A Bloomsday diversion from Anna Livia to Mullingar House and ‘Finnegans Wake’

Mullingar House … the setting for James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Today is Bloomsday and today – at least in their mind’s eyes – many Joycean scholars and fans are going to spend the way retracing Leopold Bloom’s perambulations around Dublin in Ulysses and wishing they could stop off in Davy Byrne’s ‘moral pub’ in Duke Street for a Gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy, and other closed pubs for refreshments.

Some of the other Dublin pubs associated with James Joyce include Mulligan’s of Poolbeg Street, where the Back Room provides a setting for a scene in The Dead; Kennedy’s pub on Westland Row, mentioned in Ulysses as ‘Conways’ pub, across the road from Sweny’s pharmacy; the Bailey on Duke Street, where the first Bloomsday celebrations began and which for 30 years displayed the door from No 7 Eccles Street, where Leopold Bloom begins his journey; the Lincoln Inn on Lincoln Place, which stands on the site of Finn’s Hotel where Nora Barnacle worked and where she first met James Joyce on the day celebrated as Bloomsday; the ‘Sirens’ episode is set in the bar of the old Ormond Hotel; and there is the nationalistic Citizen holds forth in Barney Kiernan’s of Little Britain Street.

But as I was walking along the banks of the River Liffey between Islandbridge and Chapelizod last week, I was reminded that James Joyce set his last great masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, in Chapelizod.

Mullingar House, a 300-year-old coaching house in the heart of the village, features in Dubliners and more centrally in Finnegans Wake, where the hero, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, is described as its owner.

Chapelizod is also the place where James Duffy lives in the Dubliners story, ‘A Painful Case,’ which opens: ‘Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious.’

The plaque placed by Dublin Tourism on the front of Mullingar House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Dublin Tourism has placed a plaque on the front of Mullingar House that reads: ‘Home of all characters and elements in James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake.’ The bridge crossing the Liffey in front of the pub has been named ‘Anna Livia Bridge.’

Joyce finished writing Finnegans Wake on 13 November 1938, and it was published on 4 May 1939 by Faber & Faber in London, and by Viking Press in New York.

Joyce had been working on Finnegans Wake for almost 17 years and this was his final novel. He told the literary critic Eugene Jolas that Finnegans Wake was the story of a Chapelizod family.

Writing in My Friend James Joyce, Jolas recalled how Joyce told him: ‘I might easily have written this story in the traditional manner … But I, after all, am trying to tell the story of this Chapelizod family in a new way. Time and the river and the mountain are the real heroes of my book.’

Most of Book Two of Finnegans Wake takes place in and around a pub, run by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Joyce’s father, John Stanislaus Joyce, worked for almost three years 1873-1876 as secretary of a distilling company in Chapelizod and regularly frequented the Mullingar House, then known as the Mullingar Hotel, drinking and playing bowls.

The character of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or HCE, was based on the then publican, Robert Broadbent (1826-1896). Joyce says in Finnegans Wake that HCE ‘owns the bulgiest bung-barrel that ever was tip-tapped in the privace of the Mullingar Inn.’

In later years, after he had squandered his inheritance, John Joyce looked back on his days in Chapelizod as a lost golden age.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel, The House by the Churchyard (1862), is set in Chapelizod where his father, the Revd Thomas Philip Le Fanu, was the Rector, and the book is a major source in Finnegans Wake. Many of the scenes take place in a village inn called the Phoenix.

The James Joyce Bistro, beside Mullingar House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

For many years, the Mullingar House was owned by the Keenan family, who were very conscious of the Joycean connection, but it was sold in recent years to a consortium of pub owners. The Mullingar House also has a James Joyce Bistro, although both are closed during the present Covid-19 lockdown.

To celebrate Bloomsday this evening (16 June 2020), the Hellenic Community of Ireland is presenting Ulysses of Dublin online at 7 p.m.: https://www.facebook.com/events/241217513842268/

Paddy Sammon will talk about the Greek influences on Joyce’s Ulysses, Fran O’Rourke will discuss James Joyce’s relationship with music and present some of the songs the writer loved and incorporated into his writings; and Polymnia Drakopoulou will present an extract from ‘The Sirens,’ the most musical episode in Ulysses. This event is in the Greek language.

