Dublin, Royalty, identity etc.

There are room for both ideas but the Irish media like fax’s which is very one sided and not really fair: )

England never really seceded from the European empire.
America never really seceded from the European empire.

I would be more worried about BRICKS than “nationalist architecture” which does not exist in Ireland and receives no funding.
No one every said sorry : )

Let’s get the ball rolling…

There is no Irish architectural identity.

Waters is just being anti-Dub. Sure he is part of that Dublin media. Besides ‘Waters’ is not an old Irish surname. It’s probably English.

This is an Urban V Rural thing. A lot of rural folk or ‘culchies’ hold this anti-Dub/Jackeen grudge, instilled in them by their parents. It’s a bit like the uber anti-English thing that some Irish folk have. Cos of this anti Dub sentiment, the city of Dublin suffered greatly at the hands of the cronies and and non-urban aware rural TD’s whose planning decisions led to her destruction and demise over the years. Georgian Dublin was always despised by such folk. Read Frank McDonald’s ‘The Destruction of Dublin’.

To say that there is no “there is no Irish architectural identity” is kinda true. The Celtic Tiger allowed something of a contemporary Irish architectural identity to flourish, but the significant marks that are left on the Irish urban/Dublin landscape have been made by foreign architects…. the N.C.C. , the Aviva stadium, the Grand Canal Theatre, etc.. and mainly, the acres and acres of ghost housing estates throughout the country are the contribution of the Irish. At the peak of the boom, the debate about building heights was kinda rediculous too. Considering that there were hundreds of billions of €uro floating about in the Irish building industry/economy we don’t have much to show for it now – roads and roads and acres and acres of empty and half finished housing estates. Now that the country is forever in debt over it all, it makes it all the more to accept.

In anyway, as rural Ireland has and is becoming more and more more urbanized, it’s becoming more ‘Dublinized’ . Problems that affected Dublin housing estates years ago, ie drugs, vandalism, crime etc… can now be seen in the housing estates of Limerick, etc…

Waters is just being anti-Dub. What a hypoctrite, sure he is part of that Dublin media and has been for years. Besides ‘Waters’ is not an old Irish surname. It’s Anglo-Saxon English, like Smith etc…

This is an Urban V Rural thing. A lot of rural folk or ‘culchies’ hold this anti-Dub/Jackeen grudge, instilled in them by their parents. It’s a bit like the uber anti-English thing that some Irish folk have. Cos of this anti Dub sentiment, the city of Dublin suffered greatly at the hands of the cronies and and non-urban aware rural TD’s whose planning decisions led to her destruction and demise over the years. Georgian Dublin was always despised by such folk. Read Frank McDonald’s ‘The Destruction of Dublin’.

To say “there is no Irish architectural identity” is kinda true. The Celtic Tiger allowed something of a contemporary Irish architectural identity to flourish, but the significant marks that are left on the Irish urban/Dublin landscape have been made by foreign architects…. the N.C.C. , the Aviva stadium, the Grand Canal Theatre, etc.. and mainly, the acres and acres of ghost housing estates throughout the country are the contribution of the Irish. At the peak of the boom, the debate about building heights was kinda rediculous too. Considering that there were hundreds of billions of €uro floating about in the Irish building industry/economy we don’t have much to show for it now – roads and roads and acres and acres of empty and half finished housing estates. Now that the country is forever in debt over it all, it makes it all the more hard to accept.

In anyway, as rural Ireland has and is becoming more and more more urbanized, it’s becoming more ‘Dublinized’ . Problems that affected Dublin housing estates years ago, ie drugs, vandalism, crime etc… can now be seen in the housing estates of Limerick, etc…

*Just to add, Waters mentions Dublin folks initial opposition to the 1916 Rising, but he fails to grasp what is quite understandable the fact that the centre of the city had been destroyed with business’s ruined and local lives lost, the majority of Irish men of the Irish Volunteers were abroad fighting in the trenches for the British Army (as we were a part of the UK at the time) but in the hope of gaining Home Rule for Ireland!

*Also, the rest of the country, including rural ireland, didn’t rise up in support when the news of the uprising in Dublin broke.

