Rathmines Library & Oratory of the Sacred Heart // Open House Dublin 2013

Vistors at the Oratory of the Sacred Heart, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin

Open House Dublin, held annually in October, is Ireland's largest Architectural festival, running annually, part of the Architectural Festival Family worldwide which includes Chicago, London, Lisbon, Helsinki and Dublin. Last October, I volunteered in the North Georgian Quarter of Dublin and I wrote about my experiences here.

Overall participating in this weekend has been a rewarding experience. Over the three days, 100 buildings of historical, social and architectural interest open their doors to the public. This festival facilitates special tours by hundreds of professionals and enthusiasts to interested members of the public. Being a volunteer you get the opportunity to experience these special buildings, share them with the public and meet other interesting volunteers besides.

Rathmines Library



Top: Rathmines library celebrates its centenary this year
Middle: Morris & Co. 1913 stained glass window, with an allegory for literature.
Bottom: View of Rathmines towards Portobello from a library window.

On Saturday, I was based in Rathmines Library. This public library is the second busiest in Ireland, and was full of life all afternoon. It was cheering to see all the young families and various members of the community come through the doors. The stained glass window to the front of the building, was commissioned from William Morris & Co. in 1913, the simplicity of design is certainly in the Morris style. A classical figure is seated in the centre, as an allegory for literature. Rathmines Library is one of libraries funded by the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie's fortune is a true rags to riches story, coming from his successful steel business in the USA. Upon the sale of his business for $480m, he dedicated the rest of his life to philanthropic activities. He built the famous Carnegie Hall, and funded the establishment of public 'Carnegie libraries' throughout the English speaking world.


By great coincidence, or not, when I ventured out to Dun Laoghaire on Sunday, I discovered they too had a Carnegie Library!

Oratory of the Sacred Heart, Dun Laoghaire



Top: Entrance to the Oratory of the Sacred Heart (c. 1919)
Middle: Mural detail of a Celtic figure
Bottom: Painted mural commemorating the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, which had taken place in Dublin
The journey from Dublin city centre takes about 50 minutes on a 46a bus, or 20 minutes on the DART. I was tied for time, as I had to get the last train back to Sligo on Sunday, but it was a beautiful mild afternoon, so I didn't mind the journey or the destination at all!

Sister Concepta Lynch (1874 - 1939, born Lily Lynch) learnt the Lynch Method of Celtic Art from her father, Thomas Joseph Lynch, a renowned Dublin artist who specialised in Celtic illuminations. After her father's death when she was 16, she ran his studio on Grafton street for a further six years, until taking her vows and becoming a nun in the enclosed order at the Dominican convent, Dun Laoghaire.

At the end of World War I, a town in Northern France donated a statue of the Sacred Heart to the parish of Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) to commemorate the many local Irishmen who had fought and died in Flanders during World War One. In response, in 1919, an oratory was commissioned by the Dominican sisters. Upon its completion, Sr Concepta was asked to decorate the altar, after witnessing the style in which she had executed it, her Mother Superior asked her to decorate the entire oratory, and she did so in the Celtic Revival style she had learnt from her father. She worked on the oratory for sixteen years (1920-1936), only giving up when she was in ill health towards the end of her life. As you can see from the pictures its not your conventional war/peace memorial!





Top: The sacred heart statue was brought over from France after WWI, see the Harry Clarke & Co. stained glass in the background
Middle: The ceiling remains unfinished, after Lynch's death in 1939, Harry Clarke & Co. stained glass in the background
Bottom: The Harry Clarke & Co. stained glass was commissioned by Lynch, she had it inscribed with the names of family members who had helped fund and inspire her work in the oratory

The design of the oratory takes its inspiration from Celtic manuscripts, including the Book of Kells, as well as Byzantine methods of decoration. Celtic illuminations are notable for their zoomorphic designs (designs taking animal forms), figures, wonderfully curved designs and repeating patterns. This all encompassing design took Lynch sixteen years to complete between (1920-36), she became ill and couldn't complete the ceiling of the oratory. However, this does not detract from the design, as you can clearly see her design process, where she sketched out the designs in graphite pencil, using templates for repeating designs. Unbelievably the oratory is painted totally in household paint. As she was in an enclosed order she could not purchase the paints herself from a specialist art shop, so she would send her students with a list of her desired colours to the local shop to buy paints.