The River Liffey seen from the Anna Livia Bridge at Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The military school in the Phoenix Park that became a hospital

The former Royal Hibernian Military School, now Saint Mary’s Hospital, seen through the trees in the Phoenix Park, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Walking along the banks of the River Liffey between Islandbridge and Chapelizod in the early summer sunshine earlier this week, Francis Johnson’s fine classical building at Saint Mary’s Hospital in the Phoenix Park could be seen in a majestic view provided by a break in the trees, looking down on the river valley and out across to the Wicklow Mountains to the south.

Recent figures from the HSE show that during this year’s Covid-19 pandemic, 21 patients have died at the hospital since the start of April. But, despite this sad part in these difficult times, the hospital building has an interesting place in Irish architectural and military history, and also has a link with some of Ireland’s great writers.

The Royal Hibernian Military School was founded by the Hibernian Society, a charity set in Dublin in 1769 after the Seven Years War, and opened in the Phoenix Park as the Hibernian Asylum.

The Hibernian Society petitioned George III for a charter, and a royal charter to open an establishment in the aid of orphans and children of soldiers. King George III granted a Charter of Incorporation on 15 July, and the School Governors held their inaugural meeting on 6 November in Dublin Castle.

The school first opened as the Hibernian Society of the Orphans and Children of Soldiers, with 90 boys and 50 girls in March 1770. The Hibernian Society aimed to help the orphaned children of soldiers who died in war. This was later extended to the destitute families of soldiers leaving Ireland for overseas service.

When a regiment was sent overseas, six families per company were allowed to accompany a battalion. The families were selected by drawing lots, and families left behind had no support of any kind, living in misery and destitution. The burden of destitute military families fell hard on Ireland’s two main garrisons, Dublin and Cork.

The children at the school were in four categories:

• Orphan
• Deceased father
• Deceased mother
• Both parents living (father possibly on foreign service)

The children were in the charge of an Inspector and Inspectress, assisted by the Chaplain and an assistant mistress. The first school chaplain, the Revd Nathaniel Smyth, was also the curate in Chapelizod parish.

The school buildings were erected in 1771 in the Phoenix Park, overlooking Chapelizod in the Liffey valley and with panoramic views of the Wicklow Mountains.

The chapel, designed by Thomas Cooley (1740-1784), was built in 1773, and 30 years later Francis Johnston (1760-1829) designed the extensions to the buildings.

Thomas Cooley trained with the architect and engineer Robert Mylne (1733-1810) while he was building Blackfriars Bridge in London. In 1769, he won the competition to design a new Royal Exchange in Dublin, and the building, now the City Hall, was completed in 1779.

Cooley built several public buildings in Ireland in the neoclassical style, including the Archbishop’s Palace, the Royal School, the gaol and the library in Armagh, the Bishop’s Palace (Clarisford House) in Killaloe, Co Clare, and he did some work on the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. His Four Courts in Dublin was completed by James Gandon. He also designed Saint Mary’s Church, Newtownbarry (Buncody), Co Wexford.

Francis Johnston’s works in Dublin include the GPO and Nelson’s Pillar, the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle, Saint George’s Church and Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row.

A census in 1785 showed that 1,400 children whose fathers were dead or serving overseas were begging on the streets of Dublin. The military authorities assumed responsibility for the Hibernian School in 1806, and it was renamed the Royal Hibernian Military School.

By 1808, the system and organisation of the school followed closely that of the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, then at Chelsea. By 1816, when the Revd Thomas Philip Le Fanu (1783-1845) was the chaplain, there were 600 children at the school. The numbers had soared due in large part to casualties during the Napoleonic Wars.

Le Fanu, who is probably the best known of the school chaplains, later became Dean of Emly (1826-1845). He was the father of the novelist Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) – the Phoenix Park and the village and parish church in Chapelizod appear in his stories. The House by the Churchyard (1863), the last of Le Fanu’s Gothic novels, is set in Chapelizod and is cited by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake, also set in Chapelizod.

The longest-serving chaplain at the scool, the Revd Samuel O’Sullivan, who was the school from 1826 to 1851, was a brother of the famed Canon Mortimer ‘Souper’ O’Sullivan, who was Master of Tipperary Grammar School and Dungannon Royal School at the same time. Both brothers were Donnellan Lecturers in Trinity College Dublin in 1851.

