Rutland’s struggles to survive as England’s smallest county, but it has its rivals, including London, Bristol … and Lichfield

Rutland’s name and fame have spread far beyond its small size … the Rutland Fountain in Merrion Square, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was musing earlier this week (31 August 2026) on which is the smallest state in Europe, recalling my visits to the Vatican City, San Marino, Malta, Cyprus and the tiny territory of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta,and even stepping on the steps of the former supreme court of Andorra, albeit in French sovereign territory.

In a similar vein, I have sometimes wondered what is the smallest county in England. I have some of the places that make that claim, and as I was researching Monday’s posting on Europe’s micronation, I came across a feature in The Guardian last week (26 August 2026) on how Rutland’s council is due to merge with Leicestershire in 2028 and how some local people are incensed. Lucy Knight asked whether the county can hold on to its ceremonial status.

But is Rutland still the smallest county? Well, that all depends on which list of counties you work from and how you define a county.

The Historic Counties Trust lists 39 English counties, there are 48 ceremonial counties, 84 metropolitan (6) and non-metropolitan (78) counties, and the 48 former postal counties from 1974 to 1996, making England a confusing patchwork of administrative counties, ceremonial counties, postal counties and unitary authority areas.

England’s counties are the source of much regional pride, not least when it comes to cricket. To identify with Yorkshire, Devon or Northumbria is to invite certain expectations about your forthright views or your fondness for cider and clog-dancing. The historic counties continue to be the basis for county cricket teams. Sussex and Yorkshire, for example, continue to be widely recognised as cultural regions, significant in sport and used by many organisations as regional units.

Although Middlesex dates back to the eighth century, Middlesex County Council was abolished in 1965. Yet Middlesex County Cricket Club, and Middlesex University live on, and so too does the historic county of Middlesex, even though most of its inhabitants now live in the ceremonial county of Greater London.

Middlesex has disappeared as a county, but the Fitzrovia Chapel survives as the former chapel of the Middlesex Hospital (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A major reform and reorganisation of local government in 1974 redrew the map of England and introduced metropolitan counties such as Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands. Administrative counties and county boroughs were abolished, England, with the exception of Greater London and the Isles of Scilly, was divided into two types of counties: metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties.

Several counties, such as Cumberland, Herefordshire, Rutland, Westmorland and Worcestershire, vanished from the administrative map, while new entities such as Avon, Cleveland, Cumbria and Humberside appeared, in addition to the six new metropolitan counties.

A review of local government structures led to the Rutland, East Riding of Yorkshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire being restored as administrative areas in the 1990s, while Avon, Cleveland and Humberside were abolished less than 25 years after their creation. Traditional borders were restored between Somerset and Gloucestershire (except at Bristol), County Durham and Yorkshire (towards the mouth of the River Tees, but not in Teesdale), and Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

The case of Huntingdonshire was considered twice, but the commission found that ‘there was no exceptional county allegiance to Huntingdonshire, as had been perceived in Rutland and Herefordshire’.

The Duke of Rutland depicted on the Rutland Fountain in Merrion Square, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Rutland is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, described by Lucy Knight in The Guardian as a pocket between Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, and she repeats the claim it ‘is often considered to be England’s smallest county’.

If we go by the list of historic counties, Rutland is the smallest with a total area of 382 sq km (147 sq miles), and an estimated population of just over 41,000. It has the second-smallest population for a ceremonial county after the City of London.

Rutland is a rural county, and the only towns are Oakham in the west and Uppingham in the south. Rutland is so small that I only remember passing through it on a train between Cambridge and Birmingham that stopped at Oakham.

But despite its size, the name of Rutland has spread far and wide: Parnell Square, one of the oldest Georgian square in Dublin, was laid out in 1753-1785 as Rutland Square, and kept that name until 1933. Charles Manners, Duke of Rutland, was a popular Viceroy of Ireland until he died on 24 October 1787 at the Vice-Regal Lodge in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, now Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the President of Ireland. His memory lives on in the names of Rutland Street, Rutland Place and Granby Row, Dublin, Rutland House and Rutland Street in Limerick, and the Rutland Fountain, an imposing monument in Merrion Square, Dublin, and a second Rutland Fountain in James’s Street, Dublin.

Rutland became a non-metropolitan district of Leicestershire in legislation that took effect in 1974. Under plans for local government reorganisation announced in July 2026, Rutland is about to become part of a new unitary authority area, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The City of London measures just 2.9 sq km, making it the smallest ceremonial county in England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But if we rely on the list of ceremonial counties, then the smallest county in England is the City of London, which includes Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Fleet Street, the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange. It is often known as ‘the Square Mile’, measures just 2.9 sq km (1.12 sq miles) and is the smallest ceremonial county in England and the smallest city in the UK by area.

Although more than half a million people work in the City of London, it has a population of only 8,583 people.

Surrounded by the modern ceremonial county of Greater London, the City is a unique local authority area governed by the City of London Corporation, which is led by the Lord Mayor of London, not to be confused with the elected Mayor of London. It is also part of the Greater London Authority, which shares local government powers in the region with the councils of 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. However, it does not include two historic liberties, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple, enclaves within the City of London.

Tyne and Wear, including Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland, is 540 sq km (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

If the City of London is removed from the debate, the ceremonial county of Bristol must be taken into account. It measures 110 sq km (42 sq miles) and was part of the county of Avon from 1974 to 1996, but then returned to being an independent county.

The Isle of Wight is usually regarded as part of Hampshire, but is also a ceremonial county and a unitary authority. It has a land area of 380 sq km (146.7 sq miles), so it is marginally smaller than Rutland, but larger than Bristol and much larger than the ceremonial county of the City of London.

Tyne and Wear, including Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland, is 540 sq km (210 sq miles); Merseyside, including Liverpool and the Wirrall, is 652 sq km (252 sq miles); and the West Midlands, including Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton, is 902 sq km (348 sq miles).

St Neots is the largest town in Huntingdonshire, now a local government district in Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

All are smaller in area than Huntingdonshire, historically a county in its own right and also, at times, claimed as the smallest county in England. Huntingdonshire has an area of 918 sq km (354.3 sq miles) and boundaries dating from Anglo-Saxon times. It became an administrative county in 1889. It was merged in 1965, with the Soke of Peterborough to form Huntingdon and Peterborough, which in turn was merged with Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely in 1974 to form Cambridgeshire. Huntingdonshire is now a local government district in Cambridgeshire, and St Neots (33,410) is the largest town.

Cambridgeshire also incorporates the Isle of Ely and the Liberty of Peterborough, each of which was treated as a separate county in legislation in the 19th century.

The Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely from 1109 to 1837. From 1889 to 1965, it was an administrative county of about 970 sq km (374.5 sq miles). The Soke of Peterborough, associated with the City and Diocese of Peterborough, was part of Northamptonshire but was had its own county council. The Soke, also known as the Liberty of Peterborough, was abolished in 1965.

We might also consider the shires that were never counties. Large exclaves affected by legislation in 1844 included the County Durham exclaves of Islandshire, Bedlingtonshire and Norhamshire, later treated as hundreds of Northumberland.

Lichfield became a city and county, separate from Staffordshire, in a charter from Queen Mary I in 1553 and remained so until 1888 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But, of course, one of the smallest counties that ever existed, at least in name and with its own sheriff, from the mid-16th century and that will always be my favourite is Lichfield, one of only 18 towns and cities in England to have held county corporate status in the past. A charter from Queen Mary I in 1553 made Lichfield a ‘City and a County’, separate from the rest of Staffordshire, and it remained so for 335 years until 1888.

Richard II gave a charter in 1387 for the foundation of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist, which effectively exercised the function of local government in Lichfield until it was dissolved by Edward VI, who incorporated the town in 1548, vesting its government in two bailiffs and 24 burgesses.

