The Viking house and its garden has been built to commemorate the 1,000th anniversary of the battle of Clontarf and is a permanent installation. The house is open to school and public tours to educate visitors on Viking life in Dublin 1,000 years ago.
The Viking house is a replica based on a 11th century type one Dublin house excavated in the 1980’s by Patrick Wallis and his team at Wood quay. The house is 8mtrs long and 4mtrs wide, with a ridge height of 3.5mtrs, it has an Oak trestle frame and a door at each end.
The Battle of Clontarf took place on 23 April 1014 at Clontarf, near Dublin, on the east coast of Ireland. It pitted an army led by Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, against a Norse-Irish alliance comprising the forces of Sigtrygg Silkbeard, King of Dublin; Máel Mórda mac Murchada, King of Leinster; and a Viking army from abroad led by Sigurd of Orkney and Brodir of Mann. It lasted from sunrise to sunset, and ended in a rout of the Viking and Leinster armies.
It is estimated that between 7,000 and 10,000 men were killed in the battle, including most of the leaders. Although Brian’s forces were victorious, Brian himself was killed, as were his son Murchad and his grandson Toirdelbach. Leinster king Máel Mórda and Viking leaders Sigurd and Brodir were also slain. After the battle, the power of the Vikings and the Kingdom of Dublin was largely broken.
The battle was an important event in Irish history and is recorded in both Irish and Norse chronicles. In Ireland, the battle came to be seen as an event that freed the Irish from foreign domination, and Brian was hailed as a national hero. This view was especially popular during English rule in Ireland. Although the battle has come to be viewed in a more critical light, it still has a hold on the popular imagination.
I have a Sigma 105mm and it is large and heavy and unfortunately it attracts a lot of unwelcome attention (I had a nasty incident last Sunday) so I do not get much opportunity to use it however the Botanic Gardens is Glasnevin is an ideal location so as the weather was beautiful early in the morning I decided to visit for a few hours.
The gardens include some glasshouses of architectural importance, such as the Palm House and the Curvilinear Range.
The Great Palm House is situated in the southern parts of the gardens, and is connected to the cactus house on its west side, and the orchid house on its east side. The main building measures 65 feet in height, 100 feet in length and 80 feet in width.
The Palm House was originally built in 1862 to accommodate the ever-increasing collection of plants from tropical areas that demanded more and more protected growing conditions. The construction was overseen by David Moore, the curator of the gardens at the time. The original structure was built of wood, and was unstable, leading to it being blown down by heavy gales in 1883, twenty-one years later. Richard Turner, the great Dublin ironmaster, had already supplied an iron house to Belfast Gardens and he persuaded the Royal Dublin Society that such a house would be a better investment than a wooden house, and by 1883 construction had begun on a stronger iron structure.
Fabrication of the structure took place in Paisley, Scotland, and shipped to Ireland in sections. By the early 2000s, the Palm House had fallen into a state of disrepair. After more than 100 years, the wrought iron, cast iron and timber construction had seriously deteriorated. Prior to its restoration, a large number of panes of glass were breaking each year due to the corrosion and instability of the structure.
As part of the restoration, the house was completely dismantled into more than 7,000 parts, and tagged for repair and restoration off-site. 20-metre-tall cast iron columns within the Great Palm House had seriously degraded and were replaced by new cast iron columns created in moulds of the originals. To protect the structure from further corrosion, new modern paint technology was used to develop long-term protection for the Palm House, providing protection from the perpetually tropical internal climate. For Health and Safety reasons, overhead glass was laminated and vertical panes toughened, and a specialised form of mastic was used to fix the panes, replacing the original linseed oil putty that had contributed to the decay of the building over the century. The Palm House was reopened in 2004 after a lengthy replanting programme following the restoration process.
The Curvilinear Range was completed in 1848 by Richard Turner, and was extended in the late 1860s. This structure, has also been restored (using some surplus contemporary structural ironwork from Kew Gardens) and this work attracted the Europa Nostra award for excellence in conservation architecture.
There is also a third range of glasshouses: the Aquatic House, the Fern House and the original Cactus House. These structures were closed off in the early 2000s, and are currently undergoing restoration. As these glasshouses were specialised in the plants they housed, many specimens such as the Giant Amazonian Water Lily have not been grown in the gardens since the closure of the structures.