THE WYVERN IN FRONT OF McDONALDS IN BRAY – BRABAZON MONUMENT
A wyvern is a legendary bipedal winged dragon usually depicted with a tail ending in a diamond- or arrow-shaped tip. The wyvern in its various forms is important to heraldry, frequently appearing as a mascot of schools and athletic teams
In front of the main entrance to the Town Hall, now McDonalds, and facing down Main Street is a monument surmounted by a wyvern holding a shield with the Brabazon crest on it. The underside of the basin is elaborately carved and the pedestal, which has robust lion heads, has in inscription so weathered it has become illegible.
Reginald Brabazon, Lord Ardee, was the owner of much of the Bray estate in the 1880s.
Reginald Brabazon, was an Irish politician and philanthropist. He is buried in the graveyard of the Church of Ireland parish church in the village of Delgany, County Wicklow, Ireland, along with his wife and son. There are some streets and squares in The Coombe, Dublin, named in his honour: Reginald Street, Reginald Square and Brabazon Square.
A WALK ALONG RAVENSWELL ROAD – THE RIVER DARGLE IN BRAY
In August 2019 an agreement was reached with all parties regarding the opening of the underpass between Ravenswell and Bray harbour. The cycle path through the Harbour and under the rail bridge was a condition of planning permission for the new schools and was funded by the NDFA under the schools building program.
As you can the path is a bit rough and ready and when I visited the harbour area I had difficulty locating the pathway.
The River Dargle is a river that rises in the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland on the southern slopes of Tonduff 642 metres (2,106 ft). It flows down the Glensoulan hanging valley, to fall over the 121 metres (397 ft) Powerscourt Waterfall. The Dargle then flows through the Glencree valley where it is fed by the River Glencree, before flowing east for a further 13 km (8.1 mi) where a small tributary the Swan River joins opposite the People’s Park, Little Bray. The final section 1 km (0.62 mi) section reaches the Irish Sea at Bray Harbour. The river’s name in Irish refers to the tint of red in the rocks at its source.
Sir Walter Scott visited the area in 1825 and mistakenly assumed that Dargle was the name for any glen, etc. He used the word in his novel Redgauntlet seven years later: Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave, could hide the puir hill-folk.
In 1838 the eminent judge Philip Cecil Crampton, who lived at St. Valery House, by the Dargle, became a supporter of the temperance movement: to show his fidelity to the cause, he emptied the entire contents of his wine cellar into the river.
The folk song Waxies’ Dargle makes an indirect reference to the river. Non-religious holidays in Dublin – especially tradesmens’ days off – were traditionally referred to as a “Dargle Days” (from the habit of the Irish upper classes, of travelling off to the banks of the Dargle, to picnic and engage in field sports such as tennis, on such days). The “Waxie’s Dargle”, on the other hand, is a humorous reference to the annual outing of the Dublin shoe-makers and repairers (who were known as “Waxies”, from their habit of periodically running a ball of wax along the string as they stitched) to Irishtown on the River Dodder.
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