Enhancing at the Crossroads – An Irishman’s Diary about Kilmainham Gaol

Whatever else this year of commemorations may bring, I’m grateful for the improved footpaths it has already delivered to part of my Dublin neighbourhood.

As regular readers will know, I live in Kilmainham, an area with almost an embarrassment of historical riches. Among its many landmark buildings are the old gaol, now a very popular museum, and the adjoining courthouse, which closed in 2008 and was lying unused until recently.

Near both of those, we also have the former Royal Hospital, home for2½ centuries to pensioned soldiers, but now housing the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

And a few years ago, when the future of the courthouse remained uncertain, I proposed here a radical scheme that would have seen it continue to serve a quasi-judicial role in connection with the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma), helping resolve the controversies that arise periodically about modern art’s worth.

My idea was that certain installations and their creators might occasionally be tried in the courthouse, charged with attempting to commit fraud on an unsuspecting public.

The old holding cells could have doubled as storage space and a remand facility. Artworks that purported to be ahead of their time could have been locked up, with limited visiting rights, and a review date for 10 or 20 years hence.

But much as such a facility was needed, I knew that an amalgamation of the courthouse and its more immediate neighbour, the gaol, was always more likely. And sure enough, that's what's now happening. Two years ago, those modern-day revolutionaries, the Office of Public Works, took over the building on behalf of the Republic. Since when, there has been a race to bring about the architectural equivalent of the marriage of Joseph Mary Plunkett and Grace Gifford, just in time for the Rising's centenary.

The nuptial preparations continue even now. But like a bridal train, the footpath outside the courthouse has already been expanded into a plaza, awaiting the greatly increased numbers of tourists expected from Easter onwards.

If you've ever attended the MacGill Summer School or similar events, by the way, you'll be aware that they always seem to be talking about "Ireland at the Crossroads".  That's a much-loved junction among political commentators, and I know it's a figurative or metaphysical crossroads they usually have in mind. But if there's an actual crossroads anywhere that encapsulates Irish history, it must be the one at Kilmainham Courthouse.  There, facing each other across the South Circular Road, are a republican shrine (the gaol, where most of the 1916 leaders were executed) and the RHK, a bastion of the former ascendancy, where the earliest inmates were veterans from the Battle of the Boyne. On the other corners, meanwhile, more modern buildings add pathos (a pub) and irony (a hotel, opposite the gaol), respectively, while also entertaining visitors. So well might this be the terminus of the so-called "Dubline" – a tourist super-highway that leads from College Green to Dublin Castle, and then passes Christchurch, the Liberties, and Guinness's, before westering towards Kilmainham, where the sun set on this corner of the empire. The various points on the line have recently been stitched together by a series of information signs – another welcome development. But it remains to be seen whether this will reduce the number of confused visitors I meet every day.

Living at the eastern end of the RHK, I have an unpaid part-time job advising the many tourists I see studying maps, and then the signs for Imma, and then the maps again. “You’re looking for the gaol, aren’t you?” I invariably inquire, in English, French, or sometimes Spanish (I’m also hoping to introduce a limited Japanese service shortly).  Then I tell them that the shortest way is through the hospital, a secret that no direction signs see fit to share.

But at least when they reach their destination this year, they’ll have the fine new plaza greeting them. And I only wish the planners could have gone a bit further and done something about the traffic-choked South Circular Road that will still separate the RHK’s back gate and the courthouse-gaol complex.

At this particular crossroads, Ireland is too often reduced to fumbling with the pedestrian button on the traffic lights, and then waiting for the lights to change in their own time. A footbridge would improve the situation. Or, even better perhaps, a tunnel. It’s close to an old prison, after all – there might one half-dug somewhere already.