This Spring I completed my goal of visiting every park in Dublin city center. To commemorate this journey, I went out and shot a roll of black and white film at ten of my favorite Dublin parks. There’s a few classics in here, but I mostly focused on hidden gems and parks with unusual stories. Hope you guys enjoy 🙂
^shot on Fomapan 400 35mm
Notes:
- This project only features parks and neighborhoods north of the Grand Canal and south of the Royal Canal. It’s impossible (and controversial) to define where “Core Dublin” begins and ends, but the canals are a neutral natural boundary. Where the Grand Canal branches off in Rialto, I’ve drawn an imaginary line running North along R111, right where Kilmainham meets the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This imaginary border extends straight up until it meets the Royal Canal in Cabra. Anything within these bounds is fair game.
- I’ve excluded Stephen’s Green and Phoenix Park from this project. You don’t need to hear me yap about Dublin’s most famous parks. Go look them up on Lonely Planet or something…
South of the Liffey
- Iveagh Gardens
There’s an otherworldly magic about Iveagh Gardens. It’s roughly the size of a city block, and barely half a mile from the hustle and bustle of Grafton Street and Stephen’s Green- but you’d never notice this park unless you went looking for it. Iveagh Gardens is basically an oversized courtyard, surrounded by a block of red-brick Georgian townhouses. In the 18th and 19th centuries it belonged to the 1st Earl of Clonmell, serving as his private cloister gardens. Today it’s a public park, but is only accessible through three little gated stone archways, one nestled in between the exterior buildings on each side. The Park’s interior matches the whimsical mystery of this discovery process- crumbling stone statues dot a carefully manicured central lawn, and tucked away in corners of the gardens, down hidden footpaths, surprises await- a rose garden, a waterfall, a hedge maze leading to a bronze sundial. The whole place has a sense of eerie tranquility, evocative of Alice’s Wonderland or the Garden of Eden.
2. St. Kevin’s Park
To me, St. Kevin’s Park is a microcosm of “Dublinness”. It sits on the ruins of a little old churchyard. Headstones from the graveyard have been removed from the ground and lined up along the churchyard walls. In spring, orange and pink roses bloom on vines hanging over the tombstones and on bushes groping wildly out of the windows of the ruined church. Plaques around the park relate the proud history of the parish. But the park’s stately sense of history rubs shoulders with another Dublin plotline: St. Kevin’s is a popular retreat for drug users and Dublin’s growing homeless population. Little details tell this story: cigarette butts and crack pipes under rose bushes, a nylon sleeping bag tucked behind an 18th century headstone. The park is overall very clean and inviting, but you start to notice those details as your eyes adjust. For me, the juxtaposition of these elements is moving- People of all walks of life share these park benches. Over a century after the parish church closed, its spirit lives on, because all peoples have identified St. Kevin’s as a place of respite and peace. And respite and peace ought to be universal human rights. The alleys surrounding St. Kevin’s Park are some of the most heavily graffitied in City Center, but the park remains largely untouched- a testament to the sanctity it still exudes.
3. Rialto Greenway
Is this even a park? I dunno. Just north of the roundabout in the quaint neighborhood of Rialto, a wooded trail connects the town square to the Grand Canal (about half a mile North). What charms me about this little green belt is its unexpectedness and uncanniness.
Regarding unexpectedness– A lot of Dublin’s best green spaces are little pockets that you just stumble upon, unmarked on the map. This place is clearly very important to the people of Rialto- it’s a well-worn trail- but you’d never know that until you came to the neighborhood to explore with an open mind. There’s a lesson in that somewhere.
Regarding uncanniness– Something here is a bit odd. Elements of infrastructure and nature come together in a way that gives the park the feel of a surreal dream. It is a long, narrow park, seemingly secluded- but every ten minutes, the red line LUAS runs right through the middle on a track installed directly in the grass, shattering this illusion of quiet intimacy. Follow the LUAS towards the end of the greenway, and you’ll come to a bridge, under which a single iron ladder offers swimming access to the Grand Canal.
4. Pearse Square Park
I need to be more concise, or I’ll never finish this article. Fortunately, there’s not much profound to say about this one. I think Pearse Square Park is the platonic ideal of a small Dublin park. Tucked away off Lower Pearse Street, it is cute, clean, well-maintained and planted with beautiful flowers, but not too showy. It is nestled snugly between rows of adorable townhouses, is a little hard to find your way into, and of course, features a cryptic central statue. In other words, it checks all the boxes. The thing I like about Pearse Square, and this area of Southeast Dublin as a whole, is the palpable sense that you’re approaching the sea. The air tastes a little bit saltier, the buildings are getting a little bit shorter, and you get the sense that Dublin Bay is just over the horizon.
5. Fitzwilliam Square
I am not allowed into Fitzwilliam Square. An air of bourgeois mystery surrounds it. The wrought-iron gates are usually closed, and the park’s perimeter is planted with trees and dense shrubbery to obscure passerby’s view inside. A sign on the gate says “This is a private community garden. Applications for membership welcomed! To enquire, email ********@gmail.com.
I emailed ********@gmail.com and did not receive a response.
