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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
Paul Bloomfield
states
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Paul Bloomfield
Mom talk has just been blowing up. Whitney and Jen are on Dancing with the Stars. Taylor is a bachelorette.
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Podcast Host or Co-host
Saying that out loud is crazy. That is huge.
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Paul Bloomfield
But all the cool opportunities could pull us apart.
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Podcast Host or Co-host
It's causing issues in everyone's marriage.
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Paul Bloomfield
My whole world is falling apart right now.
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Podcast Host or Co-host
It's chaos.
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Commercial Announcer
Watch the Hulu original series the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives now streaming on Hulu and Hulu Disney. For bonus subscribers terms apply.
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Podcast Host or Co-host
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Podcast Narrator
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. To mark St. Patrick's Day today, we're going to revisit an episode of our History's Greatest Cities series, exploring the historic city of Dublin. And if you enjoy the episode, don't miss the new series of History's Greatest Cities launching next Tuesday. We'll include all the details of that in the description to this episode, but for now, I'll hand you over to your guys to Dublin Paul Bloomfield and historian Gillian o'. Brien. And Paul started by asking Gillian about her connection to Dublin and what makes the city so exciting.
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Paul Bloomfield
Well, I'm from very close to Dublin and grew up with trips to Dublin most weekends and went to university in Dublin. I've always had a fascination with the city, which I have spent quite a lot of time researching. And I think it's sort of the multi layered aspect to the city that you can dip it at various points. There's the literature, there's certainly drama and warfare and conflict. And it's a city that hasn't always been comfortable with its own identity. And I think that's really interesting and how it struggled with its identity. And I think it's somewhat more comfortable with it now than it was in the past.
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Gillian O'Brien
Well, it's interesting, you talk about identity, which is often linked with names. And of course, Dublin's name has a long history as well. Can you tell us about the origins of the city that we now call Dublin?
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Paul Bloomfield
Dublin has two names, really, because obviously Ireland has two official languages, so it has Irish as one language and English as the second. And Dublin in English is Dublin, but in Irish it's Balliol. Clear that they are not direct translations. So they actually come from two separate names for the same settlement, which I always think is interesting. I think most people would assume that Balliol eclear was the translation of Dublin, which is not unusual or unreasonable to assume. But Ohaklea means hurdle fort. And it really was about a very early settlement close to the River Liffey, which straddled both sides of the Liffey, which is the Liffey that dominates the city today and has always dominated the city. And it was a very low fort that you could get across with woven strips that people could cross the the river on. And that's where you get the name Ohaklea. Now, Dublin comes from Dove Lynn, which in Irish is Black Pool. And it relates to a monastic settlement that grew up in the same sort of area, but very close to a tidal pool for the River Liffey, where the River Liffey met with another famous Dublin river called the Poddle, which is now primarily underground. And you can only see it in very occasional places. And that black pool, that tidal pool is Dov Lyn, and therefore Dublin. So actually in today we get both of those names together if you use the two languages.
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Gillian O'Brien
So who were those people who founded the original settlement, that early settlement on the ford and then the monastic site?
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Paul Bloomfield
Well, we know very little about them because we very few records about the people that were in Dublin. There were certainly settlements and more than one settlement around Dublin in the period before the 9th century, when we began to have more records. But there were people both living in a monastic type settlement, and there were traders and those who were using the river for their livelihood. But we don't have. We obviously don't have written records. And almost everything associated with them would have been organic matter. So they would have built their shelters from mud and wood. And we have very few things remaining from that period. So it's very hard to know exactly who was there.
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Gillian O'Brien
Okay, so where do we first read about, if you like, in written sources? What's the first recorded history of the settlement?
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Paul Bloomfield
Well, we begin to know a lot more about the settlement that becomes the city of Dublin when the Vikings begin to raid. Now, they begin to raid Dublin as they raided a lot of port towns across Europe, but they tended not to settle. So they would come, they would raid, and then they would disappear again. But they begin to settle around 837 and begin to kind of stay over winter, basically, and begin to establish kind of a more formal settlement. And that all sounds very peaceful, but it wasn't as peaceful as all that. I mean, there is a lot of brutality surrounding the arrival of the Vikings. I think sometimes we forget because they become sort of vaguely romantic. So you really begin to see Dublin emerge on the site that the city center is now from the period where the Vikings arrive in the 9th century.
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Gillian O'Brien
And how did that relationship between the Viking settlers and the indigenous people of the area at that time evolve?
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Paul Bloomfield
I think initially it was troubled, but I mean, you certainly very rapidly get intermarriage. I mean, there are all sorts of problems. Dublin was used as a slave trading base for the Vikings at a certain point. And you can see shackles and chains that were used by the Vikings, which are now on display in the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street. And you can see remnants of a very brutal period in Irish history, but you also can see remnants of a quite domestic period. So we have records of kind of domestic life, and there was clearly considerable intermarriage because the Vikings coming on their ships, they tend to be all men. Once they settle, they tend not to bring families with them from Scandinavia, but to intermarry with those who are already resident in Ireland. And so quite quickly, you've got a quite blended city, well, town which ultimately becomes the city.
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Gillian O'Brien
So how did that town develop? Was this a trading post? Was it a port? Was it using the hinterland for gathering food? What was its status in if you like the later 9th, 10th centuries?
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Paul Bloomfield
Well, it's all of those things. So there's a lot of trade through the ports. There's also trade within the city, and you have very fertile land around the city. So you begin to have animals being brought into the city from outside the settlement itself.
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Gillian O'Brien
By the 11th century, we've got a settlement there which was older than the Vikings, but has Viking elements. And of course, in the 11th century, attention comes from east again. The Normans have invaded England, and they're turning their attention to Ireland. How does that affect Dublin? How does the settlement progress?
