The 16 bus magical history tour remembered in 2016 - Grange Road to O’Connell Street - 1976
Backdrop
In 1879, the Dublin Central Tramways Company commenced a horse-drawn tram service from Dublin City via Harold's Cross to Terenure, and soon this service was extended to Rathfarnham. Just two years previously, in 1877, the North Dublin Street Tramway Company's horse-drawn tram service from Nelson's Pillar to Drumcondra started. With the advent of electricity though, the days of horse-drawn transport were short-lived. In 1899, the entire line from Drumcondra to Rathfarnham, the no. 16, was electrified. After forty years of horse-drawn and electrified service, the 16-tram replaced by the 16 bus in 1939. In the intervening years the 16-bus route has been extended. Now, new plans from Dublin Bus include doing away with the 16 bus in 2020.
Prelude
It is 1976 and I am besotted with the music of Bowie, Queen and T-Rex; I am sixteen. I am wearing flared denims, cheesecloth smock and clogs, some leather jewellery, and I carry a woven wool bag. The zeitgeist book is Go Ask Alice, and the Dublin football team – Heffo’s Army – are on a winning streak. Kojak is on the telly and Rocky is fighting for his life on the big screen. Hop on the No. 16 bus and join me on my trip from Grange Road, Rathfarnham, home of revolutionaries, to the GPO on O’Connell Street, where the final chapter to Ireland’s freedom began. Every landmark mentioned is not as it was in 1976, let alone in 1939, but if I had been 16 in 1939, the route would have been identical. It’s all about 16. The historic route between St Enda’s in Rathfarnham and the GPO encapsulates Irish history in microcosm.
Rebellion Bus
Terminus
Just over the wall
From Saint Enda’s;
a rebel crèche in colonial Ireland
Where the Brothers Pearse
Taught doe-eyed youth
Celtic mysticism
With the ardour of zealots
In a language foreign to
Tenement dwellers and landed gentry alike.
Just across the road from
Philpott Curran’s house
Whose daughter Sarah clandestinely courted
That other doomed patriot, Robert Emmet.
Next stop; my house
Trundle past the stoic little fortresses of
St. Patrick’s Cottages on the left
Past the school yard where in 1966
I stood to attention
Babbling Faith of our Fathers
In my best dress – aged six
Holding my Easter lily - bewildered
For the fiftieth anniversary
Of 1916
On the right
Another ascendancy ‘big house’
Now a rookery for
Flocks of white veiled novices
And black veiled wives of Christ
Guiding timorous postulants
One of them would be the Spartan
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Turn left and come to
The Christmas card
Church of the Annunciation
Its foundation stone laid by papal gladiator, Cardinal Cullen
on Easter Monday 1875
It faces that tavern of fine repute;
Refuge of United Irishmen;
The Yellow House
Through the village
On the left sits an eighteenth century
Church of Ireland sanctuary
Straight from Grey’s Elegy.
I imagine Regency clad worshippers
Spilling out on summer Sundays
On the right Rathfarnham Castle
Erected by Adam Loftus
Protestant Archbishop of Dublin in 1583
Now a hot bed of Jesuitical apprentices learning
The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola
Cross the Dodder Bridge
Dedicatory conduit to the Brothers Pearse
Rathfarnham Road borders the Elysian Bushy Park
The War Memorial Hall to the left
Summons imaginings of moustachioed, medal-laden officer types.
Upstairs you can spy the surprisingly modern
Singular Synagogue on the right
A Promised Land behind its high wall
And on to red-bricked Terenure
Victorian and Edwardian suburb
For the burgeoning nineteenth century middle class
Looks like a set from Ealing Studios.
On through Harolds Cross
Failed sanctuary of doomed Robert Emmet;
Its tiny manicured park
A former execution ground for Dublin.
And the Poor Clares convent
Concealed behind cream-coloured masonry
You can just spy a statue of the Virgin Mary.