The school was coeducational until the girls left for the Drummond School in Chapelizod village in 1853. That year, the school’s first ‘stand of colours’ were presented by the then Prince of Wales.

The school was a feeder for the British Army. In the mid-19th century, children as young as 12 could enlist in the army but generally enlistment began at 14. By the 1900s, 50 per cent of pupils were going straight into the army. By then, of course, the school was not only an orphanage.

Many of the school’s pupils were recognised for their gallantry, including Frederick Jeremiah Edwards who was decorated with the Victoria Cross for bravery in World War I. On the other hand, William Joseph Mellows, an army sergeant, sent his son, also William Joseph Mellows, to the school. The boy grew up to be Liam Mellows (1892-1922), a key figure in the 1916 Rising, the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War.

From 1903 to 1920, the school chaplain was the Rector of Chapelizod, the Revd Amyrald Dancer Purefoy, and his curate, the historian the Revd Robert Henry Murray, was the assistant chaplain.

The last school chaplain, in 1921-1922, the Revd John Francis Cox, later became Assistant Chaplain in Chief in the British Army, and an honorary chaplain to King George VI.

The school campus had expanded by 1922 from three acres to 33. By then, however, talks were taking place about moving the school to Northern Ireland. However, the cost was prohibitive and so the school was moved to Shorncliffe in Folkestone, Kent, in 1922. Having decided not to take on any new students, the RHMS merged with the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in 1924.

A stained-glass window above the ‘minstrel gallery’ in the Duke of York’s school chapel depicts a saluting boy soldier and commemorates the merger of the schools.

The school documents – including admissions registers, board minutes and commandants’ correspondence – moved with them. The school records were stored in London, but they were destroyed by fire during the London blitz of World War II in 1940. The surviving registers were transferred to the National Archives, Kew, in 2003.

Meanwhile, the school premises were taken over by the government of the new Irish Free State, and the buildings were used as a hospital by the Irish Army. In 1948 It was transferred to the Dublin Health Authority in 1948 and became a Chest Hospital; in 1964 it became a facility for older patients and today it provides accommodation for dependent older people, with 198 residential places.

The former Royal Hibernian Military School above the River Liffey, between Islandbridge and Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Chapelizod’s Catholic parish church on the Liffey shapes a Constable-like scene

The Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a landmark building at the entrance to Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

As I was walking along the south bank of the River Liffey earlier this week, from the Dublin University Boat Club at Islandbridge to the Ana Livia Bridge at Chapelizod, the Catholic parish church rose above the river bed on the north bank in a scene that could have been the setting for a Constable painting.

As we got closer, the church was shimmering in its reflections on the surface of the river, and it became obvious that it was built over a high crypt that is not visible from the road on the other side of the church.

The Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a landmark building on Chapelizod Road. It was planned following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and was designed by John Bourke and forms part of an attractive group of buildings marking the entrance to Chapelizod.

The church in Chapelizod rises above the river like a scene in a Constable painting (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

This Gothic Revival Catholic church was built in 1845-1849 and opened for worship in 1849. The church is built over a high crypt that is only visible on the river side, to raise it to street level and higher than the flood plain. The dark limestone elevations of the church are brought to life by its Gothic-style devices, including the buttresses, pinnacles and stained-glass lancets.

The details include roughly-dressed limestone blocks laid to random courses, chamfered string courses at sill level, buttresses, a stepped parapet, ogee-headed niches over the windows, cruciform-roofed pinnacles over the buttresses, pointed arch window openings with chamfered reveals, windows set within decorative-headed niches, pointed arch door openings, timber battened doors with iron door furniture, and pointed arch louver openings at the second and third stages and belfry of the tower.

The church has a four-bay nave, four-stage west tower, south porch and sacristy. There is a pitched slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles, hidden by the stepped parapet, and a ringed Celtic cross with knotwork detail on the east gable parapet.

Inside the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The interior was reordered after Vatican II. Inside, the church has a single-cell nave, with a gallery and stairs at the west end and the sanctuary at the east end. There is a rib-vaulted, plasterwork ceiling, marble altar furniture, timber pews and free-standing timber confessionals. The organ is in the gallery.

