The ‘steps’

4.2.1 The ‘steps’

Popular history leads us to believe that Pearse stood on the steps of the General Post Office to read out the Proclamation. Earlier, Kee recounted that Pearse had ‘emerge[d] on to the steps’. Somerset Fry claims he ‘appeared on the lowest step of the GPO’s portico and read out the Proclamation’ (1988, p.

286). Pearse’s position during that iconic moment is reiterated in popular media where he ‘read from the steps’ (Duffy, 2009) and ‘read out the Proclamation…from its steps’ (Anchor House Dublin, 2013). It permeates popular fiction: ‘I helped type up the Declaration of Independence for young Padraig to read on the steps of the GPO’ (Keyes, 2012, p. 10). However, more discerning sources claim that Pearse ‘stood before the Ionic pillars’ (Kiberd, 1996, p. 206) and the General Post Office’s official website places him ‘under the GPO portico’ (An Post, 2010).

Wills (2009) elucidates how the myth of the steps manifested itself. She places the conjuring of the steps with a cartoon which appeared in the Dublin Opinion in August 1924: ‘The portico appears to be drawn with steps, showing that the story that Pearse had read the Proclamation from the steps of the GPO was already accepted, even though the building had no steps’ (2009, p. 145). The cartoon’s reference to the General Post Office holding ’30,000 patriots in 1916’

refers to the need, after the establishment of the Irish Free State, for Irish people to associate with the original Rising which Wills refers to as an

‘immense’ ‘pressure to claim participation’. Kiberd qualifies this as a state-down doctrine, where ‘In the early decades, the new leaders soothed a frustrated people with endless recollections of the sacred struggle for independence. Commemorations abounded, the Irish version of this disease being the repeated political taunt “Where were you in 1916?” (1996, p. 552).

Such claims of participation will be repeated later in this chapter in relation to

171 the destruction of Nelson’s Pillar, which was located near the General Post Office on O’Connell Street.

Wills does not consider the placement of the building on a plinth further, nor questions the accuracy of the 1924 depiction. The portico has six columns, not four, but these appear to be sitting on a plinth which is higher than street level. The two lines in front of the portico could be interpreted as steps. But they could equally have been a simple underlining of a sketch, or a representation of the tram tracks which originally ran in front of the building, with the trams terminating at the adjacent Nelson’s Pillar. However, the plethora of tourist information and guide books does not urge the visitor to stand on the steps: instead they compel the visitor to participate in the nation forming event by touching the bullet holes in the columns: the tangible manifestation of a historic event.

Ferguson recognises how ‘the course of history has bestowed an almost mythical status on the simple brick and granite of Dublin’s GPO’ (2011, p. 32).

The illusion of the steps in nationalist imagination ideologically elevates the building: in such a construct Pearse can be pictured standing above an expectant crowd delivering the Proclamation, when in fact a few interested bystanders stopped to listen. The Georgian portico was designed with reference to Neo-classical ideals which took inspiration from classical Greek and Roman architecture. The heavily ordered frontage of the Parthenon in Athens stands on a naturally elevated plinth, overlooking the city. Therefore, the General Post Office, aesthetically of a similar ilk, is raised both ideologically and physically, despite the fact that the Rising itself failed on political grounds.

The General Post Office was originally designed by Armagh architect Francis Johnston, who was in the service of the Board of Works. It cost £50,000 to complete and was opened in 1818. Ferguson describes the building as being composed of ‘simple brick and granite’ (ibid). The inner rooms were indeed composed of brick, and the politicisation around that particular building material will be considered in detail in Chapter Five. Part of the façade was constructed with granite sourced from Wicklow, Ireland. But the infamous portico was built with British Portland stone. The fact that Ferguson omits this imported material from his description of the building is important. The

172 General Post Office holds a significant place in the construction of Irish nationalist identity. Ferguson references ‘native’ buildings materials: the Wicklow granite. British Portland stone was imported: therefore forming part of a tangible relation with Ireland’s former colonisers, the British. By omitting the reference to imported stone, the building is somewhat made purer and more Irish.

Image 26: General Post Office, O’Connell Street, Dublin (Photographic credit: Ramona Usher)

The pediment was surmounted by symbolic statues, designed by Irish sculptor Edward Smyth (who also worked on the Custom House): Hibernia, Mercury and Fidelity. These were damaged during the Rising, and have more recently been replaced by casts. Hibernia is centrally located, grasping a harp in her left hand and sword in her right; Mercury stands to her right, the winged messenger to the gods; and to Hibernia’s left stands Fidelity, fundamentally associated with the postal service. In addition to the use of native building materials, the input of Irish craft skill facilitates native custodianship of the General Post Office. Hibernia and the harp are rich in Irish symbolism.

Therefore, despite the General Post Office being a British institution it was

173 imbued with Irishness. However, as the casts have been replaced with replicas one element of intangible heritage, the Irish craft skill, associated with the building has been lost, undermining its authenticity. UNESCO’s definition of intangible heritage was cited in Chapter Two and it can be argued here that the traditional craftsmanship of the General Post Office is part of its intangible heritage. However, the word ‘traditional’ does not immediately accord with Georgian sculpture and art history, and instead conjures images of the vernacular, as discussed in Chapter Three. The following chapter will argue that traditional methods of pointing brickwork in Dublin’s domestic Georgian buildings provides a more explicit avenue through which such buildings can be accorded a more ‘Irish’ status.

The restoration of the General Post Office by the Irish government in the 1920s will be considered later in this chapter, but in the interim it is worth considering that the building is designated as a ‘Protected Structure’, which under the Planning and Development Act 2000, ‘is a structure that a planning authority considers to be of special interest from an architectural, historical, archaeological, artistic, cultural, scientific, social or technical point of view’.

Section 58 of this Act notes that ‘any person who, without lawful authority, causes damage to a protected structure or a proposed protected structure shall be guilty of an offence’. The Irish system of legislative protection does not provide assessments of a building’s significance, such as that used in England by English Heritage. Buildings there are ‘listed’, and the accompanying list description was originally only supposed to make clear the identity and location of the building. However, historic building assessors went further than their remit, describing the building and its features. Today, English Heritage is attempting to rewrite the list descriptions so that they make the ‘significance’ of the building more discernible to the lay person (HELM, 2012).