Re: Re: pearse street developments
@jimg wrote:
I found this old photograph of Pearse St. while dicking about on the web:
It took quite a while for me to find my bearings with the photo as the corner building mirrors Doyles Pub across the street which I found very disorienting. The giveaway is the firestation tower in the background behind the wierd christmas tree thing or whatever it is.
Ok it’s a fairly trivial piece of knowledge but I found out what the “weird christmas tree thing” in the above photo is. It was called the Crampton Memorial and apparently Cosgrave’s Illustrated Dictionary of Dublin, has an entry:
This fountain has been placed here,
A type of helath and usefulness,
by the friends and admirers,
Of Sir Philip Cramption, Bart.,
Surgeon-General to His Majesty’s Forces,
It but feebly represents
The sparkle of his genial fancy,
The depth of his calm sagacity,
The clearness of his spotless honour,
The flow of his boundless benevolence.
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I’m not sure why but I find it amusing on a number of levels.
I typed the above from a book called The Annals of Dublin Fair City by E E O’Donnell published in time for the millenium (the 1988 one!). I’d love to know more about Cosgrave’s Illustrated Dictionary of Dublin. There’s also a reference to it in John Finerty’s 19th century coffeetable book – Ireland in Pictures. I couldn’t resist buying a copy of the latter even though it’s available in a digitised form on the web. But besides that neither google nor abebooks revealed anything above what sounds like a fascinating book.