The Nativity scene in the triple-light East Window is a good example of stained-glass work. This east window has hood-mouldings terminating in mask stops and is flanked by paired lancets.

The wall-mounted commemorative Gothic-style marble water stoup on the south wall of the entrance porch in the tower was erected in memory of Mrs Mary Broderick in 1909. The south porch is now used as parent and baby room.

The tower of the church in Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The concrete landscaped churchyard is bounded on the north side by Chapelizod Road, with a plinth wall and wrought-iron railings. A gate opens into the garden path leading to the presbytery next door.

The church was designed by the Dublin architect John Bourke. Most of his work is connected with the Catholic Church, and he is best known as the designer of churches, convents and schools.

Bourke was awarded first premium by Dublin Corporation for his design for Dublin baths and wash houses in 1847, and was one of the earliest members of the Dublin Mechanics’ Institute. His other works include the tower and spire at Saint Peter’s Church, Phibsborough, the completion of Saint Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, the Mater Hospital in Eccles Street, Dublin, and the church on City Quay, Dublin.

When he was selected as the architect of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in 1851, he visited the great hospitals in England, Scotland, Belgium and France.

He lived at 27 South Richmond Street, Portobello (1845-1854) and 13 Lower Charlemont Street (1855-1871). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI) in 1863.

Bourke died suddenly on 10 November 1871 in Dr Hayden’s consulting room in Harcourt Street, having gone there feeling unwell. He was buried at Glasnevin cemetery on 14 November 1871. His obituary in the Irish Builder praised his ‘unswerving integrity’ and said he ‘was justice personified between contractor and client.’

The presbytery is one of a pair of Victorian villa-style houses (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Presbytery beside the church was built as one of a pair. Although this Victorian house has lost some of its historic fabric, it is of architectural interest and forms part of a group, including the church, marking the entrance into Chapelizod.

The raised basement is typical of Victorian houses in suburban Dublin and gives a villa-like character to the pair.

The house was built ca 1885. The original presbytery, which was demolished sometime after 1915.

The church seen through the trees and reflected in the waters of the River Liffey, below the bridge at Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A summer afternoon by the boathouses on the Liffey at Islandbridge

Reflections on the River Liffey by the boathouses at Islandbridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

I am in Dublin for a check-up this evening with my GP about my pulmonary sarcoidosis and to receive a much-needed B-12 injection.

This is my first time outside Co Limerick since March, and the June sunshine has brought real my pleasure to my time here.

Two of us spent a few hours in yesterday’s afternoon sunshine walking along the south bank of the River Liffey from Islandbridge to Chapelizod, from the Dublin University Boat Club to the bridge over the river at Chapelizod, and back again to the War Memorial Gardens.

The Trinity boathouse in Islandbridge is the only boathouse on the south bank of the Liffey, with a series of boathouses lining the opposite bank of the river.

The Trinity boathouse, with its Tudor-style gable fronts and black lacquered wooden supports reflects the club’s colours of black and white. This late Victorian building was designed in 1897 by the Belfast architect William Godfrey Ferguson (1855-1939).

On a bend on the river between Islandbridge and Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The endearing charm of the Trinity boathouse is a sharp contrast with the University College Dublin (UCD) boathouse and other boathouses upstream, with their shed-like structures of breeze block walls and aluminium roofs. The UCD clubhouse has been described unkindly by one critic at sitting ‘ignorantly in its surroundings like a humble cow chewing its cud.’

As we walked briskly along the south bank of the river, more and more single scullers took to the water, making the best use of the early summer afternoon sunshine.

I have remarked at times that had I gone to Cambridge earlier than in my 50s I would have learned to row. May father tried to teach me to row when I was 15. You are never too young, or too old, to learn to row. During my walk along the Deel in Askeaton on Sunday, Patsy McCarthy was urging me to get involved in the Desmond Rowing Club again this summer, once the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.

Beneath the willows on the River Liffey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

At times on Monday afternoon, it was reminiscent of walking along the Backs in Cambridge – without the temptation of stopping at the Fort St George on Midsummer Commons for a glass of chilled white wine or even to share a jug of Pimms.

