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Roll me over next to the wall
May. 9th, 2011 08:50 pmThis morning I wrote a three-hour exam in one and one-half hours. I suppose this is either a good thing or a bad one, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you which.
So I decided thereafter that I'd spend a little while wandering around Dublin city: I tend to stick to my well-known and familiar routes, and I haven't walked up past Christchurch in a while. But since I'd discovered the existence of an interesting public library - Marsh's Library, which has been in continuous operation since the early 1700s - up by Kevin St. garda station, adjacent to St. Patrick's Cathedral. So I headed up that way, going up Aungier St past the Carmelite Priory, and then down along Kevin St towards the cathedral.
The library's housed in a very pleasant Georgian building. You enter through a narrow iron gate, through a small townhouse garden, up some steps to the door. You go up an age-polished staircase and buzz for entry at the giant heavy oaken door to the main room, under a plaque commemorating three hundred years of Keepers of the library. There are two galleries, narrow and lined with stacks filled with massive early printed books. There are also glass cases for the exhibition. It's fantastic. You just want to roll around in the history. But I arrived at ten minutes to lunch. They kindly let me in, but asked me to pull the garden gate shut on my way out.
After this I wandered down past the two cathedrals, ducked up to the Castle to inquire about opening hours for one of the museums there, then went back past Christchurch while the bells were tolling - seventeen times: I counted them - towards the medieval parish of St Audoen's, where a massive post-Emancipation Catholic parish church (home of the Polish mission in Ireland, and where Latin mass is said, I think, once a week) towers over the tiny basilica of medieval St Audoen's. It's rather annoying, you know: Henry Eight nicked all the interesting churches for the Anglicans. I'm not even Catholic anymore, but one does feel a smattering of conflicted puzzling resentment when one realises that all the Catholic monumental churches in Dublin are 19th century constructions - post-Emancipation. Well, obviously! But I did not actually realise this, viscerally, until... well, the last week, as a matter of fact.
St Audoen's is beside the old Cornmarket, where all the old buildings were demolished for new development before I was born. It's also beside the last remnant of Dublin's medieval wall.
Have a linky! There is a belltower with six! bells. And a sepulchre - with no body in it - for Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, once Lord Treasurer of Ireland, way back in the 1400s. (FitzEustace, interestingly enough, is in Irish Mac Ghiolla Easa, McAleese. I wonder if the President's any relation?)
And then I went back home to college, stopping off for an Italian icecream milkshake in Temple Bar on the way. After which I climbed. Nice wall. Pretty wall. Painful wall.
I came home to find that my book order had arrived. I now possess a beguiling, enticing, lovely, bound-to-be-entertaining* copy of North and Hillard's Greek Prose Composition. Joy!
Going flop now. Wake me up if the world ends in the next twenty-four hours, k?
*Sarcasm. But you probably guessed that already.
So I decided thereafter that I'd spend a little while wandering around Dublin city: I tend to stick to my well-known and familiar routes, and I haven't walked up past Christchurch in a while. But since I'd discovered the existence of an interesting public library - Marsh's Library, which has been in continuous operation since the early 1700s - up by Kevin St. garda station, adjacent to St. Patrick's Cathedral. So I headed up that way, going up Aungier St past the Carmelite Priory, and then down along Kevin St towards the cathedral.
The library's housed in a very pleasant Georgian building. You enter through a narrow iron gate, through a small townhouse garden, up some steps to the door. You go up an age-polished staircase and buzz for entry at the giant heavy oaken door to the main room, under a plaque commemorating three hundred years of Keepers of the library. There are two galleries, narrow and lined with stacks filled with massive early printed books. There are also glass cases for the exhibition. It's fantastic. You just want to roll around in the history. But I arrived at ten minutes to lunch. They kindly let me in, but asked me to pull the garden gate shut on my way out.
After this I wandered down past the two cathedrals, ducked up to the Castle to inquire about opening hours for one of the museums there, then went back past Christchurch while the bells were tolling - seventeen times: I counted them - towards the medieval parish of St Audoen's, where a massive post-Emancipation Catholic parish church (home of the Polish mission in Ireland, and where Latin mass is said, I think, once a week) towers over the tiny basilica of medieval St Audoen's. It's rather annoying, you know: Henry Eight nicked all the interesting churches for the Anglicans. I'm not even Catholic anymore, but one does feel a smattering of conflicted puzzling resentment when one realises that all the Catholic monumental churches in Dublin are 19th century constructions - post-Emancipation. Well, obviously! But I did not actually realise this, viscerally, until... well, the last week, as a matter of fact.
St Audoen's is beside the old Cornmarket, where all the old buildings were demolished for new development before I was born. It's also beside the last remnant of Dublin's medieval wall.
Have a linky! There is a belltower with six! bells. And a sepulchre - with no body in it - for Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, once Lord Treasurer of Ireland, way back in the 1400s. (FitzEustace, interestingly enough, is in Irish Mac Ghiolla Easa, McAleese. I wonder if the President's any relation?)
And then I went back home to college, stopping off for an Italian icecream milkshake in Temple Bar on the way. After which I climbed. Nice wall. Pretty wall. Painful wall.
I came home to find that my book order had arrived. I now possess a beguiling, enticing, lovely, bound-to-be-entertaining* copy of North and Hillard's Greek Prose Composition. Joy!
Going flop now. Wake me up if the world ends in the next twenty-four hours, k?
*Sarcasm. But you probably guessed that already.
