Mark Sturgis

Mark Sturgis was a British civil servant who served as Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland from 1920 to 1922. He was a typical English gentleman of that time. He had a keen interest in horses, attending many Irish race meetings and the Dublin Horse Show, despite the risks of doing so. A fellow Castle civil servant of that time, writing under the pseudonym “Periscope”, described how “He [Sturgis] lent a cachet to the administration, he supplied an atmosphere which Dublin Castle had lacked for many years.” Periscope also left the following sketch of him:

Mark Sturgis, fresh from an early morning canter in the Phoenix Park, in his buttonhole a red rose picked in the Viceregal gardens, looks out of place in this dingy square [the Upper Castle Yard]. Hyde Park on a summer’s morning seems more in keeping with the atmosphere he creates, the general effect often aided by a nicelycut pair of riding breeches not even discarded for the official day.

Sturgis kept a diary, which offers some interesting glimpses into life at the Castle during that time. In August 1920, he recorded how he had lunch with the Director of the National Gallery of Ireland who:

… took us over the National Gallery and showed us his best pictures. … We are going to be lent some pictures from the attics and we picked out some very nice ones for our house in Upper Castle Yard.

However, life was not always as comfortable as these descriptions might suggest, and the occupants of the Castle, including Mr Sturgis, lived in a state of constant apprehension. The same month, he described an incident that gives some idea of the fear that constantly lurked at the back of their minds:

Last night when we had finished dinner we heard shouting in Dame Street and several shots from the direction of the Castle Gate. Soldiers came running back through the Upper Yard to get their rifles – We thought the Castle was being stormed and with hideous courage all went down to the Gate – the last thing we ought to have done as we could only have been in the way. It appeared that the foe was still outside. … [after some time] We soon got tired of looking and went to play bridge and heard no more.

On another occasion, less than two weeks later:

Last night we half thought something was up. We were playing cards at 11.30 when the electric light gave out and the officer of the Guard came in to say he had heard 3 shots in the distance – tried to get on the telephone and couldn’t – so we thought wires cut etc. for general attack! Howsoever nothing happened!

Despite all of this, one has the impression that Mark Sturgis quite enjoyed his time at Dublin Castle. He summed it up as follows:

Gawd knows whether I shall ever settle down happily in a London office again – here one is up to the neck in intrigue, plot and counterplot with a small spice of danger all mixed up with the life of something like a big country house in the old days.

Mark Sturgis

Some of the inhabitants of Dublin Castle in the Upper Castle Yard, from an IRA intelligence file marking out men for possible assassination.