Here the willows dipped into the river, a reminder of Dr Johnson’s willow at Stowe Pool in Lichfield; there the trees framed a scene of tranquillity; a little further on, as we got closer to Chapelizod, the tower of John Bourke’s Victorian Gothic church rose above the trees, like a scene in a Constable painting.

We stopped in Chapelizod for a takeaway double espresso at Café de Bróc. The Bridge Bar was closed, but two men were standing outside on the bridge, enjoying the sunshine, and below the bar two or three small boats were tied against the steps leading down to the river.

We crossed the Anna Livia Bridge, stopped to look at Mullingar House, which is also closed, and mused about Finnegans Wake and James Joyce, and wondered how Bloomsday would be marked next week (16 June 2020), and then stopped to look into Bourke’s church, built in the immediate aftermath of Catholic Emancipation in the mid-19th century.

We decided to turn back and walk back along the south bank of the river towards Islandbridge. By now, the river was busy with scullers and the path was busy with coaches on bicycles, encouraging the mixed groups on the water.

Some were just beginners, many were well practised, others were experienced and glad to be back on the water. This is a complete sport, exercising all parts of the body and the mind too.

The church in Chapelizod rises above the river like a scene in a Constable painting (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Gandon’s former Royal Hibernian Military School – now Saint Mary’s Hospital – stood out in a gap in the trees as we looked across to the Phoenix Park, and we thought what a sad experience Covid-19 has been for everyone there.

We finally returned to the War Memorial Gardens, designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, with its sunken rose gardens and granite paved pergolas. It is dedicated ‘to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914-1918.’ How many more lost their lives when they returned home and died from the Spanish ’Flu in 1918-1919?

A domed temple stands at the north of the Gardens overlooking the River Liffey. This also marks the beginning of the avenue leading gently up to the steps containing the Stone of Remembrance, inscribed: ‘Their name liveth for ever more.’

On the floor of the Temple are lines from the War Sonnett II: Safety by Rupert Brooke:

We have found safety with all things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.

The River Liffey at Chapelizod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A circular search for Wittgenstein’s Dublin

By the River Liffey at the Strawberry Beds this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

Following an afternoon in the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin last week, I have started working on a short paper on the Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the Irish doctor and former Anglican ordinand, Dr Martin O’Connor (‘Con’) Drury, who persuaded him to move to Ireland in the late 1940s.

Wittgenstein spent solitary moments in thought and contemplation on the steps inside the Great Palm House in the Botanic Gardens. He spent some of his time in Ireland living in Ross’s Hotel, now the Ashling Hotel, in Parkgate Street, close to Kingsbridge and the Phoenix Park.

But the philosopher’s time in the Dublin hotel, from November 1948 to June 1949, was never completely happy.

Saint Edmundsbury’s Hospital, Lucan, where Dr Con Drury was on the staff as a psychiatrist (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Con Drury was a very hard-working psychiatrist, on the staff of both Saint Patrick’s Hospital, near Kingsbridge and the Ashling Hotel, and Saint Edmundsbury’s Hospital, in Lucan, Co Dublin, which was linked to Saint Patrick’s and also served as a nursing home for some of the better-off patients at Saint Patrick’s.

Con Drury’s patients included Annemarie (Anny) Bertel, the wife of another great Austrian intellectual, the physicist and Erwin Schrödinger, who was living in Dublin at the same time.

Schrödinger was living in Clontarf and was a Professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and where Con Drury's son, Luke, would later become Senior Professor of Astrophysics in the School of Cosmic Physics.

At Saint Edmundsbury’s, Con Drury treated Anny Schrödinger for depression, and another patient was Yorick Smythies, one of the close friends who later gathered around Wittgenstein’s death-bed in Cambridge.

After visiting some family members in Lucan this afternoon, I stopped briefly to photograph Saint Edmundsbury’s, which stands in its own grounds sloping down to the banks of the River Liffey and looking across to the Strawberry Beds, west of Chapelizod.

The plaque on the Ashling Hotel remembering Ludwig Wittgenstein’s time in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

From there, two of us drove back towards Kingsbridge and Heuston Station to photograph the plaque unveiled at the Ashling Hotel in 1989 to commemorate Wittgenstein few months in Ross’s Hotel.

