We have long been aware of the importance of Irishtown in the history of the southeast area along the River Liffey and Dublin Bay, but it’s pivotal role in Irish history and the history of warfare and space exploration is probably less appreciated. In our next two posts we will explore that unique and important history. Firstly, we will look at how Irishtown was at the heart of the creation of Republicanism, how its salt water was a source of medicinal cures and secondly while Space X launches the heaviest rocket into the space, the first firing of a rocket anywhere in Europe took place on Irishtown strand. The goal of the Ringsend & Districts Historical Society is the preserve and protect this great history, to research and educate and to bring our proud history to a wider audience. But let’s begin with part one and a homage to Irishtown, published in the Dublin Evening Post newspaper in August 1790.
IRISHTOWN – AUGUST 1790
The sun behind proud Merrion’s
towers,
Calls off his ardent conquering
powers.
Reflectant light flow quits the
plain,
And yields to fable night’s domain.
The opening rosebud hangs its head,
The tulip droops upon her bed.
And mourns the morning ray,
Shall bid her all her charms
display.
That ray, which now paints the
grove,
And gives the parting kiss of love.
To Howth’s tall hill, whose
blushing face
Receives Sol’s lingering last
embrace
Tis darkness all! but soon we'll
see,
The Moon in splendid majesty.
And lo! she comes, with decent
pride,
Moving thro’ th’ ethereal tide.
Stars resplendent join her train,
Hail her Queen and grace her reign.
View'd from Irishtown’s sweet shore,
Dublin Bay looks silver’d o’er.
Whilst in watery murmurs faint,
Spirits make their sad complaint.
That no tender friend was by,
To receive their parting sigh.
Nor to shed the silent tear,
O'er the slow’r-bestrewed bier.
Howth emerging from the deep,
Shews its awful rocky steep.
Points to Charlemont’s fair dome,
Patriotic virtues home.
Softest scenes my eye arrest,
Sweet sensations fill my breast.
‘Til with black frowns Ringsend steals
in,
And like unhappy Adam's sin.
Saddens the view, and in a thrice,
To Hell itself links Paradise.
While from that side the sailors’
cry,
Proclaims the crowded shipping nigh.
Hark the sprightly violin,
Tells the moon- light sports begin!
Let us to the green repair,
Mirth and music voice I hear.
Where the church its gothic head,
Lies among the peaceful dead.
Dismal bells toll out no more,
Dinning with their plants the shore.
Death in vain is monarch here,
Youthful Frolick knows no fear.
All his threats we set at nought,
On him let’s not lose a thought!
Come—the country dance lead down,
‘Tis the life of Irishtown.
Where the mossy banks permit,
Eager-looking matrons sit.
Whilst their daughters young and
gay,
Trip it merrily away.
Extasy marks every face,
Innocence and lively grace,
Who can view and not be charm’d?
Drooping Age itself is warm’d,
When to music’s lively sound.
Feet unnumbered press the ground,
Rage, and Strife, and Vice away.
Innocence is not your prey,
Curs'd be the deluder’s art,
That could wound one virtuous
heart.
Gods! what giggling, sporting, swearing!
I’m afraid t’will hurt my hearing;
Beaux unnumbered group’d together,
Light and sportive as a feather.
Zealous to display perfections,
Move about in all directions.
Youth and beauty disappear,
Quick as though:—the coast is
clear.
Now bucks advance—your cares are
o’er,
You've swept the counter, shut the
door.
Your angry masters’ gone to bed,
This night, no blows you'll have to
dread.
Each here appears as an’ Adonis,
So snug his face, so neat each bone
is.
Assurer’d of this, your dear selves
proffer,
As partners who’ll refuse the
offer?
For Ladies like that you should
treat:’em,
To what you have—some musk’d
pomatam[1].
Hear the bagpipes zerking note!
Mark each zigging petticoat!
Whilst the squeak of ill-timed
flutes,
Thro’ my pericranium shoots.
Hopping, squeezing, oogling,
nodding,
On all sides destruction’s plodding.
Sideways, frontways, glances flying,
Belles exulting, Gallants dying.