*Pearse’s father was an Englsh man, Eamon Ceannt gaelicized his very English name ‘Edward Kent’.

Ho ho ho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eozp6w6cHck

All honour to Dublin to her’s the renown,
In the long generations her name will go down,
And her children will tell how their forefathers saw,
The red blaze of freedom o’er Erin go Bragh.

:thumbup:

Ignore Waters, he feels that he is a National muse who must have an opinion on everything, no matter how vapid it is. For example he was on radio not so long ago stating that FF have a connection to the psych and heart of the Irish people and would never be destroyed at an election and might even be re-elected!

Likewise, for somebody who is now presenting himself as some sort of rural sage, he appeared on RTEs recent documentary on Dublin Bay waxing lyrical about how he required and deserved to live by the sea in Dublin like other urbane thinkers. An extremely vacuous contention when you consider that most Dubliners couldn’t afford the luxury of living near Dublin Bay!

C

@thebig C wrote:

For example he was on radio not so long ago stating that FF have a connection to the psych and heart of the Irish people and would never be destroyed at an election and might even be re-elected!

Dont underestimate the stupidity of the Irish….

Waters has never appealed to me. I often wonder how he gets such traction.

@GregF wrote:

*Just to add, Waters mentions Dublin folks initial opposition to the 1916 Rising, but he fails to grasp what is quite understandable the fact that the centre of the city had been destroyed with business’s ruined and local lives lost, the majority of Irish men of the Irish Volunteers were abroad fighting in the trenches for the British Army (as we were a part of the UK at the time) but in the hope of gaining Home Rule for Ireland!

*Also, the rest of the country, including rural ireland, didn’t rise up in support when the news of the uprising in Dublin broke.

there were also risings in cork, tyrone, galway, ashbourne, enniscorthy. know your facts. plus a weeklong rising isnt going to get much traction. anyway how much did dublin participate in other rebelions… i dont think i ever saw one reference to it for something like the nine years war (bit more a chance to get involved there) other than brits heading north out of it.

ps businesses ruined… id take that for the north back (if there wasnt going to be a troubles mark 2 (the sectarian part)and their was a majority for it- which there is in some of the 6 but 3 counties were seen as too small to survive (derry city west of the folye was also in donegal before partition), the rebels in the jacobs factory & south dublin union were attacked by locals.

home rule wasnt going to happen, a new election was due again after ww1 and unless they IPP held the balance of power again they were never going to get it
(ps iv never truly gotton why 1916 is held in such high regard, the actual rising itself was a military disaster it was what happened after it that made the difference on the road to part independance the day they were shot should be marked)

and FF did have a connection to the irish psych to be honest, going back to the civil war… it was stupid especially seen as the country was declared a republic under fine geal! and even with the mess they made they are still the third largest party

@thebig C wrote:

waxing lyrical about how he required and deserved to live by the sea in Dublin like other urbane thinkers

in all fairness though he does sound like a bit of a twat but why is this on a architecture form bordss.ie seems the place for it

We ought to be able to maintain a reasonable level of patriotism without mangling our history.

Dublin in particular, and pretty much every other urban centre on the island, has a built heritage which was substantially the product of English immigrants. A lot of these people may have been second and third generation or more, but there were a lot too that were first generation, or literally off the boat.

The standard way of dealing with the likes of Georgian Dublin, for example, is the line that, while the Georgian city was built for an alien protestant ascendancy, the actual buildings were built by Irishmen, so it’s our heritage too. That’s fine if it gave Neil Blaney pause for thought before signing off on the demolition of 16 houses on Fitzwilliam St. in 1962 [apparently Lemass rather than Blaney was the real culprit according to a recent PhD lassie], but it isn’t actually true and it glosses over the fact that we have this deep English heritage underlying who we are.

As far as I can tell, the real story of 17th and 18th century Dublin, is the remarkable extent to which the English immigrants who built this city began to see themselves in patriotic Irish terms and evolved a colonial/national identity that was distinct and sometimes opposed to the old country while adhering rigidly to English heritage in other regards. The parallels with the American colonies are obvious and a significant number of the names involved are actually the same, with the Quaker community in particular arriving here in the late 17th century, contributing hugely to the growth and development of the city before filtering out again to do the same in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

Royalty might be a preposterously antiquated concept, but we could use the occasion of the forthcoming visit of the Queen of England to begin to explore our deep connections with England and just maybe begin to allow ourselves to celebrate that side of the family.

