Patrick Comerford
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin is undergoing its biggest renovation challenge in over 150 years. Although the Covid-19 pandemic and drop in tourism has had a challenging impact on funding for the project, the cathedral is now about halfway through this mammoth project.
Below the scaffolding and hoarding around the cathedral, the Liberty Bell by Vivienne Roche stands in the south-east corner of Saint Patrick’s Park, close to the Bride Street entrance, and recalls the cathedral’s setting in the heart of the ‘Liberties’ of Dublin.
The park is bounded by Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on the south side, the Liberties College on the north side, while the east side of the park has a ‘Literary Parade’ along its sandstone arches, celebrating Dublin’s writers and literary heritage, including Jonathan Swift, a former Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
Vivienne Roche’s Liberty Bell and the Literary Parade were commissioned as part of the celebrations marking the Dublin ‘Millennium’ in 1988.
Vivienne Roche has worked in large-scale bronze, glass, steel, sailcloth, stucco plaster, and reconfigured landscape. Drawing, watercolour and photography have also been central to her work. Her artistic themes derive from site-specific dialogues between architecture and sculpture, the emotional resonances of the coastal landscape in which she lives, relationships between male and female, archaeology sites and their artefacts, and between music and the visual.
Light has been a central focus, as seen in recent work, including ‘NC Iris’ (2006), ‘Whitelight Garden’ (2006), ‘Light Ensemble’ (2008) and ‘Light House’ (2009).
She has exhibited widely in Ireland and has taken part in a number of exhibitions internationally, notably in Sweden, Finland and France. She is represented in public and private collections in Ireland, and abroad, and has created many large-scale public commissions throughout Ireland.
She is a member of Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy, a former member of the Arts Council, and a founder member and first chair of the National Sculpture Factory in Cork. She received an honorary doctorate from University College Cork in 2006.
The Liberty Bell is an elongated bell, hung by a chain to a metal frame that is painted white. The bell is about 5 ft in height. It is called the ‘Liberty Bell’ because it is located in one of the ancient liberties of Dublin. A nearby pub is known as the Liberty Belle.
A local hotel on its Facebook page confuses the Liberty Bell with Dublin’s ‘Freedom Bell,’ the first Catholic church bell to ring in Dublin at the end of Penal Laws almost 200 years ago.
Legend says that Daniel O’Connell rang the bell at Saint Michael’s and Saint John’s Church to celebrate Catholic Emancipation in 1829, creating a crack in the bell that remains visible today. The church is now the Smock Alley Theatre in the Temple Bar area, and the theatre has preserved the bell as part of its heritage.
But the Liberty Bell in Saint Patrick’s Park takes its name from the Liberties of Dublin, manorial jurisdictions that dated back to the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the late 12th century.
Although these manors outside the city walls were incorporated into the mediaeval the city, they preserved their separate jurisdictions. There were five liberties on the south-west fringes of mediaeval Dublin:
● The Manor of Saint Sepulchre, also known as the Archbishop’s Liberty, which extended beyond Dublin city and county – the boundaries of the city manor stretched from Bishop Street to Saint Stephen’s Green, along Harcourt Street to Donnybrook, across Rathgar to Harold’s Cross and back along Clanbrassil Street.
● The Liberty of Thomas Court (93 acres), belonging to the Abbey of Saint Thomas.
● The Liberty of and Donore (377 acres), also belonging to the Abbey of Saint Thomas.
● The Liberty of Saint Patrick’s (183 acres), which included the site of today’s Saint Patrick’s Park.
● The Dean’s Liberty (1.6 acres), attached to Christ Church Cathedral.
The liberties belonging to the Abbey of Saint Thomas were later joined together as the Earl of Meath’s Liberty.
The ancient liberties were finally abolished and subsumed into the city in the 1840s. The Barony of Saint Sepulchre, lying north of the South Circular Road, was abolished by the Dublin Baronies Act in 1842, and the Manor Court of Saint Sepulchre was abolished in 1856.
However, the name of ‘The Liberties’ is still used remains for some of the core areas of the former liberties around and to the west of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
The park on the north side of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral is said in myth and legend to be the place where Saint Patrick baptised the first Christians in Dublin, using water from the River Poddle that now flows under the cathedral and under the park.
The park was developed by Lord Iveagh under the Saint Patrick’s Park Act of 1897, and was completed by July 1904 to a layout designed by Arthur Dudgeon in 1901. Lord Iveagh continued to maintain the park for a number of years until Dublin Corporation took full responsibility in the 1920s.
The ‘Literary Parade’ at the east side of the park includes plaques by Leo Higgins and Colm Brennan celebrating Dublin writers: Jonathan Swift, James Clarence Mangan, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, Sean O’Casey, James Joyce, Brendan Behan, Austin Clarke and Samuel Beckett.
Meanwhile, the roof project at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral is reaching new milestones every week. People can become involved by sponsoring a slate, and can support this essential work by visiting www.stpatrickscathedral.ie/support-us.
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