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Paul Bloomfield
I think one of the key periods in Irish history before the arrival of the Normans, is an event associated with a man called Brian Boru. Brianborough was one of the very significant chieftains in Ireland who had aspirations to become what was known as the high king of Ireland, so that he would have control over the other chieftains, but because of Viking settlement, and there were various alliances between Vikings and the Irish chieftains, what you end up in 1014 with is a dispute between Brian Boru, who wants to assert his authority over Dublin, and the Vikings in Dublin, who want to maintain their authority over the town. And it ends in very famously in what's known as the battle of Clontarf. Now, Clontarf now is a bustling suburb in the city, but then feels very close to the coast. And there is a very significant battle that takes place there where Brianborough's troops ultimately win. But it is in many ways a pyrrhic victory because he dies just after the battle, where he's beheaded in his tent. So it is a victory of sorts. But the reason it's really important is it becomes. It passes down as a story of the last time the sort of the native Irish were victorious over an invading force. And that's a story that gets repeated and repeated and repeated. Now, what people generally don't add into the story is that one of Brian Boru's daughters was married to Sitric silkbeard, which I think is a great Viking name. He was the Viking king of Dublin, and Brian Boru was fighting with Vikings on his side side, as well as fighting against the Vikings. So everything, if it all seems simple, then, you know, you've probably got the wrong story, that it's always more complex than it seems. So, you know, that sort of set up a whole system where there was dispute in the city and then you have the arrival of the Normans. And that's partly, again, to do with internal politics. It's to do with who wants to be the High King of Ireland and the King of Leinster? A man called Dermot MacMurrough had aspirations to be the High King. He was not making enormous progress in this. And so as part of his attempt to enhance his approach to becoming High King, he invited a number of Normans to come and fight with him. And that was partly because they had better weaponry, they were more sophisticated militarily. And he thought, if I have them on my side, the chances of victory are strong. I mean, he hadn't really anticipated what might then happen. So a number of Normans come over in 1170 and the most famous of those is a man called Strongbow. He's a very well known military man. His name is Richard de Clare and he's the Earl of Pembroke. So he's a very significant figure. And he becomes the most famous of the Anglo Normans and he very famously marries the daughter of Dermot McMurrogh. And in a way, that's to sort of seal the alliance between the Irish chieftain and the Normans. And if you go to the National Gallery, you see a really famous painting, 19th century painting of that wedding. And it's an enormous painting. It takes up an entire wall of the National Gallery painted in the 19th century by a man called Daniel Maclise. And it's really famous, it's reproduced everywhere. It's really well worth going to see because it looks like a romantic wedding. But if you look closely, the Irish chieftains at the wedding are shackled. They've got thick collars around their necks and there's chains. There's an Irish sort of castle on fire. Dermot McMurrogh himself looks very disappointed and there are dead and wounded Celtic soldiers all over the place. And somehow people seem not to notice this. But it's a really good story about that period and how different people interpret the Anglo Normans arrival in very different ways.
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Gillian O'Brien
So after the arrival of the Anglo Normans and particularly Clare, what impact did that have on Dublin as a settlement and a community, the people who lived there and the way that it evolved.
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Paul Bloomfield
It has a significant impact on how the city evolves, partly because you have the beginning of what ultimately becomes known as the Pale. Ultimately, what happens is with that marriage between Dermotic McMurray's daughter Aoife to Strongbow, Dermot McMurray dies quite quickly after this and women don't inherit, but a son in law might be able to fill that gap. And so very quickly, Strongbow goes from being kind of almost a mercenary who's been invited over to someone who has real power, real authority and in many ways real skill. So you see Dublin beginning to become much more representative of what we begin to see. So in terms of trade, in terms of population growth, but there are tensions between the Anglo Normans and those who were the original inhabitants.
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Gillian O'Brien
And obviously Normans love to build castles. So there was a castle built at that time in Dublin, wasn't there?
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Paul Bloomfield
Dublin Castle was built in that period. And in fact, the garden of where Dublin Castle is today, which is very much in the city centre, is where that tidal pool of Dove Lyn is likely to have been. It's where we think it was now, the castle that exists today. There's hardly any of the original castle built in the Norman times, so very often it looks quite like a stately home. So a lot of visitors go expecting to see a turreted castle, but that's not what's there now, but that is what was being what was built during, during the Norman period. Dublin is extremely proud of its sort of Viking and to a lesser extent, I think it's Norman heritage, but there's very little of it to be seen. And that is in part because the government didn't try to save an area of Dublin called Wood Quay, which, when there were excavations, in order to build what's now Dublin City Council's headquarters, they discovered an enormous amount of the original Viking settlement was there, with an enormous amount of artifacts. And the way in which the mud had been compressed meant you could still see the streets. And it ended up that there were huge, huge protests, there were marches through the city to try and prevent the building going ahead and to keep this enormously valuable settlement and all of the pieces associated with it, which ultimately failed. So now you can see what they excavated in the National Museum. You can see parts of the city wall and you can find those little bits of what's remained of the wall. But it is a real loss to the city. But one of the best places to see part of that old medieval Dublin is in a really surprising place. So there's a little supermarket which is, you know, people go to for the middle island to buy a chainsaw or whatever. So there's a little supermarket on a street called Anger street in Dublin city centre. And when they were very recently, in the last few years, doing some work to expand, they discovered there were remnants underneath of the old city walls of Viking settlements, of some 18th century buildings. So instead of doing what would often be done, which was you do an excavation and then you just Build over it. If you go to that little. They have glass sections in their floor. So as you're buying your milk and vegetables, you can look down and see the medieval city below your feet. And it's. It's brilliant. It's totally unexpected. It's totally free, obviously, to go to, but it's a really unusual way of kind of commemorating thousands of years of heritage while doing your shopping.
