4 Castle Gardens

There has been a garden behind Dublin Castle for several centuries, accessed from the State Apartments by the steps over the small footbridge, which still survives today. This bridge spanned the River Poddle, which today flows in a culvert beneath the road, and long before a garden was created, the site was occupied by a large pool filled by the river. This was known in ancient times as the dubh linn, or “black pool”, from which the city of Dublin takes its name.

By the time of the War of Independence, the Garden was a simple affair, referred to as “the Pound”; however, it still provided a place of respite for those living within the Castle walls. As Periscope described:

Men cannot live cooped up in these walls from week to week without some outdoor recreation. No one desires to be murdered for the sake of a game of golf, or butchered on the football field. Behind the old Viceregal apartments there is a pleasant walled-in garden where tennis-courts have been laid out, and as the summer comes on the Metropolitan Police Band plays in the late afternoon.

Alongside these features were several graves within the garden. During the First World War, the State Apartments had been used as a Red Cross hospital and several of those who had been killed during the 1916 Easter Rising were interred in the Castle garden. There were separate plots for “Tommies” and “Sinn Féiners”. Several of these graves survived until the 1960s, when the remains were exhumed and re-interred in Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin. The garden affords a picturesque view of the different buildings, additions and wings that make up the main part of Dublin Castle. The view became popular with soldiers and others based at the Castle, serving as a backdrop to many souvenir photographs taken at the time.