Not sure if the spelling is “Jones’ Road” or Jones’s Road”.
The area now known as Croke Park was owned in the 1880s by Maurice Butterly and known as the City and Suburban Racecourse, or Jones’ Road sports ground. From 1890 it was also used by the Bohemian Football Club. In 1901 Jones’ Road hosted the IFA Irish Cup football final when Cliftonville defeated Freebooters.
Recognising the potential of the Jones’ Road sports ground a journalist and GAA member, Frank Dineen, borrowed much of the £3,250 asking price and bought the ground in 1908. In 1913 the GAA came into exclusive ownership of the plot when they purchased it from Dineen for £3,500. The ground was then renamed Croke Park in honour of Archbishop Thomas Croke, one of the GAA’s first patrons.
In 1913, Croke Park had only two stands on what is now known as the Hogan stand side and grassy banks all round. In 1917, a grassy hill was constructed on the railway end of Croke Park to afford patrons a better view of the pitch. This terrace was originally known as Hill 60, after the Battle of Hill 60 during the Great War. Some decades later, it was later renamed Hill 16 and a myth allowed to develop that it was built from the ruins of the Easter Rising.
In the 1920s, the GAA set out to create a high capacity stadium at Croke Park. Following the Hogan Stand, the Cusack Stand, named after Michael Cusack from Clare (who founded the GAA and served as its first secretary), was built in 1927. 1936 saw the first double-deck Cusack Stand open with 5,000 seats, and concrete terracing being constructed on Hill 16. In 1952 the Nally Stand was built in memorial of Pat Nally, another of the GAA founders. Seven years later, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the GAA, the first cantilevered “New Hogan Stand” was opened.
The highest attendance ever recorded at an All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was 90,556 for Offaly v Down in 1961. Since the introduction of seating to the Cusack stand in 1966, the largest crowd recorded has been 84,516.
During the Irish War of Independence on 21 November 1920 Croke Park was the scene of a massacre by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). The Police, supported by the British Auxiliary Division entered the ground, shooting indiscriminately into the crowd killing or fatally wounding 14 during a Dublin-Tipperary Gaelic football match. The dead included 13 spectators and Tipperary’s captain, Michael Hogan. Posthumously, the Hogan stand built in 1924 was named in his honour. These shootings, on the day which became known as Bloody Sunday, were a reprisal for the assassination of 15 people associated with the Cairo Gang, a group of British Intelligence officers, by Michael Collins’s ‘squad’ earlier that day.
EMPTY PLINTHS OUTSIDE THE SHELBOURNE HOTEL THE STATUES ARE TO BE RETURNED
The missing statues will be restored, date yet to be specified, to their plinths once they are cleaned. Their restoration will include a plaque explaining their backgrounds.
The statues were originally designed and sculpted by Mathurin Moreau (1822-1912), son of another famous French sculptor, Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Joseph Moreau and were cast in the Val d’Orsne foundry in Paris.
The Shelbourne hotel at Stephen’ Green was widely criticised by Dubliners for its decision to remove four statues from outside the hotel. The action undertaken by the hotel owners prompted several complaints to Dublin City Council that the facade of the hotel was a protected structure and the removal of the statues was a breach of planning permission.
The hotel removed the statues of what were believed to be two Nubian princesses from the lower Nile and their slave girls holding torches.
The bronze statues stood on plinths outside hotel since 1867 but as a response to recent Black Lives Matter protests across the world the owners of the hotel made a decision to remove the statues.
According the a number of art experts the original catalogues clearly labeled the statues as African and Egyptian aristocratic women.
Dublin City Council sent an enforcement letter on July 29th giving hotel management four weeks to respond to the claims of an alleged planning breach. Hotel management were granted another four-week extension to respond to the allegation.
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