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Gillian O'Brien
Incredible. So we've got now an Anglo Norman city, if you like, or controlled by Anglo Normans. It's fortified and surrounded by this area, the Pale, which is the area that the Anglo Normans have at least some control over. How does the settlement evolve from the end of the 12th century?
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Paul Bloomfield
It continues to expand. I mean, that's almost always the case with Dublin is that it continues to expand. And what you have happening as you move into the sort of Tudor period, I guess, is you have a number of significant buildings that you can still see. You've got things like Christchurch Cathedral, you've got a number of religious settlements being established that remain visible today. So you've got several churches. And you begin to see the skyline of the city are steeples. The earliest map I think we have of the city is 1610 by a man called John Speed. And you can see there that churches are. Are kind of dominating what is still a relatively small, enclosed city. So you have the city wall, which is a stone wall surrounding city, but then you do have that spread beyond the city, and that makes a difference to how it develops. Where there's very controlled within the city, but outside the city or the city walls, it's not so controlled at all. With the arrival of the Tudors, you have at this point, considerable kind of control, certainly in the area of the Pale, which, as you say, is Dublin and the surrounding counties. And that term or phrase that people use today about something being beyond the pale, which makes it unacceptable or outrageous or possibly dangerous, that comes from the area around Dublin in this period, because that was the area where the Irish chieftains still had control. Ireland was very heavily wooded, so it was sort of dangerous to go beyond the Pale. And that was largely the case for those who were living in the city, or at least those who had power, because a lot of the city is made up of people who are just traders or eking a living, again, mostly living in houses that were made of wood. And at one point during this period they banned thatch. And one of the reasons for banning thatch is the possibility of fire, because lots of the city would frequently go up in Flames. There are a lot of reasons why the population was hit hard. So it's hit hard, I guess, going back a little by the bubonic plague which races through the city in the 14th century, 1348, you've half the city population is annihilated, which is not particular to Dublin, I guess, but you do have these ebbs and flows of population. The Reformation, though, has a big impact on Dublin. A number of things in Dublin that make a big difference is one, there's a rebellion by a man called Silken Thomas. Silkenthomas. I learned about Silken Thomas in school, where you had to learn lots of things by rote. And all I ever remembered about Silken Thomas was he was known as Silken Thomas because of the fine clothes he and his troops wore. But he was from the family Fitzgerald, who were very significant family in Dublin and outside in the Pale. And Silkenthomas believed his father had been executed at the Tower of London. He hadn't been, but this story got back to Dublin and so he stages a rebellion. Now, ultimately the rebellion is put down and the real significance of that rebellion, he is executed for his role in it. But. And the real, I think, impact was that the monarchy in Britain began to pay an awful lot more attention to what was going on in Dublin. And so they clamped down on the attempt by these local lords to claim power. And the Reformation has a huge impact because the closure of the monasteries. So there are a lot of those sort of changes and you begin to have a city that I think you would recognise today.
- [21:12]
Gillian O'Brien
So we've got that sort of development from the Reformation. The 16th century and the 17th century particularly was quite a turbulent time for Ireland and Dublin in particular, wasn't it?
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Paul Bloomfield
Yeah, the 17th century is very busy. One of the big things that happens in the 17th century is the 1641 rebellion. And the 1641 rebellion was a rebellion that largely took place in Ulster, but the impact on Dublin was significant. So the 1641 rebellion was, to simplify it considerably, was a rebellion largely by Catholics who had been dispossessed of their land, and that land had been given to Protestants, both Anglican and Presbyterian, and they wanted it back, essentially. And it becomes initially a fight to try and get that land back, but then it develops into something more and it begins to pitch for the first time, really, people against each other in Ireland, specifically because of their religion. And I think that's significant because one of the reasons of why you'd be on one side or the other is because you were either Catholic or you were Protestant. Dublin remains Protestant in this case. So you have the 1641 rebellion and then you have the Civil War. Now, the Civil War isn't actually taking place in Ireland, but the English Civil War, the Cromwellians, the Parliamentarians, that does bleed through and has a very significant impact on Ireland. There's a statue of Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament in London where he's seen as sort of the father of the Parliament. And there are good things about Cromwell if you're in England, In Ireland, he's probably the most hated person. When the Cromwellian forces win and you've got the execution of the king, Cromwell and his forces come to Ireland in part because in order to finance the civil war, he had promised land to a number of his, to many supporters. And where was he going to get that land? Well, a very good place to get that land was Catholic Ireland, who had been very loyal to the crown. And so that's what he does. And it's a very brutal suppression of the Catholics, famous for a massacre that takes place in Drogheda, just north of Dublin. Dublin had remained Protestant and ultimately Parliamentarian. So there's that decade of real flux in Ireland with people losing land, people gaining land, new people coming in. And the key figure in Dublin at the time is a man called James Butler, who's the Earl of Ormond, who like loads of others, he comes from a family where he is converted, but lots of other members of his family who remain Catholic. It's never so straightforward. So he ultimately surrenders to Cromwellian forces when they come to Dublin in 1647, and then he returns to Dublin a few years later to try and retake the city, fails to do that, but comes back at the restoration of the monarchy. So that period from the 1640s to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 is a period of enormous flux. And once you get the restoration of the monarchy, things don't get any simpler because the King, who the monarchy had been supported in Ireland, lots of those supporters had lost their land. He wants to give back the land, but he can't take all the land back because that'll create another conflict. So he gives back part of the land and it creates all sorts of tensions. So in the space of a couple of decades, you could have lost or gained your land about four times.
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Gillian O'Brien
And obviously following the Restoration, Charles ii, the merry monarch, had his rule. His successor, James the second and seventh in England, was very unpopular and was ousted in the so called Glorious Revolution. And that had a big impact on Ireland and Dublin as well, didn't it?