It is a shame that Lynch isn't more recognised in the Irish art canon. This is possibly due to a number of inter-related factors, significantly, she was in an enclosed order so she was not part of the artistic social scene in Dublin. The oratory itself was in a fixed location on the grounds of a convent in a coastal village outside Dublin, so its not like her life's work could be exhibited to the greater public.



The modern building, or 'shell' that now surrounds the oratory was constructed in the 1990s in order to protect the small oratory. The entrance area has this beautiful mosaic set in the centre, by the artist Laura O'Hagan, who designed it in response to the Celtic Revival decoration of the oratory.

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I apologise for the quality of my photos, it wasn't until I was on a train bound for Dublin that I realised I had forgotten my camera! Its difficult to source photos of the Oratory online, but I found some high resolution pictures of the oratory here on the Militaria Archive.

Rathmines library celebrates their cententary this year, and are hosting a number of fascinating (and free!) talks and events throughout October and November. View the full series of events on their site here.

Read more:
'The Gospel of Wealth' by Andrew Carnegie
Sister Concepta Lynch and the Lynch method of Celtic Art 1874 - 1939
View more high resolution pictures of the oratory here on the Militaria Archive

In Good Hands / Nostalgia and Traditional Irish Craft

Film-makers David and Sally Shaw-Smith

As a child growing up in the West of Ireland, on the suburbs of a large town, we had the "poverty channels" (how us those of us from outside the Pale would later jokingly refer to a childhood spent watching the basic national TV channels). There were only 2 national television stations, Rte 1 and Network 2, the more obscure TG4 and TV3 were later arrivals in the mid 90s. In the pre-Celtic Tiger years, only the more affluent classmates seemed to have the British channels.

I'm glad my parents refused to budge though, because in the days before our huge, awkward desktop arrived in the early 00s, rainy day television was my only distraction when I'd finished reading all my books. I watched a great many things, my interest in old films and eclectic old documentaries stems from this time (necessity fuels the imagination). By happy coincidence, Hands was one of those iconic documentaries screened repeatedly by RTE over the years, I watched quite a quantity of them, charmed by the almost skill of the craftsman, many who seemed to be kindly old rural bachelors who spoke in indecipherable heavy Cork accents. Now numbering over 37 documentaries focusing on the survival of traditional Irish craft in the Age of the Machine, in all the 32 counties on the island of Ireland.





Hands always stuck with me, especially as I later went on to study History and Art History. The nobility of Ireland's rich arts and craft tradition remained as one of my untapped interests. Happily, Lara Byrne, the film programmer at The Model arts centre in Sligo, arranged for some exclusive screenings of the documentary last weekend, with a Q&A with the directors afterward. The weather was a washout, and unfortunately probably deterred a lot of people from attending, but for those of it who determinedly battled our way through the rain to get there, we were rewarded with an intimate Q&A session with the filmmakers, David and Sally Shaw-Smith.

Lara made her decisions wisely. We were treated to two thirty minute long documentaries, one on Rushwork – In Strokestown, Co. Roscommon, we see the harvesting of rushes on Lough Ree, curing and making traditional rush baskets and other items (1989). The second, 'Of Bees & Bee Skeps' (1983) – winner of the Golden Harp for Ireland and in the museum of Modern Art Collection New York; this arresting and moving documentary records the traditional work of bee-keeping from making a straw skep to catching a swarm, and extracting honey.




(Chairmaker John Surlis, Wool spinning and an Irish tailor, Images via David Shaw-Smith)

I can happily report that after watching these documentaries for the first time in many years on a big screen, the authenticity and intimacy of this series has not dated, even though the fashions have! There are 37 documentaries in all, recorded between 1969 and the late 1980s. I love the easy pace of the documentary, reflecting the pace of life in the countryside in which it was filmed. There were a couple of narrators as far as I remember, but the easy, familiar tone of hs voice still is most comforting. I decided to save up to buy the 15 disk complete Hands series at Christmas, but I did purchase a copy of David's beautifully illustrated compilation Traditional Crafts of Ireland. David and Sally kindly signed it for me, and it is now resting on my beside locker, for me to look through before bed each night!