Retrograde with many a thump,
Yorder Damsel smacks her rump.
Against her heedless paramour,
Down he falls on Earth's hard floor.
Take him up, and bear him hence,
This may teach him to have sense.
Hair dishevell’d! waistcoat burst,
Irishtown and Pipes be curs’d.
Noise succeeds, and fad confusion,
At a brother Fop’s contusion.
All the conquering rump askance,
Eye, with fear, and quit the dance.
CONCLUSION.
In flow numbers, soft and sweet,
Bagpipes celebrate the fete.
Let the conquering Maid be crown'd,
And her rump with laurels bound.
Now the fiddle of recall,
Bids them vacate the church wall.
Dublin, Dublin, is the cry—
Dublin echoes thro’ the sky.
Straight embody’d Beaux depart,
Carrying each, a fair-one’s heart.
Boasting, loudly, without measure,
Of the captive, lovely treasure,
Taken by the force of locks.
Charg’d with powder, and fierce
cocks !
Should a drunken Sailor dare
To impede their proud career,
Fierce; impetuous, ten to one, soon
they make the foe begone.
Or, with many a kick and pound,
Trail his sides along the ground.
Go noble youths—and still may fame,
Prolong your virtues and your name
May. Irishtown, still own your
merit,
And every Public-house your spirit!
But deign your scouts to call away,
Who, thro’ our streets, each
morning stray.
Yelping their exorable oaths,
Aad straining, puppy-like, their
throats.
Oh, take them with you, they're
your own,
And leave to peace, and sleep, this
town.
Theobald
Wolfe Tone, a notable figure in Republican history and culture, was born in
Dublin on June 20th, 1763, to Peter, a coach builder and Margaret Tone[2]. The eldest of sixteen
siblings (only five reached adulthood), he graduated from Trinity College
despite being a lacklustre student and serving a year’s suspension for
participating in a fatal duel.
Meanwhile Martha (Matilda) Witherington was born on 17 June 1769 in Dublin, Dublin, to Catherine Fanning, age 28, and William Witherington, age 32. William, a wool merchant, lived with his family on Grafton Street. Wolfe Tone was taken by the beauty of the then fifteen-year-old and on July 21st 1785, he married Martha, then sixteen. Their wedding took place in St. Anne’s church on Dawson Street, not far from her home. It was Tone, according to Professor Patrick Geoghegan of Trinity College, who persuaded Martha to change her first name to Matilda. Matilda was the name of a character in a play Tone produced portrayed by Eliza Martin, the wife of an MP Richard Martin[3] whom Tone had fallen in love with and was disgusted that not only did she not leave her husband for him but she did have an affair with Mr Petrie in Paris which ended her marriage.
While
often spending time at his father’s home in County Kildare, Martha gave birth
to Maria in 1786. Tone moved to London, without his wife and daughter, to study
law but as with Trinity he was bored in college and was often distracted. His
developed a love of the theatre and even planned and submitted planned for a
British military colony on the newly discovered Sandwich Islands, today Hawaii.
In 1790 with fellow authors Thomas Radcliff and Richard Jebb, he had a novel
‘Belmont Castle’ published. Tone
returned to Ireland in December 1788 on the promise of £500 from Matilda’s
grandfather Reverend Fanning, and was called to the bar in July 1789. For a
time he practised on the Leinster circuit but, as he recalled, ‘I soon got sick
and weary of the law’.
In 1787, his son Richard was born but died two years later and this affected Martha both physically and mentally. In a bid to help his beloved wife, Wolfe in May 1790 moved his family from lodging in Clarendon Street to rent a small house on the sea front in Irishtown. This house was most likely located where today’s Bayview is located. In 1834, what the newspapers described as a ‘hurricane’ struck Irishtown washing away these houses on the Irishtown seafront including a local tavern known as the Merrion Arms owned by Michael Donnelly. In 1789 his father had been declared bankrupt following a legal and financial battle with his brother Jonathan. The house’s proximity to the popular St. Matthews protestant church was an added attraction for the Tone’s.