- [25:10]
Paul Bloomfield
Yeah. So you think everything might be settling down in Dublin and the city now has maybe 50,000 people in it. And then there's a Catholic king is restored to the throne and becomes king of Ireland, obviously as well. And this, in a predominantly Catholic country, is seen as a great thing. And it's interesting that in Ireland you will very rarely hear that period, that war between William and Mary and her father, King James ii. You won't hear it referred to as the Glorious Revolution, because for certainly nationalists in Ireland or those who become nationalists in Ireland, there was nothing glorious about it at all. And that does throw everything into flux, because a Catholic cake king is an opportunity for Irish Catholics to assert themselves and they do begin to ascend to positions of power, particularly in the military. And there are two, I think, kind of key things. So the most famous battle is the Battle of the Boyne. That battle on 12 July 1690, which takes place about 30 miles north of Dublin, is the most famous battle. It's not actually that important militarily. Nobody wins or loses the war because of this battle. And the reason we talk about it so much is because the two kings were there. And that's really, really unusual that actually in a war the kings are on the battlefield. But Dublin is abandoned by James supporters after that battle. So it is significant for Dublin because the Catholic supporters abandoned the city after the Battle of the Boyne. The war itself ends a year later after a lesser known battle in Galway called the Battle of Aughram. This changes things for Ireland and for Dublin very significantly because you have the passage of what becomes known as the Penal Laws. And those laws which were enacted from the 1690s into the 1720s, make Catholics second class and later third class citizens. So they're not allowed to join the army, they're not allowed vote, they're not allowed to sit in parliament, they're not allowed to inherit land. Priests and bishops are largely banned. Essentially, they're put in position of economic, social, political and religious inferiority. And some of those laws also affect Presbyterians, who are also then sort of seen as second class citizens. Now that changes things very significantly because then the only really significant presence in terms of kind of political power are Protestants in Dublin, who make up a relatively small percentage of the population.
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Gillian O'Brien
And of course, that century through the 18th century was a big period of development for the city, wasn't it? You know, a lot of the buildings, the really major grand buildings that we still see today arose during that time, didn't they?
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Paul Bloomfield
Yeah, I mean, the 18th century is really identifiable if you walk through the city today. Dublin in the 18th century really is the second city of the British Empire after London. It's probably the most important city. It has its own parliament, which is significant. Now, it's not a parliament that's representative of the population of the city or indeed the country, because it's entirely members of the Church of Ireland. But the fact that it has its own parliament means it brings a lot of money, it brings a lot of very well connected people, which means it brings a lot of people wanting nice houses in the city. And so Dublin is very famous for its Georgian squares. And it's in the 18th century that most of those are developed and many of them still exist today. And the names of those places, like Mountjoy Square, they're all named after a lot of those who built them and the big names. So Capel street in Dublin is after one of the families. Mountjoy Square is after another, Fitzwilliam Square after another, Dawson street, all of those. You can read a lot about the city's history through the naming of those 18th century streets. Though we did rename quite a lot of streets after Irish independence. There's all sorts of really beautiful, significant sort of civic buildings that were built at that time. But it's also a city where there's an awful lot going on. The theaters are being built, there are hot air balloons, you know, going up in the sky. There are fireworks pretty much every night. But there's also places to promenade. So around St. Stephen's Green is the place where you would go if you wanted to be seen. One of the other things you get is the rotunda, which is a, well, what was called a lying in hospital, but it's a maternity hospital which was built in the 1740s. And that's the, I think, the world's oldest and longest maternity hospital in continuous use, which I think is quite interesting. And some of the original building is still in use, which might not be ideal, I suspect, for some of the women who were there.
- [30:06]
Gillian O'Brien
Well, so that period, the 18th century, sounds like it was a wonderful time for people who had money and influence in Dublin and Ireland. But obviously that. That wasn't necessarily representative of the majority of people there. So how did that play out over those years of the 18th century and into the 19th?
- [30:25]
Paul Bloomfield
Yeah, I mean, you do have that mix of some people going down to Fishamble street to listen to Handel's the premiere of Messiah. But on the other hand, you have incredible poverty in the city. And part of it has been pushed to the margins and very little is being pushed being done that. There's no sort of civic society. But you do have the beginning of a number of buildings, of kind of institutions that are designed to help the destitute and the poor. And you do have a number of charitable organizations being set up. And they are being set up in recognition of the fact that there is increasing poverty in city. Now there are quite a lot of employers. So one of the, I guess the most famous employer established in 1759, you have Guinness Brewery, established by Arthur Guinness. Now when that was established, it was one of a number of breweries in the city. And over time they bought up a lot of the other ones. So by the 20th century it's the biggest brewery in the world. But that created quite a lot of employment. I think per capita there were thousand inns and taverns in the city. So all of that is both creating employment and also causing problems. One of the things that the Guinness family ultimately do is they build quite a lot of housing for their employees and are largely regarded as very good employers. But you do have this buildup of enormous poverty and that particularly goes into the 19th century. And as you move further into the 19th century, because the Irish parliament is closed because of the passage of the act of Union, a lot of those grand houses are abandoned by their very wealthy owners. And they ultimately become subdivided and subdivided and subdivided, subdivided into what are called tenements. And tenements in Dublin are not the same as the tenements in Scotland where they are purpose built multi family homes and very desirable. In Dublin they are not. And you get in some instances single family Georgian homes by the end of the 19th century housing over 100 people with no running water. So Henrietta street, where number 14 is open to the public and it tells the story of its great grandeur. You can see the original amazing staircase that brought you into the house. But as you go through the tour, you also see alongside that great grandeur, its decline into poverty, into dereliction, into having over 100 people living. It's subdivided in these rooms with only an outside pump for bringing water in and one sort of outside toilet. But that outside toilet was open to the street, so all 100 people could use it, but anyone also passing could use it. So incredibly insanitary conditions in what had been the grandest street in Ireland. And it is well worth, you know, if you want to get a sense of the city through that period, that house is absolutely worth going to see.
