Talbot Guest House, Dublin, 14th March 1996
Eight–thirty breakfast – black and white pudding – before last morning exploring.
Across the Liffey by the Ha’penny Bridge and into Temple Bar, where a huge effort is going into a new arts and cultural quarter of Dublin – renovation and new build marrying past and future.
Walked up to Christ Church Cathedral. Formally the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, its Gothick shell covers ancient roots. Founded in the early 11th Century under the Viking king Sitric Silkenbeard, it was rebuilt in the late 12th Century by Norman ruler Strongbow, then enlarged in the early 13th century. Unfortunately the foundations rested on peat and gave way in 1562 bringing down the south wall and roof. After three centuries of increasing dereliction it was rebuilt in the 1870s to designs by G. E. Street. The stairs to the belfry and the crypt are reminders of an older foundation. In the Peace Chapel of St Laud a curious heart shaped metal box on a chain in a metal cage is fixed to the wall: it contains the heart of Saint Laurence O’Toole, Archbishop in the 1150s. The organ played to a few ambling visitors.
Outside two bustling women in fake furs and high heels warned us about walking in the area, ‘Watch your bags, there are some funny people about’.
Strolled down to the Powerscourt Centre off Grafton Street. Powerscourt House, the home of the 3rd Viscount Powerscourt, was designed by Robert Mack and dates from 1771 to 1774. It was redeveloped as a shopping centre between 1978 and 1981. An imaginative reworking, it survives on an affluence that supports shopping and eating and drinking as leisure and tourist pastimes. A pianist perched on a podium mixed the ‘Green Green Grass of Home’ with the ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ and the ‘Flowers of the Forest’.
Then to Bewleys in Grafton Street for lunch served by lace-capped waitresses in the James Joyce Room. Not a special meal, but a nostalgic time warp atmosphere. Coffee and cake downstairs in the main café, sharing a table with two postgraduate marketing students, who were recording the movement and behaviour of customers. Sitting by the fire with teapot and notebooks they could have had a worse assignment on a bitter day.