70
Irish Times, May 14, 1937, 6.
Punch 1850 Vol. 19, 141.
72
Irish Times January 31, 1861, 3.
71
P a g e | 45
perimeter of the People’s Garden. However there were plans to commemorate a Gaelic-Irish battle
in a monument to the Battle of Clontarf, touted in 1910 as part of the designs for the new park at
Fairview. This resonated with nationalist, Celtic Revival ideology at the turn of the century and with
the Home Rule movement.73
If the lack of such monuments in Dublin might be understood in the context of the late nineteenth
century political scene, their absence in Belfast is harder to explain. Here nationalists were a
minority and it seems strange that the loyalist populace would not have sought to express their
adherence to the empire in the face of rising nationalism in the south. The most likely explanation is
that the authorities feared creating rallying grounds in public spaces where political meetings were
expressly forbidden by the park bye-laws. Also, the Belfast authorities seem to have been sensitive
to sectarian behaviour as is shown by their swift dismissal in July of 1878 of the ranger at the Falls
Park who was arrested and imprisoned for using ‘party expressions’ and for being under the
influence of drink.74 The only notable statue erected in a Belfast Park was that raised in 1913 to Lord
Kelvin, just inside the western entrance to the Botanic Gardens (see Fig. 46). Kelvin’s contribution
had been to science rather than politics and the honour coincided with the building of the new
Ulster Museum in the park.
The general aversion amongst the authorities and public to monuments in public parks highlights the
appearance of those few which were built. The most prominent example is the memorial arch
erected in St. Stephen’s Green in 1907, commonly known as the Fusiliers’ Arch after the Dublin
Fusiliers who fell in the Boer War
of 1899-1900 whom it
commemorates. A committee
was established to raise funds for
the arch, which included Sir
Thomas Drew, P. R.H.A., who had
designed the layout of the public
gardens of Christ Church and St.
Mary’s in 1888. The tender for
the construction of the arch was
won by Henry Laverty and Sons
Ltd,75 who agreed to erect the
arch at a cost of £1,800. 76 The
original intention was to engrave
the 212 names of the dead in
bronze panels but they were
Figure 47. The grand opening of the Fusiliers' Arch in 1907 (courtesy of the
Irish Architectural Archive, Inv. No. 14/68 Iy 1)
eventually inscribed into
recessed panels of Drogheda
limestone on the soffit of the arch. It was Sir Thomas Drew who originally suggested the idea of
raising the arch and he acted as consulting architect on the project. The actual design, however, was
73
Irish Times July 16, 1910, 4.
Belfast Parks Committee Minutes 3 July, 1878, 239.
75
Irish Times September 11, 1906, 4.
76
Irish Times February 11, 1907, 6.
74
P a g e | 46
that of the Board of Works architect, Howard Pentland (R.H.A.),77 while the iron gates and railings
were provided by J. & C. M’Gloughlin Ltd of Dublin.78
It was noted at the time that other modern cities such as London and Paris had erected triumphal
arches and it was seen as appropriate that Dublin should have one too.79 Given its position facing
Grafton Street, the Fusiliers’ Arch might be understood as part of central Dublin’s broader urban
landscape of public commemoration. The monument forms the grand northwestern entrance to the
park, facing the south end of Grafton Street. Loosely modelled on the Arch of Titus in Rome it is
flanked by pedestrian gates, themselves distinguished by piers of channelled stone with ball finials.
The design eschews the use of the flamboyant Corinthian order found in the Roman original, instead
opting for the more appropriately sober Tuscan order – expressed here only as paired pilasters
rather than in the round. They are nevertheless made more emphatic by resting on rusticated
pedestals lower than and advanced from the rusticated piers under the arch. Above the entablature
is an attic, which breaks forward over the pilasters below. The massing of the overall form, though
similarly derived from the arch of Titus, is here inverted so that the central inscription is recessed
rather than advanced. The overall proportions match those of the original. The attic section has a
central inscription:
FORTISSIMIS SUIS MILITIBUS
HOC MONUMENTUM
EBLANA DEDICAVIT MCMVII
On the rear, facing the park, is the following inscription in English:
IN MEMORY OF THE OFFICERS, NON COMMISSIONED OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE ROYAL
DUBLIN FUSILIERS WHO FELL IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 1899-1900
On the frieze on each side of the monument are inscribed the names in gold (though now somewhat
faded) of key battles in which the Fusiliers fell: TALANA and COLENSO (north face), HARTSHILL and
LADYSMITH (south face), LAINGS NEK (northeast face); TUGELA HEIGHTS (southwest face).
Over the keystone of the arch is a bronze escutcheon designed by Pentland and inscribed with the
slogan SPECTAMUR AGENDO, and at the bottom a banner inscribed Royal Dublin Fusiliers. At the
centre is a globe surmounted by a crown and flanked by a lion and elephant, symbols of Britain’s
imperial claims to African soil, which was modelled and cast by a Mr. Emery of Great Brunswick
Street80. The opening of the monument by Queen Victoria’s son, the Duke of Connaught, was
attended by a large public gathering (see Fig. 47).
77
Irish Times August 14, 1907, 6.
Ibid.
79
Irish Times August 20, 1907, 7.
80
Irish Times August 14, 1907, 6.
78
P a g e | 47
Figure 48. A 1906 working drawing for the projected Fusiliers’ Arch (OPW HC/4/939, National Archives, courtesy of the
Director of the National Archives of Ireland). The channelled stone is not here limited to the area below the imposts of
the arch as it was in the executed work.
P a g e | 48
CHAPTER 3 – SOCIAL CONTEXT
DEBATES OVER THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC PARKS IN DUBLIN AND BELFAST
The first Dublin park to open its gates to the public at large was the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin,
sometime in 1862 or 1863.81 However, the garden was not initially open on Sundays, effectively
excluding the working class, a policy which led to a popular movement in the early 1860s on the part
of the liberal press to provide improved access to public spaces for the city’s poorest. The issue of
public access to this ‘scientific resource’ had long been controversial and proposals to make the
gardens more accessible had been defeated within the Royal Dublin Society, who ran the gardens,
by vote in 1854, 1858, and 1859. 82 A group loosely described by the Irish Times at the time as
‘friends of the movement for the freer opening of the Glasnevin Botanic gardens’ included those
members of the Royal Dublin Society, led by James Haughton, who had attempted to get the
grounds opened on Sundays from within the Society.83 The precedent for Sunday openings, they
argued, had been favourably set in England where Kensington Palace Gardens, Hampton Court
Gardens and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew had been made accessible to the public.84 The
principal argument in favour of opening the gardens on this day was that it would allow the working
class to enjoy them. Mr. W. O’Mahony, one speaker at a meeting on the subject, cited the example
of working class access to public parks and institutions of science in Paris, remarking on the resulting
superiority of the French artisan.85 This was the real fear of the Royal Dublin Society who ran the
gardens as a scientific collection for research and the training of gardeners. Critics of the RDS argued
that it was elitist, taking public money paid by the many and spent on the few. There was also the
fact that the gardens were actually open to members of the Society themselves on this day and so as
far as some were concerned ‘Sunday opening’ as an idea was both tried and tested.
Opposition to Sunday opening came from another quarter as well. A group of Church of Ireland
clergymen gathered in the Metropolitan Hall on Lower Abbey Street on April 29 1861 to voice strong
opposition to the opening of the Botanic Gardens. 86 The business was described by its chairman, the
Dean of St. Patrick’s, as ‘exceedingly important’ and ‘exceedingly solemn’. He said he could not
believe it was truly the wish of the people to open the park on the Sabbath day and supported his
opposition by citing chapter and verse of the bible. Another speaker, Dr. Gayer, Q.C., confessed that
the idea of opening the gardens on Sunday had caused him ‘intense pain and anxiety’. The question
was whether the amusements afforded by the park could properly constitute abstinence from
labour and thus afford the Sabbath the sanctity it deserved. If the park was opened then where
would it stop? Surely it would inevitably lead to the opening of other gardens, such as those at
Portabello, the appearance of military bands, the opening of concert halls, and then inevitably to
dancing. He felt that the opening of the park would Parisianise the city, something regarded by all
with horror.
81
The newspaper sources examined in this project did not give an exact date.
Irish Times April 30, 1861, 3.
83
Irish Times January 31, 1861, 3.
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
Irish Times April 27, 1861, 1.
82
P a g e | 49
There was also the argument that a Sunday opening of the parks (and indeed anything else that
might follow suit) would mean certain people would have to work to accommodate such access. One
speaker cited the example of Paris again, remarking how, in the wake of freer opening times, a
society had sprung up to protect the working man from being forced to work on Sundays. Although
it was suggested at the meeting that there were other ‘more suitable’ places in the suburbs of
Dublin for the working classes so disposed to take the air. The objections of the RDS themselves
were listed: the religious argument, already outlined; the scientific argument which stated that the
purpose of the garden was the study of botany, not to provide a place of amusement; thirdly, there
were more suitable places in the suburbs and on the coast; and lastly, that ‘the measure would
inflict serious injury on those exceedingly rare and choice plants which the gardens contained and
also serious injury to other property in them’.87 The Irish Times opposed the opening of the Botanic
Gardens on a Sunday citing the threat to the plants and the society’s already stretched resources. In
an editorial of April 12, 1861, the paper cited the behaviour of the artisan class at a recent meeting
they organised regarding the opening of the gardens where ‘the violence of the greater portion of
the audience gave anything but an orderly character to the meeting’. Instead the newspaper argued
that they should agitate for the opening of St. Stephen’s Green which was in the heart of the city and
therefore more useful and relevant for their purposes. Eyes were also turned towards the Phoenix
Park and the following week an editorial in the Irish Times argued that a section of the land there
should be laid out as a park for the ‘heavily worked’ Dublin artisan. It made the point that the British
government was raising £50,000 per annum from Irish forestry to spend on the improvement of
London parks while there was still no proper park in Dublin and contrasted the backward state of
Ireland as regards parks to continental Europe as a whole:
There is not a petty town on the Continent which does not possess its “park,” adorned
scientifically with the most beautiful flowers and flowering shrubs; with alcoves, shady
bowers, fishponds, aviaries, and playing fountains’ and commented that ‘no lover of flowers
was ever yet a bad man. There is something humanising in their influence, even on the
worst.88
The campaign to open St. Stephen’s Green had gained pace by 1863 and in November of that year
the Commissioners of the park announced their determination to oppose with “strenuous
resistance” a parliamentary bill that would be proposed at the next session of parliament.89
Indecision over how to handle the issue continued for several years. It was reported that the
Commissioners of the Green would not sell it to Dublin Corporation because they feared that body
would not manage it properly and it would become ‘the scene of torchlight processions and political
demonstrations’.90 The main concern was over the type of person who would be allowed in and how
it would affect the wider locality. It was reported that in 1863-4 several military bands played in the
Green and the commissioners of the park were anxious to have more of them and that they had
directed the gardener to admit all respectable well dressed people to promenade there.91
87
Irish Times April 30, 1861, 3.