- [33:37]
Gillian O'Brien
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- [33:41]
Commercial Announcer
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- [33:44]
Gillian O'Brien
Duo keeps every user and device protected. Cisco Duo fishing season is over. Learn more@duo.com so we have that story of inequality of great grandeur and economic and social problems in dublin during the 18th century. Moving into the 19th century. Of course, one of the most notorious events in Irish history was the terrible famine of the 1840s. Can you tell us a bit about how that happened and what its impact was on Dublin?
- [34:13]
Paul Bloomfield
Yeah, well, the famine of the 1840s was largely the result of a blight that hit the potato crop and that hit potato crop right across Europe. But in no other country were the poor so dependent on one crop for essentially almost all of their food. So once the potato crop failed and then repeatedly failed, you've got huge people, huge numbers of people not able to feed themselves or their families. And that creates, obviously a disaster and a terrible situation. So over the course of a five year period, you've about a million people dying of starvation or of diseases associated with malnutrition, and you have over a million emigrating. This situation was not helped by a lack of interventions, largely by the British government and also by individual landlords. Now the population of Ireland declines massively. But in Dublin, which in itself wasn't hit that badly by the famine because the population weren't so reliant on one crop, you have an enormous number of people coming into the city essentially as refugees from within the country. And those people are coming in looking for housing, looking for food, looking for jobs. But those things really don't exist in the city. The city is not set up, up to look after that level of sort of influx of the poor. I think one example of that, and it's a city that continues to thrive in some ways because if you're rich, you can buy whatever you like. You're importing all sorts of things from Europe. You can have fine silks, you can have fine wine. All of those things are still happening. The advertisements in the newspapers indicate a thriving cultural and social life in the city. One of the stories I found kind of most revealing about Dublin and the famine is the arrival of, I guess, really one of the first celebrity chefs in certainly Britain and Ireland is a Frenchman called Alexis Soyer, and he was the chef at the Reform Club in London. And he decided to come over to Ireland during the famine to help alleviate the suffering of the poor. And so he establishes a soup kitchen in Dublin on a site called Croppies Acre. Which was, I think, poorly chosen because it was believed to be the grave site of several hundred United Irishmen who had been killed by Crown forces during the failed 1798 rebellion. So it wasn't an ideal site to have a soup kitchen. But he sets up his soup kitchen, and he can feed a thousand people every six minutes with this soup. And he charges the well to do of Dublin to come and watch this happen. So on the first day the mayor comes along, you can pay money to go. If you've got money, you can go in all your finery and watch the po poor eat their soup. And they eat their soup from spoons that are attached by chains to the table in case they might steal them. And this did not go down terribly well. I mean, even in quite conservative Dublin, there were things in the papers which said, you know, this is like going to the zoo, like paying to watch poor people eat food. A few years ago, I made his soup just to see what it tasted like. And it's sort of gray sludge that reminded me of wallpaper paste that has a sort of hint of turnip from. Is truly terrible. But it was very interesting as an experiment. But also when I worked out or got someone who knew about these things to work out, the nutritional value, the nutritional value was almost zero. You'd get far more nutritional value from one potato. And so all of these people who had walked and expended energy to get their celebrity soup would have wasted more energy traveling to get this particular soup than they would have gained. So I think that's a very depressing story, but also sort of illustrative of what was going on in the city at the time. That you have huge poverty rubbing up side by side or cheek by jowl with considerable wealth.
- [38:19]
Gillian O'Brien
And of course, that sort of inequality breeds unrest. There'd long been a sense of injustice in Dublin and wider Ireland, and that was going to become more prominent, wasn't it? Over the 19th and 18th into the 20th century.
- [38:33]
Paul Bloomfield
Yeah, late 19th and into the 20th century, you have increasing groups who are actively involved in trying to break that connection with Britain. Very often these groups who are determined to get Irish independence tend to have rural backgrounds rather than necessarily urban backgrounds. And after the famine, a lot of the money. Money that is raised for those organizations tends to come from the expat community, so from the Irish in America sending money back. But you do have the development of groups like Young Ireland, who had a very small failed rebellion in 1848. And then you have the advent of a group called the IRB the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who are partnered or very often called the same as their partner group, which is the feedback. And they stage a number of attacks, mostly not in Dublin, but occasionally in Dublin in the 1860s and 70s. The most famous incident that takes place in Dublin is in 1882, where a group who call themselves the Invincibles, they attack the Chief Secretary, who's kind of the British government's representative in Ireland, this newly arrived Chief Secretary called Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Under Secretary. And these are two men that have huge power in what happens in Dublin and in Ireland. They attack them in the Phoenix Park. They stab them to death as they were out for a walk. It fails. They don't achieve very much by it. A lot of them are captured and ultimately executed. But it happens at a very particular time. So it happens in 1882. And that's around the same time that the move towards getting home rule or re establishing an Irish parliament is beginning to develop very considerable momentum. And that's a move which is kind of constitutional. But now mixing the constitutional with the violent kind of threatens the constitutional element. And that's the way kind of Irish history and politics go through the 19th century is you have a constitutional movement trying to achieve things. If that fails, then you have physical force. If that fails, then you have a constitutional movement. So it is this sort of these troughs and peaks through the 19th century, and in the 1880s, you have that overlap.
- [41:00]
Gillian O'Brien
And of course, this independence movement really comes to a head at the start of the 20th century. And that's a very big topic which we could talk about for a long time. But could you very briefly preci. What happened in Dublin and how. How those events impacted on the city in those first sort of two or three decades of the 20th century?
