WHEN IS A lamppost not a lamppost? When it’s a piece of street art and a history lesson to boot.
This handpainted illustration of a little-known story from the Easter Rising was commissioned by the Little Museum of Dublin outside their premises at 15 St Stephen’s Green. It was painted by Orla Roche, more of whose work can be seen here.
It tells the tale of how the Green’s park keeper at the time of the 1916 Rising, James Kearney, negotiated a ceasefire each morning between rebels and British forces so that he could enter the park to feed the resident ducks.
The Green was somewhat of a battlefield after the insurgents had dug trenches on the Green, and were fired upon by the British from surrounding buildings. The rebels were later pushed back to occupy the College of Surgeons, the facade of which still bears the scars of gunfire.
A spokesperson for the Little Museum told TheJournal.ie that the anecdote is one of those included on their tour. The lamppost idea was simply “to bring one of the stories from the Green onto the Green”.
Our tweeted photo of the lamppost art/history this morning prompted this response among others – “more lamp history please”. What little nugget of Dublin history (or indeed, your favourite historical anecdotes from anywhere around the country) would you like to see memorialised on a lamppost at the scene?
Share them with us in the comments below.
This was Orla Roche’s painting in progress last week (click on the twitter pic in @helvick’s reply):
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