From Parkgate Street, we turned into to the Phoenix Park and at Farmeligh House we had afternoon coffee in the Boathouse, sitting on the decking looking out onto the pleasure lake where the Guinness family once went boating.

On the decking at the Boathouse Café at Farmleigh House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

We took a wrong turn out of the Phoenix Park at Knockmaroon Hill and ended up driving west along the Strawberry Beds on the north side of the River Liffey, between Chapelizod and Lucan.

Much of the land in this area once belonged to the Guinness family and the area – once devoted to market gardening, including the cultivation of strawberries – remains largely unspoiled despite modern building and developments.

This part of the Liffey Valley is also known for the Liffey Descent, and a number of river-side places offer training in kayaks, canoes and rowing.

There were three inviting pubs on the north side of this narrow country lane – the Angler’s Rest, and the Wren’s Nest. On the opposite side of the river we could see the Hermitage Golf Club, and the slopes behind Saint Edmundsbury’s Hospital. In our search for Wittgenstein’s Dublin, we had come full circle.

A walk by the boathouses ... and coffee in the Boathouse

The boathouses on the banks of the River Liffey late this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

There was a lull in the storm in Dublin today, despite the winds that have blown across these islands at up to 150 kph, cutting power to many households, disrupting sea, air, rail and road traffic, and flooding many areas.

With blue skies and a crisp clean air that felt like fresh mountain water, two of us decided to go for a walk this afternoon [28 December 2013].

Bray had been physically and spiritually invigorating yesterday, and in these lazy days it would have taken only 20 minutes to get to the beach there. However, we decided instead to go for a walk along the River Liffey, by the boathouses at Islandbridge.

It’s a ‘Wind in the Willows’ thing ... a single sculler on the River Liffey late this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Only two lone scullers from the Trinity Boathouse were out on the river in single sculls or shells, working their way between the boathouse and Chapelizod and back again. But the water was as calm as a millpond.

Single-sculling is the second slowest category of racing boat, although it is faster than the coxed pair. But the competitors are known to other rowers as among the toughest, both physically and mentally, so that single sculling is sometimes known as “King’s Class.”

Single sculling time trials and races can be used to measure each individual’s rowing ability for selection into larger boats. These two brave women are obviously determined and single-minded to get into the water in this hardy weather.

As these two women worked their way up and down the river, small family groups by the edge of the water were helping their children to feed the swans and ducks by the Trinity Boathouse.

In an idle moment, as I looked up at the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park overlooking the river, I wondered why the Trinity boathouse is on the south side of the River, why the UCD boathouse is on the north side of the river, and why the Phoenix Park, although it is on the northside, has a southside postal code (Dublin 8)? Is it because the President lives there?

Oh the silliness of Dublin southside snobberies!

This evening’s sunset behind Chapelizod and Palmerstown seen from a hill in the Phoenix Park (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Although the sun was beginning to set, we decided to drive along the north bank of the river to the Chapelizod Gate and into the Phoenix Park. The grazing deer provided a Christmas-themed look to the landscape, and at the top of the hill, over in the south-west, the sun was setting in the trees behind Chapelizod and Palmerstown.

We continued on to Farmleigh, the 78 acre estate that includes the official residence of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and the official State Guest House. Although it was now dark, it is hard to imagine that could be such an open welcome to the public at Chequers.

Farmleigh was bought from the Guinness family by the Government in 1999 for over €29 million, and since then the house has been carefully refurbished.

The house was built in the late 18th century and was bought by Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927) in 1873 when he married his cousin, Adelaide Guinness. A great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, he became the first Earl of Iveagh in 1919.

The Conservatory was built at Farmleigh in 1901 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We were too late to join the last tour of the house, and instead we stopped for coffee and panini at the Boathouse Café beside the main house.

The café, managed by RASC Catering, is set alongside the ornamental lake, with a skirt of decking overlooking the water and offering a quiet rural corner so close to the heart of the city.

This was my first visit to Farmleigh and to Boathouse. I ought to return before this holiday season comes to an end.

.´

After-dark reflections in the ornamental lake seen from the skirt of decking at the Boathouse Café in Farmleigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)