In July 1790 in the gallery of the Irish House of Commons, now the Bank of Ireland, College Green, he had met a kindred spirit, Thomas Russell. Russell was born in County Cork, his father was a decorated British army captain. After serving during numerous battles he was appointed to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham where his family lived with him. It was while Thomas Russell was staying here that he met with Tone and destiny. Both men were critical of Henry Grattan, feeling that his inaction was not creating meaningful reform in Ireland. Tone was to describe the encounter with Russell as "one of the most fortunate in my life". According to Richard Madden writing a memoir of Tone & his brother Mathhew in 1846,
‘In the summer in 1790, he took a little cottage…where in a small circle of friends, the opinions were discussed, extended and fortified, which had so important and influence on the fate of Ireland a few years later. The parties to those discussions were his friend Thomas Russell, his venerable father, Captain Russell, his own brother William, occasionally from the county of Kildare where he resided with his brother Matthew[4], who had lately set up a cotton manufactory at Prosperous.’
According
to his own autobiography
“My wife's health continuing still
delicate, she was ordered by her physician to bathe in the salt-water. I hired,
in consequence, a little box of a house on the seaside, at Irishtown,
where we spent the summer of 1790. Russell and I were inseparable, and, as our
discussions were mostly political, and our sentiments agreed exactly, we
extended our views, and fortified each other in the opinions, to the
propagation and establishment of which we have ever since been devoted. I
recall with transport the happy days we spent together during that period; the
delicious dinners, in the preparation of which my wife, Russell, and myself,
were all engaged ; our afternoon walks, and the discussions we had as We lay
stretched on the grass. It was delightful! Sometimes Russell's venerable
father, a veteran of nearly seventy, with the courage of a hero, the serenity
of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint, used to visit our little mansion,
and that day was a fete. My wife doated on the old man, and he loved her like
one of his children. I will not attempt, because I am unable, to express the
veneration and regard I had for him, and I am sure that, next to his own sons,
and scarcely below them, he loved and esteemed me. Russell's brother, John,
too, used to visit us ; a man of a most warm and affectionate heart' and
incontestably of the most companionable talents I ever met. His humour, which
was pure and natural, flowed in an inexhaustible stream. He had not the
strength of character of my friend Tom, but for the charms of conversation he
excelled him and all the world. Sometimes, too, my brother William used to join
us for a week, from County Kildare, where he resided with my brother Matthew,
who had lately commenced a cotton manufactory at Prosperous, in that county. I
have already mentioned the convivial talents he possessed. In short, when the
two Russell’s, my brother, and I, were assembled, it is impossible to conceive
a happier society. I know not whether our wit was perfectly classical or not,
nor does it signify. If it was not sterling, at least it passed current amongst
ourselves. If I may judge, we were none of us destitute of the humour
indigenous to the soil of Ireland ; for three of us I can answer, they
possessed it in an eminent degree ; add to this, I was the only one of the four
who was not a poet, or at least a maker of verses : so that every day produced
a ballad, or some poetical squib, which amused us after dinner ; and, as our
conversation turned upon no ribaldry nor indecency, my wife and sister never left
the table. These were delicious days. The rich and great, who sit down every
day to the monotony of a splendid entertainment, can form no idea of the
happiness of our frugal meal, nor of the infinite pleasure we found in taking
each his part in the preparation and at-James's, on the one part, and Russell
and myself, from my little box at Irishtown, on the other. If the
measure I proposed had been adopted, we were both determined on going out with
the expedition, in which case, instead of planning revolutions in our own
country, we might be now, perhaps, carrying on a privateering war (for which, I
think, we have each of us talents,) on the coasts of Spanish America. This
adventure is an additional proof of the romantic spirit I have mentioned in the
beginning of my memoirs, as a trait in our family; and, indeed, my friend
Russell was, in that respect, completely one of ourselves. The minister's
refusal did not sweeten us much towards him. I renewed the vow I had once
before made, to make him, if I could, repent of it, in which Russell most
heartily concurred. Perhaps the minister may yet have reason to wish he had let
us go off quietly to the South Seas. I should be glad to have an opportunity to
remind him of his old correspondent, and if I find one, I will not overlook it.