Irish Times April 18, 1861, 2.
89
Irish Times November 26, 1863, 2.
90
The Nation June 24, 1876, 3.
91
Irish Times June 2, 1864, 2.
88
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Resistance to people’s parks was more apparent in Dublin than Belfast largely due to the pressure to
open up large privately owned spaces within the city centre – of which Belfast had comparatively
few. This presented a greater threat to the status quo than the development of new parks on
suburban sites. Those who opposed the opening up of such spaces protested that it would lower the
value of property, though the reverse seems to have been the case. The opening of St. James Park in
London was advanced by the Duke of Leinster as an example of how a public park would not
necessarily do damage to an area.92 Indeed he ridiculed the idea. A legal wrangle over the actual
ownership of the Green delayed its opening for some years. In 1865 The Nation reported the
people’s success in acquiring a legal right to the park in the following hard-line terms:
We have looked upon the exclusion of citizens from St. Stephen’s Green as an outrage and
insult to public right and justice – a hateful relic of barbarous feudal distinctions and arrogant
class exclusiveness. Such a monstrosity existing at this time of day in the centre of a city like
Dublin, was to us as intolerable as a morass in its place would be. St. Stephen’s Green was,
and has never ceased to be, the property of the citizens.93
But it was not until 1876 that the park was opened to the general public on Sundays – by which
stage it had not yet been re-landscaped as a ‘people’s park’. 94 To allay fears of local residents it was
promised that only the more respectable members of the working classes would be allowed in and
that the park would be well supervised.
The question of good behaviour on the part of the working or artisan class was at the forefront of
the parks project. The hope was repeatedly expressed that the working classes would behave with
decorum in the parks but it was also thought that the parks themselves would improve behaviour –
though those who were badly behaved would be excluded.95 At the opening of Ormeau Park
speeches from the chairman of the Parks Committee, the Mayor and local MPs all refer to this hope.
The opening of these parks was a platform for a literal dialogue between the classes. The mayor
would address the populace in a condescending and patriarchal manner and then a representative
from a working man’s guild would offer a reply. This formal discourse was of course echoed in the
formal written (and frequently published) addresses between landlords and tenants and tended to
re-enforce the status quo. But in the context of parks there is a barely acknowledged sense that the
social order is being subverted with the tacit agreement of all sides. The idea of public property
carried with it a sense of responsibility and ownership which was traditionally the reserve of the
landed classes but here was being tacitly shared with the people as if in some strange social
experiment. For those sceptical of the project, it was argued a healthy worker was a harder worker
thus justifying the financial outlay on parks in economic terms that appealed to the vested interests
of the city’s industrial oligarchy.96
92
Irish Times June 1, 1864, 4.
The Nation June 3 1865, 11.
94
Irish Times Oct 21 1876, 11.
95
Irish Times November 26, 1863, 1.
96
Belfast Newsletter April 17, 1871.
93
P a g e | 51
POLITICS
While the bye-laws of the new municipal parks forbade their use for political meetings such spaces
inevitably lent themselves to large gatherings in the name of some shared political cause. The
Phoenix Park in Dublin extended beyond the bounds of the People’s Garden and the broader area of
the park seems was generally accessible to the public. It was around the Wellington Monument that
a crowd gathered on a Sunday in August of 1871 to hear speeches agitating for the release of Irish
political prisoners. Regarding the venue, the press commented:
While in the selection of the place of assembly the promoters of it no doubt felt that as
public political demonstrations were permitted to be held in the Parks of London, there
could be nothing very criminal in selecting what has hitherto been popularly known as the
People’s Park as the scene of the meeting. But the authorities held other
opinions...intimating that to hold the meeting in the Park was illegal.97
Both the nationalist and conservative press reported with equal horror the police brutality used to
break up the crowd: ‘At first the police seemed to use only their hands, but before many seconds
had elapsed they plied their batons in the most fearful manner – so lavish and vigorous were they in
their application that the crash and rebound of the batons could be distinctly heard at some
distance...strong, able men were felled; women were bludgeoned, and children kicked'.98 The
incident was widely reported abroad and caused great embarrassment to Gladstone’s Liberal
government, though a motion proposing an inquiry into the conduct of the police was voted down
by parliament. There was much debate over the legality of holding meetings in parks and the Chief
Secretary of Ireland, Lord Hartington, made it clear that political meetings in parks would not be
interfered with again, at least in the immediate future99. The Irish American press reported the
incident in highly exaggerated terms as something approaching a popular revolution against the
Empire.100
The incident certainly didn’t dissuade people from gathering in public parks and on October 8, 1871,
a meeting of the Home Rule Association was held in the People’s Park in Drogheda , attended by
members of the Dublin branch who travelled there for the day.101
IDEAS OF SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT
If the Royal Dublin Society and Commissioners of St. Stephen’s Green feared a rampaging mob
destroying their rhododendrons or upsetting the social order more liberal members of the upper,
middle and professional classes expressed their belief in the improving nature of the municipal park.
In opening Ormeau Park, Councillor Suffern, head of the Parks Committee in Belfast, described it as a
place where the working class could ‘enjoy their leisure hours in quiet, rational, and healthy
recreation in the valued society of their wives and children’.102 Embedded in the middle class project
97
The Nation August 12, 1871, 3.
Ibid.
99
The Nation August 26, 1871.
100
Ibid.
101
The Nation, October 7, 1871, 14.
102
Belfast Newsletter April 17, 1871.
98
P a g e | 52
of providing public parks to the working poor was the optimism that healthy and family-oriented
public recreation would the cure for the alcoholism that plagued working class life.103 This rosy view
of working class life was a decidedly middle class one and the Irish Times, in promoting the opening
of St. Stephen’s Green, imagined that the residents there would ‘ witness from their windows a
scene of life, enjoyment and order’. 104 But these experimental public ‘drawing rooms’ also provided
an opportunity for the disenfranchised to lash out against authority and there remains the question
of whether the violence that sometimes took place was actually directed against the parks
themselves. Woodvale Park in Belfast was injured before it even opened and the Town Council had
to hire security to protect it. 105 Unspecified destruction was also wrought on Alexandra Park just
after it opened necessitating its immediate temporary closure.106
If there is little in the late Victorian Park to suggest its primary purpose was to cater for the working
population then this was due to the fact that they were designed to improve and sensitise those
lower down on the social scale. During the movement to open the Botanic Gardens in Dublin in 1861
one agitator commented that ‘on the Continent, by mixing of the classes, good feeling and harmony
was promoted, and while the humbler were elevated, the higher did not suffer in position’. 107 During
the same period the Irish Times also alluded to the Continent in recommending the creation of a
people’s park in the Phoenix Park: ‘Royalty does not disdain to meet the artisan in public pleasure
gardens, and, naturally, the artisan dresses neatly, and behaves as courteously as your drawing room
knight’.108
The notion that royalty would be happy to mix with the common man in a park was brought even
further by one Belfast MP during the opening of Ormeau Park in 1871. In his speech he alluded to
the recent marriage of Princess Louise to a commoner saying he ‘was sure that the working men of
Belfast were glad to see a Princess united to a commoner, as an assurance of a better understanding
between the Crown and the people for future generations.109 While in reality the equation of
Princess Louise’s ‘commoner’ with the Belfast working class was totally fabricated (her new
husband, although not royal, was a marquis and in line to the Dukedom of Argyll), the idea reflected
the growing interest in – at least in theory – allowing the classes to mix.
In the council meetings and press there was, however, no discussion concerning whether the gentry
and professional classes might make use of the park. All the benefits of Ormeau and most other
parks were seen as gifts to the working classes. But the upper classes did visit Ormeau in substantial
numbers after it opened. There were soon after horrified accounts in the press of the gentry’s
encounters there with ‘roughs’. One writer to the Belfast Newsletter described a gang of thirty boys
from the ages of 14 to 17, shouting and jumping on seats and ‘conducting themselves in a most
disorderly manner’, and almost running over his wife. When challenged one youth ‘gave vent to the
most abusive language not fit for any person, much less a lady’.110 Not long after this event, it was
observed by one councillor at a meeting that ‘a very large number of respectable people were in the
103
e.g. The Nation Oct 21 1876, 11.
Irish Times Nov 26 1863, 2.
105
Belfast Newsletter June 2, 1887 (no details of the damage are given, however).
106
Belfast Newsletter June 2, 1887.
107
Irish Times Jan 31 1861, 3.
108
Irish Times April 18, 1861, 2.
109
Belfast Newsletter April 17 1871.
110
Belfast Newsletter May 17, 1871.
104
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habit of visiting the park; and it would be gratifying to them to know that the greatest order and
regularity were now observed’. A fellow councillor agreed relating that ‘the other day a lady told him
that she would not send her nurse or children to the park, owing to the outrageous and indecent
roughs who frequented it’. The point was made that such events had largely disappeared since the
recent appointment of two ‘constables’ or rangers ‘who have been assisted by the regular police’. It
was also noted that ‘the magistrates were fully determined to deal as rigorously as the law would
allow with persons charged with infringement of the rules.111
WORKING CLASS OBJECTIONS
Despite the stated aim of providing space for the working classes at Ormeau the development of
high end housing in the vicinity of the park (details and sources will be set out in the report on
Ormeau) saw the increasing alienation of the working classes from it. It quickly became apparent
that the geography of the city had as much a role to play in shaping the usage and perception of
public parks as their design. Ormeau, touted as the great gift to the working classes, was soon
perceived as the preserve of the middle classes (details and sources will be set out in the report on
Ormeau). Desperate to make the park pay for itself the Parks Committee had rushed into leasing
surplus land for housing at high-end prices thus ensuring the park would be surrounded by a firmly
middle class population. It soon became known as the ‘posh park’ amongst the working classes,
many of whom lived too far away from it to make much use of it. However, it is likely the working
class aversion to Ormeau was overstated by those agitating for the long overdue development of
Victoria Park in the heart of industrial east Belfast. The working class perception of these parks (with
their emphasis on polite walks) remains somewhat obscure. It is clear however that public
attendance at Falls Park in one of the most industrialised parts of the city was far less than that at
Ormeau,112 and it seems unlikely it was simply a matter of size.
When plans were being made in 1902 to complete Victoria Park in the east of Belfast some
wondered whether there was need for the park given the proximity of the very large Ormeau Park.
