Fr Pat Noise Memorial

What an intriuging story! Personally I think they should leave this little quirk in place. However I do have to wonder at priorities here when pieces of masonry are missing from the bridge (see OConnell St thread) with little or no proper attention, why get so worked up over such a minor point.

Very true Stephen. I wonder when it was put there. Anyone have any idea? Maybe the council should look further afield before deciding to definitely take it down.

How long has it been in situ?

I seen this on the news last night, but couldn’t find the story on the web to post it. Very strange indeed.
It can’t be just a random thing, must be an allusion to something. But nobody has ever heard of him.

The name is a bit suss alright

Don’t know how harmless it is to be honest. They made an absolute balls of putting it in and have damaged the brickwork on the bridge.

I I thought at first it could have been to commemorate the priest who gave the last rites to the unknown gurrier (of Myles na gCopaleen fame) However, the date is wrong.
KB2

it’s a prank.

It’s vandalism in a sense, but the plaque is filling in a hole left when the millennium clock (“the chime in the slime”) was abandoned.

It’s a bit of harmless fun. I think it should be allowed to stay, at least until something more fitting can be found to plug the hole.

And it’s hardly the first time a memorial has been erected to a person or event of dubious historical accuracy.

My first thought when I heard this prank was: that’s the work of Paul Clerkin!

so I take it this wasn’t your handiwork Paul? 🙂

I just like to find out what it means, somebody must of had a reason behind the name. I’d be a little dissappointed if it was just random.

If they had carved the hole out of the stonework for the plaque, that would be vandalism. However, this is filling in an unsightly hole the council had left after a failed project. It may meet the technical definition of vandalism, but as long as no damage has been done to the bridge, I think no moral vandalism has occurred (if such a thing exists).

Hopefully people will see the humour of it.

I’d recommend getting down there to have a look for yourself before it disappears.

It turns out it’s been there for three years

http://www.utvinternet.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=73142&pt=n

Thanks to those for posting more information about this throughout the day. I must say I find it quite funny. The bridge doesn’t look to have been damaged by it and it is nice to see this sort of random activity take place once in a while.

That UTV item is junk journalism, lazily lifted from some other dozy organ. It’s clear the plaque is no more than three months there

My guess is that it’s some media studies or art student doing a project – and the reaction to the plaque, or rather how we are all “interpreting” it – will be at the centre of his/her thesis

I find that as people have more leisure time and money, hoaxes are becoming more prevalent. Tiresome, really:(

Agreed. I can’t believe it could be there for three years without somebody noticing and it becomming public knowledge. Even three months is probably pushing it.

Then again, I must have walked past that spot hundreds of times without paying notice to either the plaque or the empty space.

I don’t find it tiresome, though. It’s a hoax, but an imaginative one. An implausible story that just might have a hint of truth about it.

I think it would be a shame if it does get removed. However, I’d like to know the source of the original story and some confirmation of the intentions of the council before I start a letter writing campaign. I’ve seen this article copied on several forums, but none of them have credited the original source.

:rolleyes: …and did you notice that “fr pat noise” is an anagram of “pater of sin”?….the plot thickens

@lostcarpark wrote:

Agreed. I can’t believe it could be there for three years without somebody noticing and it becomming public knowledge. Even three months is probably pushing it.

If you wake past it, even stopped and read it. Would you think it was anything other than a legitimate plaque. May of thought it strange that you never heard of “Fr Pat Noise”. But would you of doubted it. Ands thats only if you have a change to stop and wait on the bridge, most people are hurrying accross it.

@jackwade wrote:

:rolleyes: …and did you notice that “fr pat noise” is an anagram of “pater of sin”?….the plot thickens

I was thinking along the anagram lines earlier. If you expand pat to patrick or Fr. to father the lsit goes on and on. I think we may need to wait to hear the cause.

It’s been there a few months, and I’m sad that the story is finally out. I liked the idea of it being there quietly for years. I was going to post about it in the O’Connell Street thread a few months ago after it first came to my attention, but a friend thought that doing so might blow its cover.

Fr Pat Noise, RIP.

I found a photograph of it dating from February.

If anyone’s interested, the photos I took today are here.

I wonder who the jokers were who did this and what was the purpose….Is there a hidden meaning in the name ‘Fr. Pat Noise’…..need the Da Vinci Code breakers here ………Fr.Pat Noise….. aka Patronise. Could be someone taking the piss outta our attitude to our Irish history.

