Thursday Doors – Dublin

It’s been a few weeks since I last posted anything on my blog and I have to say I’ve missed not participating in Thursday Doors. However, that didn’t mean I wasn’t on the hunt for them – you can take the woman out of Thursday Doors but you can’t take Thursday Doors out of the woman. While on a daytrip to meet up with some family in Dublin I took shots of various doors and buildings from around the city. The first one is of St. Thomas (Church of Ireland previously but now used by Anglican congregations). The original structure was destroyed in the Civil War of 1922 and this new church was built in 1931. Winner of the RIAI Gold Medal for Architecture 1932-34.

The Spire, taken from Henry Street.

The Spire of Dublin, also called The Monument of Light – An Túr Solais in Irish – is a very tall, stainless steel structure 120m (390 ft) high. It’s located on the site of the former Nelson’s Pillar on O’Connell Street in Ireland’s capitol city. Dubliners can be very witty and quickly ‘renamed’ it The Stiletto in the Ghetto. Here’s a closer shot of the Spire, designed by Ian Ritchie Architects, who sought an “Elegant and dynamic simplicity bridging art and technology”.

At dusk, the base of the monument is lit and the top 10m (33 ft) is illuminated by light-emitting diodes shining through 11,884 holes. I’m glad I wasn’t given the job of counting them. There’s a selection of doors of all shapes and sizes in the following gallery. Often it’s the upper levels that are more interesting when the ground floor is occupied by a retail store.

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If you’ve ever been to Dublin you can’t have missed Moore Street Market, one of the oldest of all the markets in the city to have survived. I’ll put a link at the end of the post for a short but interesting history. *

It was first established in the 18th century and you’ll hear it before you see it. My mother used to bring me there on shopping trips to the city when I was a child and in my teens I spent every second Saturday roaming the streets of the capitol, absorbing the Seventies atmosphere in The Dandelion Market at the top of Stephen’s Green. Any of you readers of a ‘certain age’ who were living in Ireland at the time will remember The Dandelion.

A store my mother-in-law loved to visit was Guineys, still trading, having first opened in 1971 and I just had to pop in and have a look around. Another well known Dublin store is Arnotts on Henry Street.

It is Ireland’s oldest and largest department store, which opened for business in 1843 and is still going strong today. I’ll leave you with some random shots of doors and buildings that caught my eye as we left the city. Of course, there’s a red one included.

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Thanks for coming along with me on this short tour of Dublin City. If you would like to see some lovely doors from around the world, have a look at the links in the comments on Norm’s latest Thursday Doors post.

Moore Street Market *