But although some areas for which Victoria Park would cater were certainly closer to the existing
Ormeau Park Alderman James Kerr stated that the people never used it, being ‘essentially of the
artisan class’. Ormeau was regarded, he said, as ‘the fashionable park’.113 The approaches to it were
poor and the people preferred to walk out to what he called ‘this people’s park’ – i.e. Victoria Park,
though it had not yet been developed as such by the city council, despite an act of Parliament that
insisted it could be used for no other purpose.114 The development of Victoria Park became a
particularly sore point for both councillors and working class interest groups in Belfast. Although the
111
Belfast Telegraph July 3, 1871.
The attendance figures at both Ormeau and Falls Parks were regularly reported in the minutes of the
Belfast Parks Committee in the early years after their openings. For examples on the Committee reported that
on Sunday 22 July, 6920 visitors frequented Ormeau Park in contrast to the 2365 who visited Falls Park (see
minutes for 25 July 1877, page 205). The weekly figures are even starker: 2000-3000 visited Ormeau while
only 140-150 visitied Falls Park.
113
Local Government Board Inquiry at Belfast, Feb 1902, 252-3 (PRONI LA 7/3 JA/1).
114
Ibid.
112
P a g e | 54
earliest site to be designated as a public park, a dispute with the Harbour Commissioners from
whom it had been acquired halted its development for almost fifty years.115
But the question of the class identity of parks was also inherent in issues of design. While the upper
classes saw the ‘polite’ drawing-room-style furnishings and ornamental embellishments of the park
as ‘improving’, the working class did not always concur. A deputation of working class groups to the
Town Council in June of 1886 on the issue of the establishment of Victoria Park expressed this quite
clearly: “Mr.Wellwood addressed the council saying that at a recent meeting of the Harbour
Commissioners it was thrown out that that there was no use for this park being laid out as a flower
garden; it should be used merely as a recreation ground for the people of Ballymacarrett...he might
state on behalf of the people that no carriage-drive was wanted; what was desired was merely a
recreation place for the poor”. A second speaker, Mr. R.J. McConmell, noted the marvellous increase
in the population of east Belfast with rate increases of 74 percent between 1876 and 1886 arguing
that the council ‘would do well to remember this portion of Belfast, as it was inhabited by the
working classes, who, he was sure, did not grudge their richer neighbours Alexandra Park (north
Belfast, 1887), which they had secured for recreation grounds. At the same time the compliment
should be returned by giving breathing spaces to the people of Ballymacarrett. A small outlay would
enable these grounds to be utilized by the working people, as only a few roads, and perhaps a small
pond, were required to make them useful and an ornament to the district’. 116
The reference to Alexandra Park here is telling. One critical councillor, at the time of its construction,
had noted that it ‘could be occupied by only the quality along the Antrim Road, for where were the
artisans to come from to enjoy it? ...the appearance of the place was enough to scare any artisan
away...’.117 The middle and upper class exclusivity of both it and Ormeau had evidently given rise to
the notion that working class parks might be mutually exclusive. The rejection of a carriage drive by
Wellwood and his associates at Victoria Park in favour of simple footpaths for the poor was seen as a
harsh rejection of the upper class by the mayor who considered the carriage drive as ‘one of the
great features attached to the place’:
He was sorry that Mr. Wellwood had expressed himself to the effect that they did not
want [the park] for the rich. Such remarks, he thought, in these days, should not be made;
for what would the poor do without the rich? It was better not to divide parties, for there
was as everyone knew, division enough at present.118
The issue of carriage drives or ‘rides’ around the periphery of parks had been arisen in relation to
Stephen’s Green in 1876 during the planning for its conversion into a public park. One speaker at a
fiery meeting complained that
...they were told and led to suppose that it was to be a people’s park, and nothing but
that (hear, hear). He, however, had been told by a member of Parliament in London that
it was the intention to make a ride round it, to convert it, in fact, into the Rotten-row of
Dublin (hear). There was, it seemed, to be a public ride, where all the grooms of the city
115
The Belfast Book 1929, Belfast: Local Government in the City and County Borough of Belfast, 166.
Belfast Newsletter June 2 1886.
117
Belfast Newsletter Oct 2, 1886.
118
Belfast Newsletter May 18, 1886.
116
P a g e | 55
would be exercising their horses at pleasure (hear, hear). Was that a fact or was it
not?119
This reference to the fashionable Rotten-row in London’s Hyde Park is a reminder that the park
promenade or ride was originally an upper class pursuit. Although the notion of incorporating a ride
in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin was controversial, the Belfast Parks Committee had no such
obstruction in laying one out at Ormeau.
Figure 49. The Ride at Ormeau Park added in 1880. A bicycle track runs along its inside (Ordnance Survey 25 inch first
edition, 1902, © OSNI).
In January of 1880, some nine years after the park’s opening, two committee members visited
Ormeau to decide the route of the ‘new ride’ 120 and ordered the superintendent to provide timber
from the park for its enclosure.121 It was still clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey map of 1920 as
a ‘riding track’ which encircles the northern green in the park, including the lake. The mayor was
requested to formally open the ride on Monday 24 May at 3pm, later changed to Saturday at 11am
at his request, in advance of which the superintendent was ordered to roll it to make it firm.122 The
initial decision by the Parks Committee to open the ride on a Monday is significant as it meant the
working classes could not attend, reflecting the fact that the ride was intended for the more leisured
members of the locality. It evidently was frequently used as soon after its opening a notice was
119
The Nation June 24 1876, 3.
Parks Committee Minutes 14 January 1880, 304.
121
Parks Committee Minutes 28 January 1880, 305.
122
Parks Committee Minutes 8 September 1880, 322.
120
P a g e | 56
posted informing the public that the ride was only to be used in good weather.123 A belt of trees was
planted on the inner side of the track and sometime later a bicycle track was laid out on the other
side, bicycling at this stage being perhaps equally the pursuit of the better off. The presence of rides
for the upper classes in public parks had been a cause for complaint since at least the 1830s in
England. One reporter then described the notion that Regent’s Park was public, an ‘impudent
mockery’: ‘there is indeed a fine drive round for those who can afford to keep or hire carriages...it is
not a public park, but a place set apart for the use of the wealthy only, and the people are permitted
to grind out their shoes upon the gravel merely because they cannot be prevented’. 124
Figure 50. Rotten Row, Hyde Park (James Valentine, 1894)
At Victoria Park Wellwood’s criticism of the ride fell on deaf ears. By 1908 a subway (12ft 5 inches
wide and 7ft 8inches high) had been made under the railway to allow access for vehicles, while a
broad road 6 yds wide, which had been begun was to be developed all the way around the park, and
made wide enough for visitors to drive around.125 However, despite the cost of this facility not much
driving was expected due to the largely working class populace who used the park. The Parks
Committee had several plans for improving the appearance of the park including doing away with
the canal-like look of the river, making it wide and inserting little harbours for people to stop at.
There was also to be considerable aesthetic enrichment of the grounds through planting and the
creation of a walk along the top of the embankment, ‘5 or 6 feet wide’.126 While the driveway
around the perimeter had to be perfectly flat, the ground around it was designed to undulate
gently.127 And so the tension between the perceived decorative and utilitarian purposes of the park
remained. It was felt, for example, that ‘shrubberies along the edges of portions of the lake might
be laid out with advantage without unduly encroaching on the ground required for sports,128
indicating that sport rather than adornment of the landscape was the primary need. Talk of
123
Parks Committee Minutes 22 Sept 1880, 323.
Westminster Review Vol 20, 1834, 502.
125
Local Government Board Inquiry at Belfast February 1902, 97-99.
126
Ibid.
127
Ibid., 102.
128
Ibid., 232.
124
P a g e | 57
landscape gardeners and planting designs during a meeting in this period provoked the objection
that the park was becoming too fine for its ‘rough and ready’ purpose as a ground for sports and
athletic pursuits.129
In Dublin the park at Ringsend might be considered the equivalent to Victoria Park in Belfast, both of
which were developed later than most other parks, on reclaimed land and in largely working class
areas. At Ringsend there was deliberately less focus on developing formal gardens – the actual
garden being decidedly small in relation to other parks – and has since disappeared to provide
training grounds for football. This loss perhaps reflects the early view that sport would be more
beneficial to the locality than flowers. The Irish Times in 1908 described its purpose as
‘...a thing of beauty, as well as a comfortable recreation ground for youthful Ringsenders.
To expect that the new Ringsend Park will ever rival Stephen’s Green, or the People’s
Gardens, would be expecting too much. Rather would we see the chief of its area given
over to the frolicsome football, or other popular pastime, and, even then, ample room for
marginal adornment by suitable, wind-resisting evergreens...’130
This attitude highlights the fact that one of the primary purposes in opening such spaces to the
working classes was to improve the poor standard of public health in urban environments.
PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE INNER CITY PARKS 1888-1900
Figure 51. A group of 'city Arabs' at the People's Garden by R. Welch, Belfast, from the Camera Series Album of VIews of
Dublin, 1899.
129
130
Ibid., 104.
Irish Times January 11 1908, 19.
P a g e | 58
The question of public health loomed large in the move to establish Ireland’s parks as it did
elsewhere. Indeed, the provision of pockets of open space in the inner cities where high mortality
from typhoid and tuberculosis was ubiquitous was frequently seen as a public health issue of
extreme urgency. Reference to ‘fresh air’ was persistent in discussions of public parks throughout
the last decades of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth. A key figure in promoting
greater access to parks was Sir Charles Cameron, chairman of the Open Spaces Association, who
‘…as chief officer of health, long since saw the necessity, in the interest of the health of children, of
having open spaces in poor and congested localities in which children could disport themselves away
from the dangers of the streets and enjoy the benefits of fresh air’.131
Facilities for children in the earlier suburban parks had been limited but some provision for them
was made early on in Belfast parks in the form of swings. The superintendent of Ormeau was
instructed in the early spring of 1880 to keep only five swings in working order in Ormeau Park and
two in Falls Park and to prevent people standing on them.132 A proper playground for children was
not established at Ormeau until 1912, a gift of one of the councillors.133 There is no mention of the
provision of swings in Dublin parks in the same period. When Harold’s Cross Park was planned in
1893 it was described as providing a ‘people’s park’ and a ‘playground for children’,134 but did not
specify any particular facilities for children. An article in the Irish Times of 1898 praising the Queen’s
Square created some ten years previously remarked how the children were delighted by the
fountain in the centre and able to play on the grass plots which were kept trim for them but makes
no reference to any other entertainments.135 When St. Patrick’s Park in Dublin was being made
during 1902 a portion of it was reserved as a playground for children, probably the western end.136
There was also a ramp way into the park on the east side to assist women with prams suggesting
that designers were beginning to consider the issue of children more seriously.137 But the same year
the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin decided to discourage the use of perambulators as they were
generally forbidden in other botanic gardens due to the damage they caused. They issued a
proclamation that only those who had previously used perambulators in the gardens could apply to
use them again.138
A key problem with the new parks or new access to parks established in the 1860s at the Botanic
Gardens and the Phoenix Park was that of distance. Agitators for the opening of St. Stephen’s Green
argued that artisans on the south side of the city could not be expected to travel to the existing
parks on the north side. Although the tram fare was reasonable for an individual when aggregated to
include a whole family it became something of a burden.139 The same issue was discussed in the
Belfast press. While the intention was that the working classes should journey out to these parks the
reality was quite different. The people of the Falls Road in Belfast were particularly vociferous about
how useless Ormeau was due to its distance from them. A member of the Flax Dressers Benevolent
Society complained in a deputation to the council just after the park opened that it was so far away
131
Irish Times December 28, 1898, 6.
