Lord Ardilaun Monument - St Stephens Green

Sir Arthur Guinness, Bt, otherwise known as Lord Ardilaun was born at St Anne's, Raheny, near Dublin in 1840 and died in 1915. He was the great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, the founder of Guinness Company. Throughout his life, Lord Ardilaun was a businessman, politiician and Philantrapist. His father Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness acquired lands throughout the country and after his death Lord Ardilaun continued in his fathers footseps purchasing land throughout the country. Combined with his fathers purchases, the total land amounted to over 33,000 acres After selling his share in the Guiness Company, Lord Ardilaun became Baron Ardilaun of Ashford, and his home was the famous Ashford Castle in Cong. Lord Ardilaun even got a mention in James Joyce's famed Ulysses, "a crystal cup full of the foamy ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat." Lord Ardilaun is best known for his Philantropy, including the restoration of Marsh's Library in Dublin and the extension of the city's Coombe Women's Hospital. In buying and keeping intact the estate around Muckross House in 1899, he assisted the movement to preserve the lake and mountain landscape around Killarney. From 1875 he was a sponsor of the "Dublin Artizan's Dwellings Company", which built cottages for poor Dubliners at reasonable rents, and was the forerunner of the Iveagh Trust later set up by his brother Edward. Lord Ardilaun bought, landscaped, and gave to the capital, the central public park of St Stephen's Green. To do so he sponsored a Private bill that was passed as the Saint Stephen’s Green (Dublin) Act 1877, and after the landscaping it was formally opened to the public on 27 July 1880.