- [41:21]
Paul Bloomfield
Yeah, I mean, it is. How long is a piece of string? It's an incredibly complex period. Early 20th century Dublin. There are a number of things happen in the decade of sort of 1913 to 1923, I guess, is the kind of peak decade of things happening, sometimes simultaneously. So now in 1913, there is what's known as the lockout. And Dublin didn't have a huge labor movement because it didn't have very many big industries. But by 1913, there is a beginning of a desire to have a union movement. And it ultimately reaches a peak in 1913 with this lockout where people go on strike. There is obviously no social welfare, so those on strike are not earning anything. And there's the employers take action, and their action is to not let the striking workers back in. So you have this standoff that goes on for months. And with no social welfare, Dublin has huge problems, because if you've no money coming into families, then they can't buy in the local shop. And so there's enormous poverty and deprivation in the city during this period. It lasts for a number of months. Various points, the police charge the strikers, killing a number of them. So there's huge unrest in the city that ultimately comes to an end with the employees having to go back to work. But it does, I guess, ignite a fire and radicalizes a lot of people who were working class. They also set up their own militia called the Irish Citizen army, which becomes very important a couple of years later. But what happens, happens almost immediately after the lockout is you have the First World War. Now, obviously, that's an enormous thing, but there is an impact on Dublin. So about 250,000 Irishmen sign up to join the British army and fight in the First World War. And they do so for all sorts of reasons. About 25,000 of those join in Dublin. And they join for all sorts of reasons. Some. Some of them join because it's an adventure. Some of them join because it's good money. And know there has been all this problem of people being really poor in Dublin. No. So not only is it good money, but there's also a widow's pension. If something happens to you like that is not insignificant in Dublin, which has just been through this lockout. Some join because they think it's a just war. Some join big, you know, to fight for plucky little Belgium, all sorts of reasons for joining. But for others, this is a point where it's England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity. While Britain is fighting a war looking the other direction, away from Ireland, Irish Republicans think maybe this is our time. This is when we can have a successful uprising. After many, many unsuccessful uprisings. An uprising is planned for Easter 1916. There are a number of groups involved in that, including Irish Volunteers and this Irish Citizen Army. They plan to have it on Easter Sunday. The plans are discovered and the action is cancelled. But the rebellion begins on Easter Monday morning. About 1800 people take place. The key building during this rising is the General Post Office on o' Connell Street. The rising lasts for about a week. They declare a republic, they take over a number of significant sites in Dublin and troops are sent in. So it's an incredibly bloody week. Dublin is blown to bits in that week. Ultimately, a republic is not achieved. And after a week, when the Rebels surrender and a lot of them are marched up o' Connell Street. As they are marched up, abuse is shouted at them, rotten fruit is thrown at them by people in Dublin. Now, that is partly because a lot of those people have family members fighting in the British army. And this seems like a terrible thing to do. The leaders are largely kind of mocked and ridiculed. For a few days. They're all taken to Kilmainham Jail, which is a jail again now open to the public. And the leaders over the course of the next 10 days or so are executed. One of the papers talks about how it's like watching blood flow from under a closed door. And almost immediately, public sentiment changes. W.B. yeats writes a very famous poem called Easter 1916, where he says, all changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born. And that's really true. This was seen as a massive overreaction to these young men and women who were regarded as kind of foolish, but they didn't deserve to be executed. Whereas for the British this was treason and they would obviously be executed. But public opinion almost entirely changes because of those executions and because the British rounded up thousands of people who were not involved and imprisoned them for most of a year. And so as a result of the failed rebellion, you radicalize an entire generation, as well as destroying pretty much all of Dublin city. And what then follows is a war of independence between 1919 and 1921, where the Irish fight the British really right across the country in a guerrilla style war that ultimately ends in a truce. In December of 1921, a treaty is signed, causes enormous division across Ireland. In the Irish Parliament, which is now in Dublin, the Parliament votes to accept the treaty. And then within months, there is a bloody civil war, because besides, some say that it wasn't enough. The treaty doesn't give a 32 county republic. It creates Northern Ireland. And many would argue that that wasn't, you know, a success. People had fought for an entire island and what they got was a partial free state. And it, you know, it put pitched families against families. Those who had fought alongside each other in 1916 in the war of Independence were now fighting against each other. And it was hugely problematic during the civil war. The very first act of the civil war takes place in Dublin, when those who had been in favor of the treaty, who are now the new Irish government, they attack those who were against the treaty previously, their allies, who would hold themselves up in the forecourts along the quays. And in June 1922, using weapons that had been borrowed from the British government, Previously, their enemy, they fire on the forecourts. And that's the first act of the Civil War. And alongside the destruction of the forecourts, it also destroyed the Public Records Office in Ireland, which is partly why we don't have as many records about Dublin as we would have had. So they destroyed their own history as much as anything else. And after that, almost all of the action, not all of it, but takes place outside of Dublin during the Civil War. It is very much based outside of the capital for that period, but the city is still in shambles because it's been so destroyed in 1916.
- [48:30]
Gillian O'Brien
So how did Ireland and Dublin specifically emerge from that period of conflict, from the War of Independence and the Civil War?
