I was a bit early arriving into Dublin for the concert on Friday so decided to take a walk around St Stephen’s Green. It was a pleasant evening, and the park was quite busy with people, some sitting on the grass and some strolling around as I was. This was 28th April 2023.
The scene must have been very different 107 years ago. The Easter Rising of 1916 started on Easter Monday (24th April of that year), and ended on Saturday 29th. St Stephen’s Green was a focus of the first day of hostilities, as I blogged about here. It is obvious why the rebel forces considered this park an important location to control as it is at the junction of several main roads. On the other hand if you actually visit the location you will see a big problem, namely that the Green itself is surrounded on all sides by very tall buildings, including the swanky Shelbourne Hotel to the North.
When a contingent of about 120 members of the Citizens Army arrived in St Stephen’s Green on Easter Monday, 24th April 1916, they immediately began erecting barricades outside, and digging trenches inside, the Park. They did not, however, have the numbers needed to seize and hold the buildings around it except for the Royal College of Surgeons building to the West.
The following morning, Tuesday 25th April, the British moved two machine guns into position, one in the Shelbourne Hotel (on the 4th floor) and the other in the United Services club, along with numerous snipers. According to eyewitness accounts, almost every window in the hotel had a sniper in it. From these vantage points British soldiers could shoot down into the Park, making it impossible for the rebels to move around safely. The position inside the Green being untenable the Rebels effected an orderly (but perilous) withdrawal to the Royal College of Surgeons which they had fortified for the purpose. And that’s where they stayed until the surrender at the end of the Rising.
St Stephen’s Green is full of mature trees – there are about 750 at present – which would have been in full leaf at the time. Something I have occasionally wondered about is the extent to which the trees in late April might have afforded the rebels cover from the snipers and machine guns aimed into the park. It being the same time of year when I visited on Friday, and assuming the trees looked roughly the same as in 1916, I had a look around to see what protection they might have offered.
The answer, as you can see from the photo, is not very much…
In the Dark 