Please find below our new, updated schedule of History and Architecture Walking tours of Dublin for Spring 2023. As always, these public tours feature our fantastic audio-receiver sets. With a range of over 60 meters, these audio receiver are a game-changer: they screen out background street-noise, deliver perfect sound quality, and crucially, allow each guest… Read More Fantastic history & architecture walks Spring 2023
A few coal hole iron covers, these particular two are on Merrion Street. There are coal-hole covers in all the older parts of Dublin. This Merrion/Fitzwilliam area has a particularly rich store of them. The majority of the most interesting are coal holes, those circular discs of cast iron capping the coal chutes, ubiquitous to… Read More Cast of Thousands
A History of the Easter Rising in 50 Objects. By John Gibney historian. Some if not most readers may be familiar with Ireland in 100 Objects, a wide ranging history-through artifact book helmed by Fintan O’Tooole. Here in A History of the Easter Rising in 50 Objects, historian John Gibney (who I know, formerly… Read More A History of the Easter Rising in 50 Objects. By John Gibney historian.
Here is a sight to which Dubliners, or indeed many who’ve visited Dublin, will need no introduction. (my photo) Yes, it’s the famous, justly famous, Long Room of Trinity College. It sits as the top level, the top two levels really, of the Old Library, that handsome old building which divides Library Square from Fellows’ Square in… Read More The Long Room | From superb to sublime.
Recently, we asked readers to identify what this drawing below was, and why it was never built. Many of you wrote in to say, very correctly it was Edwin Luytens’ design (one of at least two he did) in the 1900s, for the art collector and gallerist Hugh Lane. (Above: Hugh Lane, painted by John… Read More The Bridge, the Poet, the Aesthete, and his aunt.
It has been the maddest few weeks of work for a very long time… For many years now I have run cultural programs for schools and colleges, or led one-off tours for schools and language schools, of history or art history, around the city of Dublin. Sometimes I take them to the National Museum, or… Read More Exciting times… and a new start.
The last post was an epic, annotated list on the best sights & visits in Dublin. At the end is appended a few of my favorite coastal walks outside the city. Today, just a bit more detail on my favorite South side walk, from Dun Laoghaire to the end of Killiney beach, specifically the best route, via Sandycove, the 40 Foot,… Read More From the Granite to the Pebbles | Arran’s best 3- harbour walk.
This post is for all visitors and was inspired by my students. They often tell me they find it hard to get reliable information on the most interesting places to see here. This sounds a bit unlikely at first? With Ireland’s long-established tourism, you’d imagine we’re bursting at the seams with reliable, objective lists and maps,… Read More Arran’s Top Dublin Sights & Visits.
On of the best walks near Dublin is the circumnavigation of the Howth peninsula. I love to do the entire 360 circuit, and prefer it anti-clockwise, if you like, as you begin on the south-facing side and so catch more sun. Just leave the car at and start walking somehwere between the modern church near Sutton cross and Sutton dinghy… Read More from Sea to shining Sea, a picture walk, on Howth head.
This is the companion photo essay to the recent Pearse St post. https://arranqhenderson.com/2013/02/20/autumn-when-dublin-comes-to-life-a-little-picture-essay-of-pearse-st/ This walk took place on the same Open House weekend. And our little gathering of arcitectural and social history afficianados were led by the same guide, the excellent Lisa Cassidy. We started just behind the Four Courts, at Chancellery House, (above), designed by Herbert Simms, commemorated in… Read More a shorter photo essay- Four Courts to Green St & around.
Arran Q Henderson 