Funny all the same 😀

A clever, if rather bizarre prank. Can’t claim to have noticed the plaque itself, but certainly know the gap that it fills – a nasty rectangular hole with an even deeper smaller hole set into it as I recall. Been there for a while, often stuffed with crisp packets and the like. It always looked rather strange being just right of centre on the parapet, and of course it being there in the first place :rolleyes:

It ought to be removed though – you can’t have such a leg-pulling plaque in such a prominent location. It also makes a mockery of commemorative structures erected with genuine intentions, even with the good spirit it seems to have been made in – I like the ‘erected by the HSTI’ part 🙂
The amount of attention this was receiving yesterday on the bridge was remarkable, all seemingly on the back of a single news report the night before at the bottom of this page:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0508/9news.html

Now if the CC would lavish the same professional resources on the simple matter of the missing baluster we might actually get somewhere. The same goes for filling the nasty hole the plaque is neatly tidying up.

Also just thinking – 1919 is the date the CC have (incorrectly) published for the reduction of all the O’Connell Bridge lanterns due to ‘safety concerns’. Maybe this is where the date came from to lend the story some credibility.

I agree with the site stance;

someone hacked a chunk out of one of the finest bridges in the City as a joke they do not deserve oxygen

@Thomond Park wrote:

I agree with the site stance]

somebody already pointed out

the plaque is filling in a hole left when the millennium clock (“the chime in the slime”) was abandoned.

So I’d blame them for hacking out a chunck of the bridge, not the hoaxer, there was no vandalism involved.

hmm I can’t find a picture of it anywhere

Has it been proven that the millenium clock damaged the bridge?

I’m not so sure that damage to the bridge is in fact negligible as the extent of the damage will not be known until the plaque is removed.

A story like the Carravagio or the BMW paint bombed by a greived lover is funny but when it comes to errecting a plaque on a historic bridge the line has been crossed for me.

Mr Clerkin, Thank you for re-opening this thread; it reflects well on you and the running of this site all the better to do so…even if it does aNoise Thomond Park 😀

But I shall adopt a diginified stance and not create a commotion as a result of my aNoise-ance at this juvenile and misplaced act

The crusading left have at last latched on to an issue of great importance…and so have put up a website looking for suggestions as to what should be done with the Pat Noise plaque. So far there are more than 100 replies!

From: http://www.oconnellbridge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2

The Dublin South East Labour Party invite your suggestions for the proposed new plaque on O’Connell Bridge.

The recent removal of the “Father Noise” plaque (placed there as part of an art experiment) has made space for a new plaque to be erected on O’Connell Bridge. Who or what should it comemmorate? A person of significance to Dublin? A symbol to recall an important event in Dublin’s history? Should any plaque be placed there at all?

All (suitable!) submissions made here will be presented to the Arts Committee of Dublin City Council.

With best regards,

Ruairi Quinn TD, Cllr Kevin Humphreys, Cllr Dermot Lacey, Cllr Mary Freehill, Cllr Oisín Quinn, and all the Labour Party Group on Dublin City Council.

Who should be on the plaque? Why, Fr. Ted Crilly of course!

@The Denouncer wrote:

Who should be on the plaque? Why, Fr. Ted Crilly of course!

Ah Denouncer you are not living up to your name…I was at least expecting you to denounce this thread, or the joke – the plaque, that is, not the labour party:D

It is an interesting idea to let the public express an opinion on what should replace it if not a simple restoration

How about a memorial to the gunboat “Helga”

What a load of nonsense…lets make up the need to commemorate someone to fill a bit of space on a bridge. Ruiari should be ashamed of himself. As should Lacey…. the man who famously derided the Spire as a monument to nothing!

But it’s cheaper than having to restore the bridge Stephen – have you not learned the system at this stage?

Perhaps it could commemorate a past view? There could be a plaque on the east parapet showing the view towards the Custom House without the Loop Line, and one on the west parapet showing the view upriver without Calatrava’s arches that don’t play by the rules.

Or how about a memorial to the Fr Pat Noise memorial? “This plaque commemorates a plaque that commemorated a fictitious character…”
And then when it gets nicked, there would be a plaque commemorating a plaque commemorating a plaque…

It’s still there by the way. Had a look at it last night, Pretty small, did it really replace some plaque for the chime in the slime ? A very neat fit if it did, whomever must have measured up first. V. bizarre.