The Classic and Kenilworth cinemas
Promise quixotic respite
From the grey grind of mid-seventies Dublin
The hospice unsettles your teenaged odyssey momentarily.
Over the canal bridge
Of dubious hostelries and coal yards
And perhaps a few of Kavanagh’s apologetic swans
Onto Clanbrassil Street and
Number 52; residence of Leopold Bloom
Turn right at Leonard’s Corner onto
South Circular’s grubby flat lands and
Saint Kevin’s Church; a Gothic relic
The benign ghost of Shaw
Canterville-like
Ever present on my right.
Turn left onto Camden Street
DeLuxe Cinema on the left; street traders on the right
So many shop signs a palimpsest
Of earlier commerce
Purveyors of select wines and teas;
Family grocers of standing
Over Redmond’s Hill and into
Aungier Street; Whitefriar’s church on the left
Cavern of relics of Saint Valentine.
South Great Georges Street
Byrne’s butcher’s prize-winning sausages
Bewely’s Oriental Café opened by Quakers in 1894.
Turn right onto Dame Street
The Pen Corner looks Dickensian
College Green is grey
Thomas Davis; hero of Patrick Pearse; author of A Nation Once Again
Strains to see over the trumpeting angels
Who look like they are heralding Armageddon
Now sandwiched between Grattan’s Parliament
And Trinity College
Its open wooden gates
Give you a fleeting glance at
Academic mysteries and imagined
Cricket matches straight from a Betjemen poem.
Over the bridge and onto
Magisterial O’Connell Street; Ireland’s Champs-Élysées
Guarded by the Great Liberator
His curls crowned with seagull droppings
His emancipated Catholics
Now hunt for bargains
And ignore emaciated beggars.
Eason’s book emporium;
The shop of dreams
For a young reader
Disembark at the GPO
Where the Brothers Pearse
Made their final hopeless stand
Against the British Crown
Necropolis of Irish nationhood
The number 16 bus has come full circle.
©Copyright Berni Dwan 2016
Backdrop
In 1879, the Dublin Central Tramways Company commenced a horse-drawn tram service from Dublin City via Harold's Cross to Terenure, and soon this service was extended to Rathfarnham. Just two years previously, in 1877, the North Dublin Street Tramway Company's horse-drawn tram service from Nelson's Pillar to Drumcondra started. With the advent of electricity though, the days of horse-drawn transport were short-lived. In 1899, the entire line from Drumcondra to Rathfarnham, the no. 16, was electrified. After forty years of horse-drawn and electrified service, the 16-tram replaced by the 16 bus in 1939. In the intervening years the 16-bus route has been extended. Now, new plans from Dublin Bus include doing away with the 16 bus in 2020.
Prelude
It is 1976 and I am besotted with the music of Bowie, Queen and T-Rex; I am sixteen. I am wearing flared denims, cheesecloth smock and clogs, some leather jewellery, and I carry a woven wool bag. The zeitgeist book is Go Ask Alice, and the Dublin football team – Heffo’s Army – are on a winning streak. Kojak is on the telly and Rocky is fighting for his life on the big screen. Hop on the No. 16 bus and join me on my trip from Grange Road, Rathfarnham, home of revolutionaries, to the GPO on O’Connell Street, where the final chapter to Ireland’s freedom began. Every landmark mentioned is not as it was in 1976, let alone in 1939, but if I had been 16 in 1939, the route would have been identical. It’s all about 16. The historic route between St Enda’s in Rathfarnham and the GPO encapsulates Irish history in microcosm.
Rebellion Bus
Terminus
Just over the wall
From Saint Enda’s;
a rebel crèche in colonial Ireland
Where the Brothers Pearse
Taught doe-eyed youth
Celtic mysticism
With the ardour of zealots
In a language foreign to
Tenement dwellers and landed gentry alike.
Just across the road from
Philpott Curran’s house
Whose daughter Sarah clandestinely courted
That other doomed patriot, Robert Emmet.