The corporation established in 1548 probably acquired legal rights to the surrounding land, but the line of the boundary at that date is uncertain. The charter states merely that the limits of the city and its suburbs ‘should extend as far as in times past they have been reputed and considered to extend’.

Queen Mary I’s charter in 1553 repeated this formula. She granted the charter in 1553, the first year of her reign, as a reward thanking the citizens and bailiffs of Lichfield for their loyalty and support during the Duke of Northumberland’s attempt to block her accession to the throne.

The charter separated Lichfield administratively from Staffordshire, making it a county of itself until it was reincorporated into Staffordshire in 1888. The charter also created the ancient office of the Sheriff of Lichfield, and the city remains one of the few towns in England that still appoints to this ancient office.

Queen Mary I’s charter to Lichfield in 1553 … it remained a city and county until 1888

The City and County of Lichfield extended to an area of about 14 sq km (5.4 sq miles), which is larger than the City of London, but smaller than, say, Bristol, the Isle of Wight or Rutland. The area of the Lichfield City remained so until 1934, when it was enlarged to 14.56 sq km with the addition of part of Streethay on the east, and there have been further adjustments to the boundaries since then.

The charter stated that Lichfield ‘should be a city and county of itself, for ever, and not parcel of Staffordshire. That there should be one sheriff of the city and county of Lichfield, to be chosen on the feast of St Thomas’.

The charter required the newly appointed sheriff to ride the boundaries of the city and county, a distance of 16 to 20 miles, every year on the Saturday nearest 8 September, the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to inspect and enforce the borders. This tradition continues today through the Lichfield City Council events, and the Sheriff’s Ride this year takes place next Saturday, 5 September 2026.

Rathmines Library has been progressive and pioneering since it opened in 1913

Rathmines Library, on the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and Leinster Road, opened 110 years ago in 1913 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

I was recalling yesterday how three buildings grace the skyline and dominate the skyline of Rathmines: Rathmines Church with its giant green copper dome, and which is celebrating the bicentenary of its parish this year; Rathmines Library; and Rathmines Town Hall, with its clock tower.

Rathmines Library had been my local library when I was in my teens, and in recent weeks I used the library for some of my research for a forthcoming publication in Limerick. With its classical façade, replete with a William Morris stained glass window, the library has been a prominent landmark since it first opened 110 years ago in 1913.

Rathmines Library opened in its present location on the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and Leinster Road on 24 October 1913. But the first public library in Rathmines opened in June 1887 in rented premises at 53 Rathmines Road. The library soon needed more space, and in 1899 moved to 67 Rathmines Road, remaining there for 14 years. Rathmines Fire Brigade later used the same building.

Rathmines and Rathgar Urban District Council applied in 1902 for a grant to Andrew Carnegie, who was making large grants of money towards building libraries around the world. An initial grant of £7,500 in 1903 was later increased to £8,500. It took the town council some time to find a suitable site for the library at 157 Lower Rathmines Road, but building work began in 1912.

The Dublin-based architect Frederick George Hicks (1870-1965) won the competition to design the new library and his partnership firm of Batchelor and Hicks of Dublin were the architects for the new building.

Frederick Hicks was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, on 16 May 1870, a son of Joseph Hicks, linen draper, and his wife Mary. His architectural training was at the London Architectural Association School and Finsbury Technical College. At 20, he moved to Dublin in 1890 to the office of James Rawson Carroll, where he worked with Frederick Batchelor. He later worked with both William Henry Byrne and Sir Thomas Drew, before setting up his own practice in Dublin in 1895, working from 5 Saint Stephen’s Green, 28 South Frederick Street and 35a Kildare Street.

Batchelor and Hicks set up a partnership at 86 Merrion Square in 1905, and their practice continued until 1922, when Batchelor retired. Hicks continued to work until his retirement in 1945. He was president of the RIAI in 1929-1931, and exhibited frequently at the exhibition of the Water Colour Society of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy.

Hicks died at home at The Tower, Malahide, on 24 April 1965 shortly before his 95th birthday and was buried in Saint Andrew’s churchyard. His former office at 86 Merrion Square has a much-photographed front door and was later the offices of GVA Donal O’Buachalla (now Avison Young), where my father was once a director until his retirement.

Hicks designed many artisan housing schemes, including many in Rathmines, and his other designs include Saint Thomas’s Church (later Saint George and Saint Thomas Church), Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin, and Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Kilmallock, Co Limerick.

The library and technical school next door were part of the same building, but each had a separate entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Hicks’s design of the library is a fine example of neo-Georgian style architecture. The library was built in red brick and was designed to fit in with the style of Rathmines Town Hall, designed by Sir Thomas Drew, and it was intended to be an ‘ornament to the township’. The library and technical school next door were part of the same building, but each had a separate entrance.

The Baroque style façade is composed of Arklow brick walls with terracotta dressings. The library and technical school next door were part of the same building but each had a separate entrance, with the library entrance flanked by two-storey high Ionic columns.

A ventilating cupola is in the centre of the roof, and large Venetian windows provide light to the ground floor. The ground floor included a newspaper reading room, an open access lending library, a strong room and a librarian’s room. The large sunny room on the ground floor where people could read the daily newspapers was innovative in a day when newspapers were expensive for ordinary people.

A teak staircase leads up to the landing, where a handsome stained-glass window designed by William Morris depicting ‘Literature’ overlooks the stairwell. There the staircase divides into two parallel flights that lead to the first floor.

The first floor included a well-equipped reference room, with an inner room for periodicals and a lecture hall, now the exhibition room.

The Library and Technical Institute opened on 24 October 1913. During the opening speeches in the town hall, a suffragette seized the chance to shout about ‘votes for women!’ A report at the time said that Sir Thomas Wallace Russell (1841-1920), who was speaking, encouraged those present not to give attention to the woman.

In its early days, Rathmines was a pioneering and progressive library, introducing open access lending and a self-contained children’s library with its own dedicated librarian. Mary Kettle, a councillor in Rathmines, and other women councillors were interested in making the lives of poor children better. They voted to provide school meals for children and supported opening a children’s library in Rathmines 100 years ago in 1923.

Roisin Walsh, the first children’s librarian in Ireland, was based in Rathmines. She became the first chief librarian of Dublin City Council when all the authorities merged in the 1930s.

The library presented both the written word and the writers and thinkers of the day to the general public. It became a true literary workshop catering for the student and general reader in an atmosphere of peace and learning, making information, education and the enjoyment of reading available to all.

A popular free lecture series included topics from ‘Prehistoric Man’ by FE Stephens to ‘My Own Poetry’ by Senator William Butler Yeats in 1926. The future President Douglas Hyde gave a talk in 1928 on Irish folklore, and in 1931 the campaigner and academic Hannah Sheehy Skeffington spoke about Russia.

The library was used by a variety of community groups: Rathmines Chess Club had its headquarters there, the Public Health Department held clinics there, and the Thomas Davis branch of the Gaelic League held meetings there.

The library reopened in 2011 after extensive refurbishment works that removed barriers for people with disabilities and created an open, accessible and welcoming environment. A passenger lift, automatic doors, accessible signage, accessible toilets and improved furniture and shelving were installed, and significant conservation works restored the building to its former glory.

Some of the restored features include reading desks and the original floors, including the oak parquet on the ground floor, the solid pine on the first floor and the teak staircase. The literary associations with Rathmines and local writers were strengthened, re-enforcing Dublin’s designation as a UNESCO City of literature.

Today the library offers access to a collection of 35,000 items, including books, audio books, large print, DVDs and reference material. The children’s library reflects the fact that 35% of active borrowers are children. There is free Wi-Fi, space for study and research, and advice and guidance from professional staff.

