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A COLLECTION OF fascinating photographs of a Dublin bombarded by artillery fire in the 1916 rising has been posted online.
The pictures were taken by contemporary photographer Thomas Westropp (who died in 1922) in May 1916, just weeks after the fateful rising.
The Digital Repository Ireland (DRI) has shared the 40 photos on their site with the permission of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), who themselves received the images from Westropp himself in June 1916.
“We’re delighted at how much these photographs capture the public imagination, and bring to life in vivid detail a seminal moment in Irish history,” DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower told TheJournal.ie.
We just launched the Repository to the public six weeks ago, and this is a great example of the kinds of digital content we will continue to preserve and share with the public.
The Westropp photos are indicative of our entire purpose really – when you see the ruins in the pictures it reminds us of how quickly things can be destroyed and lost.
“When we look beyond the buildings, the rubble, the dust, we get a sense of what it might have been like to stand amongst the chaotic aftermath (of the rising),” said Dr Sharon Webb of DRI, who together with Rebecca Grant (also DRI) and Siobhan Fitzpatrick of the RIA worked to make the photographs available.
One particular poignant image (see below) shows a small boy looking directly at the camera. What did he think of Dublin’s new landscape? Of the Rising, of the fighting? Indeed, what did he think of Westropp’s camera?
Taking a step back from the camera, what did Westropp think standing at his many vantage points, climbing Nelson’s Pillar to take shots of the GPO, of Henry Street? What did he think, surrounded by the rubble of the GPO, light filtering through the steel girders and the Rising’s dust still settling?
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Amazing pictures and the still managed to keep the trams going!!! Something the luas should look at :)
O’Connell Street looks better in those pictures than it does now.
Sackville Street.
That’s because there’s a distinct lack of walking dead junkies around the place.
aaaah heear
The ironic thing being that all these drugs were legal back then.
Amazing. Great to be able to see an untarnished look back in history
The few hundred men that stood up to an empire!
Yeah the few hundred men who decided to start an armed insurrection on one of Ireland’s busiest streets, knowing full well innocent people would get caught in between it. Not to mention an absolute stab in the back to the men who were trying to gain home rule by other means.
Goodman Nigel….piss all over the men of the rising. The British promised home rule if the Irish faught in WW1 and many died, often the first regiments sent over the top. Then the british went back on the deal. The rising wasn’t pretty or well planned but it was the start of the Republic.
Darren I’m sorry but taking over the gpo on a busy street was insane. They knew what was going to happen but they still went ahead and did it. The people of Ireland weren’t behind it.
Darren, I fully agree with you. I also supported the provisional ira during the troubles, did you?
The Republican movement has always acknowledged that the risk of death or maiming to innocent civilians is a price worth paying in pursuit of their personal objectives, until new leadership took over in the 1970s when they realised they were making a dog’s dinner of realising anything worthwhile and opted for a stalemate.
It’s a sorry tale.
No wonder there are mixed feelings about there being anything worth celebrating in 2016.
Nothing good was achieved by the Risers in 1916.
Subsequent events created the Republic, but they were entirely formed by very different people.
Republicans were and still are vermin. They “fight” in the most cowardly way possible, hiding behind civilians, targeting off duty security forces, bombing civilians etc
No i can say i did. I accept that the catholics of Northern Ireland had to defend themselves and should of had more help. They really got the bad end of the stick and i see them as Irish as myself. I can’t say i ever supported them if im honest. I know it looks like im all for 1916 and against what happened in the north but i feel they went way to far.
Yes Nigel it was insane and i don’t want to get into numbers, and im not going into Cromwell or the famine but in the time they were alive…im sure the british killed a lot more civilians. Im not saying they are military masterminds but they stood up to the largest empire in the world with a few rifiles and not alot of ammo. To me they are brave men and Irish heros.
Certain people claim that the PIRA existed because of the treatment of catholics but in reality they murdered more catholics during those 30 years than the British army did.
Ian Pasely himself in his last interview said that catholics were mistreated. If im wrong about this next sentence please tell me..The british army were first deployed to protect catholic families that were suffering at the hands of mobs buring them out of their homes. If catholics had been treated fair the other shower (who i don’t in anyway support) would not have any support. Remember a “protestant land for a protestant people?”. Now I’ve nothing against protestants, infact im marrying one but you cannot say the treatment of catholics wasn’t a major factor.