Parks Committee Minutes 11 February, 1880, 306.
133
Scott op. cit., 61.
134
Irish Times August 30, 1893, 4.
135
Irish Times December 28, 1898, 6.
136
Irish Times August 9, 1902, 12.
137
Irish Times July 25, 1903, 7.
138
Nelson and McCracken 1987, 199.
139
Irish Times March 11, 1876, 2.
132
P a g e | 59
that people would require a bed when they got there.140 This continued to be a major problem in
Belfast where parks remained suburban but in Dublin steps were taken to create small recreational
spaces in the very heart of the old inner city.
In 1886 the Open Spaces Association formed in Dublin on the model of Lord Brabazon’s Society in
London with the aim of providing recreation grounds for the inner city poor.141 The following year
proposals put forward to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee included both plans to develop a new
suburban park and open inner city gardens.142 The latter idea was more favourably viewed,
adherents arguing that such an idea would likely attract most financial benevolence. The Irish Times
drew a distinction between these two types of park:
The uses of these gardens or play-grounds in the dense quarters of the city are quite
distinct from those of park. The latter is for those strong enough in limb or pocket, and
who have the time to walk or to drive to it, but for the thousands non-locomotive from
age or non-age or infirmity, the suburban park is as unattainable as Paradise. For the little
children who cluster in the slums at the steps of the tenement houses; for superannuated
or convalescent workmen; for the wives and mothers who can never be far distant from
their homes, however poor – if for these there is to be any sight of trees or breathing of
fresh air or sitting in the rare sunshine, in their habitual life it must be but very few
minutes, and not very many yards from their own door.143
The passing of the Open Spaces Act in 1887 allowed Dublin Corporation to proceed in creating a
number of such spaces. The following year plans were made to convert the old graveyard around St.
Mary’s on the north side into a park with the co-operation of the Church of Ireland.144 In the same
year the Corporation decided (again in conjunction with the Church of Ireland) to open up the
garden around Christ Church, which had been considerably enlarged by the creation of Lord Edward
Street by the Corporation.145 The first inner city park to be independently created by Dublin
Corporation was the Blessington Street Basin which was developed in 1889.146 In the same year the
Open Spaces Association were involved with works undertaken in the grounds at St. Audoen’s in the
Liberties,147 though funds were still being sought to finish the work five years later when several
prominent figures donated large sums.148 The grounds were finally opened by the Lord Mayor on
May 10, 1895. He commented in his speech that ‘the idea of catering for the health of the
inhabitants of Dublin in this manner was of recent origin, but during the few years since the value of
these open spaces came to be appreciated by the citizens, they had opened about six spaces, and he
trusted they would soon have more’.149 He also noted that people of all creeds had contributed to
the projected noting the help of clergymen from the Catholic Church and Church of Ireland.
140
Belfast Newsletter April 24, 1871.
Irish Times March 16, 1887, 7.
142
Ibid.
143
Ibid.
144
Dublin Corporation Reports 1888, Vol. I, 169.
145
Ibid, 172.
146
Dublin Corporation Reports 1890, 53.
147
Irish Times July 23, 1889, 3.
148
Irish Times October 29, 1894, 8.
149
Irish Times May 11, 1895, 6.
141
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An attempt by the Association in 1890 to open the grounds of the Rotunda Hospital failed as the
Corporation would not agree to the conditions which included taking full control of the gardens and
paying an annual rent of £300.150 In 1898 the Corporation began converting the disused graveyard
of Old St. George’s on Hill Street in the North inner city into a park ‘for the recreation of children’.
Nowhere, said the Irish Times, was such a project more essential: ‘The squalor of the
neighbourhood is intense, and it is pitiful to see children at play on the side paths crowded with
various wares or on the dirty street’.151 At the same time Lord Meath provided open ground at New
Figure 52. Common people walking on Killiney Hill in Bartlett and Coyne's Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland 1841
Row and Pimilico. Meath was an important figure in the parks movement in London where he was
the first chairman of the Open Spaces Committee and had travelled to the United States to inspect
public parks there.152
At no time was the interest in the health benefits of parks more in evidence than in the lead up to
the royal jubilee in 1887 when two rival projects were established in Dublin to commemorate Queen
Victoria’s reign.153 One jubilee committee decided on establishing a fever hospital while a second
favoured the establishment of a new park, or as it turned out, two new parks: St. Patricks in the
inner city and Victoria Park on Killiney Hill. While the hospital project was deemed worthy enough it
was seen as misguided in the long term. The parks project was given the support of a prominent
Dublin doctor who argued that Dublin already had more hospitals than it could support. 154 He
150
Irish Times March 27, 1890, 6.
Irish Times December 28 1898, 6.
152
A. Saint, Politics and the People of London: the London County Council 1889-1965, The Hambledon Press,
1989, 52.
153
Irish Times May 20, 1887, 5.
154
Irish Times May 20 1887, 5.
151
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argued that what was needed was prevention rather than cure and that is exactly what more parks
for the people were seen to provide. As it turned out St. Patrick’s Park, in the heart of the inner city,
was not developed until 1897, some ten years later. Rather it was Killiney Hill, the most remote and
least accessible of Dublin’s parks, that was opened by Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen
Victoria, at the time of the Jubilee.155 Getting around this obvious objection those in the press who
supported it spoke of it as for all the people of Ireland rather than just Dubliners.156 Whether Killiney
Hill could rightly be regarded as a new park at this time is questionable. A view of the hill from 1841
depicts it as a resort of the common people despite being the demesne of a wealthy private
individual.
MUSIC IN PARKS
The class divide between Dublin’s parks is nowhere better illustrated than through musical
performances. A typical advertisement might read as follows:
By kind permission of Colonel G. Crole Wyndham, C.B., and officers, 21st
(Empress of India’s) Lancers, the band of the regiment will play at Sorrento
Park, Dalkey, this (Saturday) evening from 7.30 to 9.30pm.
The St. James’s Brass and Reed Band will perform a programme of music in
the Phoenix Park tomorrow (Sunday), from 4 to 6pm. Conductor, Mr. G.
McNerney.’ 157
The difference between these two performances is in their time and place. Newspaper
advertisements show that music was always performed in the upmarket Sorrento Park at a relatively
late hour on a Saturday night. Similarly consistent is the Sunday afternoon performance in those
parks frequented by the working classes such as the People’s Garden in the Phoenix Park, Queen’s
Square and Ringsend Park. A similar distinction might be noted between the bands that played.
British regimental bands only played in upmarket parks while working men’s bands almost always
provided the music in working class parks. The difference in timing would seem to stem from the
authorities’ unwillingness to encourage the working classes to amuse themselves late in the evening,
particularly on Saturdays, when it was feared they might drink and cause trouble. Similarly it was
feared that British regimental bands might provoke a nationalist backlash as indeed happened when
a regimental band (7th Provisional Regiment) played in the People’s Garden in the Phoenix Park in
1902. They were booed by a large section of the crowd who began to drown them out with a
rendition of ‘God save Ireland’:
‘As the bandsmen left the hostile demonstration was so marked that it seemed as if they would
be attacked, but a number of sympathisers formed round them making a passage from the
bandstand to the roadway, and loudly cheering the military as they left. Portion of the hostile
crowd accompanied the bandsmen along the route to the barracks, groaning and hissing as they
155
Irish Times June 27, 1887, 5.
Irish Times June 11, 1887, 6.
157
Irish Times June 23 1900, 9.
156
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marched along; and then proceeded in a solid mass through the city…the crowd marched to
Stephen’s Green, and gradually dispersed’.158
The chant of ‘God save Ireland’ may have been a response to the band playing ‘God save the Queen’.
At Ormeau in Belfast while the committee did allow the Belfast National Band to perform in the park
they emphasised to them that they should conform to the prescribed rule that each band conclude
with the National Anthem “God save the Queen”.159 The Belfast Parks Committee kept strict control
over musical events, programmes having to be submitted beforehand for their approval. When a
‘Blind Harpist’ sought permission to play in the Autumn of 1874 he was permitted to do so on the
condition that no ‘party songs’ would be played.160 Most bands who requested to play were native
to the city and of all backgrounds, some with clear political or religious allegiances such as the
Belfast Constitutional Brass Band, who were granted permission to play on a Wednesday from
7.30pm 161and the Belfast Catholic band who sought to play in the Falls Park in 1879.162
Some religious tension emerged in relation to the question of music in Dublin. When in 1909 the
parks committee for Pembroke Urban District Council received a request from the St. Patrick’s
branch of the Gaelic League to play concerts in Ringsend on four dates in August the feelings of both
Catholics and Protestants in the area were consulted. The Protestants were against while the
Catholics were in favour. One council member argued that such concerts would be a great
inducement to keep people out of public houses on that day, while another cited the precedent of
such concerts in other parks.163 Protestant opposition was probably on both religious and class
grounds as the Church of Ireland in the 1860s had led the protest against opening the Botanic
Gardens in Glasnevin on Sundays while the Catholic press had supported it. 164
The bands at Fairview, on the north side of Dublin, commenced while work on the park had just
begun and proved a nuisance to local middle class residents, one of whom wrote into the Irish
Times: ‘The item of news, that probably the promenades (save the mark!) are not to be held this
year, will be hailed with delight by every resident of Fairview. Things got so bad last year that it was
suggested that a petition be sent in against the continuance of these bands, on account of the
conduct the rowdies who always formed nine-tenths of the audiences. I do not think a dozen
Fairview people ever patronised the bands’.165 Lord Ardilaun deliberately kept control of St. Patrick’s
Park for five years after its completion so as to prevent bands disrupting services in the cathedral
next door and a bandstand was never conceived as part of the park’s design.166 The bands proved
popular at Blackrock where the park was somewhat removed from local housing. When it was
thought ‘the band promenade’ there might be discontinued in 1898 one resident wrote to the Times
to express his hope they would continue and suggested that if the Blackrock Committee could not
158
Irish Times June 30, 1902, 6.
