ROTUNDA RINK MEMORIAL AT PARNELL SQUARE NEAR THE GATE THEATRE
Google Maps describes this as “1916 Site Of Rotund Rink” but on the copper plaque the date is 1913.
Unfortunately there is a lot of lens flare my photographs of this memorial because I used a very wide-angle lens and the sunlight was somewhat overpowering.
Oglaigh na hÉireann was founded in the Rotunda Rink and the neighbouring garden on 25th November 1913. The Rotunda Rink, was a temporary building in the Rotunda Gardens capable of holding 4,000.
25 November – The pro-Home Rule Irish Volunteers are formed at a meeting attended by 4,000 men in Dublin’s Rotunda Rink.
On 19th November 1913, James Larkin and James Connolly established the Irish Citizen Army as a force to protect workers from the excesses of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It had a membership of about 350, the majority being members of Unions.
The Irish Volunteers, Óglaigh na hÉireann, was founded on 25th November 1913 at a public meeting held in the Rotunda Rink in Dublin. It emerged in response to an article, ‘The North Began’ written by Eoin MacNeill in the Gaelic League paper ‘An Claidheamh Soluis’. The Volunteers included members of the Gaelic League, Ancient Order of Hibernians and Sinn Féin, and, secretly, the IRB and its ranks numbered up to 100,000 at one point.
At the time of WW1 the Irish Volunteers broke into two distinct bodies. The National Volunteers, under the direction of John Redmond, went to fight in the Great War; the Irish Volunteers, under the direction of men such as Patrick Pearse and Eoin McNeill, stayed in Ireland and went on to join forces with The Irish Citizens Army in the 1916 Uprising.
ABBEY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OR FINDLATER’S CHURCH AS SEEN FROM THE GARDEN OF REMEMBRANCE
Abbey Presbyterian Church is a church located at Parnell Square, Dublin. Designed by architect Andrew Heiton of Perth, Scotland, it is a decorated Gothic building, with a spire 180 feet (54.9 m) high. The church was erected in 1864 with funding from Alexander Findlater, a Dublin merchant, and is known colloquially as “Findlater’s church”.
One of the first preachers was John Hall (1829–1898).
Alexander Findlater, the founder of the business in Dublin, was born in Glasgow, on 9 March 1797, the second son of John Findlater, Supervisor of Excise at Greenock. In Dublin, the Findlaters prospered. By 1906, the company had expanded into groceries, tea and provisions, with 14 shops. They built Findlater’s Church on Parnell Square, as well as the Todd Burns department store on Mary Street. Their Mountjoy Brewery, established in 1852, was Dublin’s second-largest exporter of stout by 1866. They also operated hotels in Howth and Bray.
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