Rathmines Library marked its centenary 10 years ago with a programme of lectures, exhibitions and children’s events in 2013. Today, the library stands proudly in the heart of Rathmines, on the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and Leinster Road. It is still a major part of the community and is visited by hundreds of people every day.

Rathmines Library is visited by hundreds of people every day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Watching football in the pub with princes and dukes

The Duke of Wellington on Wolverton Road, Stony Stratford … once known as the Duke of Edinburgh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

There is a story about the Duke of Edinburgh that is probably apocryphal but is still worth retelling.

It is said that one Saturday afternoon, during a football match, he personally rang one of the senior farm staff members at Balmoral. The phone was answered by the man’s son, who said his father was watching football on the television, and asked could whether he could take a message.

‘No, tell him I want to talk to him,’ Prince Philip insisted.

‘OK,’ the youth came back, ‘but who’s calling him?’

‘The Duke of Edinburgh,’ the duke said clearly.

Without dropping the ’phone, the boy shouted out, ‘Hey, Dad! Some bloke from the pub wants to talk to you. Are you in?’

There are pubs throughout England and Scotland known as the Duke of Edinburgh, and when Prince Philip died earlier last year many were – paradoxically – disappointed that they could not close as marks of respect, because they were already closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But, of course, few if any of the Dukes of Edinburgh up and down the land were not named after Prince Philip. Most of these pubs, it seems, were named after Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred (1844-1900), who was given the titles of Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Ulster, and Earl of Kent by his mother in 1866.

Prince Alfred later became the sovereign Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1893-1900), and the title ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ lost its popularity as a name for pubs in England as tensions with Germany rose in the years before World War I.

The coat of arms of the Duke of Wellington on the pub sign (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

In the 1860s, the Duke of Edinburgh was the name of a pub on the corner of Wolverton Road and King Street in Stony Stratford. The popularity of the pub grew with the development of the tram line between Stony Stratford and Wolverton, but the name lost its lustre at the same time.

For a time it was known as the Dog and Gun, but a succession of proprietors eventually settled on the name of the Duke of Wellington for their premises.

Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), 1st Duke of Wellington, was born in Merrion Square, Dublin, and went to school at Drogheda Grammar School. He was one of the many Irish-born British Prime Ministers, but he is popularly remembered and celebrated as the victor at the Battle of Waterloo. He had been a proxy sponsor at the baptism of that earlier Duke of Edinburgh, and died in 1852, long before the Duke of Edinburgh in Stony Stratford changed its name.

In recent weeks, the Duke of Wellington on Wolverton Road has changed management, and the scaffolding has come down from around the building, revealing once again the sign displaying the coat of arms of the Dukes of Wellington. These arms quarters the arms of the Wellesley and Cowley families, with an additional representation of the crosses of Saint George, Saint Andrew and Saint Patrick as ‘the union badge of the United Kingdom.’

The Colley or Cowley family, the direct male line of ancestors of the Dukes, came to Ireland in the late 16th century. When Richard Colley’s distant cousin Garret Wesley died and he inherited the Dangan and Mornington estates in Co Meath, Richard Colley changed his name to Wellesley.

The Duke of Wellington is the only pub in Stony Stratford that I know to have a name with Irish associations. The new-look pub has become a popular local venue in recent weeks for World Cup fixtures. For England supporters, it matters little whether the Duke of Edinburgh was Scots or German or the Duke of Wellington was Irish or English. Hopefully, there are more pressing issues, such as human rights in Qatar, including the rights of women, gay people and migrant workers, the lack of democracy, and the despotic and explotative regime, and the arrogant, grubby attitude of senior officials in FIFA.

The Duke of Wellington at night … a popular venue for watching live sport (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Keeping up appearances on Sloane Square after the arrest of Oscar Wilde

The Cadogan Hotel, where Oscar Wilde was arrested in 1895 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

Sloane Street and Sloane Square are part of the Cadogan Estate, one of London’s most expensive retailing districts with some of the most expensive residential property in Chelsea and Knightsbridge.

The estate’s streets and buildings were first commissioned by Charles Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan, in the 18th century, and Sloane Street evolved into one of the world’s most exclusive retail areas. The shops include Chloe, Salvatore Ferragamo, Giorgio Armani, Tom Ford and Valentino.

I was not in Sloane Square and Sloane Street to go shopping, but to take part in a day’s events organised by the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) in Holy Trinity Church, also built by the Cadogan Estate.

Before the day’s programme began, I walked the length of Sloane Street to see the Cadogan Hotel, where Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was arrested in 1895 and which is the venue at the centre of a celebrated poem by the Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984).

Betjeman’s poem ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’ tells of the arrest of the Irish-born poet, playwright and wit in the hotel on Sloane Street on 6 April 1895.

The Cadogan Hotel on Sloane Street, was built in 1887 and is one of London’s most prestigious luxury hotels.

Lillie Langtry, famous actress and close friend of Edward VII and of Oscar Wilde, lived at 21 Pont Street from 1892 to 1897. A blue plaque recalls that long after she had sold the house, Lillie Langtry continued to stay in her old bedroom, by then a part of the hotel.

Shortly after it opened, the Cadogan Hotel became infamous for the arrest of Oscar Wilde in Room 118, charged with ‘committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons.’ The events in the room are recalled by Betjeman in his tragic poem.

The Marquess of Queensbury, father of his Wilde’s long-time lover, Sir Alfred Douglas, was at the centre of Wilde’s arrest, trial, and imprisonment. Wilde sued Queensbury for defamation, but this lead to the case in which Wilde’s homosexuality was all but proven for the court. The lawsuit was eventually withdrawn. This was seen as an admission of guilt on Wilde’s part and he was soon arrested.

In this poem, the John Betjeman imagines the moment when Oscar Wilde was arrested on 6 April 1895. Wilde was charged with gross indecency and, at a time when homosexuality was illegal, he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour. The prison regime was brutal and, although he was released in 1897, a toxic mix of illnesses contracted in prison and a increasing alcoholism lead to his death in Paris in 1900.

The poem has significant rhythm and rhyme and deploys three voices. Its rhyming scheme and use of quatrains make ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’ a ballad.

The voice of narrator is almost without emotion, describing the scene inside the Cadogan Hotel where Oscar Wilde and his friend Robbie Ross are waiting for the inevitable arrival of the police.

Oscar Wilde presents the second voice at the moment of crisis.

The third voices are those of the policemen, who speak with an almost pantomime quality. Their language, dialect and accents emphasise the gap between the sophisticated and cultured poet and the working class background of the ‘two plain clothes policemen.’

The poem begins with the speaker describing how the Wilde spent his last moments with his close friend the journalist Robbie Ross before his arrest in the Cadogan Hotel. Wilde and Ross were once been in a relationship, and Ross worked as Wilde’s literary executor after his death. Ross was with Wilde at his deathbed in Paris, and his ashes are within the headstone on Wilde’s grave.

Wilde was continuously drinking and knew everything was about to change. The unmade bed may be a symbol of Wilde’s mental state at this point in his life. He knew that things were starting to cascade against him.

He grows more irritated that the hotel and Robbie are not acting fast enough. Eventually, he starts wondering about the location of his expensive coats and his leather suitcase or ‘portmanteau’.

The fourth stanza refers to The Yellow Book, a literary periodical in London in the 1890s. It features in Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the art director, Audrey Beardsley, who produced illustrations for Wilde’s play Salome in 1893. It is thought Wilde had this publication with him when he was arrested at the Cadogan Hotel.

John Buchan’s works were also published in The Yellow Book, but Wilde looked down on Buchan’s writing, dismissing it is a backward step for literature and society.

The arrival of the two plain clothes policemen is the turning point in the poem, when the climactic moment of Wilde’s arrest arrives. There is thumping and murmuring outside the door and as they come in Wilde light-heartedly complains about the noise they are making.