Belfast Parks Committee Minutes 6 June, 1877, 200.
160
Belfast Parks Committee Minutes 10 September, 1874, 84-5.
161
Belfast Parks Minutes 19 June, 1878, 238.
162
Belfast Parks Minutes 2 July, 1879, 283.
163
Irish Times August 10, 1909, 3.
164
For the Church of Ireland objections, see Irish Times April 30, 3, and May 11, 1861; the editor of the Catholic
Telegraph is listed amongst those who attended a pro-opening meeting as reported in Irish Times January 31,
1861, 3.
165
Irish Times March 11, 1913, 5.
166
E. Patricia MacDonald, The historic parks of Dublin: towards a conservation policy, MA Thesis, UCD School of
Architecture, 1992, 64-5.
159
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arrange them then surely it would be in the interest of the Tram company to do so, indicating that
many of those who visited the park came from the city specifically to listen to music.167
There were no bandstands at Palmerston Park or Harolds Cross in the wealthy Dublin suburbs south
of the Grand Canal suggesting the middle class residents were against them. In fact, the bye laws of
these two parks actually expressly forbade the performance of music 168 until pressure from bands
requesting to play saw the experimental introduction of weekly musical days in September 1901. At
Harold’s Cross the surveyor was asked to arrange the position of the bandstand, though this was
likely a temporary structure.169 Blackrock Park, however, was more distant from surrounding houses
and had a prominent bandstand where performances by regimental bands on Saturday evenings
took place.170
It is notable that both Kingstown and Sorrento had quite distinctive bandstands to those found in
other parks. They were not roofed but rather had very conspicuous ornamental lamps. These
features may reflect the fact that these parks, being more middle class, frequently held recitals of
music on Saturdays evenings when the musicians would have needed light to see their music as dusk
approached.
SPORT
There was never a question that parks should provide some outlet for athletic activity of one form or
another though their principal purpose was to provide space to walk, an activity that always
remained primary in the minds of the various councils operating parks. Class distinctions between
parks were often clearly marked by the types of sports catered for. At Ormeau, the earliest and
largest of the Belfast municipal parks, cricket and croquet were the first sports to be introduced,
which no doubt helped shape its reputation as a park for the middle and upper classes.171 These
sports emerged within the park through the partnership of the Parks Committee with various local
sporting clubs. A request from Queens College Athletic Club to use the grounds fell through due to
the parks distance from the university but by 1879 the Rugby Lacrosse club had established a
presence there,172 and in 1893 Ireland’s first golf club was established on the remaining surplus
ground to the east of the park. 173 All of these activities increased the alienation of the working
classes from Ormeau even more.
One of the main issues hampering sport was the question of whether it should be played on Sundays
or not. It was not until 1909 that football was allowed on Sundays in the working class park at
Ringsend though by that point the decision encountered little opposition.174 At Falls Park in Belfast
the upper hay fields were informally used for cricket, football and hurling but the park
167
Irish Times June 8, 1898, 6.
Rathmines and Rathgar Urban District Council Minute Book Vol 7, 5 June, 1901, 493.
169
Ibid., 497-9.
170
See August 14, 1906, 7.
171
Belfast Parks Committee Minutes, 3 September, 1874, 83-84; 22 March, 1875, 102.
172
ibid. 4 September, 1874, 83-4; 3 January, 1877, 177-8; 19 March, 1879, 267.
173
For golf club, see Scott op. cit., 60.
174
Irish Times August 10, 1909, 3.
168
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superintendent did not approve.175 At the start of the summer of 1887 it was reported that some
groups had taken to playing football and other unnamed games in the park on Sundays and the
Parks Committee determined to put a stop to it, issuing the following memorandum: “Every person
who shall play at football, cricket, lawn tennis, croquet, bowls, quoits or any other games, or who
shall be in any way concerned therein, in any part of the park on Sunday, shall for every such offence
forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding £5’. 176 The offences were to apply to Ormeau Park as well. There
were tennis grounds established at Falls park from 1892, which have now gone,177 suggesting some
attempt to cater for more middle class sporting interests in a predominantly working class district.
Unlike at Ormeau and the Falls Park, at Alexandra Park a tennis lawn was laid out from its creation in
1886, which probably attests to relatively new interest in tennis as a sport during this period.178
At the People’s Park in Kingstown there were plans to create a handball alley, a sport not mentioned
in connection with any of the other parks. There were objections from the Church of Ireland Vicar of
Christ Church next to the park who feared the sport would interfere with his Sunday service. The
Kingstown Council agreed to forbid its use on Sunday should they decide to go ahead with the
alley.179 Photographs of the park from soon after its completion suggest the idea was dropped and
the emphasis of the Council seems to have been on creating polite and refined surroundings. A
letter to the Irish Times on July 21 1886 in relation to Blackrock complained strongly of preparations
being made for a jumping contest in ‘the best portion of the park’ (the south end), where the
correspondent stated all games were forbidden. He remarked that some seemed desirous of turning
the area into a common.
The more restrictive spaces of inner city parks meant that the playing of sport was not such an issue,
particularly as some of the parks were in or near religious grounds. Under the Open Spaces Act
games were expressly forbidden in such cemeteries without the permission of the church body.180
However, gambling did take place in St. Patrick’s Park and other inner city parks.
175
Scott, op. cit., 20.
Belfast Newsletter May 3, 1887.
177
Scott ibid., 20.
178
Belfast Newsletter May 18, 1886.
179
Township of Kingstown, Reports, Minutes etc 1889, 113-4.
180
Dublin Corporation Reports 1888, Vol I, 169.
176
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CHAPTER 4 - CONCLUSION
THE POLITICS OF ORNAMENT
The nineteenth century municipal park, where it survives relatively intact, provides a remarkably
complete view of both the aesthetic and social concerns of the Victorian age. As landscapes of
‘improvement’ they inscribed the moral and scientific concerns of the times into the very fabric of
the city. Behind the profusion of ornamental planting and furnishing lies a Ruskinian belief in the
redemptive powers of the decorative arts and an idealisation of the working class as an ‘artisan
class’ in tune with nature – though contrary to that philosophy, many of the decorative features in
municipal parks were a product of cheap mass-produced materials that reflected the grim reality of
their urban lives.
On a more positive note the notion of public spaces for the people recognised the rights of workers
to health and recreation and public ownership of land was part of a wider agenda of urban reform
that saw the opening of museums and other places of public benefit, changes that went hand-inhand in the rise of increasingly equitable democracy. Within this ideological shift the parks became –
in theory at least - the meeting ground for the various classes from the artisan to the aristocracy. If
in the Victorian period the aristocracy managed to re-invent itself as essentially and necessarily
philanthropic, the same process also established the working class as the repository of moral
goodness. The persistent appearance of the term ‘artisan’ in the Victorian discussion of public parks
reflects the degree to which the media were attempting to salvage an idealistic version of the
working class, largely a product of the Gothic Revival and later the Arts and Crafts movement. And so
amidst the more refined ‘drawing room furniture’ that attempted to civilise and reform we find the
counter aesthetic of the rustic – in sections of open parkland, branch-work benches and the
ubiquitous use of the Tudor cottage with picturesque gables and faux half-timbering. Manifest in this
ornamental assemblage was the dream of a rural idyll of happy artisan craftsmen that stretches back
to the late eighteenth century and beyond, a world conjured up to counteract and resist the
economic basis of mass production.
The notion of there being a natural link between ornamental art and the artisan workman was
expressed in the founding of the Royal Dublin Society’s Schools of Art ‘established for the instruction
of artisans, the object being to elevate the workman to the position of an artist in his own sphere’ 181.
At the same time plans were formed to create a Museum of Ornamental Art and attempts made to
distance Ireland’s artistic development from that of Britain182. However the reality of these schools
reflected the middle and upper class fantasy of ‘the artisan’ that Ruskin had done so much to
propagate. As early as 1864 a correspondent for the Irish Times reviewing the achievements of the
schools noted:
‘In every point but one the year has been one of remarkable success. The artisan class
have not availed themselves of the instructions given in these schools as they might
have done. The pupils in attendance are really drawn from the higher and middle
181
182
Irish Times March 3, 1868, 2.
Ibid.
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classes, not from the artisan or lower classes. Perhaps they may arise from a want of
acquaintance with the rules of the schools. The artisans may, in general, be ignorant
that for a very trifling fee they can receive instruction from the best qualified teachers
in art and design. There are numbers of trades to which a regular training in art would
be most important. Take for instance, the painters, the paper strainers, the
silversmiths, the cabinet makers, the carpet weavers, &c. There is no workman whose
eye could not be improved by familiarity with the most perfect designs, and whose
hand might not endeavour to work out the invention of a cultivated fancy. The artisan
would gain infinitely more by attending at these schools and cultivating his taste than
he loses by joining in political agitations and societies. We hope the advantages
offered in the schools of the Royal Dublin Society have never been fully brought before
the working classes, for it is better they should be ignorant of what is offered them
than that they should have deliberately rejected it.183
The correspondent also expresses his fear that this apathy might be a result of the lack of
manufacturing establishments to reproduce their designs but insisted that where the work is good a
market will be found. He speaks of the success of manufactures which have had the ‘science of taste’
applied to them and suggests that though the artisan may not have yet had opportunity to display
his skill and taste in Dublin there were other fields where the workmen would receive
encouragement and reward. Lastly the correspondent expressed his optimism that ‘in a few years a
large proportion of the artisan class must be thoroughly imbued with art principles and with the
theory of their application...’184 Most revealing here is perhaps the way the writer posits the benefits
of the artisan’s cultivation of ‘taste’ against ‘the losses’ of his involvement in political agitation. In
this way we might understand attempts to exploit public parks by the working classes for political
meetings with the attempts of the city authorities to undermine such activism through
ornamentation and the idealisation of the people as an ‘artisan class’. That artisan design was in
reality the pursuit of the middle and upper classes, as stated here, should be no surprise as they
were the only ones reading the works of John Ruskin and William Morris who championed an
idealised artisan taste against the rise of mass production. The questioning of excessive
ornamentation and the emphasis on sport at Victoria Park by representatives of working men’s clubs
(see above) is an interesting counterpoint to the middle class agenda in Belfast. Indeed, this working
class perspective deserves to be explored more fully in relation to Irish parks.
