8 Palace Street Gate

The Palace Street Gate was the main entrance to the Castle during the War of Independence. The houses to the right were commandeered in January 1921, one of them providing accommodation for the Castle’s staff of female typists. Periscope describes a typical scene:

On duty at the Lower Castle yard gate are Dublin Metropolitan and Military Police, and just inside lounge a couple of Auxiliaries ready for emergencies. Bomb-catching meshwork is stretched across the archway, and a drapery of barbed wire festoons the passage ways in front of the guardroom. Twenty yards outside the Castle gate a mantrap is open, giving access to the subterranean river Poddle that runs beneath the Castle walls. A couple of Royal Engineers are below seeing that the wire entanglements across the stream have not been tampered with during the night.

As noted earlier, the River Poddle runs beneath the Castle, making its way to the River Liffey. The zig-zag in the modern paving on Palace Street shows its route. This was another source of worry for those confined within the walls of the Castle – would the IRA try to sneak in via the Poddle culvert, or perhaps try to blow the Castle up from below? On 11 July 1921, a truce was called between the British and Irish forces and negotiations opened on resolving what had become a stalemated conflict. These negotiations eventually resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty (sometimes known simply as “the Treaty”), which was signed on 6 December 1921 and ratified by the Dáil on 7 January 1922, 64 votes to 57. As the conflict came to its close, on 10 January 1922, Mark Sturgis wrote:

The Castle makes a good propaganda appearance with its gate standing open for the first time for at least two years and soldiers busy removing barbed wire.

Six days later, on 16 January 1922, members of the Provisional Government of Ireland made their way through this gate and up into the Upper Castle Yard to receive the handover of the administration from the last Viceroy of Ireland, Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent.

Passing through the ornate, cast-iron gates, the visitor will see the steel plates fitted to the back of them following the 1916 Easter Rising.

Also, to the right as they enter, the visitor can glimpse the long narrow yard, or “alley”, in which prisoners like Ernie O’Malley once exercised, and from where they were able to observe the comings and goings through the Palace Street Gate.