I dare say he has utterly forgotten the circumstance, but I have not. " Everything,
however, is for the best," as Pangloss says, " in this best of all
possible worlds :" If I had gone to the Sandwich Islands, in 1790, I
should not be to-day chef de brigade in the service of the French Republic, not
to mention what I may be in my own country, if our expedition thither succeeds.
But to return. Shortly after this disappointment, Russell, who had for two or three years revelled in the ease and dignity of an Ensign's half pay, (amounting to 28/. sterling a-year,) which he had earned before he was twenty-one by broiling in the East Indies for five years, was unexpectedly promoted by favour of the commander-in-chief to an Ensigncy on full pay, in the 64th regiment of foot, then quartered in the town of Belfast. He put himself, in consequence, in battle array, and prepared to join. I remember the last day he dined with us in Irishtown, where he came, to use his own quotation, " nil clinquant, all in gold" We set him to cook part of the dinner in a very fine suit of laced regimentals. I love to recall those scenes. We parted with the sincerest regret on both sides ; he set off for Belfast, and shortly after we returned to town for the winter, my wife's health being perfectly re-established, as she manifested by being, in due time, brought to bed of our eldest boy, whom we called William, after my brother.”
(From
Page 38 ‘Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone’. Written by himself.)
It
was obvious that the discussions held in the house in Irishtown formed the
basis of the revolutionary movement that would culminate in the 1798 rebellion.
According to Seamus McManus’s book ‘The Story of the Irish Race’,
“One of the truths presently
discovered by the keen minds which canvassed these things, that summer of 1790
at Irishtown, was that England, through the instrumentality of the
"Protestant Ascendancy," had kept her hold on Ireland by the
deliberate fostering of religious differences. Ergo it followed that if
Dissenters and Catholics could be persuaded to make common cause, the
"Protestant Ascendancy" would not only suffer a rude shock, but the
supremacy of its "owners and inventors," the English Government, would
meet with an immediate downfall. The first task, therefore, of anyone who
wanted to free Ireland was to unite Catholics and Dissenters”.
The
immediate result of the Irishtown talks was that in October 1791 in Belfast the
Society of the United Irishmen was founded. The founders were Wolfe Tone, James
Napper Tandy, Thomas Russell, Samual Nielson and Henry Joy McCracken. According
to the BBC Website,
‘The United Irishmen wanted to see democratic change in Ireland believing this could heal the religious divisions that had harmed the country. They promised to unite Catholic, Protestant (Anglican) and Dissenter (the name given to Presbyterians who were viewed as dissenting from (disagreeing with) the Anglican Church).’
On June 13th, 1795, the Tone’s sailed from Belfast crossing the Atlantic to the US arriving in Philadelphia in early August. He immediately made contact with the French authorities in Washington. As a result, on New Years Day 1796 he sailed to Le Harve, France. Mrs Tone and family travelled the following October. They made their way to Paris and Wolfe Tone began negotiations with the French Government to organise an invasion force to free Ireland from British rule.
One
of the informers to help the British defeat the United Irishmen was Thomas
Reynolds who in 1784 had married Martha Witherington’s sister.
Intriguingly
in August 1790, the same month that Russell moved to Belfast to join his
regiment in the British Army. Towards the end of August the Wolfe’s left
Irishtown , moving to a flat on Longford Street and within nine months his son
William Theobald Wolfe Tone was born. On August 12th, 1790, in the Dublin
Evening Post newspaper a homage to Irishtown appeared in the paper under the pseudonym
‘Volbond’ which could easily have been Tone’s farewell to the place where
revolution was born.
Tone
was arrested following a failed attempt to land French troops near Derry and
following a one hour trial in Dublin on November 10th, 1798, he was
sentenced to death. While awaiting his execution day in prison, on November 19th
he slit his throat and died. His body was given to his family was he was
interned in Bodenstown, County Kildare. Matilda remarried a Thomas Wilson and died
on March 18th 1849 in Georgetown near Washington DC.
[1]
Scented ointment
[2]
Nee Lamport
[3]
Later founder of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
[4]
Matthew was hanged in the aftermath of the failed French naval invasion.