Surely a plaque to Flann O’Brien is the only appropriate memorial for this site – given the nonsense that has led to this situation

It says that the plaque filled the spot where the Millenium Clock used to be but i always thought that the Clock was actually in the water! Can someone tell me about the Millenium Clock?

The clock was indeed in the water and could be viewed from the bridge. The idea was that a machine on the bridge would print postcards with the exact time left until the millenium on each one. I would assume the hole was cut in the bridge to hold this machine, although as far as i know it was never actually installed.

ok thanks!

I remember the postcard machine being pretty big, I thought it stood on the bridge rather than mounted on the parapet. Could be wrong though it was a long time ago… I have a postcard from it here somewhere – 20 pee well spent!

This has been stuck in my head for a while now, no idea where I put the card. Could be worth a fortune now!. However I did do some digging on the millennium clock:

The official name was the “Millennium Countdown” and it was the winner of a Dublin City Corporation competition held in 1996 for a countdown monument.

It consisted of the digital countdown tethered just below the water in the liffey, surrounded by mechanical reeds intended to emit a sound and light display.

On the bridge a “steel bollard” was to dispense souvenier postcards stamped with the number of seconds till the millennium. I recall the “bollard” was more like a big stainless steel box but I may be wrong. The postcards were real and it did work for a time.

When clock counted down to 000000000 the plan was that it would detatch itself and float off down river like at a viking funeral. The reeds were to combust, no doubt adding to the sense of occasion.

After the recent duck race where the organisers failed to check the tides and had the ducks going the wrong way up the Liffey I wonder would the same thing have happened on the big night?

The reeds in particular always looked messy, the clock looked good for a while. I think it was for a rowboat race or possibly the liffey swim that the clock was “temporarily” removed. Plan at time was to clean the clock and somehow address the slime attaching to it.

I dug most of this info from Angela Brady and Robin Mallalieu’s “Dublin , a guide to recent architecture” published back in 1997 (- well worth a look, don’t know if still in print). Here’s the closing comment from the book:

“The Architects [Hassett Ducatez] list their concepts as ‘a study of time, the immateriality of Time and the forces of Nature….. the most beautiful and astonishing clock in the world’. After such a build-up the reality can only dissapoint.”

Well that dissapoint certaintly came to pass!

Has anyone been able to locate a picture of what the steel bollard of the Millenium Clock actually looked like? I’m very interested to see if anyone has been able to find photos of the damage that was done to the bridge, not to mention the postcard dispenser or the postcards themselves. (Not to drive you mad again, Lotts.) It almost seems the stuff of myth now. I want some hard evidence.

Between the failed chime in the slime and Fr. Pat, this location seems to be a nesting place of transient memorials. A museum of spurned memorials might be in order. Pieces of the Millenium Clock, the pink tank of Prague… Woe to the project that seeks to fill the empty space!

I was searched searched and was unable to find even a pic of the slime chime itself on the net…

http://www.fotosearch.com/SIX009/eir-066/

It has been erased from memory…

From today’s Irish Times:

Plaque to fictitious ‘Fr Noise’ to be taken off bridge again
Alison Healy

He secretly arrived on Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge in 2004 and remained there for two years before his cover was blown. But now Fr Pat Noise’s days on the bridge are finally over.

Dublin City Council will make a second attempt today to remove the mysterious Fr Pat Noise plaque from O’Connell Bridge after pranksters replaced the original, which was removed a couple of months ago.

The bronze plaque commemorates the fictitious priest who “died in suspicious circumstances when his carriage plunged into the Liffey on August 10th, 1919”.

The plaque was brought to public attention by the Sunday Tribune last May, although video footage supplied by the hoaxers showed it being mounted on the busy bridge in April 2004 as pedestrians passed by. It was thought that the work was carried out by two brothers and was a tribute to their father.

The name “Fr Pat Noise” is a play on pater noster , the Latin for “our father”. The portrait on the plaque is said to be a likeness of the men’s father. Dublin City Council did not know about the plaque until the media drew attention to it.

A council spokeswoman confirmed that the plaque had been taken away by the council two months ago while work was being carried out on the bridge. She said it was difficult to pinpoint when the replacement arrived, but it would be removed today.

The spokeswoman said that the council had not identified the hoaxers, but if they had been caught they could have faced charges for defacing public property: “It’s quite serious. It has damaged the bridge.”

