The Mansion House is celebrating its 300th birthday today. Built in 1710, this iconic building has lived quite a few unique moments in the Irish history. Here is a short list of 5 facts you didn’t know about the Mansion House.
1) On the 25th of April 1715, the Mansion House was purchased for £3,500. Part of the sale agreement was to provide the Dawson family with 2 fat capons (male hens) and a six pound loaf of double refined sugar at Christmas.
Hard to believe you could buy such building with so little…
2) Joshua Dawson; after whom Dawson Street is named; built the Mansion House in 1710 and was the first to develop this area of the city which was once marshlands.
The building doesn’t look a day over 250!
3) Ghosts are believed to haunt the Mansion House. One of the spirits is believed to be of a girl who used to work as a servant some 200 years ago, while the other is believed to be a man that is a “superior type who does not want to leave”.
4) The Largest Cake Ever Baked In Dublin weighed a whopping 190lb’s and was made to celebrate the 1988 city millennium. The cake stood untouched in the Mansion House until 1991 when it was thrown out.
That is what they say, but we think someone had a go on the 3-year-old cake.
5) August 2006, a paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force claimed they had planted a bomb in the Mansion House back in 1981, in an attempt to wipe out the Sinn Féin leadership during a party conference on that year. The claim led to a security alert at the house, as the Garda and army searched for the 25-year-old bomb. The building was eventually given the all clear but during the search the army bomb disposal team was called upon to examine a fire extinguisher which turned out to be harmless.
Fire extinguishers can be quite dangerous we all agree.