6. Merrion Square Park
I didn’t have enough film to extensively shoot all of my favorite parks, but I had some room at the end of my roll for just a couple pics of Merrion Square. This is probably the third most famous and popular Dublin park, so it doesn’t really need my attention. What I appreciate about Merrion Square is how its landscape design differs from the nearby Stephens Green. To me, Merrion Square feels more like an NYC park, with a more nonchalant and organic approach to its design reminiscent of American ideals of green spaces. It’s a reminder that parks aren’t just “wild spaces” we’ve preserved, devoid of social and ideological baggage. Urban parks in particular are illuminating reflections of our attitudes on what nature “should” look like. In the case of Stephen’s Green, its deliberate, ornate, geometric design is likely a reflection of classic English notions of the pleasure garden or pleasing prospect: where the carefully manicured country estate is seen as the highest reflection of “natural” beauty. I think the aesthetics of Stephen’s Green are also evocative of the late Victorian period in which it was founded. Then again, Merrion Square is older, and doesn’t reflect that same sense of elaborate design. So what makes it feel more “open” and “wild”? It’s something to look into further.
7. People, Parks, Poverty, etc.
This one isn’t a park, it’s a sidebar for discussion. Tricked you…
I originally conceived this blog post as a Buzzfeed-style ranking: “Owen’s TOP 10 Dublin Parks!” or something of the like. But like I said before, parks carry socioeconomic baggage, and I realized that my “Top 10 Parks” list was turning into a “Top 10 Richest Neighborhoods of Dublin” list. And at that point, it was no longer a story about Dublin- it was a story about Southeast Dublin. We admire parks for their beauty, but beauty is money, and to an extent, beauty is proportional to the classed agency to seclude your park from the world in a place where the “wrong kind of people” can’t find it. Furthermore, we also admire parks for their “tranquility”, but in some of these Southeast Dublin parks, tranquility is reflective of emptiness, and that in turn is reflective of inaccessibility. Parks should be for people. And indeed, on the working-class North Side of Dublin, most of its parks aren’t ornately manicured- but they are almost always bustling. These green spaces are beloved and well-used, and the most beloved ones stay clean and tidy, just like the fancy-pants South Side parks. Because when people see themselves as “belonging” to a park, having a stake in it, they take care of it. And that’s an important lesson with larger ramifications for other social institutions. Sometimes, a park falls through the cracks- there is no rich philanthropist or tax base supporting its upkeep, and no working-class kinship to the space protecting it. When this happens, you get something like Oisin Kelly Park in the Liberties- a carcass.
One more thing I wanted to address- parks are about people. My photos are largely devoid of humanity. If I’m not careful, my biases for empty, idyllic landscapes will also creep in. But that’s not the real issue- the main reason I don’t take pictures of people in parks is that I’m too scared! I’m a baby! It takes a lot of confidence to walk up to a mother and say “Can I take pictures of your kids playing?” without sounding like a creep. One day I’ll muster up the courage to start taking portraits and action shots. For now, here’s a couple moments of humanity from a distance.
Is secretly photographing people from far away weirder than asking to take their photo? I feel like it might be worse. Oops…
North of the Liffey
8. Garden of Remembrance
Another space that raises the ontological question of “Is this a park?”. I say this because the Garden of Remembrance contains almost no greenery- just water, concrete, and a few flowers. Do parks need to have grass? Is a park just an outdoor gathering space- or is living biomass an essential part of the definition?
The Garden of Remembrance was opened in 1966, the semi centennial of the Easter Rising, as a memorial to “all those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom”. I find its long reflecting pool, tiled with mosaics of lapping waves and Viking symbols, particularly strange and captivating. And the Children of Lir monument at the end of the Garden is an awe-inspiring memorial to Republican martyrdom. It was designed by none other than Oisin Kelly- the namesake of the abandoned park in the last section. When you build a monument to martyred Irishmen, upon your death, they won’t be around to build a fitting monument to you.
9. Chancery Park
We’re almost to the end now, so let’s lighten the mood a bit by celebrating my favorite micro-park in Dublin- Chancery Park. I think this might be the smallest park between the canals? It’s roughly the size of my rich friend’s living room. The park’s centerpiece is a beautiful little wrought-iron fountain adorned with three little heron statuettes. On the far end of the park sits a small maintenance shed affixed with vaguely art-deco lettering and designs. Why art deco? Why the herons? Why is this park barely twenty feet wide? I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. It’s more magical that way.
10. Blessington Street Park
I saved the best for last. Blessington Street Park is my favorite park in Dublin. While it may not be objectively as beautiful as the Iveagh Gardens, unlike the Iveagh Gardens, it is a true hidden gem. Like many of Dublin’s best parks, it is innocuous and unnoticeable from the roadside. Tucked away in the far Northeast of the city center, Blessington Street Park surrounds a pond called the Blessington Street Basin, a former 19th century drinking water reservoir. These days, the reservoir is a small sanctuary for waterfowl, with the greatest species diversity in any Dublin park between the canals. The basin is ringed by a stone walkway, with a variety of tropical plants planted along the water’s edge. A quaint little cottage is nestled in one corner of the park, and at the far end of the basin, a green wooden door set in a tall stone wall leads back out into the city…
I’m getting off the bus soon, so no time to write a conclusion…
The End. 🙂
