Merrion Square Park

The railings around the park once really did separate insiders from outsiders. In seventeen ninety-one, the owners of the houses on Merrion Square secured an act of parliament: money was collected from residents, and with it they enclosed the empty middle of the square, laid out paths, and planted trees. The inhabitants of the expensive houses and selected subscribers received keys. Everyone else had to walk outside.

In nineteen thirty, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Edward Byrne, who was seeking a full Catholic cathedral for the city, bought the garden from the owners of the Pembroke Estate for ten thousand pounds. St Mary's Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street was then called a pro-cathedral: the prefix meant that it was regarded as a temporary replacement for the future main church. A large site near Leinster House and the government buildings was chosen for the new structure.

But the land formally passed to the Archdiocese of Dublin only in nineteen thirty-eight. Byrne had long been ill and died two years later, without ever laying the foundation. His successor, John Charles McQuaid, wanted to continue the project and considered Merrion Square the best location. The city administration preferred a site closer to the River Liffey and feared that enormous construction would alter the neighborhood beside the state buildings. McQuaid complained to the head of government, Éamon de Valera, but did not obtain agreement. During the thirty-one years of his archbishopric, not a single wall was built here.

The next archbishop, Dermot Ryan, disposed of the site differently. On April fifth, nineteen seventy-four, he transferred the garden to the city administration for a public park. At the ceremony, Ryan handed the key to the chairman of the city commissioners, who unlocked the gates—and most Dubliners were able for the first time to go beyond the railings, which had previously been opened only for the residents of the square.

There is no cathedral foundation beneath the lawns: construction never began. Behind the old railings, the paths of the public park remained, and in November two thousand twenty-five, the former temporary St Mary's Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street officially became Dublin's Catholic cathedral.