If iconic as a term references anything, it’s a sense of deep linkage and symbolism, a descriptor attaching to something that’s certainly unique – but beyond that, that tends towards the indispensable, irreplaceable. And like many cities, Dublin is endowed, as someone once said, ‘with a rich baggage of memorials and mementoes from history’; an iconography that’s unquestionably ours. Furthermore, it’s suggested that this deep layering, with its attachments and meanings, relates to the city as its Id, even as subconscious. And from which perspective most mere concrete assets get consigned to the dustbin of distain, if not irrelevance.
We can suggest also that mementos and memorials resist the imposition of value or hierarchy that, in any event, are transient aspects, like last year’s fashion story. In spite of which it’s hard to resist the impulse. And so, if we must assemble an identikit for what’s quintessentially Dublin, the Liffey will inevitably feature, the Liberties presumably gets involved and floating out on the city edge, an expanse known to generations as the Phoenix Park, will not go unremarked.
Six years have now passed since the Office of Public Works (OPW) published its Conservation Management Plan for the Phoenix Park, regarded by the agency as its prime city parkland property. In many ways a visionary document, that plan included a headline-grabbing proposal to have the park designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. There was to be a new pedestrian bridge connecting across the Liffey to Edwin Lutyens’ monumental Southside War Memorial Gardens. More controversially, the plan sought to tackle the traffic issues that blight the Park’s recreational amenity, with a proposal to ban through traffic, amounting to some 30,000 cars a day, or 10 million journeys per year, along Chesterfield Avenue.
At this juncture very few, if any, of the key elements of the OPW plan have seen the light of day, a situation that no doubt reflects a lack of certainty regarding the role of the park and its relationship to the public that ‘own’ it and the disparate groups that control it and use it. Founded as a 2,000 acre Royal Hunting ground in the late 17th century by James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, early in the history of the park about one third of its area was amputated to provide a generously proportioned estate for the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. This marked the beginnings of an unwelcome trend, with statist intrusions and confiscations continuing uninterrupted – and apparently unremarked – right up to recent times. Thus, at the centre of the Park, the President of Ireland’s official estate extends to over 70 acres. His near neighbour, the US Ambassador (situation vacant) controls a generous 40 acres, while the government owned Farmleigh House, added to the Ordnance Survey, St Mary’s Hospital and the Garda HQ account for a further 120 acres between them. As a consequence, almost one third of the 1700 acre extent of the Phoenix Park have been given over to a variety of official uses, none of which relate in any meaningful way to its role as a recreational amenity for the city.
So there we have it. A severe case of arrested development, the Phoenix Park stands as victim of disjointed Government and public deference. And at the centre of this near shambles can be observed the autocratic eminence of our OPW, ever aspiring to enlightened management but defaulting instead towards command and control.
Words: Reg McCabe
Reg McCabe is a tour guide and local historian. You can follow him at @timethemetours
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