Dublin to me
Written by Dublin to me
Tom O’ Raghallaigh, National Leprechaun Museum
I come into work early, in the summer the heat hasn’t really hit yet and you’ve got that energy of a new day starting. Coming in through Smithfield in the morning when the guys are just getting the fruit market ready there’s just a buzz of activity. There’s such huge variety. I’m always going round a corner and finding something new I didn’t know about and for a city that’s not that huge there’s loads of little corners and places I haven’t been. Even finding things like St. Mary’s Abbey round the corner, that most people wouldn’t know about. It’s where Silken Thomas threw down his sword and declared rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. The chapterhouse is the only remnant of the abbey which was essentially the biggest thing on the Northside of the river and that’s why it’s called Abbey street. Once you start putting those things together it begins to make more sense. One of the things we do with people here, particularly Irish people, is we talk about the landscape. We ask where they’re from and then we talk about stories that happened where they live, and people come away from the experience here knowing a bit more about their local area. It just makes your connection to the place a bit richer.