There are some noises outside the door as the two policemen enter. They ask Wilde to come ‘quoietly’ and to leave the hotel with them. They see the Cadogan Hotel as a reputable respectable establishment, and do not want to disturb the guests or the staff, dismissed by Wilde as ‘little better than cretins’.

Wilde is taken away without much fuss. On the way to the waiting hansom cab or two-wheeled coach outside, he touches the plants on the staircase, and the poem ends abruptly with him being helped into the carriage. The poem ends abruptly, leaving the reader to mourn over Wilde’s fate.

The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel (1937), by John Betjeman

He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer
As he gazed at the London skies
Through the Nottingham lace of the curtains
Or was it his bees-winged eyes?

To the right and before him Pont Street
Did tower in her new built red,
As hard as the morning gaslight
That shone on his unmade bed,

“I want some more hock in my seltzer,
And Robbie, please give me your hand —
Is this the end or beginning?
How can I understand?

“So you’ve brought me the latest Yellow Book:
And Buchan has got in it now:
Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow.

“More hock, Robbie — where is the seltzer?
Dear boy, pull again at the bell!
They are all little better than cretins,
Though this is the Cadogan Hotel.

“One astrakhan coat is at Willis’s —
Another one’s at the Savoy:
Do fetch my morocco portmanteau,
And bring them on later, dear boy.”

A thump, and a murmur of voices —
(”Oh why must they make such a din?”)
As the door of the bedroom swung open
And TWO PLAIN CLOTHES POLICEMEN came in:

“Mr. Woilde, we ’ave come for tew take yew
Where felons and criminals dwell:
We must ask yew tew leave with us quoietly
For this is the Cadogan Hotel.”

He rose, and he put down The Yellow Book.
He staggered — and, terrible-eyed,
He brushed past the plants on the staircase
And was helped to a hansom outside.

Danny Osborne’s sculpture of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square, Dublin … unveiled in 1997, 100 years after Wilde was arrested in the Cadogan Hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Poem © John Betjeman and The Estate of John Betjeman

The ‘Doomsday Clock’ is ticking closer to Midnight on this Hiroshima Day

Survivors of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima lay flowers at the cherry tree in Merrion Square, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

President, Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Irish CND Annual Hiroshima Day Commemoration,

6 August 2022

1 p.m., Merrion Square, Dublin 2

Good afternoon.

It is good to be with you this afternoon in Merrion Square on this anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I’m sorry that I’m not with you in person. Instead, I’m here in Milton Keynes, and for health reasons I’m not able to travel very much at the moment.

But I am with you in this video link and I am with you very much in spirit.

I am here at the monastery beside the Japanese Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes which has very strong associations and very strong links with the Hibakusha and the victims of and survivors of the Hiroshima bombing on 6 August 1945.

Many people may be wondering why, 77 years later, we need to remember that bombing. But, of course, we are living in dangerous times. We have never been closer to Hiroshima than we are today.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says that the ‘Doomsday Clock’ is only 100 seconds to Midnight. That is the nearest we have been to Global Hiroshima since the ‘Doomsday Clock’ was first inaugurated in 1947. In 1947, we were seven minutes from Midnight. When it came to the end of the Cold War in 1991, the world could take a breather, take a deep breath. By then we were, in fact, 17 minutes from Midnight.

Now it likes increasingly like the world is running out of time.

We edge closer and closer, by microseconds, every moment, to Doomsday.

That push comes because of global warming; but it also comes because once again we are living in an atmosphere where the world is at war and where the nuclear powers are threatening to use their nuclear weapons if each alliance starts to expand any further.

Many experts, many commentators, are saying that Russia is in danger of resorting to nuclear or chemical weapons if the war in Ukraine intensifies.

Indeed, Vladimir Putin has exploited gaps in international law and policies. International law has failed in recent years because the international powers, particularly the nuclear weapons powers, have failed to regulate nuclear capabilities.

Putin says that he has special combat readiness for his nuclear weapons. He is threatening his foes in the West that he has identified, telling them that they face consequences that ‘you have never faced in history.’

In other words, there is no such thing as a ‘nuclear deterrent.’

He is willing to use his nuclear weapons, and we can presume therefore that all the nuclear powers are willing to use their ‘nuclear option’ too.

Who is going to pull us back from the precipice?

Who is going to say that enough is enough?

Who is going to try to lead the way so that we can get back to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that Trump walked away from in 2019, paving the way for Putin being able to make his nuclear threats?

Now Putin has abandoned any thought of making a commitment to ‘no first use’ as a principle in international law.

The experts agree that it is now hard to predict what is going to happen with nuclear weapons and the nuclear stockpiles in the world.

Never before has the need for CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) been greater.

We need to campaign for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.

We need to campaign for a commitment from the nuclear powers, to give a commitment not to use their nuclear weapons and to reduce their stockpiles.

We need to remind the world that just one nuclear weapon 77 years ago on 6 August 1945 wiped out 200,000 people in Hiroshima – and that nuclear weapon was smaller than any of the intermediate-range nuclear missiles that we are being threatened with use today.

I am sad that’s may be my last address on Hiroshima Day as President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Health is telling me that I should soon step down.

But that does not reduce my commitment to campaigning for nuclear disarmament, campaigning for the abolition of all nuclear weapons, campaigning and reminding us all that we need to remember Hiroshima – not just on 6 August but every day, every moment, until all nuclear weapons are put out of reach!

Thank you.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. A priest in the Church of Ireland, he is now living in retirement in Milton Keynes. This address was recorded for Irish CND’s annual Hiroshima Day commemorations in Merrion Square, Dublin, on 6 August 2022.

We need to take note of all the warning signs and rekindle our hope

Yoshinori Sakai, who ran the final leg of the torch relay for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, at the Olympic torch in Tokyo shortly before he died

Patrick Comerford

President, Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND)

1 p.m., Friday 6 August 2021

Annual Hiroshima Day Commemoration

Merrion Square, Dublin

I think we are all proud of the medals our Olympic athletes have brought home from Tokyo. Personally, I am particularly proud of our rowers and scullers.

I am old enough now to also recall the first Olympics in Tokyo, back in 1964.

But how many of us remember the opening ceremony in Tokyo on 10 October 1964 … 57 years ago, but just 19 years after the bombing of Hiroshima?

Yoshinori Sakai (1945-2014) was the Olympic flame torchbearer who lit the cauldron at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. He was born on the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, two hours after the bombing. The Hiroshima bomb exploded so close to his hometown of Miyoshi, 60 km away, that his father saw the flash.

At the age of 19, Yoshinori Sakai was chosen to light the flame to symbolise Japan’s post-war reconstruction and commitment to peace. At the time, sports commentators labelled him ‘the Hiroshima Boy.’

While the nations compete at the Tokyo games this summer, there are four clear indicators that the world is not safe while we sit and watch.

1, It is now estimated that the Covid-19 pandemic will kill well over two million people around the globe. Nuclear weapons have failed to protect the world – have failed to protect us – against this mass killer. We may yet find we are facing wave after wave of pandemics, but the world’s nuclear powers have learned nothing and continue to spend money needed for health care and research on weapons that are useless against this global threat to our security and our survival.

Indeed, the mishandling of this grave global health crisis is a ‘wake-up call’ that governments, institutions, and a misled public remain unprepared to handle the even greater threats posed by nuclear war and climate change.

2, The failure of the world powers to deal with climate change and global warming show the folly of using the world’s scarce resources for the pleasure of the rich of this generation. Fires continue to rage across Greece and Turkey as I speak, and no amount of spending on nuclear weapons can ever protect us against climate change and global warming, against the folly of world leaders who have brought this crisis to a head in our generation.

