Sites of the Civil War by Donal Fallon

When the trade union leader Jim Larkin returned to Ireland in May 1923, he cut a very different shape from the revolutionary of a decade earlier and the excitement and agitation of the 1913 Lockout. After a stint in New York’s notorious Sing Sing Prison, and having become something of an obsession to later FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Big Jim was back on Irish soil. The authorities in both London and Dublin feared what this could mean for the Civil War, but they needn’t have worried. At a meeting, Larkin laid out his case for the Republican movement to abandon the armed campaign and turn to politics: “Give up your arms. There is no disgrace in peace. There can never be dishonour in peace.” By then, everyone was war weary.

If the Decade of Centenaries began for many with commemoration of the Lockout in 2013, it has eventually arrived at its conclusion with the anniversary of the ending of the Civil War. Culture Date with Dublin 8, taking place in May, is an annual festival that celebrates the rich cultural, historical and architectural heritage of the Dublin 8 area. An expansive postcode, and one of only two that span both sides of the Liffey (with the inclusion of the Phoenix Park on the northside), numerous institutions in the area are deeply connected to the story of this pivotal moment. Some of them are more familiar than others.

How many of us have stepped inside Goldenbridge Cemetery? Its walls visible from the passing Luas, Inchicore is home to a cemetery that predates Glasnevin Cemetery, but which shared the same egalitarian vision of Daniel O’Connell, founder of both. A final resting place for more than a million people, Glasnevin opened in 1832, some three years after O'Connell's crowning achievement of Catholic Emancipation. The much smaller Goldenbridge, from 1828, came before it. For O’Connell, parity of esteem extended beyond this life, embodied in his statement that “we wish to live on terms of amity and affection with our brother Protestant fellow-countrymen. "We earnestly desire to be united with them in our lives, and not to be separated from them in death.”

One of those buried in Goldenbridge Cemetery is W.T Cosgrave, the son of a publican from nearby 174 James's Street who went on to become the first political leader of the new state. Even before the 1916 Rising, Cosgrave was a councilor for the new Sinn Féin party from 1908. A veteran of Easter Week, he went on to play an important role in the clandestine Dáil Éireann during the War of Independence, before assuming a leadership position in the Pro-Treaty side and achieving the office of President of the Executive Council. Cosgrave did not expect to make it through the conflict, his biographer Eunan O’Halpin writing of how “under threat of assassination, he wrote a note forgiving whoever might kill him.” Unlike contemporaries on both sides of the conflict, he lived to be an old man. He was buried in the family plot at Goldenbridge in 1965.

Today, tours of Goldenbridge Cemetery are offered by guides from the neighbouring Richmond Barracks. One of the great success stories of the Decade of Centenaries, new life was brought to a barracks which dates back to the early nineteenth century, and which housed many visiting regiments over its lifetime. It was within the gymnasium of Richmond Barracks that ‘G Men; - the much-feared intelligence police of the Dublin Metropolitan Police - inspected captured rebels after the Rising, identifying ringleaders who were later executed. Local historian Seosamh O Broin, reflecting on that importance, has noted that “if the saga of Easter Week is seen as a drama – the first act of which is centred on the GPO and the last act the executions in Kilmainham Gaol, then the penultimate act was played out in Richmond Barracks.”

In Civil War times, a new army took control of the barracks, which was renamed in honour of Commandant Tom Keogh, a young Free State army leader killed in a mine explosion near Macroom in September 1922. Keogh had been just sixteen when he took part in the Easter Rising. Just six years later, the barracks in which he’d been detained after that event was renamed in his honour. A beautiful artwork in the garden of the barracks, 'A Walk' by artist Joanne Byrne, honours Constance Markiecicz. She was interned here after the Rising, and sentenced to execution. She lived to fight another day, and became a leading voice in the Anti-Treaty movement, telling the Dáil that “my idea is the Workers' Republic for which Connolly died.”

At nearby Kilmainham Gaol, the prison was once more a place of detention during the Civil War. Some of its walls carry graffiti from the period, such as the bold declaration of ‘A FEW MEN FAITHFUL AND A DEATHLESS DREAM’, complete with a tricolour and ‘1923.’ Kilmainham was the site of the first official executions of the conflict, when James Fisher, Peter Cassidy, John Gaffney and Richard Twohig were executed on 17 November 1922.-All four were young working class men from the neighbouring Liberties, with James Fisher just nineteen. The prison also housed Grace Gifford Plunkett, whose cell includes a beautiful mural of Madonna and Child. For Grace, it was surely a surreal experience to be a political prisoner in the very prison where she had wed Joseph Mary Plunkett, hours before his execution in 1916. From Kilmainham, she wrote to her friend the artist William Orpen: “Send me a pair of roller skates - isn’t that a staggering request - but we aren’t confined to cells all day.” Some of Orpen’s work is on display in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, in the exhibition Championing Irish Art: The Mary and Alan Hobart Collection.

In the heart of the Liberties area, the Civil War story is sometimes hiding in plain sight. No plaque marks 135 Thomas Street, once the headquarters of the ‘Neutral IRA’, a body established by Florence O’Donoghue and Sean O'Hegarty, gathering up those who wished to bring an end to the fighting between former comrades. They sought to "bring about the termination of the present deplorable conflict", and their very existence - with a claimed membership of some 20,000 men - is a reminder there were many who took no part in the conflict. A similiar message, of trying to move on from the division of the conflict, is found in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. A bust to Erskine Childers, Ireland’s second President from the Church of Ireland tradition, is a reminder of the commitment of his father to healing. Before going to his own firing squad in 1922, Erskine Hamilton Childers had asked his sixteen year old son to later seek out and shake the hand of each man who had signed his death sentence. That the son of an executed Anti-Treaty leader could become President of the state within a few short decades was in itself remarkable.

Highlights of the Civil War strand of Culture Date with Dublin 8 will include a lecture by Ronan McGreevy in Richmond Barracks on the killing which sparked the Civil War outbreak in Dublin, and tours of Goldenbridge Cemetery. This is a chance to step inside places - some familiar, some new to us - and discover the very rich history and heritage of Dublin 8.

Donal Fallon is the presenter of the Three Castles Burning podcast and author of Three Castles Burning: A History of Dublin in Twelve Streets.