- [48:37]
Paul Bloomfield
It emerges slowly, really. I mean, when the Civil War ends, there's a lot of kind of reconstruction to be done, and that's both physical and, you know, in terms of relationships between people. It's a city that has a considerable population of people who've come back from the First World War as well. And they. They don't talk about their experiences because by the time they come back from the war, that war had been the wrong war for the wrong reasons, because now everything had been overtaken by what had happened in Ireland. And so generations never spoke about families involvement in the First World War. So those scars ran deep. So the city does ultimately rebuild itself. The Irish Parliament is there now. Interesting. The Irish Parliament, which is called. Called the Dalle, is today in a house called Leinster House. And Leinster House was originally built for the Duke of Leinster in 1745. It's very near St Stephen's Green. It was one of the finest houses in Dublin. So it's interesting that one of those great Georgian houses ultimately becomes the home of what becomes the Parliament of the Irish Republic. Also interesting, that house was the inspiration for the design of the White House. That sort of almost brings everything around full circle. That you go from sort of the great names of the 18th century who would have been part of the aristocracy and sort of the elite ultimately becomes the Irish Republic's Parliament and house. But it is a city that in the 20th century is very conflicted. So I think I mentioned earlier that they built over the Viking remains, and yet now we champion this part of our history. But they did the same with the Georgian buildings. So in the 1960s, they demolished huge swathes of beautiful Georgian buildings because it was seen as being associated with Britain and it was seen as being far too English. So there was once the longest Georgian road in the world, which was demolished for terrible 1960s office blocks, which they themselves have since been demolished. And in the 1970s, students from Trinity and UCD occupied six Georgian houses to prevent their demolition, because they argued that you were destroying the jewels, architectural jewels of the city. They failed to keep those six Georgian houses. And it's interesting that now, I think the identity of the city is very heavily bound up with our Viking and our Georgian past, and we embrace it and celebrate it, but we did, over many years, try to destroy it.
- [51:17]
Gillian O'Brien
So, Gillian, can you tell us, how did the years of violence known as the Troubles impact Dublin and how did the city emerge from that period?
- [51:25]
Paul Bloomfield
The Troubles are really interesting in Dublin and often overlooked. And in part that's because clearly other places like Derry and Belfast were hit in a much greater way. I think one of the first things that occurs actually just occurs just before the trouble start, which is the blowing up of Nelson's Pillar, which has been on the middle of O' Connell street, the main thoroughfare in the city, since 1809. And it had been controversial because obviously Nelson was not popular among Irish Republicans and nationalists, and there had been great debates over would they change the person at the top of this pillar, rather than, you know, removing the pillar itself. But all of that conversation came to nothing when, in 1966, for the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, the pillar was. Was blown up. It was blown up in the middle of the night. And remarkably, nobody was injured with this. And it was the work of kind of dissident Irish Republicans who decided to take matters into their own hands. So it is before the Troubles officially start. And it's interesting that it's a Republican organization that sort of takes aim at the Capitol and the main street on the Capitol. So that in some ways kind of sets the scene. And once the troubles start in 1969, you do have sort of sporadic violence taking place or things associated with the conflict in the north of Ireland taking place in Dublin. I think probably the two that are most, I suppose, well known in some ways is in 1972, in February of 1972, the British Embassy was set on fire, and that was right in the city centre on Merrion Square, one of the big joints, Georgian Squares now, that was set on fire because of a reaction to the events of Bloody Sunday that had taken place in Derry several days ago, when British soldiers had opened fire on a crowd of unarmed people, killing a number of them. And that's something that's really been an event that's been greatly discussed and huge criticism of both The British army and the British government at the time. But. But the immediate reaction in Dublin was the burning of the British Embassy. One of the biggest events associated with the Troubles and Dublin occurred in May 1974, when a series of car bombs exploded, killing a significant number of people. Now, they were a response to the Sunningdale Agreement. Now, the Sunningdale Agreement was an agreement that had been brought together by politicians in Northern Ireland, in Britain and in Ireland, and it was going to set up a Northern Ireland executive. And as part of that, there would also be a Council of Ireland. Now, in that Council of Ireland, the Republic of Ireland government would have some oversight of what was happening in Northern Ireland. That did not go down well with the Unionist loyalist population. And one of the things that occurred as a result of kind of protests against the sun was a general strike which was designed to sort of bring Northern Ireland to its knees in terms of its ability to function. The dissident groups decided that they would take action as well. And that resulted on 17 May 1974, in three car bombs exploding at rush hour in Dublin and a fourth bomb exploding in Monaghan, which is a town very close to the border, about 90 minutes later. Now, those three bombs, two of them very close to Connolly Station in the city centre, which was packed with people trying to get home from work that afternoon. And the total death toll was 33 people and an unborn baby who died as a result of those four car bombs. That's the single largest number of casualties in any one day during the Troubles. And it is very awful, I think, think kind of overlooked. There were over 200 people injured as a result of those car bombs. So it was a really significant event and was largely, I think, overlooked by both the Irish Republic and by those in Northern Ireland over the course of the next few decades, in a way, because they didn't want to tip the balance of very delicate negotiations. Now, there is a memorial today on Talbot street, one of the places where the bomb bombs exploded, to those people who were killed and who were injured on that day. So that's the largest, I guess, active bombing that takes place in Dublin during the Troubles over the course of the rest of the 70s, 80s and into the 90s. There are occasional bombs set in department stores. There are attempts to blow up a number of significant statues associated with Irish national nationalism or Republicanism. There are kind of isolated shootings that take place, but it is nothing on the scale of what's happening, say, in Belfast or across Northern Ireland. And I think what's really interesting is that that single largest number of casualties who were killed as a result of terrorist action posed to the Sunningdale Agreement. What's very interesting is that in 1998, when we have the Good Friday Agreement that was voted in by or approved by the population both north and south of the border, that the Good Friday Agreement is very similar to the Sunningdale Agreement that they tried to bring about 40 years earlier. And you just think about all the damage that was done in those intervening decades to ultimately go from 1974 to 1998 where you have quite a similar agreement eventually being agreed to by all sides.
- [57:09]
Gillian O'Brien
And of course, Dublin since the late 90s has emerged as a popular destination for visitors and for business, hasn't it?
- [57:18]
Paul Bloomfield
Yeah, I mean, that's very true. It's become a big tourist capital. It's become very popular with hen and stag parties. But it's also become very popular with some of the biggest businesses across the world. Places like Google. Google and Facebook and Twitter all established kind of European HQs in Dublin. In part that's not because they loved Dublin so much, but they very much loved the Irish tax regime for big businesses. So it's just something those doors are sort of slowly being closed and they are being obliged to pay tax. So you've got a mix of it being quite a vibrant European capital city attracting tourists, but also good tax laws if you're big business, not so good if you're. Or not.