3, Cyber security has shown how vulnerable, how weak, every country in the world is today. It was Ireland’s hospitals and health service that were targeted in recent weeks. But it was also oil supplies on the east coast of the US, trains in Britain, Iran and Australia, cabinet offices in Poland and Japan, Dutch police, the supply chains of major food suppliers in Australia, Brazil, Canada and the US … all in recent weeks.

Nuclear weapons are no protection against people who are waging a new, low-level, cold war that is warning us that everything is vulnerable, everything can collapse, everything can grind to halt. And if the para-state hackers get into the command and control systems of nuclear arsenals, all guided missiles become mass killers with the capacity to destroy all life as we know it.

4, Nuclear weapons cannot protect the victims of human rights abuses, the migrants caught in the waters of the Mediterranean or between Calais and Dover, or the people increasingly denied access to clean water, food or affordable medical care.

Nuclear weapons cannot protect girls denied access to education, the victims of gender-based violence, or stop the rise of racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate crime.

Nuclear weapons cannot open the eyes of a blinkered Priti Patel or roll back the folly of Brexit in Boris Johnson’s Britain, where £205 billion is being spent on replacing Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system – money that public morality says must be spent instead on meeting genuine security needs: providing a properly-funded NHS and a sustainable energy sector.

This year, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists remains as close to midnight as it has ever been – just 100 seconds to midnight.

Dr Rachel Bronson of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says the ‘lethal and fear-inspiring’ Covid-19 pandemic is as a ‘wake-up call,’ a vivid illustration that national governments and international organisations are ‘unprepared to manage the truly civilisation-ending threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.’

But Yoshinori Sakai was like so many hibakusha. He too succumbed as a victim of the bomb, and he died of cerebral bleeding in Tokyo at the age 69, 50 years after the first Tokyo Olympics, on 10 September 2014.

Before this year’s Tokyo Olympics began on 23 July, the Olympic torch relay passed through Hiroshima on Monday 17 May. There were few participants because of the pandemic. But one of the torchbearers was Yoshinori Sakai’s younger brother, Takayuki Sakai. He was part of the group who brought the Olympic flame to the city’s Peace Memorial Park, near the epicentre of the atomic bombing.

There should be no more Yoshinori Sakais, no more hibakusha.

It is time to listen to the wake-up call of the Doomsday Clock. Nuclear weapons protect us against none of the threats we face in the world today. They never protected us against the threats the world faced in the past. And they have no place in the world as face the challenges of the future.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND). He was speaking at Irish CND’s annual Hiroshima Day commemoration at the Hiroshima Memorial in Merrion Square, Dublin.

Victorian villas in Dalkey, a pioneering medical discovery, and royal visits

Iniscorrig on Coliemore Road, Dalkey … built as a summer residence for Sir Dominic Corrigan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

On the way back from Bulloch Harbour and a walk through Dalkey Village last week, Coliemore Road was lined with a number of elegant houses looking out to Dalkey Island and the Irish Sea. These Victorian Villas were built in the 19th century as summer residence for prosperous people who found the new railway line allowed them to escape to the sea airs while they continued their professional practices in the city centre.

They include houses such as Rockview, now on the market, Cliff Castle, recently sold, Inniscorig, built for a pioneer in Victorian medicine, and Queenstown Castle.

I have written in the past about Dakey’s mediaeval castles, but these romantic, castellated villas and mansions had no mediaeval historical background; instead, they were suburban statements of wealth by the post-Famine professional classes in Dublin.

Inniscorrig is one of these romantic mansions, with a spectacular and coastal position and its own private harbour. The working harbour is one of only two in private hands in Dublin and provides direct sea access.

Inside, there are sea views from all the principal rooms. The accommodation extends to 536 square metres, including a lodge house, and the grounds extend to 0.3 hectare (0.75 acre) along the shoreline, with panoramic coastal views that stretch from Dun Laoghaire over the bay to Howth Head, taking in the rocky seashore and Dalkey Island.

Brass plates in Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, commemorate Sir Dominic Corrigan and his family … he built Inniscorrig in 1847 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Inniscorrig was built in 1847 by the Dublin physician Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880), who first diagnosed the heart condition known as Corrigan’s Pulse.

Corrigan was born in Thomas Street, Dublin, on 2 December 1802, the son of a dealer in agricultural tools, and was educated in Saint Patrick's College, Maynooth. There he was inspired to study medicine by the physician in attendance, and spent several years as am apprentice to the local doctor, Edward Talbot O’Kelly.

Corrigan studied medicine in Dublin, later transferring to Edinburgh Medical School where he received his MD degree in 1825. He then returned to Dublin and set up a private practice, first at 11 Ormond Street, later at 12 Bachelor’s Walk, and from 1837 at 4 Merrion Square West.

His work with many of Dublin’s poorest people led to him specialising in diseases of the heart and lungs, and he was a hard-working physician throughout the Great Famine. He was also physician to Maynooth College, the Sick Poor Institute, the Charitable Infirmary Jervis Street (1830-1843) and the House of Industry Hospitals (1840-1866).

Corrigan’s application to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland was rejected in 1846. But he was appointed physician-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria in Ireland in 1847, and he received an honorary MD from Trinity College Dublin two years later.

Corrigan challenged the opposition he had faced in the RCPI by sitting the college's entrance exam with the newly qualified doctors in 1855. He became a fellow in 1856, and in 1859 was elected president, the first Roman Catholic to hold the position, and ge was re-elected president an unprecedented four times.

He was a member of the senate of the Queen’s University from the 1840s, and became its vice-chancellor in 1871. He was President of the Royal Zoological Society of Dublin, the Dublin Pathological Society, and the Dublin Pharmaceutical Society. He was a member of the board of Glasnevin Cemetery and a member of the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Committee.

He was given the title of a baronet, with the designation ‘of Cappagh and Inniscorrig’, in 1866, partly as a reward for his services as a Commissioner of Education. He was elected a Liberal MP for Dublin at a by-election in 1870. In Parliament, he actively campaigned for reforms in education in Ireland and the early release of Fenian prisoners. But his support for temperance and Sunday closing of pubs may have antagonised his constituents and he did not stand for re-election in 1874.

Corrigan married Joanna Woodlock, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and sister of the Bishop Bartholomew Woodlock of Ardagh, in 1827. They were the parents of six children, three girls and three boys. Their eldest son, Captain John Joseph Corrigan, died on 6 January 1866 aged 35 years and is buried in Melbourne, Australia. His grandson succeeded him as the second baronet.

Corrigan died at Merrion Square, Dublin, on 1 February 1880, and he is buried in the crypt of Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row. A statue of Corrigan by John Henry Foley stands in the Graves Hall of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland in Kildare Street, Dublin. The Corrigan Ward in Beaumont Hospital is named in his honour.

His title was inherited by his grandson, Sir John Joseph Corrigan (1859-1883), but he died at the age of 23 and with him the family title died too.

Sir Dominic Corrigan built Inniscorrig as his summer retreat in Dalkey in 1847. Later, it was the home of the architect John Joseph Robinson (1887-1965), the architect of Galway Cathedral, who made Inniscorrig his home from 1940 until his death in 1965. His father, John Loftus Robinson (ca 1848-1894), was the architect of Dun Laoghaire Town Hall.

Prominent guests at Inniscorrig included King Edward VII and King George V. Their visits are commemorated by a crown and star set in pebbles into the patio terraces on either side of the front door along with elaborate plasterwork motifs throughout. Corrigan himself is commemorated in a granite bust over the front door.

The interior plasterwork includes Tudor roses and mosaics, and there is a fifth bedroom in the tower. The Italianate gardens link the house and grounds, with arched granite statue niches either side of the front door combining with a series of Gothic arches. They protect a ‘secret garden’ and frame the views of the islands and the sea.

