St. Stephen's Green

In 1663 Dublin Corporation decided to enclose the centre of a marshy common used for grazing on the edge of Dublin and to sell land around the perimeter for building. The park was enclosed within a wall in 1664 and houses were built around the perimeter. They were replaced by Georgian buildings in the late 18th Century. Until 1877 access to the green was restricted to local residents. That year Parliament passed an Act that would open the park to the city. Sir A.E. Guinness, a member of the Guinness brewing family paid for the laying out of the Green in approximately its current form, which took place in 1880, and gave it to the Corporation, as representatives of the people. The green is famously referenced in James Joyce Ulysses: “the trees in Stephen’s Green were fragrant of rain and the rainsodden earth gave forth its mortal odour”. A bust of James Joyce, by sculptor Marjorie Fitzgibbon, faces Newman House, part of University College Dublin (UCD), where Joyce was once a student. During the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish Citizen Army occupied St Stephens Green. They dug trenches in the park and set up barricades to forify their positions in the park. The force of 200 volunteers was led by Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz. British Forces challenged the ICA and took up positions around the Park but mainly, the Shelbourne Hotel, where snipers used the height of the hotel to fire down on the volunteers. The volunteers retreated to the Royal College of Surgeons before finally surrendering. Bullet holes under Fusilier’s Arch at the main entrance to the Green are still visible today. During the Rising, park keeper James Kearney would enter the Green evereyday, gunfire was stopped, to allow the ducks in the park to be fed.