- [57:56]
Gillian O'Brien
Well, I think we've covered quite a lot of ground there both in terms of the. The history of Dublin and the places that represent that history. I'm now going to ask you to share five sites in Dublin perhaps that we haven't talked about, that each reveal something about the city's past. And to explain the historical significance of each of those to listeners, if you would.
- [58:16]
Paul Bloomfield
I would start, I think with Kilmainham Gaol. So Kilmainham Jail is an amazing site in itself. It's a large 18th century prison which opened in the 1790s and closed in the 1920s. And it's a who's who of anyone in Irish history. If you want a history of Ireland and a history of Dublin in one site, go to Kilmainham Jail. You get the history of the elite because almost all the political prisoners were kept there from the 1798 rebellion right up to the Civil War. So you get all of the that sort of history, but you also get the history of the poor and we very little evidence of the poor. I think as I Sort of mentioned in terms of their housing not, not being there. And they don't leave records behind. So very often the only records we have are of them where they run foul of the law. They have a huge population in the prison in the 1840s because of the famine, because there was a vagrancy law. So you've got records of a 10 year old being imprisoned for stealing a party parsnip for a month's hard labour, or a nine year old girl getting a week's hard labour for begging on the street. All society is there and architecturally it's stunning. I mean, it's a really great building. So I would urge everyone to go to Kilmainham Gaol.
- [59:33]
Gillian O'Brien
And how about choice number two?
- [59:34]
Paul Bloomfield
I would send people out to Croke Park. Croke park is the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association. It's where many of the hurling and Gaelic football matches take place, where the finals take place. And it has a great museum. It also has a very significant role to play in Ireland's political and heritage in that a lot of those who joined the GAA in the early years when it was founded in the 1880s, ultimately become quite active in the Irish Nationalist Republican movement. The British troops went in at one point, broke in during a game and killed 13 spectators and one player. So they have a museum there. The museum is wonderful, but I would urge everyone to go on the day of a match where you could also go to the museum and see a match being played and go to a hurling match. If you really want to see top quality sport, you get a museum and sport all in one. So Croke Park I would definitely advocate for tremendous.
- [60:34]
Gillian O'Brien
And place number three, I think I
- [60:36]
Paul Bloomfield
briefly mentioned it earlier, is 14 Henrietta Street. It's a very different experience to the jail and the sports grounds in that because it's one Georgian house with a myriad of stories. And after you've been to Henrietta Street, I think you look at the whole city with very different eyes.
- [60:57]
Gillian O'Brien
And a fourth place to visit, an
- [60:59]
Paul Bloomfield
11th century church that is quite off the beaten track, though very central. It is called Saint Mickens. Allegedly, before the premiere of Handel's Messiah, he practiced on the organ that's in the church. The church itself architecturally doesn't have amazing stained glass windows, but what it does have is an amazing crypt. And you can go down to the crypt, which is relatively small. In the crypt you can see if you're of a sort of bench to like to see these sort of things. There are a number of mummified skeletons that are visible. There are some amazing coffins that have been covered with velvet that have not deteriorated. And also you get to see the coffins of two men, the Shearers brothers. And the Shearers brothers were executed following the 1798 rebellion because they had taken action against the British government trying to gain Irish freedom. And they were executed in gallows just up the road at Sylvia Newgate Prison, which is no longer there. And their coffins are there for you to see, along with the death mask of Theobald Wolfe Tone, who was the famous. The most famous United Irishman who died in Dublin in 1798. So you get a whole lot of history and it's quite off the beaten track and it really is wonderful.
- [62:20]
Gillian O'Brien
What's your final recommendation for a site for visitors to explore in Dublin?
- [62:24]
Paul Bloomfield
My final recommendation isn't one particular site, but it's something that everyone should do. I would recommend that every visitor to Dublin goes to some of the Victorian pubs of Dublin, of which there are many. Go to, I don't know, the Long hall or the Stag's Head or Neary's or the Oval Bar. Go and seek out some of the proper old Victorian pubs and buy a Guinness, I guess. Buy Guinness there rather than at the Guinness Experience. I think you get a much more authentic experience, you know, and take. I know, take James Joyce with you. Take a book. Take. There are so many. Jonathan Swift who was based in Dublin. Take Maeve Binchey or Sally Rooney or Anne Enright or even for the early Sean o' Casey plays. Those are the things that, you know, give you a properly authentic experience and everyone should do it. And there are some just wonderful bars. I mean, a great advocate of a good Victorian bar far.
- [63:20]
Gillian O'Brien
Well, that sounds very tempting. Thanks for those recommendations. Finally, could you share one piece of advice for anyone planning a visit to Dublin?
- [63:28]
Paul Bloomfield
Yes, it would be to get out of Dublin but also stay within Dublin. So there is the. What's called the Dart, which is sort of a light railway that runs from Howth Head on the north side all the way around to Killiney on the south side. And it hugs the coast. Coast. And on a good day, it is stunningly beautiful. I think travelers who used to take that road out and there are horse and traps, you know, in the 18th and 19th century, refer to it as the Naples of Europe. I mean, they might be overselling it, but it is absolutely beautiful. If you stop off in Dor, you might see Bono from U2. There's all sorts of little villages there. You can walk along the sea, you can go for a swim. There are Martello towers you can climb hills and cliff faces. And it's all within that sort of semicircle of Dublin Bay.
- [64:20]
Podcast Narrator
That was Gillian o' Brien in conversation with Paul Bloomfield. And just a reminder that the new series of History's Greatest Cities will kick off next Tuesday. And you can find out all the details about that in the description to this episode.