Onetimevoice. I would suggest viewing the 1916 rising within the historical context of its time. The British empire ruled their colonies as the world’s pre eminent military power. There was no such thing as diplomacy for colonised nations as a means for gaining independent powers. In fact international diplomacy for Britain at the time amounted to conscripting their colonies and joining other countries in world war.
Republicanism prior to the rising had little popular support. However the rising leaders knew that becoming martyr’s for a republican cause would likely gain that popular support. This was achieved in a huge swing politically from Home Rule to Sinn Fein with the rising in between.
I personally believe that had many of the signatories of the rising had survived and a civil war avoided. (big if, I concede) We’d have a republic that we really could be proud of, unlike the civil war / catholic church political set up that we got instead.
Republicans demonstrating their cowardice and no commitment to peace again in the last hour or so
Your vermin. That is all
It was the threat of conscription in 1918 and not the Rising, which led to the huge swing from the IPP to Sinn Fein in the 1918 General Election. This election provided the mandate for the first Dail, not the Rising.
Popular belief and legend is not the same as history.
Nigel, you really should take a look at the history books. The (armed insurrection) as you call it, was actually a rising of the people against hundreds of years of oppression. The men and women that fought that day knew only too well that their efforts were doomed to failure. The people that were caught up in the fighting were those that were looting and going to the places where the fighting was happening. The people knew things were about to get rough after the proclamation was read aloud at the G.P.O and posted on walls around the city. There was no way home rule was going to be granted and to think otherwise is a politicians way of thinking, not a hard up family scraping by with the English crown and it’s agents always taking more from them. The only way to make the world see what was going on in Ireland at that time was to force the British into a situation that they could not hide or cover up.
It’s always great to look at historic photos, makes me an even prouder Irishman.
and not a shot fired in our surrender to Germany..
People still do not get it Eileen, we have no sovereignty because we use but do not own the euro…
Stupid comments.
We have all the sovereignty we need to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and drift off into the Atlantic…
Diarmuid, how have we if we use the Euro, if we hadn’t the Euro and had the punt instead we would not have has the Troika to borrow from, the bondholders and banks to pay and at worst we could have devalued the punt if we had it instead of having to put up with austerity. But because we use the Euro we have no sovereignty to do what we like as we do not own the Euro, that is why the Troika and the ECB tells us what to do…
Sure but we’d have had hyper-inflation, mass exit of multinationals and an inability to borrow to fund basic services
But now this austerity is brought on us because Germany wants cheap exports for themselves and this has never happened to us before…
Amazing photos.
It’s sad that all those wonderful buildings were destroyed. If we had stayed friends this wouldn’t have happened.
If we weren’t colonized this wouldn’t have happened you mean
If we weren’t colonised we wouldn’t have had those nice buildings to begin with.
Who do you think built those buildings in the first place, Supernova?
I read that all the beautiful buildings were designed by the British in Dublin is this true ?
Yes, it is true. Dublin was referred to as the 2nd city of the empire.
Actually during this era there were several cities that each tried to claim the title of 2nd city of the empire Dublin being one of them.
Who is to say we wouldn’t have built those buildings ourselves.
We built a lot of the rest of the modern world and we educated them since ancient times. Of course we could have built them ourselves. Kind of hard to do when you’re subservient to a race that wants to strip you of every part of your culture though.
@leadog, evident of the wonderful building we have done since independence, ESB HQ in Dublin anyone
They didnt send english builders over …..the opposite infact.
We probably wouldn’t have built those buildings, we probably would have developed our own architectural style during this period just like every other European country and had a completely different set of ornate buildings. We’ll never know what the result would have been.
Unfortunately these days no country seems to have unique architecture, all new buildings look the similar in every country.
The British were never a race. Ireland was fully part of the United Kingdom and many Irish were willing colonial overlords.
I think every country is guilty of building eyesores in the recent past.
You actually believe the evil British empire who raped , imprisoned, enslaved and killed Irish people would actually send over British builders? Ignorant dopes. Irish people built them and yes some are designed by British architects.
Hows all your lovely roads, railways, dams, canals, buildings etc in the UK Llyod Hetherington? Built with Irish hands. Ignorant bigots.
Throwback Thursday: Lloyd Hetherington, May 12th 2015, 11:24 PM
“So many paedos seem to have Irish surnames, no matter where in the world they surface. Same with the priests. No matter where in the world, so many of the paedophile priests seemed to be of Irish origin. Makes you wonder…”
http://www.thejournal.ie/man-vigilante-group-teenage-girl-2099088-May2015/
BIGOT
Dutch Billy alert, pic no.3, top right. Looking a little for the worse after having its roof blown-off, quick someone post it onto Archiseek.