Next stop; my house
Trundle past the stoic little fortresses of
St. Patrick’s Cottages on the left
Past the school yard where in 1966
I stood to attention
Babbling Faith of our Fathers
In my best dress – aged six
Holding my Easter lily - bewildered
For the fiftieth anniversary
Of 1916
On the right
Another ascendancy ‘big house’
Now a rookery for
Flocks of white veiled novices
And black veiled wives of Christ
Guiding timorous postulants
One of them would be the Spartan
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Turn left and come to
The Christmas card
Church of the Annunciation
Its foundation stone laid by papal gladiator, Cardinal Cullen
on Easter Monday 1875
It faces that tavern of fine repute;
Refuge of United Irishmen;
The Yellow House
Through the village
On the left sits an eighteenth century
Church of Ireland sanctuary
Straight from Grey’s Elegy.
I imagine Regency clad worshippers
Spilling out on summer Sundays
On the right Rathfarnham Castle
Erected by Adam Loftus
Protestant Archbishop of Dublin in 1583
Now a hot bed of Jesuitical apprentices learning
The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola
Cross the Dodder Bridge
Dedicatory conduit to the Brothers Pearse
Rathfarnham Road borders the Elysian Bushy Park
The War Memorial Hall to the left
Summons imaginings of moustachioed, medal-laden officer types.
Upstairs you can spy the surprisingly modern
Singular Synagogue on the right
A Promised Land behind its high wall
And on to red-bricked Terenure
Victorian and Edwardian suburb
For the burgeoning nineteenth century middle class
Looks like a set from Ealing Studios.
On through Harolds Cross
Failed sanctuary of doomed Robert Emmet;
Its tiny manicured park
A former execution ground for Dublin.
And the Poor Clares convent
Concealed behind cream-coloured masonry
You can just spy a statue of the Virgin Mary.
The Classic and Kenilworth cinemas
Promise quixotic respite
From the grey grind of mid-seventies Dublin
The hospice unsettles your teenaged odyssey momentarily.
Over the canal bridge
Of dubious hostelries and coal yards
And perhaps a few of Kavanagh’s apologetic swans
Onto Clanbrassil Street and
Number 52; residence of Leopold Bloom
Turn right at Leonard’s Corner onto
South Circular’s grubby flat lands and
Saint Kevin’s Church; a Gothic relic
The benign ghost of Shaw
Canterville-like
Ever present on my right.
Turn left onto Camden Street
DeLuxe Cinema on the left; street traders on the right
So many shop signs a palimpsest
Of earlier commerce
Purveyors of select wines and teas;
Family grocers of standing
Over Redmond’s Hill and into
Aungier Street; Whitefriar’s church on the left
Cavern of relics of Saint Valentine.
South Great Georges Street
Byrne’s butcher’s prize-winning sausages
Bewely’s Oriental Café opened by Quakers in 1894.
Turn right onto Dame Street
The Pen Corner looks Dickensian
College Green is grey
Thomas Davis; hero of Patrick Pearse; author of A Nation Once Again
Strains to see over the trumpeting angels
Who look like they are heralding Armageddon
Now sandwiched between Grattan’s Parliament
And Trinity College
Its open wooden gates
Give you a fleeting glance at
Academic mysteries and imagined
Cricket matches straight from a Betjemen poem.
Over the bridge and onto
Magisterial O’Connell Street; Ireland’s Champs-Élysées
Guarded by the Great Liberator
His curls crowned with seagull droppings
His emancipated Catholics
Now hunt for bargains
And ignore emaciated beggars.
Eason’s book emporium;
The shop of dreams
For a young reader
Disembark at the GPO
Where the Brothers Pearse
Made their final hopeless stand
Against the British Crown
Necropolis of Irish nationhood
The number 16 bus has come full circle.
©Copyright Berni Dwan 2016
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