'Imbued by a sense of urgency to record crafts in their natural surroundings before they disappeared completely, David and his wife Sally, under contract to RTÉ, travelled the length and breadth of Ireland and it’s islands to assemble this important collection of 37 films on traditional Irish crafts and lifestyles, where the emphasis is on the skills of human hands rather than on machines.'



While I would urge people to purchase the DVDs from their official website, while searching Google for images I found a few episodes of 'Hands' available to watch online (and I believe in sharing culture wherever you find it):
1. Rushwork
2. Of Bees & Bee Skeps
3. Currach Makers
4. Chairmaker John Surlis

PS. 'In Good Hands' will be a six-part series revisiting some of the families of craftspeople featured in the original 'Hands' series, I believe it is screening on Rte this Sunday.

Open House Dublin 2012

The other volunteers and I outside Number 11 (No. 11 facebook page)

I'd only returned from Venice when my friend Sarah reminded that Open House Dublin was taking place October 5th to 7th. I had hoped to get involved, but I wasn't sure if I'd be here for it or not. So with a couple of days to spare, I asked to volunteer. I was placed on Government Buildings (Upper Merrion St) on Saturday, and in the North Georgian Quarter (North Great George's Street) on the Sunday.

This was the seventh year of Open House Dublin, and each year more buildings open their doors. Open House is Ireland's largest Architectural festival, running annually, part of the Architectural Festival Family worldwide which includes Chicago, London, Lisbon, Helsinki and Dublin. Institutions and houses with a remarkable architectural history open their doors to the public for the weekend, with guided tours led by the owners or professionals who volunteer their time for the weekend. It's a rare chance to see inside some of these buildings, many of which are private residences.


Number 11 North Great George's Street (centre)

On the Sunday, I was thrilled to be placed in the North Georgian Quarter of the city. This handsome street of houses was mostly built in the mid to late eighteenth century, and was once the most affluent area of the city, until fashionable society moved to the south of the city (beyond the River Liffey).


Piano nobile floor of No. 11


18th century Murano glass chandelier




The dolls are only a fifth of the collection of one of the owners' aunts, they make for a quirky decorative feature in the main entertaining room






18th century stucco work by Robert West, painstakingly restored by the owners. At the time of restoration (20+ years ago) there existed no expertise for restoring stuccowork, so they set up workshops in the basement and completed it themselves.




One of the many wonderful features of this house is the amount of objects that have been salvaged, from skips in the 1980s, when these things were of little value in a period of rapid modernisation. The houses themselves would have been in a djsregarded throughout the twentieth century, until people started buying and restoring these houses from the 1970s onward. These objects on the wall chronicle a history of a changed Dublin.

The fanlight above the door would originally have been on the front door of a Georgian building, this too was rescued from a skip.


Original working lock and key, these houses would largely have been used as tenements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, housing dozens of families, so its incredible that these survive in this condition.


Back window looking out onto the stunning garden


Graffiti dating from 1774, you can make out a crudely inscribed name "Cormac", the name and hand suggest this person was educated in a hedge school. The other name is written in script, suggesting a higher level of education attained by this person. The owners didn't discover the graffiti until they had removed the old wallpaper and actually painted over it.


The owners mostly live on the second floor, and in the converted attic. This is their private dining room. The graffiti is located near the door, to the left.


View of North Great Georges Street

The house's interior, possesses an eccentric Victorian influence. In their day, when furniture, carpets and fittings would have been extortionately expensive in the years before the industrial revolution, house decoration was far more austere and in the best possible 'taste'. As John, the owner, said, our view of these houses and their real functions is affected by Downton Abbey, which is a fallacy.

The theme of this year's festival was "Architecture Alive!", and from my experience, these buildings did come alive with the enthusiasm of their owners, you felt like a privileged guest. With my pictures, I hope to capture the eclecticism of the house, it truly feels like a home, adorned with objects the owners have carefully collected over the years, making their home comfortable and enabling the house to continue its life.

