Sir, - I feel sure that theatre lovers in general and the National Museum in particular should be grateful to the former city architect, Daithi Hanly, for retaining the frontage and foyer of the old Abbey Theatre after its demolition some 30 years ago, the original building having burned down in 1951.
As he pointed out in his recent letter, the stones, duly numbered, are stacked in his garden at Dalkey, and with them the marble fireplace of the vestibule and the once familiar yellow and black billboards that framed the entrance.
The National Museum, in its new premises at Collins Barracks, agreed to have the famous greystone building re-erected on the esplanade there, on a site that was decided on some three years ago, but Mr Hanly's generous and timely offer has yet to be accepted by the Board of Public Works. Surely many would agree that the new museum is the proper place for the famous building so familiar once to Dublin theatregoers and hosts of tourists. Apart from its historical value (it had links to both the Young Irelanders and the Fenians) it could be a home for the Irish Theatre Archive and a studio for scholars and students of the drama, and moreover stand as a lasting monument to the Abbey founders, the playwrights and players who gained for it a worldwide acclaim.
The centenary of the Irish Theatre Movement, which led to the founding of the Abbey, be celebrated next year and surely it would be singularly appropriate to have the original theatre restored at this time, with only another year to go before the celebrations of the Millennium. To quote one of the founders, W. B. Yeats: ". . . know whatever flourish and decline/These stones remain their monument and mine." - Yours, etc.,
TomAs Mac Anna
(former director of the Abbey Theatre), Bri Cualann, Co Chill Mhantain.