She added that the council would be taking steps to ensure that another plaque could not be mounted on the bridge. The plaque was placed in an indent left when part of the ill-fated “Millennium Countdown” clock was removed.

In an e-mail to The Irish Times last year from a “friend of the artist”, the hoaxer wrote that the interest in the plaque “reflects our famous sense of humour, and that unquantifiable Irish quality that sees us fight for the underdog every time, something that others never understand”.

Last December, the south-east area committee of Dublin City Council spoke in favour of leaving it in place. The plaque generated interest at home and abroad, with websites conducting polls asking whether it should remain or be replaced by a permanent memorial to some cause.

© 2007 The Irish Times

Bastards.

I wonder what will be done with it. I hope it goes on display in a musuem.

@cobalt wrote:

From today’s Irish Times:

The spokeswoman said that the council had not identified the hoaxers, but if they had been caught they could have faced charges for defacing public property: “It’s quite serious. It has damaged the bridge.”

the council repeats the blatent lie

“pranksters replaced the original, which was removed a couple of months ago.”

I hope another one is put in its place!

@lostexpectation wrote:

they could have faced charges for defacing public property

Pot, meet kettle.

@ctesiphon wrote:

Pot, meet kettle.

you really have to source you quotes! I can’t find where you got that from? and i was probably joking >: |

Pranksters and hoaxers, is it? Facing charges for defacing public property, eh? Perhaps we should erect a battalion of Fr Pat Noises on Spar shopfronts and see how quickly the DCC acts.

The Irish Times article caught my attention for its claim that Fr Pat Noise arrived in 2004 – a claim that was also put forth in an Irish Independent article from 15 May 2006. But, as befits an urban legend, there appear to be wildly differing reports on when the plaque first arrived. Has it actually been confirmed that the plaque appeared three years ago or is this just what the RTE video footage claimed? After all, can you really trust the testimony of a couple of chisel-wielding pranksters?

Also, you have to love how in every article, the clock is always referred to as ill-fated. Cut and paste journalism? Cryptomnesia? Or just, ahem, linguistic continuity?:

‘The plaque was placed in an indent left when part of the ill-fated Millennium Countdown clock was removed.’ (Irish Times, 22 May 2007)

‘The fake plaque, which was installed in the space vacated by the ill-fated Millennium clock, went unnoticed’ (Irish Independent, 15 May 2006)

‘…meet the same fate as the ill-fated Millennium Clock.’ (Irish Independent, 10 November 1998)

‘workmen putting the ill-fated clock… in the water’ (Irish Independent, 10 December 1996)

Well I’m only delighted to post this from today’s Irish Times.

The wily Fr Pat Noise looks set to remain a permanent fixture on O’Connell Bridge after plans to remove him were suddenly aborted by Dublin City Council on Tuesday morning. There were red faces in the council after it emerged that councillors on the southeast committee had passed a motion to retain the unofficial plaque to the fictitious priest in December. Cllr Dermot Lacey tabled that motion and said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he read in the The Irish Times on Tuesday the plaque was to be removed by council workers that day. “It would have been a direct act of defiance to local government if it had been removed,” he said. Mr Lacey said it appeared the relevant city council officials were not aware of the councillors’ decision. Ten minutes after he raised a query with the council, he was told that the priest had been spared once more. The plaque commemorates the mysterious cleric who “died in suspicious circumstances when his carriage plunged into the Liffey on August 10th, 1919”.

This is back in the news again. Amazing wee story.

See here on Blogorrah: http://blogorrah.com/come-on-feel-the-noise-father-pat-saved.html, which I think is quoting from here (subs required): http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2007/0524/1179498727032.html

There’s also a wikipedia entry for it now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Pat_Noise, on which there’s an archiseek link at the bottom. (And archiseek comes up first for a Google search on “Fr Pat Noise”. Sweet.

(Has any of the street art such as the arrow pointing upwards; or the atari-man embedded in walls turned up in Dublin at all? I’ve seen these from London to Vienna to Barcelona.)

@Sue wrote:

I find that as people have more leisure time and money, hoaxes are becoming more prevalent. Tiresome, really:(

I couldn’t disagree more. A well-performed hoax could be considered a type of artwork, even a kind of pereformance art. It’s more good hoaxes we need. But, alas, in fact, the golden age of hoaxing-the ninteenth century- is long gone. Nothing now is as audacious, creative and imaginative as the Berners Street hoax, the Cardiff Giant and the great Dreadnought hoax.