LANDSCAPE, ARCHITECTURE AND IDEOLOGY
As we have seen, the majority of Victorian and Edwardian parks were laid out in a broadly
naturalistic and picturesque style, with serpentine walks and stands of trees complementing bodies
of water both moving and still. Only a small minority of parks, such as the People’s Park in Dun
Laoghaire, were laid out in a more geometric fashion. Yet, these were nonetheless highly designed
and ordered landscapes. Features such as bandstands were placed at nodal locations while careful
planting helped to create pleasing variety in the views encountered and to demarcate different
areas of use. The siting of benches around bandstands, along paths and on terraces allowed music
183
184
Irish Times December 27, 1864, 2.
Ibid.
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to be appreciated, lakes to be contemplated, and passers-by to be observed. The railings and often
elaborate entrances to parks were designed to remind those who entered that they must behave in
a respectable fashion and could be excluded if they did not. Gates served to makes these landscapes
inaccessible at particular times and to ensure that ‘undesirable’ elements could be kept out. They
were often furnished with gatehouses in which the park keepers lived; the elaborate and eyecatching architecture of such buildings acted as another way of marking out park entrances as
significant spaces. Doubtless, features such as gateways and gatehouses put visitors in mind of
other park landscapes – those of the private demesnes of the landed gentry; the public were granted
admission to municipal parks, but in return they were expected to behave properly. It seems
possible that the gothic styling of many park railings was another reference to the aristocratic
landscapes of times past.
The rides and walks that form the main arteries of these landscapes and the shelters and seating
that provided places of rest for those who used them remind us that parks were places in which to
see and be seen. The social significance of the promenade has been discussed in the context of the
city boulevards of the period, but public parks provided an equally important setting for this activity.
These were spaces of display, in which appropriate forms of dress and behaviour were required and
where rituals of recognition distinguished those considered to be social equals. Here, it was hoped
that the classes would mingle, providing the poor with an opportunity to learn from and imitate
their betters.185 Many parks were surrounded by middle class housing, while the benches and
elevated terraces in others ensured that parks could be visually policed.186
Similar concerns are reflected in the provision of lighting in many of the parks. Like so many other
park features, lamps were often elaborately decorated, usually with floral and leaf motifs. Lighting
allowed for early evening promenades and musical events. However, the role of imagery of light and
dark in the Victorian imagination must also be taken into account. Darkness and light appear as
frequent artistic and literary motifs accentuating nineteenth century moral and social concerns.187
Urbanisation and industrialisation created a large and impoverished working class living, often, in
appalling conditions. Both the urban middle classes and the British Empire in general were
economically dependent on a cheap and reliable workforce, yet throughout the nineteenth century,
working class political movements posed an ongoing threat to established economic interests. 188 At
the same time, the respectable middle classes sought to distinguish themselves from those both
above and below through strict adherence to religious values and practices.189 In such a context, the
city came to be viewed as a place of dark and dangerous undercurrents, its dank and narrow alleys
filled with the potential for vice.190 In contrast, the bright and open public spaces of the parks
provided a place where respectable people – in particular women and children – could walk in
safety. The ideological importance of this is underlined by the highly elaborate and decorated
character of lamps and light fittings found in these landscapes.
185
Conway op. cit.; Jordan op. cit.; Taylor op. cit.
Taylor op. cit., 216-217.
187
E.g. L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: people, streets and images in nineteenth-century London, Yale University
Press, 2000.
188
E.g. T. Tholfsen, Working class radicalism in mid-Victorian England, Columbia University Press, 1977.
189
F. M. L. Thompson, The rise of respectable society: a social history of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900, Fontana,
1988.
190
Nead, op. cit.
186
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We have already noted that water features of various forms are frequently encountered in Dublin
and Belfast’s public parks. These included expanses of still water such as ponds and lakes, as well as
bodies of moving water such as waterfalls and fountains. The provision of ponds and lakes sought to
instil a sense of calm into these landscapes and to encourage reflection in the viewer.191 A pleasing
sense of aesthetic balance was often achieved by juxtaposing these with moving water, evoking both
the power of nature and human ingenuity. In both cases, the aim was to promote aesthetic
appreciation of the natural world and in turn elevate the human mind above the petty troubles of
daily life.192 Drinking fountains were also provided in many parks and these were often highly
elaborate and monumental. Some, such as that in Herbert Park, are stylistically similar to baptismal
fonts. The provision of drinking fountains can be linked to concerns over public health as well as the
activities of the temperance movement.193 In both cases, symbolic links were made between water,
cleanliness and morality. Other examples, such as that in Victoria Park, Killiney, were embellished
with the head of a lion. Here, a symbol of the English monarchy and its imperial power was overtly
linked with an ethic of improvement, purity and the public good. Water, however, was not the only
form of refreshment made available in parks. Kiosks from which food and drink could be bought
were built in a number of parks. Again, the sorts of refreshment available served to underpin the
idea of the park as a place of sedate and decorous enjoyment: alcoholic drinks were not sold, but tea
– central to that most ‘civilised’ of middle class rituals – was.
It is interesting to note the prevalence of decorative ironwork as a material of choice in the
construction of bandstands, benches, fountains and other features. Iron spoke of Britain’s industrial
might and of the forms of wage labour, capital accumulation and temporality that underpinned it.
Iron was also one of the key materials that facilitated the expansion of the British Empire, employed
to construct and to arm the ships of the British Navy. As such, this choice of raw material formed a
dramatic contrast to the Arts and Crafts style employed in so much of the architecture, and to the
naturalistic motifs used to embellish the ironwork itself. This underlines the variety of stylistic and
ideological influences that can be seen in parks. Rarely were these unified pieces of design; rather,
they developed over a period of time, often with inputs from several different architects and
landscape designers. On the other hand, one might suggest that the use of iron alongside styles that
spoke of a rustic idyll formed alternative, but not necessarily contradictory, ways of domesticating
the working classes and legitimating an industrialised empire. On the one hand, the skill of the
foundry workers was overtly celebrated; on the other, the labouring classes were recast as a
contented peasantry tied through links of reciprocity and tradition to their betters.
We have already discussed the significance of the Arts and Crafts style in Ireland’s parks. However, a
number of other important stylistic influences can be discerned. Buildings and monuments in a
classical style are relatively few; the Fusiliers Arch, St Stephen’s Green, is perhaps the best-known
example. The plain but muscular form of classicism chosen for this monument made clear reference
to the glories of empire, celebrating the sacrifice of the Irish soldiers who died for it. Elsewhere, the
occasional use of the classical style in gatehouses spoke more of ideas of aesthetic refinement and
order,194 a concern we have already argued is highly visible in other aspects of park design. The
191
Taylor, op. cit., 209.
Taylor, op. cit., 204, 209.
193
Conway, op. cit., 1991, 117-120.
194
E.g. J. M. Crook, The Greek revival: neo-classical attitudes in British architecture 1760-1870, John Murray,
1995.
192
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influence of gothic style is also apparent, predominantly in the ironwork employed for railings and
gateways but also in the construction of castellated follies such as that in Blackrock Park. This
stemmed from a romantic fascination with the past in the face of the dramatic social and economic
changes associated with industrialisation and urbanisation.195 The use of the gothic style evoked a
world of clear social hierarchies, renewing the symbolic boundary between the elite and the rest of
society and placing the origins of the Victorian class system in the distant past. 196 The final major
stylistic influence employed in Irish parks was what might broadly be termed ‘oriental’.197 Many of
the bandstands, kiosks and shelters drew their inspiration from the open-sided pavilions and
pagodas of the Orient (or at least the Orient of the Victorian imagination). This can be seen, for
example, in the roofline and roof vents of buildings such as the kiosk in St Stephen’s Green. The
popularity of this style is hardly surprising. With the ongoing expansion of both the British Empire
and of Britain’s trading interests, the architecture and material culture of ‘exotic’ peoples was
appropriated and ‘domesticated’ by being reproduced in more familiar and manageable settings.
Many of the parks examined here made little provision for sporting activities and indeed, as we have
seen, energetic sports and those that were perceived to be ‘rowdier’ were frequently banned.198
Often space was provided only for more ‘sedate’ and middle class forms of exercise such as bowling
and cricket.199 Indeed, as we have seen, working class newspapers often complained about the lack
of facilities for sports popular among the poorer echelons of society such as football and hurling. By
the early years of the twentieth century, however, playing fields were created in many parks;200 it
was hoped that sporting activities would create a fit and healthy workforce and promote relevant
values such as, on the one hand, a respect for rules and a facility for teamwork and, on the other,
the competitive individualism that was the hallmark of Capitalism.
CLASS, GENDER AND COLONIALISM IN VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN PARKS
Our discussion of Victorian and Edwardian parks indicates that these were landscapes in which some
of the key social and political concerns of the day were played out. Although formal, geometric park
layouts were relatively rare, these were nonetheless highly ordered landscapes in which the
behaviour of visitors was carefully regulated. This can be seen in the proliferation of bye-laws that
defined acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in public parks,201 but more important – from an
archaeological perspective – both the layout of these landscapes and the types of features they
contained facilitated particular forms of social control. Above all, there was a clear concern to
produce bodies that conformed to ideas of respectable and decorous behaviour. The way in which
people dressed, the manner in which they walked or sat, the time of day they visited, who they
recognised and who they ‘cut’ – all of these details defined their savoir faire and social position.202
Polite forms of social knowledge and behaviour were both facilitated and underpinned by park
195
C. Brooks, The Gothic revival, Phaidon, 1999; M. Lewis, The Gothic revival, Thames & Hudson, 2002.
M. Girouard, The Victorian country house, Yale University Press, 1979.
197
Cf. Conway, op. cit., 1991, 127.
198
E.g. Scott, op. cit, 20.
199
Cf. Conway, op. cit., 6, 100.
200
Cf. Conway, op. cit., 80; Jordan, op. cit., 86.
201
See individual park entries in Scott, op. cit.
202
Scobey, op. cit.; Domosh , op. cit.
196
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design.203 These were places in which sedate middle-class activities such as the promenade, cricket
and bowling were preferred over ‘rowdier’ sports such as football.204 Paths defined where and how
one could walk and seating was provided at those locations considered educational and morally
uplifting, such as around bandstands or at lakesides.
In addition, parks were places in which the different classes could safely meet and where the poor
could see how their betters dressed and acted.205 As such, these must also be considered
landscapes of improvement. Again, this is underpinned by their layout and facilities. Features such
as drinking fountains and bandstands promoted acceptable and improving forms of behaviour.206
The supremacy of a broadly picturesque style of landscape design sought to achieve a combination
of variety and harmony through the careful juxtaposition of different features, trees and planting.
On the one hand, the informality and variety of the picturesque style created a semblance of
democracy. On the other hand, it legitimated class distinctions and imperialism by suggesting that
difference was part of the natural order of things but that harmony could be achieved through
diversity.207 The creation of a well-behaved and healthy working class was of course in the interests
of their middle class employers.