The house is available to hire for private functions, weddings and photoshoots, they have a website at Number 11 Dublin.

Read more:
Open House Dublin
North Great George's Street: An Architectural History
Hedge Schools
11 Heaven/North Great George's Street

Titanic Belfast, Belfast, N. Ireland

Front view, Titanic Belfast. CivicArts / Eric R. Kuhne & Associates & London Todd Architects, Belfast

Due to the large volumes of visitors they only let in groups of people every 20 minutes. You wait in the queue at the bottom of the escalators. It became obvious that most visitors went in groups, I was one of the few individual visitors. Its very much a day out for families, tourists, and schoolgroups. The building is buzzing with all the activity of the exhibition on the upper floors, and the Galley restaurant and shop on the ground floor. The ground floor itself is a bit of organised chaos, a bit confusing when you first enter the building.

'Boomtown Belfast'
The first stage of the exhibition, aims to set the scene, or context of the period in which the RMS Titanic set sail. It was a politically potent time in Northern Ireland (as the sandwich boards and banners reflect). These were the years before the Republic of Ireland attained its sovereignty from Britain.

Large screens display archive footage of the streets of Belfast, whilst silhouettes in period clothing walk vertically across the screen every now and them, coupled with the noise of the archive city to recreate the experience of the city. Personally I felt like it added another distraction to a room already filled with people and interactive exhibits.

We are given a run through of life in Belfast at the time, Belfast as "Linenopolis". Linen was a particularly strong industry in Northern Ireland throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, until the turn of the century. Belfast had a strong shipbuilding heritage, like Glasgow, Liverpool and Southampton. RMS Titanic was constructed in the iconic Harland and Wolff shipyard. Titanic Belfast is built on part of the site occupied by Harland and Wolff's shipyard.

Initially I enjoyed how the exhibits explored the social and economic background of Belfast and the Harland and Wolff workers, from the dockers to the office men. Unfortunately, I found in the absence of artefacts, a lot of interactive screens were cluttered around the gallery to make up for this lack of primary sources (a common theme throughout the exhibition itself). They were noisy, and for me, ultimately unengaging, I would have preferred to have looked at contemporary artefacts instead of playing around on a computer screen, or playing an interactive game.

The building work records that original Harland and Woolf gates were installed as part of Titanic Belfast's construction, I'm not entirely sure if these were them, as they are quite a focal point.

As I progressed further, a bizarre turn of events took place, unlike anything I've seen or expected from a museum. I joined a lengthly queue to wait on a Shipyard Ride. The ride was an audio and visual guide as it took you on a tour of a recreated shipyard, informing you how a ship was made, what sort of materials were used, how much manpower would have gone into the construction of the RMS Titanic. It was a bit of a novelty and I suppose if it had been composed as a standard "What was the Shipyard like?" exhibit it wouldn't have been as engaging. I really don't think that it added anything to the experience for me, I would rather have progressed through the exhibition at my own pace and not spent ten minutes queuing for ride that I couldn't just skip past. It was a novelty, but it is a concept that could potentially date very rapidly, five, or ten years down the line.

'The Launch' gallery was exciting - I loved the frosted glass that looks out upon the original launch site. I don't have any pictures sadly, but I thought this gallery was a lovely addition to the flow of the museum. It lent a brief moment of contemplation to the visitor as you progress through the museum.

Original White Star Line first class crockery, from RMS Titanic, originally made by The Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company

'The Fit Out' gallery was the one I was most looking forward to, owing to my own interest in interiors. This gallery recreated three bedrooms, for first, second and third class passengers on the Titanic. These were contained behind glass, and included video projections of people in the costume of the period, according to class. One of the shortcomings of relying too heavily on interactive exhibits was glaringly in evidence here, at least two of the projections were not working while I was there. I think displaying the costumes of the time alongside the room refits would have been more effective, and significantly less hassle. I don't especially need to see a projection of someone in character brushing their hair to help me understand what someone does in their cabin.

