Dublin School Tours

Check out the new Blog section of our website. We will be updating our blog regularly with exciting articles on the History of Dublin for the Vikings to the Irish Revolution.

Link Below!
https://www.dublinschooltours.ie/blog

Had this gas bunch out during the week. The 6th class group from really put Alan to work. They're all tourist guides in the making for sure! Big thank you to their teacher Charles for taking them out to explore the medieval city of Dublin.

Had a great day out last week with the TY's from Scoil de Híde in Tallaght.

We did the 1916 Easter Rising Tour taking in building at Liberty Hall, , Moore Street and the Garden of Remembrance.

Here's the group with three of the flags flown over the city during Easter week. The Irish Republic flag and the Tricolour were above the GPO while the Plough and the Stars was raised over William Martin Murphy's Imperial Hotel.

If you were fighting a war in medieval Ireland there are some things to consider, especially the geography of the country.

Here's a fantastic representation from the at Collins Barracks.

Did you know that on College Green there used to stand a large equestrian statue of King William of Orange. Despite being bombed and attacked numerous times of the years it wasn't until 1928 that is was taken off the city streets to be replaced later by the Thomas Davis Monument.

March this weekend to protect the cultural identity of Dublin city from hotel developers and informant members of an Bord Planála.

Big shout out to my old college friend for the amazing poster.

One of our bigger tours this week came all the way from Denmark!

Massive thank you to the English Language Centre Ireland. We had Alan and Dan as the guides!

Hope you guys have a great time on you farming trips around our wonderful island.

We are going to take a wee break from the Sculptures of Dublin series for a little while.

When we start these projects, sometimes they grow into something bigger than initially anticipated. So instead we're going to pause at the death of Thomas Farrell in 1900 and come back to the series maybe in the new year.

This leaves us at a perfect place to pick up later on, the dawn of the 20th century, the establishment of Irish Independence and the explosion of nationalist art and sculpture, as well as the more literal explosion of some of our Dublin's colonial sculptures.

Still to come on the series will be artists such as,

James Pearse
Oliver Sheppard
Willie Pearse
Oisín Kelly and
Edward Delaney to name just a few.

Another of Dublin's newest sculptures by Alan Phelan on top of the O'Connell Plinth outside .

The plinth originally held a marble statue of Daniel O'Connell made by the Irish sculptor John Hogan in 1846. However, due to weather conditions the sculpture was moved indoors where it remains today in the rotunda of Dublin's City Hall.

Phelans colourful piece has many references to 18th and 19th century Dublin with the stem of the candelabra designed in the same fashion as the stucco plasterwork that adorns much of the stately homes and buildings of Georgian Dublin while the candles themselves reference the use of light often used in enlightenment paintings of the time. The references to the enlightenment can also be considered as references to Daniel O'Connell, a man born of the ideals of the enlightenment, who once stood on the plinth.

This is the final resting place of the Dublin born, Irish Sculptor Sir Thomas Farrell RHA . However his name is nowhere to be seen on the grave.

Farrell became the greatest Irish sculptor of the late 19th century and his work adorns the city's capital to this day. Figures such as Sir John Gray, William Smith O'Brien, Lord Ardillaun, William Dargan and even the Waterloo Panel of the Wellington Testimonial in the Phoenix Park.

Born to the well known sculptor Terence Farrell in 1827, Thomas was one of six sons who all went on to become sculptors in Dublin. It was Thomas however that would become the best well known, first attending the Royal Hibernian Academy and later winning the commission to sculpt the former Archbishop of Dublin Daniel Murray.

Farrell went on to create the Waterloo Panel for the Wellington Testimonial and would become the favourite among many Dubliners to design and complete the Daniel O'Connell Monument for O'Connell Street.

I'm 1893, he became the first sculptor to become president of the RHA and was knighted by the Lord Leuitenant just a year later.

Despite being the greatest living sculptor in Ireland during his lifetime, sculpting in itself was not as well paid as one might think. Towards the end of his life, commissions began to decline and Thomas Farrell would die in relative poverty on July 2nd 1900.

Part of Farrell's wishes before his death, was that his death would not be made public until 3 days after he had died, so that no public ceremony would be made over his death. Likewise Farrell chose not to have his name included on the plot in which his mother's side of the family had also been laid. And so, despite there being 3 major works by Thomas Farrell in , including, John Gray, Barry Sullivan and the Fenian Plot, neither his face or name appears within the cemetery.

Big thank you to Niall for showing me where Farrell's resting place is!