As we have already discussed, the newspapers and minutes examined for this pilot project clearly
articulate concerns regarding social class. In both Dublin and Belfast, however, class was cross-cut
by religion and politics. In Dublin, for example, a significant percentage of the professional middle
classes were Protestant, conservative and unionist while the majority of the working classes were
Catholic, liberal and nationalist.208 As such, the drive to ‘civilise’ working class behaviour inevitably
also acted as a means of taming those who might be tempted to rebel against the political
establishment. Interestingly, however, parks were rarely drawn into the political debates of the day
reported in newspapers and – with notable exceptions such as the Fusiliers’ Arch – include few
overtly political monuments (instead, they feature more regularly in discussions regarding social
concerns such as public health). In contrast, statues of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and other
members of the aristocracy, and monuments to military events such as the Crimean war, are
frequently found in public parks in Britain.209 It would be interesting to explore the particular
political sensitivities that made Irish parks of the period so different in this regard.
We should note, however, that the majority of the parks examined in this study were a product of
the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. These coincided with the height of the development of
the British Empire and Irish parks can indeed be seen as part of the rhetoric of imperialism. For
example, Victoria Hill, Killiney, was opened to public on the 30th of June 1887 by the Prince of Wales
to mark the Queen’s golden jubilee. Plaques on the main gates and on a pre-existing eighteenth
203
Conway, op. cit., 1991; Taylor, op. cit.
Cf Conway, op. cit. ,1991, 6.
205
Conway, op. cit., 1991; Taylor, op. cit.
206
Conway, op. cit., 1991, 117-120, 131.
207
M. Andrews, The search for the picturesque: landscape aesthetics and tourism in Britain, 1760-1800, Scholar
Press, 1989, 65; S. Bending, ‘The true rust of the barons’ wars: gardens, ruins and the national landscape’, in
M. Myrone and L. Peltz (eds), Producing the past: aspects of antiquarian culture and practice 1700-1850,
Ashgate, 1999, 91; D. Arnold, ‘Transplanting national cultures: the Phoenix Park, Dublin (1832-49), an urban
heteropia?’, in D. Arnold (ed.), Cultural identities and the aesthetics of Britishness, Manchester University
Press, 2004, 71.
208
Daly, op.cit., ch. 7.
209
Conway, op. cit., 1991, 141-142, 156-163.
204
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century monument record the event and the names of those responsible. Military bands played in
many of the parks although due to the sectarian politics of the day they were not universally
welcomed (see above). In 1889, HRH Prince of Wales, wearing the uniform of a Captain of the tenth
Hussars, visited Ormeau Park and presented colours to the Black Watch. 210 In 1900, the same park
was chosen as a suitable setting for a ceremony to present the Freedom of the City to General Sir
George White, a hero of the Boer War.211 Some of the most assiduous promoters of public parks,
notably Lord Ardilaun, were unionist,212 although nationalist politicians also supported the provision
of these places of healthy recreation for the working classes. Finally, it may be no coincidence that
Herbert Park in Donnybrook was – before it was laid out as a public park – the site where the Irish
International Exhibition of 1907 was held.213 This and similar ‘Great Exhibitions’ can be seen as
celebrations of the British Empire’s dynamism and productivity: imperialism and the trade links it
espoused could be presented as the mechanism by which improved material conditions were
brought to the many. Indeed, it can be suggested that the cultural imperatives that made the Somali
village one of the most popular attractions at the Exhibition214 were similar to the aesthetic appeal of
oriental-style design in park architecture. Of course, many of the displays at the Exhibition aimed to
showcase Irish handiwork and to counter stereotypes of Irish workers as inherently lazy, although
Ireland’s place within the Empire was not explicitly challenged.
Within the context of this project it has not been possible to explore in detail the debates around
such events as the erection of the Fusiliers’ Arch. The involvement of Irish soldiers in the Boer War
was a matter of some debate and was deeply unpopular amongst nationalists;215 a thorough
examination of the nationalist press of the period will doubtless provide insights into conflicting
views regarding this. It will be interesting to consider how such political concerns were played out in
the materiality of park design and architecture. For example, we have already noted the use of
shamrock motifs on the bandstand at Sorrento Park, Dalkey. Queen Victoria’s decision to wear a
sprig of shamrock on her dress during her visit to Ireland in 1900 – and to order soldiers in Irish
regiments to wear shamrock on St Patrick’s Day in memory of countrymen who had fallen in defence
of the Empire – provoked serious controversy in the Irish press and amongst the public, many of
whom saw this as a calculated appropriation of the national emblem.216 Clearly, the use of shamrock
motifs at Sorrento Park must be set within such a context and the different meanings that might
have been ascribed to this and other symbols needs to be carefully explored.
Although perhaps not expressed in as overt a fashion as ideals of class and colonialism, the bodily
regimes, performances and practices shaped by park design and architecture ensured the
reproduction of other forms of social identity, notably gender. In dramatic contrast to the pleasure
gardens of the eighteenth century, widely perceived in their day as foci of vice and moral
corruption,217 Victorian and Edwardian parks were designed as safe and healthful places where only
210
Scott, op. cit., 17.
Scott, op. cit., 61.
212
D. Wilson, Dark and light: the story of the Guinness family, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998.
213
B. Siggins, The Great White Fair: the Herbert Park Exhibition of 1907, Nonsuch, 2007.
214
Ibid., 65.
215
Condon, op. cit.
216
Ibid.
217
G. BOYD, DUBLIN, 1745-1922. HOSPITALS, SPECTACLE AND VICE, FOUR COURTS PRESS, 2006.
211
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the most sedate, civilised and morally uplifting activities were allowed. As such, these were
appropriate locations for respectable middle class women (and their nannies) to be seen – at the
right time of day and in the right attire, of course. Most of the sporting facilities provided in public
parks were open only to men. In contrast, women engaged predominantly in the polite social ritual
of the promenade. Here, leaning obediently on the arm of a husband, or pushing a perambulator,
they conformed to conservative ideals of feminine behaviour.218 At the same time, women became
objects of visual consumption – part of a landscape to be aesthetically appreciated by male
onlookers.
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
This short pilot project has demonstrated the significant research potential and heritage value of this
historic resource. There is a sizeable body of surviving buildings, monuments and other features in
Dublin’s parks in particular, and to a lesser extent in Belfast. Unfortunately, these continue to be
under threat from development plans that fail to recognise their importance. For example, the
Blackrock Park Concept Masterplan published by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council in 2007
proposes to demolish the bandstand and to relocate its roof-structure;219 it is unclear what will
become of the dilapidated late-Victorian benches that surround the bandstand at its present
location.
Future phases of this project will record surviving features of Victorian and Edwardian parks
elsewhere in Ireland. Examples include the People’s Parks in Limerick and Waterford, Fitzgerald’s
Park in Cork, Wallace Park in Lisburn and Warrenpoint Park. It seems likely that these will provide
different angles on the themes outline above. For example, there is a canon immediately adjacent
to the bandstand in the People’s Park in Waterford (shown, for example, in a photograph in the
Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland, L_ROY_00106, and still surviving today); the source
of the canon and the reason that it was chosen for use as a feature in this park are clearly questions
relevant to the focus of this research project.
The pilot phase of this project has employed relevant historic maps to record the location of
surviving park architecture and other features. Although some initial observations have been made
in this report, a thorough analysis of the layout and design of these landscapes is required and will
form part of a future phase of the project. This will examine patterning in the siting of particular
features, as well as more detailed discussion of how park layouts sought to create specific ways of
moving through and experiencing these landscapes. In addition, the location of parks with the wider
urban environment will be addressed.
The wealth of historical sources relating to parks has been demonstrated above, and fascinating
insights into the debates that occurred regarding the creation of parks in Dublin and Belfast during
this period have been obtained. As already noted, however, it was possible only to examine
newspapers that are available in digital format within the time constraints of the current phase of
the project. It would clearly be beneficial to investigate other sources, in particular local newspapers
218
219
Cf. Scobey, op. cit.; Domosh op. cit.
http://www.dlrcoco.ie/CCDA/Parks/Blackrock_Master_Plan/report.pdf
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of the period such as the Rathmines Free Press and South Dublin Chronicle. In addition, minutes of
the parks committees of the townships of Killiney, Dalkey and Blackrock undoubtedly contain further
valuable information. Contemporary novels are another source which may provide insights into
behaviour in and attitudes towards public parks, and may shed light on the way in which class,
gender and other forms of identity were constructed in these contexts.
The catalogue produced here includes lists of contemporary photographs and postcards of public
parks in Dublin and Belfast. However, these images need to be subjected to critical iconographic
analysis; contemporary perceptions of these landscapes will doubtless be illuminated by examining
how photographers chose and framed their subjects – including views, features and people. Finally,
a combination of historical documentation and recent tree surveys may provide information on the
types of planting chosen in public parks. Preferences for native trees over exotic species or vice
versa are likely to be partly a result of practicality – what will thrive in the particular conditions of a
public park – and partly the result of aesthetic and ideological factors. The planting of exotic species
in English public parks such as Derby Arboretum had an avowedly educational aim;220 trees were
planted on small artificial mounds to display them to their best advantage and labelled so that park
visitors could learn their names and origins. The appropriation and display of the exotic (whether
plants, animals, people or objects) was one of the strategies that underpinned British imperialism.221
Tree surveys are available for some of the parks discussed in this report and will be examined in
future phases of the project; Dublin City Council, for example, have undertaken a tree survey of
Herbert Park.222
HERITAGE
In heritage terms Dublin retains a substantial collection of well-preserved Victorian parks – genuine
relics of the great age of park. In surveying and cataloguing the parks collectively it has been possible
to identify the high and low points of park heritage in the two cities. Outstanding examples spring
quickly to mind – the People’s Garden, St. Stephen’s Green, the People’s Park, Dun Laoghaire. Inner
city parks have generally fared worse than their suburban counterparts, though St. Patrick’s and
Christ Church remain impressive Victorian spaces. Small parks like St. Mary’s on the north side have
disappeared totally and St. Michan’s is only notable for the survival of its railings. Queen’s Square on
Pearse Street in the south inner city has been completely reconstructed having become almost
totally destroyed. Ringsend Park has little of interest beyond the keeper’s lodge and has lost much of
its original Edwardian character (locals bemoan the disappearance of its flower garden) – though
sections of railing still survive. Dublin is particularly notable for the survival of a wide range of
original Victorian benches, features one would not expect to have survived over a century of public
use. The Botanic Gardens is particularly remarkable in this regard.
220
Taylor, op. cit., 205.
E.g. H. Ritvo, The animal estate: the English and other creatures in the Victorian age, Harvard University
Press, 1987; T. Barringer and T. Flynn (eds.), Colonialism and the object: empire, material culture and the
museum, Routledge, 1997.