A decked terrace off the sea-front elevation leads to a lawn terrace and to the harbour terrace. Protected from westerly winds, this large harbour terrace provides a harbour-side sanctuary and an entertaining plaza. There is a tidal swimming pool and a boathouse, and the harbour includes a working winch, and boasts a separate.

When this Gothic Revival mansion went on sale in 2015, it was described as Dublin’s latest ‘most expensive home,’ with an asking price of €10.5 million. Inniscorrig sold after two years on the market.

Cliff Castle was once a popular venue for wedding receptions and 21st birthday parties (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Neighbouring Cliff Castle sold at auction for more than £2.5 million in 1999. It was built as a private residence in the 1840s, and was a popular hotel until the 1980s. It was run by the McGettigans and earlier by the Phelans of the Miami Showband.

Cliff Castle was known as a venue for wedding receptions and 21st birthday parties, and, during the 1960s for its afternoon tea dances.

It has a floor area of around 6,000 sq ft, and is now a five-bedroom family home. The internal features include a turret room with a roundel of stained-glass set high overhead in the domed ceiling.

Cliff Castle, with its battlement towers, stands on three-quarters of an acre with extensive water frontage, its own harbour and a large suntrap garden behind high walls.

Rockview stands on a quarter-acre site and is on the market (Photograph; Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Rockview is another Victorian home on Coliemore Road with a sea-front site of about a quarter of an acre with direct shoreline access.

Rockview is a five-bedroom house and is on the market through Sherry FitzGerald, with an asking price of €5.25 million.

Queenstown Castle is a castellated Victorian property further up Coliemore Road. It is no longer a private residence for a single family but has been converted into five apartments.

Queenstown Castle has been converted into five apartments (Photograph; Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Updated: 24 April 2021; thanks to Georgina Sweetnam for coredctions to the dates for John Robinson, father and son.

A reminder of Henry Grattan 200 years after his birth

The bust of Henry Grattan in Merrion Square, Dublin … he died 200 years ago in 1820 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The 200th anniversary of the death of Henry Grattan passed virtually unnoticed earlier this summer. He died 200 years ago on 4 June 1820, and I was reminded of the man who gave his name to ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ and his contribution to the Irish tradition of parliamentary democracy when I saw his sculpture in Merrion Square, Dublin, earlier this month.

Henry Grattan was an politician and lawyer who campaigned for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century. He was an MP in the Irish House of Commons from 1775 to 1801 for Charlemont (1775-1790), Dublin City (1790-1798) and for Wicklow Borough (1800-1801), and an MP in Westminster from 1805 to 1820, first for Malton (1805-1806) and then for Dublin City (1806-1820).

Grattan has been described as a superb orator and a romantic. He demanded that Ireland should be recognised as an independent nation, while remaining linked to Britain by a common crown and a shared, common political tradition.

Grattan was born at Fishamble Street, close to Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 3 July 1746 and was baptised in the nearby church of Saint John the Evangelist.

His father was James Grattan MP, of Belcamp Park, Co Dublin, and his mother Mary was a daughter of Thomas Marlay, Attorney-General of Ireland, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer and Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench.

Henry Grattan was educated at Drogheda Grammar School and Trinity College Dublin.

He spent some years in London in the late 1760s and early 1770s, and he visited pre-Revolutionary France in 1771. In London, he attended debates in the House of Commons regularly, and he enjoyed visiting the celebrated Grecian Coffee House in Devereux Court, where he got to know Oliver Goldsmith.

After studying at the Middle Temple, London, and the King's Inns, Dublin, he was called to the Irish Bar in 1772, but was drawn into politics by Henry Flood. He first entered Parliament as MP for Charlemont in 1775, with the support of the ‘Volunteer’ Earl of Charlemont.

Grattan soon became the leader of the national party, and secured the passage by the British House of Commons in 1783 of an Act that declared: ‘Be it enacted that the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom, in all cases whatever shall be, and is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time be questioned or questionable.’

In September that year, Grattan became a member of the Privy Council of Ireland in September 1783, but was expelled in 1798 in a reaction to the 1798 Rising. He opposed the Act of Union in 1800, but later sat as an MP in the Westminster Parliament.

He was re-admitted to the Privy Council on 9 August 1806. He died at Portman Square, London, on 4 June 1820, and was buried in Westminster Abbey close to the tombs of Pitt and Fox.

Sydney Smith said of Grattan: ‘No government ever dismayed him. The world could not bribe him. He thought only of Ireland; lived for no other object; dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence.’

Apart from the bust in Merrion Square, there are statues of Grattan in College Green, Dublin, outside the former Irish Parliament, and in the Outer Lobby of the Palace of Westminster. Grattan Bridge on the River Liffey in Dublin links Parliament Street and Capel Street, but is usually known as Capel Street Bridge.

Henry Grattan and his parliamentary supporters … stucco work by James Comerford that once decorated the Irish House, close to Henry Grattan’s birthplace (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

An afternoon in Dublin becomes a city break in a European capital

I started my working life on a corner of Dawson Street that has been demolished and is being transformed (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in Dublin just twice since the pandemic lockdown was introduced in March. Those visits were carefully chosen: a family birthday and visits to my GP for consultations about my sarcoidosis and my Vitamin B12 levels.

This week’s visit was a little different. As President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), I was speaking at the annual Hiroshima Day commemorations in Merrion Square, Dublin – an event I have taken part in almost every year since I was first involved in planting the cherry tree 40 years ago in 1980.

A family member brought me into the city centre in the late morning, and brought me back in the late evening. So, without taking any risks on public transport, keeping social distances, and wearing a facemask throughout the day, I was able to enjoy a day in Dublin for the first time in almost five months.

Although I was born in Dublin, and I moved back to Dublin from Wexford at the end of 1974, it took many years before I felt at home there. If sport provides the Irish definition of where you from, then I still hope every year that Wexford is going to win the All-Ireland hurling final.

But Thursday’s sunshine added to the pleasure of walking around a capital city that is as pleasant as any European capital city I have come to know and enjoy, and there was time to do things that I enjoy in any other elegant European city …

Reminiscing about the book barrows in Clare Street; coffee on the footpath, watching life stroll by on Nassau Street; enjoying the monkeys carved on the old Kildare Street Club building; book browsing in Hodges Figgis; missing Carlucci’s on Dawson Street; a stroll through part of Saint Stephen’s Green; listening to the buskers on Grafton Street …

Decrying the vacant look of Bewley’s on Grafton Street and the appalling mess that has made of the colonnades at the former Saint Andrew’s Church …

Stopping for ice cream in Wicklow Street, for another coffee in Drury Street, and buying a birthday card in the George’s Street Arcade

Loose Canon … and Kaph … there is a healthy buzz in life around Drury Street in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

It was good to feel the healthy buzz of life that percolates throughout the area around Wicklow Street, South William Street, Clarendon Street, Drury Street is still buzzing with coffee shops, small wine bars and chic restaurants.

But it is also interesting to notice how much has changed in Dublin in recent years. When you are in a city day-by-day or week-by-week, you tend not to notice the gradual, incremental changes that take place over time … new cheese and wine shops or coffee bars in Drury Street, the closure of cafés and restaurants like Bewley’s and Carlucci’s …

But perhaps the most startling sight was the complete demolition of the corner of Nassau Street and Dawson Street. I began my adult life training as a chartered surveyor with Jones Lang Wootton on the third floor of what was then the Norwich Union Building on Dawson Street. While there, I turned my attention to journalism, became a freelance contributor to the Lichfield Mercury, and later moved on to the Wexford People and The Irish Times.