This room had a small amount of artefacts, it also had a walkthrough of the styles used in the interiors, and particularly the dining rooms of the the Titanic, comparing it to other luxury liners of its time. Titanic's interiors were far superior to cruise liners of the period, particularly for second and third class passengers. Obviously, displaying genuine artefacts here is an issue, considering most of them are buried 4km below the Atlantic ocean. It was more how they were displayed that I had issue with, but overall, save for the room refits, I felt this gallery was laid out appropriately.

I was particularly piqued by this recognition of Ireland's Titanic town. Mary Mangan was one of 14 passengers from a small community in County Mayo, in the Republic of Ireland. Addergoole Parish (Lagardane) is so-called 'Ireland's Titanic town' as this community suffered the most loss of life in the tragedy, proportionate to its population. Eleven of the fourteen passengers from Addergoole died when RMS Titanic sank on her maiden voyage.

These personal vignettes give the passengers motives for being on the Titanic, some are more poignant than others, such as "Home to show off the ring".

The Maiden Voyage
This is where things started to get personal. For me, this was the most effective element of the whole exhibition. It features the personal stories of the passengers and crew, and their motives for sailing on RMS Titanic. Individual stories were highlighted according to where the passenger docked. On its maiden voyage RMS Titanic had four stop off points on its journey: Belfast, Southampton, Cherbourg and Cobh (then known as Queenstown).

Father Browne's iconic photographs were used to maintain the link between the previous exhibit as one went down the stairs to The Sinking gallery.

The whole architecture of the building itself was very angular, one could look over railings to the floors below, and the large domineering windows that looked out onto the harbour gave one the illusion of being on a deck.

Four more galleries followed after this which I will sum up briefly as I have no visual guides (I didn't take pictures to be honest). The Sinking is an interactive exhibit, with icy cold air conditioning recreating the atmosphere on the Atlantic on that faithful night, with morse code signals ringing in our ears. This seemed fairly effective as my fellow passengers, nay, visitors got quite emotional throughout the course of this. Interactive screens profiled individual passengers and rescue stories.

The heroism and horror of Titanic’s final hours are induced with atmospheric sound and lighting to create a subtle and moving evocation of the ship’s catastrophic and untimely demise.

The Aftermath - This exhibit details the trials that took place on both sides of Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic. It also highlights the recommendations that influenced major changes in maritime regulations to enforce new safety measures, such as ensuring that more lifeboats were provided. Some of the American trial is reacted in a visual exhibit, something we have already established that Titanic Belfast is preoccupied with.

Myths and Legends brings together the many stories, media reports, legends and fantasies that have grown up around the Titanic story. Displays of Titanic memorabilia (from the tame to the tasteless: Titanic ice cube tray anyone?), clips from movies and musicals (Celine Dion on a 5 minute loop really) form the basis of this exhibit. It gives you an opportunity to giggle at the recognise iconography and myth that has grown up around the Titanic myth.

One of the most compelling exhibits Visit & Explore the Wreck gave the visitor access to Dr. Ballard’s high-definition footage from the wreckage. Ballard and his team discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, 4km below sea level. For me, absorbed as I was within the theatre that this footage was being played, the concept was a little marred by a clunky, scripted narrative by two actors who made subjective comments on selected items of debris around the ship (shoes, crockery, etc).

The final exhibit, the Ocean Exploration Centre was made up of... interactive exhibits! You can never have enough, or can you? While not directly linked to the Titanic the aim of this exhibit is to explore what makes up our oceans and aims to provide up to date information on marine biology and archaeology. There was some interesting information panels but ultimately it didn't hold much of my interest so I made a quick exit. I have no doubt that it would interest some people but for me it felt anticlimatic as an end to the "Titanic experience".

One of the Samson and Goliath shipbuilding cranes. These two twin cranes are still in use today and their imposing presence in the harbour around Titanic Belfast allude to the city's shipbuilding history.

Titanic Belfast is ambitious in its vision, I'm not certain if it hasn't isolated part of its market by being just too interactive, at the cost of a real human connection with the objects and the story. Everything is new and glossy, but what will happen when the initial crowds reduce in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how the surrounding Titanic Quarter develops as a cultural hub for Belfast and beyond.