222
Charles Duggan (Heritage Officer, Dublin City Council), pers. comm..
221
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The original layout of the parks can still be discerned from early Ordnance Survey maps and
generally there has been little disturbance to the plans of Dublin parks with one or two exceptions.
Fountains such as those in St. Stephen’s Green and Dun Laoghaire still flow and provide central
points for congregation. Where dereliction or neglect can be detected the culprit is often lack of use.
At Blackrock the bandstand and pavilion are excellent and valuable examples of Victorian park
architecture yet appear abandoned and graffitied. In contrast, the Victorian kiosk at the People’s
Garden in the Phoenix Park thrives as a place of refreshment and repose – its original function. At
Dun Laoghaire the old iron stairs to the viewing platform lies half-hidden and derelict behind a wire
cage, testament to the abandonment of the roof above – though the interior is still used as a
tearoom. Why not restore the viewing platform to take advantage of the park’s seaside location and
preserve the totality of its original design?
Belfast, on the other hand, has lost a great deal of its original park features, most notably in its lakes,
railings and buildings. There remain moments of grandeur such as the 1890 gates at Ormeau Park or
the monumental fountain at Dunville, the latter now badly defaced. The story here is of dereliction,
destruction and occasional renewal but it is clear from visiting the parks that they are currently wellmaintained. The economic deprivation of many of Belfast’s working class districts in the twentieth
century no doubt contributed to their decline, as well as the troubles which isolated communities.
Alexandra Park still has a ‘peace line’ running through it and many of its features betray an era of
dereliction and urban decline. At Belfast the damage to the integrity of the Victorian park is largely
irreversible and so much has been lost as to render the city’s park heritage of far less significance
than that of Dublin. An exception can be found at the Botanic Gardens, a type of garden which,
however, stands to some degree outside the genre of the municipal park. However, as Robert
Scotthas already shown, Belfast once had a rich heritage of parks and their history remains an
integral part of the wider history of the city.223
The Victorian park survives as a complex and nuanced expression of class and shifting attitudes
to class in an increasingly democratic world and as such deserves to be preserved as a monument to
that period, something that can be achieved without any infringement on the utility of the parks as
spaces of contemporary recreation.
223
op. cit.
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APPENDIX 1: A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY AND SOURCES
This survey comprised both field work and a limited number of documentary sources.
FIELDWORK
The field work for this project involved visiting all of the municipal parks in both Dublin and Belfast,
to assess the status, quality and whereabouts of original features within each park. This was
achieved the creation of both a written and photographic record of original landscape and water
features as well as a list of all ironwork and architecture.
HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS
A total of 107 photographs of parks in Dublin and Belfast survive in the Lawrence Collection in the
National Library of Ireland and provide significant data on their original features and appearance.
Further photographic evidence exists in the collection of the Ulster Museum, unfortunately
inaccessible at the time of writing. However, copies were made of photographs from the collection
which had already been published – most obviously in Scott (2000).
Other published sources consulted for photographs were:
Johnson, N. 1981. Dublin: the people’s city. The photographs of Neville Johnson, 1952-3. Dublin: The
Academy Press.
Lawrence, W. 1875-1880. Dublin photographs (published album, NLI).
Gorham, M. 1972. Dublin from old photographs. London: Batsford.
Gorham, M. 1975. Dublin old and new. Wakefield: E.P. Publishing.
O’Donnell, E.E. 1993. Father Brown’s Dublin 1925-1950. Dublin: Wolfhound Press.
Hickey, K. 1982. Faithful departed: the Dublin of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Dublin: Ward River Press.
Pearson, P. 1991. Dun Laoghaire Kingstown. Dublin: O’Brien Press.
Craig, A. 1980. St. Stephen’s Green, 1880-1980. Dublin: National Parks and Monuments Service.
Mac Cóil, L. 1981. The Book of Blackrock: the story of the town of Blackrock Co. Dublin through the
ages. Blackrock: Carraig Books (note sources of photographs not referenced).
Crowley, J. 1994. Basin at the Broadstone 1807-1994. Dublin: Broadstone Press (no photos of any
interest).
Lattimore, R. 1997. The Real Donnybrook. Dublin: Kamac Publishing (no photos of interest).
Local History Group Ballybrack, I.C.A Guild. 1980. A guide to Killiney and Ballybrack (no photos of
interest).
Souvenir of Kingstown, Dalkey and Killiney Cooks of Kingstown, Stationers, c.1918 (Victorian Photo
Album NLI).
O’Maitiú, S. 2003. Dublin’s suburban towns 1834-1930. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
There is a number of published volumes possibly containing historic photographs of Belfast which
unfortunately could not be consulted within the timeframe of this pilot project. These include:
Bardon, J. 1983. Belfast: an illustrated history. Dundonald: Blackstaff Press.
Beckett, J. C. 1983. Belfast: the making of a city. Belfast: Appletree.
Haines, K. 1997. East Belfast. Dublin: Gill and McMillan.
Johnston, J. 1993. Victorian Belfast. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation.
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Johnstone, R. 1990. Belfast: portraits of a city. London : Barrie and Jenkins.
Johnstone, R. and Kirk, W. 1983. Images of Belfast. Belfast: Blackstaff Press.
Livingstone, R. 1998. The road: memories of the Falls. Belfast: Blackstaff Press.
Templeton, G. 1998. South Belfast. Dublin: Gill and McMillan.
Walker, B. and Dixon, H. 1983. No mean city. Belfast 1880-1914 in the photographs of Robert
French. Belfast: Friar’s Bush.
Weir, P. 1999. North Belfast. Dublin: Gill and McMillan.
These books will need to be examined in the next phase of the project.
DRAWINGS
Surviving drawings for Irish parks in Ireland are rare but a number have been preserved in the OPW
collection in the National Archives relating to the People’s Garden in the Phoenix Park and to St.
Stephen’s Green (OPW 5 HC/2/38 (2) and OPW HC/4/939). These consist of two folders of assorted
drawings of buildings and improvements (most notably the Fusilier’s Arch, the kiosk in the Green
and the ranger’s lodge in the People’s Garden). Only one drawing of significance survives in the
PRONI collection which is the proposed design for Victoria Park dated c.1890, which provides a
detailed insight into the planning process for public parks during this period. Plans by Sir Thomas
Drew for the public park around Christ Church are preserved in both the RCB Library and the
National Library of Ireland Prints and Drawings Collection.
MAPS
Detailed views of all the Dublin parks are preserved in the 25 inch maps which for Dublin were
largely carried out in three different phases. The first survey, carried out between 1864 and 1867, is
largely irrelevant for the study of parks as it pre-dates most of them except for the People’s Garden
in the Phoenix Park and the Botanic Gardens. The most important maps are the second edition 25
inch maps made between 1906 and 1907, which capture the appearance of most Dublin parks at
height of the Edwardian period prior to any substantial changes to their original design. However for
Herbert Park and Ringsend Park, the last to be built in this era, we have to rely on the third edition of
these maps which date to 1939-40. The most extensive collection of the various editions is to be
found in the Trinity Map Library. The second edition – the most relevant - is available in digital
format through the Ordnance Survey website.
For Belfast the 25 inch maps were made between 1905-7 and revised in 1935-8, and these provide
detailed plans of all the Belfast parks, though the quality is somewhat variable for certain parks
(note: Falls Park is particularly poor). All the various editions are available in digital format through
the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland Website.
NEWSPAPERS
Due to time limitations it was decided to consult only those newspaper sources that had been
digitised and would lend themselves to the investigation of key topics. For Belfast only the Belfast
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Newsletter is presently available in digital form (through the National Library of Ireland) and was
consulted for the years April 1871-June 1887. More information is available for research here and
would be valuable for any future research in this area. Future research on parks should seek to
balance the conservative coverage in the Belfast Newsletter with the views of the more liberal and
nationalist press in the north.
For Dublin extensive use was made of the Irish Times Digital Archive (available through UCD), which
provided detailed accounts of both the debates surrounding the opening of certain parks (the really
controversial ones being the Botanic Gardens and St. Stephens Green), descriptions of work carried
out, names of contractors, and accounts of the council meetings for some of the town councils –
Pembroke was particularly well-reported on. It was not so good for the more suburban townships,
however, and other Dublin newspapers will need to be consulted in future to build up a more
detailed picture of parks outside the city centre. The Irish Newspaper Archive (available through
UCD) provided access to digitised versions of other newspapers, most notably The Nation, which
provided a more liberal and nationalist balance to the conservative and unionist perspective of the
Irish Times. Also of use were the Freeman’s Journal, which covers the entire spectrum of the
nineteenth century, and the Irish Independent from 1900 only. In terms of future research, there are
many undigitised Dublin titles which could be consulted to provide a fuller and more balanced
perspective on parks, particularly at a local level. These may also provide further information about
the involvement of local contractors and any minor disputes over the opening of parks that may not
have made it into the national press.
COUNCIL AND COMMITTEE MINUTES
The best documentary sources for Irish parks are the council and committee minutes that survive for
the various townships where parks were opened. The task is easiest for Belfast where there was a
single Parks Committee for all the parks that reported to the city council. The original written
minutes for this committee survive in PRONI and give a week-by-week account of changes and
developments in Belfast’s parks. These minutes are extremely detailed and were consulted from
1872-1882 in PRONI. While the minutes are very valuable for their detail a good overview can be had
from reports in The Belfast Newsletter which gives regular reports of city council meetings. Any
further research on Dublin and Belfast parks should include more extensive examination of this
source. In Dublin the situation is more complex in that the council for each township generally had
its own separate parks committee, normally only established for the period surrounding the
establishment of the park and then subsumed into a larger committee such as that covering public
health. The Dublin Corporation reports are easily accessible in the Gilbert Library on Pearse Street
where the reports for Rathmines & Rathgar township are now also held. However, it is worth being
aware that much of the material found for the Dublin Corporation parks was reported in more
coherent form by the Irish Times. The Rathmines & Rathgar material is more valuable in that it did
not receive the same press coverage. The Kingstown committee minutes are available in Dun
Laoghaire public library and provide information on the establishment of the People’s Park.
However, it has not yet proved possible to access the minutes of Dalkey (Sorrento Park), Killiney
(Victoria Park) and Blackrock, which are kept by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Further
investigation in to these parks will need to involve consultation with these records as the Irish Times
P a g e | 78
is not particularly extensive in its coverage of their construction and openings. Killiney Park, in
particular, being one of the most complex in terms of its history, requires explanation for decisions
taken over its refurbishment as a public park.
For those parks under the stewardship of the OPW, a small amount of further documentation is
available in the National Archives in addition to those drawings discussed above.