Later, many of the cafés at the street level on this corner were important stopping-off places for coffee before or after meetings and lectures in Trinity College, on the way to or from the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

In other circumstances, my engagement with academic life might easily have been framed on that corner, beginning with the course I followed through Jones Lang with the College of Estate Management in Reading University, including exams in the Science Museum in TCD, and closing with cups of coffee after emerging from Trinity’s Nassau Street Gate.

Now ‘Project Kells’ is going to reshape this corner of Dublin for a future generation.

The old RIAC buildings at the top of Dawson Street are about to be transformed (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

For some years I was a director of the National Bible Society of Ireland, but its bookshop in the middle of Dawson Street, opposite Saint Anne’s Church, has been closed for many years, and the shop that moved into those premises has closed since.

At the top of Dawson Street, there are plans for a €35 million, 117-bedroom hotel and a redevelopment of the old Royal Irish Automobile Club.

Two of us went on to an early dinner in Glas, a new vegetarian restaurant on Chatham Street, before continuing our evening stroll along Stephen Street, Golden Lane where I had a ‘summer job’ for two years with Irish Printers, through Saint Patrick’s Park, up New Street, into ‘Little Jerusalem’ and along Clanbrassil Street – lower and upper – and over the Grand Canal into Harold’s Cross as the sun was beginning to set in the west.

It was not quite Venice, but Rialto was in the distance to the west, and Portobello was behind me, to the east.

The new rise in Covid-19 cases this week is worrying, and I am not sure when I am going to have another city break in Dublin like this again.

Evening lights on the Grand Canal at Harold’s Cross, looking towards Rialto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

‘The world is sleepwalking its way through a newly unstable nuclear landscape’

Canon Patrick Comerford speaking at a previous Hiroshima Day commemoration in Merrion Square, Dublin

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford,

President, Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND),

Annual Hiroshima Day Commemoration

Merrion Square, Dublin

6 August 2020

Lord Mayor, members of the diplomatic corps, guests, friends …

We are here this afternoon to remember the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.

Throughout this year, we are marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II: the liberation of the concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust, but also the first use of nuclear weapons: at the ‘Trinity’ test site in the New Mexico desert, at Hiroshima, and at Nagasaki.

But many of us may be asking: what have we learned about war and peace, hatred and justice, since then?

The nuclear arms race continues apace, so that earlier this year the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists said the hands on the Doomsday Clock are now at 100 seconds to Midnight … ‘closer to apocalypse than ever before.’

They say, ‘humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers – nuclear war and climate change – that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare.’

And they warn, ‘Civilisation-ending nuclear war – whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication – is a genuine possibility.’

These are our worst nightmares. As we fall further and further into the pit, into the abyss, we see too a rise in racism, anti-Semitism and far-right populism, with Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in the vanguard, leaving us unable to cope as the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps across the globe.

Too much money is being spent on the arms race and hatred, not enough on hospitals, health, housing and hospitality for those who need our welcome.

If we stopped spending on nuclear weapons for even a month, a week, a day, the world would have enough money to cope with the consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, humanity is frightened, fearful and fretful, unsure where to lay the blame for our chaos, living through a nightmare, wondering whether the planet is out of control. And as it spins, who feels like asking, ‘Stop, let me get off!’

‘The world is sleepwalking its way through a newly unstable nuclear landscape,’ the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warns us.

But instead of walking away, instead of hiding from the potential horror we face, we must act, and we must find glimpses of hope.

I was involved in planting this cherry tree on this day 40 years ago, 6 August 1980. Like the cherry tree at ground zero in Hiroshima, it continues to blossom each year as a sign of hope, hope that life continues in the face of gross enormity.

Today, on this anniversary, I am pleased to hear, the Irish Government is formally ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty.

This is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the hope of leading to their total elimination.

It was passed on 7 July 2017, and to come into effect, its needs signature and ratification by at least 50 countries. For the nations who are party to it, the treaty prohibits developing, testing, producing, stockpiling, stationing, transferring, using and threatening to use nuclear weapons, or even assisting and encouraging those activities.

For nuclear armed states joining the treaty, it provides a time-bound framework for negotiations leading to the verified and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons programmes.

This treaty has been described as an ‘unambiguous political commitment’ to achieve and maintain a nuclear-weapon-free world.

This is no small step, no small achievement, and we should be proud that Ireland is providing moral and political leadership, providing hope in a world feeling forlorn 75 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But there is still a long way to go. We must keep hope, we must keep on campaigning. We must not let Trump, Brexit, fears about Covid-19, distract us from this struggle … for this is a struggle for life, this is a struggle for survival, this is about life itself. And we will survive!

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND). He was speaking at the annual Hiroshima Day commemoration organised by Irish CND at the Hiroshima Cherry Tree in Merrion Square on 6 August 2020.

Patrick Comerford speaking at last year’s Hiroshima Day commemoration in Merrion Square, Dublin

Wellington: the Irish hero at Waterloo who introduced Catholic Emancipation

The Duke of Wellington, a portrait painted shortly before the Battle of Waterloo

Patrick Comerford

For a generation, or even two, ‘Waterloo’ is probably associated with Abba’s Eurovision winning song in 1974, or the 1967 hit ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by the Kinks. However, some years ago we also marked the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, on 18 June 1815, won by an Irish-born general who attended Drogheda Grammar School.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, has received a bad press in the past, and is often accused of denying his Irish identity by saying: ‘If a gentleman happens to be born in a stable, it does not follow that he should be called a horse.’

But, in fact, Wellington never said anything of the sort. Instead, it was Daniel O’Connell who in 1843 tried to cast doubts on Wellington’s Irish credentials, saying: ‘The poor old Duke! what shall I say of him? To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.’

The Duke of Wellington was born plain Arthur Wesley 250 years ago on 1 May 1769 in Mornington House on Merrion Street, Dublin, close to Leinster House and opposite what is now the Taoiseach’s office. Mornington House took its name from Mornington, Co Meath, near Drogheda, which also gave the family a title. The family was originally named Colley, and can be traced back to Walter Colley, who moved from England to Drogheda about 1500.

Mornington House, Upper Merrion Street, Dublin … Wellington was born across the street from Government Buildings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A plaque on the Merrion Hotel remembers that the Duke of Wellington was born in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Inheriting an estate

The duke’s grandfather, Richard Colley Wesley (1690-1758), 1st Baron Mornington, was born Richard Colley. In 1728, he inherited the estates of Dangan and Mornington, Co Meath, on the death of Garret Wesley, the husband of a distant, childless cousin, and within weeks he changed his surname to Wesley.

The estates were first offered to a distant English relative, then a schoolboy at Westminster, Charles Wesley, brother of the great Methodist John Wesley. This offer was unaccountably refused, and the inheritance passed instead to Richard, who was MP for Trim, Co Meath (1729-1746), until he was given the title Lord Mornington.

The duke’s father, Garret Colley Wesley (1735-1781), 1st Earl of Mornington, was born at Dangan, near Summerhill, outside Trim. He was MP for Trim (1757-1758) until he succeeded to his father’s peerage, and in 1764 he became the first Professor of Music at Trinity College Dublin.

The young Arthur Wesley was educated in Trim and at Drogheda Grammar School before going to Eton. He entered the British army as an ensign at 18, and he became an aide-de-camp in Dublin Castle to the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Buckingham. He was elected MP for Trim in 1789.

As a young officer, he met Catherine ‘Kitty’ Pakenham, but their marriage was blocked by her brother, the Earl of Longford, because young Wesley was in debt and had poor prospects.

He was elected MP for Trim again in 1795, but he turned down an offer to become Surveyor-General and left with his regiment for India, where his elder brother, Lord Mornington, became Governor-General.

