merrionsquare

Proposed site for cathedral for Dublin. British Embassy, no. 39 Merrion Sq., burnt down just two years earlier.

After 1974, the park was named after the Archbishop until 2010, when, after the Ryan report, Dublin City Council voted to name it Merrion Square Park instead.

Hard to believe that up to the 1960s access to the park was limited to residents, who used a private key. This square, and others, was built when the south city became fashionable following the construction of Leinster House. There is so much history referenced in this simple shot: the abandonment of plans for the site of a Dublin RC cathedral, the doner honoured at the time, and then his name removed and park renamed. A time of change for the church in Ireland.

Date 05/04/1974, www.irishtimes.com/search/archive.html?q=Archbishop+Ryan&...

That is City Manager Mathew Macken on the left of Dr. Ryan and Fred Mullen an the right (glasses and head bowed)

Streetview

Mr. Wilde in typically relaxed pose!

The Austin/Morris Mini Mk II (see note) was released at the October 1967 British Motor Show. Which means this photo is late in 1967. Edit - Wrong! It is a mark I mini YZA 855 - catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000048466 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini#Mark_II_Mini:_1967.E2.80.931970 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the cars stars.

I note that the swan necked lamp posts which we have discussed many times in dating pics of College Green and environs survive on Merrion Square to this day.

The building at left (distance) seems to say Gaeltachta on it, and in larger writing NN.

Parke was born in 1857 at Clogher House[2] in Kilmore, County Roscommon, Ireland, and was brought up in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim. He graduated from the College of Surgeons in Dublin and was appointed to a post in Ballybay, County Monaghan. In 1881 he joined the British Army and served in Egypt[1] as a surgeon. Parke fought to Khartoum in relief of General Gordon in 1885 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Heazle_Parke

Parke campaigned with Henry Morton Stanley on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. This expedition lasted three years and many were saved from death by Parke's courage and medical skills. He was known as the ' man who had saved Stanley'.[3] He thus became the first Irishman to cross the African continent. During the expedition Parke bought a pygmy girl. They travelled together for over a year and she nursed him through malaria. In the end he was forced to leave her behind because her eyes could not adapt to sunlight after the darkness of the forest. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Heazle_Parke

maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,716361,733649,7,9

Sculptor, Percy Guy Wood. ..erected 1896.

Street view in all his current glory - maps.google.ie/maps?q=kildare+street+Dublin&hl=en&...