@adrian5987 wrote:

@GregF wrote:

*Just to add, Waters mentions Dublin folks initial opposition to the 1916 Rising, but he fails to grasp what is quite understandable the fact that the centre of the city had been destroyed with business’s ruined and local lives lost, the majority of Irish men of the Irish Volunteers were abroad fighting in the trenches for the British Army (as we were a part of the UK at the time) but in the hope of gaining Home Rule for Ireland!

*Also, the rest of the country, including rural ireland, didn’t rise up in support when the news of the uprising in Dublin broke.

there were also risings in cork, tyrone, galway, ashbourne, enniscorthy. know your facts. plus a weeklong rising isnt going to get much traction. anyway how much did dublin participate in other rebelions… i dont think i ever saw one reference to it for something like the nine years war (bit more a chance to get involved there) other than brits heading north out of it.

ps businesses ruined… id take that for the north back (if there wasnt going to be a troubles mark 2 (the sectarian part)and their was a majority for it- which there is in some of the 6 but 3 counties were seen as too small to survive (derry city west of the folye was also in donegal before partition), the rebels in the jacobs factory & south dublin union were attacked by locals.

home rule wasnt going to happen, a new election was due again after ww1 and unless they IPP held the balance of power again they were never going to get it
(ps iv never truly gotton why 1916 is held in such high regard, the actual rising itself was a military disaster it was what happened after it that made the difference on the road to part independance the day they were shot should be marked)

and FF did have a connection to the irish psych to be honest, going back to the civil war… it was stupid especially seen as the country was declared a republic under fine geal! and even with the mess they made they are still the third largest party

@thebig C wrote:

waxing lyrical about how he required and deserved to live by the sea in Dublin like other urbane thinkers

in all fairness though he does sound like a bit of a twat but why is this on a architecture form bordss.ie seems the place for it

Sure, maybe then I should have mentioned the contributuions of the likes of Mac Curtain, Ashe, Mellows, McCullough etc.. and their small units of men, sporadically fighting around the country… but these were what turned out to be ‘skirmishes’ that did not have the same impact of what went on in Dublin. Emmet’s 1803 rebellion was much the same in garrisoned Dublin, small and easily put down. But that is the general history of uprisings in Ireland, they were usually small, isolated and there wasn’t very many of them throughout the centuries, despite all the romantic ballads about rebels etc…. Also, the majority of an indifferent Irish public did not support such rebellions, perhaps 1798 being the only uprising that united all creeds of Papists, Prebs and Prods, but again it did not have majority support, hence Ireland was always under the ‘yoke’ of the English.

Old Ireland was indeed ‘lost’ with the death of the Gaelic language. Today, Ireland has indeed been ‘Anglified’ throughout, a fact that we fail to recognize for we live in denial. Waters (from Castlerea) own English surname as I’ve mentioned demonstrates this. Like it or not but maybe it’s time to recognize this Anglified aspect of our Irish identity, rather than wallow in a purposely contrived notion of Celtic mythology of a time that was taken away from us by our neighbours. Denial has been an enormous aspect of Irish society , the recent Catholic Church abuse scandals as well as the Banking and Property scandals are the icing on the cake.

Such an underlying muddled ideology will not produce great architecture!

Just to add, the 1916 men that I mentioned – Thomas Ashe, Liam Mellows have English surnames. Mellows was born in England!

One of the topics Pat Kenny listed for this morning is a discussion on ‘The Anglo-Irish and their identity crisis’.

Assuming this is not going to be about that wretched bank, it might be worth a listen.

The discussion is to be with Robert O’Byrne.

OK, we’re not getting too excited, but at least it may touch on the subject of architecture . . . . however lightly.

We always think of the Anglo-Irish as plummy toned and over-privileged, but that was [is] just the country house brigade, the real Anglo-Irish, the guys with day jobs, these are the people that made urban Ireland, and gave us the cultural heritage that we’re not slow to trade on when we’re looking for ‘City of Literature’ status etc. etc.