He was still known as Arthur Wesley until 1798, when he and the other family members changed their surname to Wellesley. When he returned to Ireland as Sir Arthur Wellesley, Kitty Pakenham’s brother changed his mind, and the two were married in Saint George’s Church, Dublin, on 10 April 1806.

Meanwhile, he was elected Tory MP for Rye in 1806. A year later, he was elected MP for Tralee but decided instead to take his seat as MP for Newport on the Isle of Wight. He became the Chief Secretary for Ireland (1807-1809) and during this time in Ireland promised to work for the abolition of the remaining Penal Laws and for Catholic Emancipation.

By 1815, following his successes in the Peninsular War, he was regarded as Britain’s foremost general, making him a natural choice to command the campaign against Napoleon.

Irish officers and soldiers

Many of Wellington’s generals, offices and soldiers at Waterloo were Irish too. The Irish formed a large proportion of Wellington’s army, and they may have numbered many thousands. Three regiments with Irish names fought at Waterloo: the 27th (Inniskilling) Foot Cavalry, the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons and the 18th (King’s Irish) Hussars. The 7th and 18th Hussars were known as the ‘Drogheda Light Horse’ or the ‘Drogheda Cossacks’ because a former regimental colonel was the Earl of Drogheda, at one time an MP for the Kilkenny constituency of Saint Canice.

The Irish generals at Waterloo included Major-General Sir Denis Pack (1775-1823), from Kilkenny, who commanded the 9th British Infantry Brigade. His father, the Very Revd Thomas Pack, was Dean of Ossory (1784-1795).

The Duke of Wellington’s tomb in the crypt of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The most high-profile Irish officer to die at Waterloo was Major-General Sir William Ponsonby (1772-1815), who commanded the 2nd Cavalry Brigade. He had been MP for Bandonbridge, Co Cork (1796-1798), Fethard, Co Tipperary (1798-1801) and Derry (1812-1815). During a charge, he rode his horse into a muddy ploughed field, where he was attacked by French lancers and speared to death, although his Irish aide-de-camp, Major George de Lacy Evans, narrowly escaped death. His brother, Richard Ponsonby, later became Bishop of Killaloe.

Their cousin, Lieutenant-Colonel (later Major-General Sir) Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby (1783-1837), was from Bessborough, Co Kilkenny, and was MP for Co Kilkenny (1806-1826). He was commanding the 12th Light Dragoons when he was unhorsed and left helpless on the battlefield until the following morning. In the agonising interval, a French lancer spotted him and ran his lance through his back. Insults were added to Ponsonby’s injuries when pickpocketing passers-by robbed him of his last remaining personal valuables.

Major-General Sir John Ormsby Vandeleur (1763-1849), who had family roots in Co Laois and Co Clare, commanded the 4th Cavalry Brigade. He later retired to Merrion Square, Dublin.

Many of the battalion and regimental commanders too were from Ireland. Lieutenant-Colonel John Millet Hamerton from Orchardstown, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, commanded the 2nd Battalion, 44th Foot. When he was wounded, his command passed to Major George O’Malley from Co Mayo. Colonel Hamerton is buried in Rathronan churchyard. Major Edwin Griffith, who was also from Clonmel, was killed on the battlefield.

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Andrew Barnard, from Fahan, Co Donegal, commanded the 1st Battalion, 95th Rifles. Major Arthur Rowley Heyland from Co Derry was killed at the close of the battle leading the 1st Battalion, the 40th Foot. The 2nd Battalion, 69th Foot, had at least three Irish officers, while the 13th Light Dragoons had an Irish commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Doherty, and at least four other Irish officers.

Junior Irish officers included Captain Harry Ross-Lewin, from Ross Hill, Co Clare, of the 32nd Foot; his younger brother, Lieutenant Thomas Ross-Lewin; Captain Edward Thomas Fitzgerald from Co Mayo; and Captain Henry Edward Keane (1783-1866) of the 7th Hussars, a son of Sir Richard Keane of Cappoquin, Co Waterford.

‘Donnybrook Fair was nothing’

In a letter home, Captain Edward Kelly of the 1st Life Guards, from Portarlington, Co Laois, described the ferocity at Waterloo: ‘Donnybrook Fair was nothing to the fight we had here.’

Many Irish soldiers earned distinction at Waterloo. Private Patrick Molloy of the 52nd Light Infantry, from Co Wexford, was severely wounded in his right arm. When Corporal James Graham from Clones, Co Monaghan, died in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, in 1845, he was described as ‘the bravest of the brave at Waterloo.’ David Carroll, a tailor from Kilkenny who enlisted in the 42nd Highlanders – the ‘Black Watch’ – was wounded in the right leg at Waterloo.

One Irish officer who earned an unhappy reputation at Waterloo was John Dawson (1781-1845), 2nd Earl of Portarlington, who lived at Emo Court, Co Laois. He was a colonel in the 23rd Light Dragoons, but on the eve of battle he absented himself from his regiment and went to Brussels.

By the time he returned to Waterloo, the battle was under way and his regiment had gone into action without him. He then attached himself to the 18th Hussars and fought with bravely. Nevertheless, his reputation had been damaged.

The Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wellington after Waterloo

After Waterloo, Wellington became an increasingly influential Tory politician, and he resigned as Commander-in-Chief to become Prime Minister from 1828 to 1830.

The highlight of his office was Catholic Emancipation, and his speech in the House of Lords in favour of it was one of his best. Although Catholic Emancipation is identified with Daniel O’Connell, it was Wellington who pushed the Catholic Relief Act through Parliament despite opposition within his own party, and it passed with a majority of 105 only with the help of the Whigs. Wellington also threatened to resign as Prime Minister if King George IV did not give his Royal Assent.

Wellington returned as Prime Minister for a short period of four weeks in 1834. When he died on 14 September 1852, aged 83, over a million people crowded to see his funeral in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, where he is buried in the crypt alongside Lord Nelson.

Wellington Barracks, 300 metres from Buckingham Palace, was named in Wellington’s honour in 1833 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Remembering Wellington

Wellington Barracks, which was built near Buckingham Palace in 1833, was named in his honour, and when the former Richmond Prison in Dublin became a barracks in the 1890s it was renamed Wellington Barracks.

The Wellington Column in Trim was erected in 1817. Work began on the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, that year, but due to a shortage of funds it was not completed until 18 June 1861. This 62-metre obelisk has bronze panels celebrating the highlights of his career, including Waterloo, India, the Peninsular Campaign and Catholic Emancipation.

For much of the 19th century, the area in the Phoenix Park around the Wellington Monument was the venue for an annual military review on Waterloo Day, 18 June. The fact that the monument lies in a sleepy hollow in the Phoenix Park rather than in a prominent place in the city centre may have unwittingly aided its survival.

In the post-independence haste to wipe out memories, Wellington Barracks in Dublin was renamed Griffith Barracks in 1922. Today it is Griffith College Dublin – no-one ever dreamed of calling it Wellington College.

His name survives too in Wellington Bridge, Co Wexford, Wellington Road, Cork, and Wellington Quay, Dublin, and in a cluster of street names in Ballsbridge, including Wellington Road and Waterloo Road. A new bridge in Dublin was named the Wellington Bridge at its opening in 1816, a year after Waterloo, but it has been known ever since as the Ha’Penny Bridge.

‘Waterloo 200,’ the official committee that oversaw the bicentenary programme in 2015, noted that Wellington’s campaign was a ‘milestone in European history’ and described the bicentenary as a ‘unique international project’ that involves ‘people from many nations.’

Wellington has given his name to pubs and hotels throughout these islands (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is priest-in-charge, Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes, and a former lecturer in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

This is Chapter 4 in Drogheda Grammar School, 1669-2019, ed John McCullen and Hugh Baker (Drogheda: Drogheda Grammar School, 2019, xii + 236 pp), pp 31-37