Actually, on second thoughts, don’t bother.
Yes Paul Wallace, and such a shame about all those ruined lovely buildings in Berlin in 1945. Had the allies no sense of aesthetics?
Be great for someone to recolour them. Recoloured pictures from history are awesome.
Ireland suffers one last time to finally and heroically rid itself of a vile prolonged murderous foreign occupation.
Never heard of the war of Independence or civil war I take it?
Tan war?
Rebels responsible for wrecked city.
They destroyed 700 years worth of priceless records in the four courts too. A huge disservice to the Irish people.
The British weren’t great for keeping records about Ireland, in 1861 and 1871 the British authorities intentionally destroyed the Irish census documents straight away as they felt genealogical information on Irish people wasn’t worth keeping, they also destroyed more Irish records during World War I to cope with a paper shortage. The records for the rest of the UK in this time are intact though.
That happened during the civil war qwerty.
Fiachra, it would appear that you are in possession of information that no State agency is aware of. I am sure that the State would welcome this information along with the location of extraterrestrial aliens etc.
It would appear you’re still nothing but a Troll. Piss off there like a good boy.
It was the free state forces that blew up the public records office, the IRA were holed up there.
Tap, this is a well known fact, that two of the censuses were destroyed, two more were pulped for paper during the Great War and the four earliest censuses were in the public records office when it was blown up.
Significant kudos to Thomas Westwood for having the foresight to take these amazing photographs. I believe a national conversation is required to inform us all on the process of decision making by the Rising leaders during these heady times.
In my view, these men and women were aptly opportunistic in striking out against the British empire during the middle of WW2. They were immensely brave in that they were going against the established popular opinion, at its time. Initially a great many of the local population were aghast at the interference the rising brought to everyday life in Dublin. Also remember, that the Home Rule party were the pre eminent political movement in Ireland at the time.
The gamechanger I believe were the executions of the 1916 rising signatories. Almost overnight, the groundswell of popular opinion went from antagonism to popular support for the republican movement. As exemplified by the transfer of political support to Sinn Fein in the subsequent general election.
What could have gone down as yet another failed and mismanaged rebellion similar to those of the Fenians in previous centuries. Went on to become the basis on which a modern republic came to be in the interim. Of course, the subsequent civil war which went on to more clearly define the new republic, is another crucially important chapter for further discussion on another day.
* Correction. 1916 Rising took place during the middle of WW1.
@chalk, you have been the only contributor in this discussion that has knowledge and insight relating to Colonial rule. Colonisation is a part of all human history since the Neolithic Age. Each and every culture across the globe have been party to it, it is part of our primal instinct( even in animals it occurs) How was our little island first populated? Ancient Egypt, Romans, Ottomans, Monguls, Incas, Aztecs, Polynesians, Vikings, and when the Norman came, they “became more Irish than the Irish themselves”. The Germans tried it, as did the Russians and Japanese as recent as 70 years ago. These are facts of human history on this planet but wait, we are now looking to the Cosmos for possible locations! The legacy of all this suppression and plunder is painful to many. In Ireland, as well as suffering greatly under Colonial Rule, we did benefit in other ways. Our history has been manipulated in pursuit of political gain, in fact I believe, since Independence we have been fed propaganda, and never really been told the whole story. This Centenary Celebration is an opportunity for all Irish people to know and understand our history under British Rule. We still have alot to learn, to acknowledge and embrace. We are a very diverse little nation. So the big house and the big tree were symbols of occupation and destroyed, as were the Tower Houses and Ring Forts. Yet there are still gems of British Architecture and engineering still remaining, built by our ancestors, at home and abroad. Our canal systems, municipal buildings, churches, roads and railways and castles, to name but a few. And of course the specimen trees found on all big estates. We can all learn to understand, embrace and love our little island in all of its terrible beauty.
Liberty Hall certainly looks a lot less ugly than it does now.
it was a kip then and it’s a kip now
Yes Dublin is a kip, the same kip that provides jobs, not just for Dubs. Dublin is a kip yet it is a tourist hotspot, it has a fantastic history, it is the place I call home and I still look forward to going back to the kip no matter where I am in this god forsaken country.
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