Qualla: St Stephen's Green

St Stephen's Green: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CraftyCaedus, CC BY-SA 4.0. On Easter Monday 1916, Constance Markievicz stood beside Commandant Michael Mallin in the bandstand at the centre of St Stephen's Green and watched her Irish Citizen Army volunteers dig defensive trenches in the lawns. Two hundred and fifty rebels. Confiscated cars at every gate. It was a brilliant tactical idea executed in the wrong terrain. By Tuesday morning, British soldiers had climbed to the upper floors of the Shelbourne Hotel on the north side and were firing down into the trenches with rifles and machine guns. The Citizen Army was forced to withdraw across the road to the Royal College of Surgeons. The grass closed over the trenches within months. The Green has been a garden again for over a century, but underneath, the outline of those trenches is still there.

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Image: CraftyCaedus | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Stephen's Green: From Common to Square

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Avramescu Marius, CC BY-SA 4.0. Until 1663 St Stephen's Green was a marshy common on the edge of Dublin, used for grazing cattle. The name came from a medieval leper hospital dedicated to Saint Stephen on nearby Stephen Street (now the site of Mercer's Hospital). In 1663 Dublin Corporation, in need of revenue, ...

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Image: Avramescu Marius | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Stephen's Green: Lord Ardilaun Opens the Gates

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit XeresNelro, CC BY-SA 4.0. Until 1877 the Green was strictly private - access restricted to the householders around its perimeter, who maintained the park through a commission. That year Parliament passed an Act, at the initiative of Sir Arthur Edward Guinness - Lord Ardilaun - opening the park to the publ...

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Image: XeresNelro | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Stephen's Green: 1916: A Tactical Misjudgement

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elisa.rolle, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Easter Monday came in 1916, the Citizen Army's decision to occupy the Green and dig trenches rather than seize buildings around it cost them dearly. The British position at the Shelbourne - five storeys overlooking the open lawns - meant every rebel trench was within direct ...

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Image: Elisa.rolle | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Stephen's Green: The Statues

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photographer: Thorsten Pohl Thpohl, Public domain. The park's monuments read like a syllabus of modern Irish history. The Fusiliers' Arch at the Grafton Street corner, erected in 1907, commemorates the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died in the Second Boer War. Inside the Leeson Street gate stands the Three Fates fountain - a 1956 br...

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Image: Photographer: Thorsten Pohl Thpohl | Public domain

St Stephen's Green: Twenty-Two Acres in the Centre

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jnestorius, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park covers 22 acres, the largest of Dublin's main Georgian garden squares, larger than nearby Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square. The Office of Public Works manages it now. The Luas Green Line stops on the western side; the entire west pavement is the front of the Stephen...

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Image: Jnestorius | CC BY-SA 3.0