Peter CostelloA True Symbol of the City of Dublin – The Ha’penny Bridge Dublin
by Michael English and others
(Dublin City Council, €24.95pb / €34.95hb)
As a Dubliner I was delighted to receive this book on the city’s famous metal bridge, which has now become so emblematic of the city.
Every great city as a symbol of some kind: the Sydney opera house, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate. For most of the 19th Century and a large part of the 20th the symbol of Dublin was Nelson’s Pillar. It was for many a much resented symbol, which had to be finally removed after being half demolished by terrorist action. The admiral’s head now sits, a forlorn relic of imperial greatness, in the Pearse Street Public library.
The Pillar was replaced by the Spire, an edifice which never managed to capture the affections of anyone, either the citizens or the visitors. It was quite simply too alien, too metallic, too tall.
Affection
But in recent years it has become clear that the real object of affection that symbolises the city, both for those who live there and those who visit, is the Ha’penny Bridge, which this year celebrates its bi-centenary.
This is very much a people’s bridge. It links to the two side of the city is a graceful and pleasing way, a monument to the elegance of Georgian design, and the human scale of its execution.
In this magnificently illustrated book was the conception of photographer Michael English, whose own images provide the core of the book. But with the aid of pictures from the past and essays by some eight other hands, it celebrates the bridge, and its history. For the ‘rayl ol’ Dubliner’, you know this book will make an ideal Christmas present.
Of course, the bridge was not always so admired as it is today. Logan Sisley recounts how it was nearly swept away by a scheme for a gallery to house the Hugh Lane Collection; but thankfully due largely to the intransigence of the British authorities over the collection itself, that never came about.
Michael B. Barry deals with its role in the city, and David de Haan with the pioneering iron works (in England) from which it came.
Sean Harrington explores its relation to other recent bridges, while Gerard Smyth deals in great detail with its actual history.
Annette Black writes about it as part of Dublin’s cultural quarter; but I am afraid most Dubliners do not believe in “the cultural quarter”. For myself, I always recall that to create this planned rather than organic quartier meant the closing of some eight very varied places that sold books, books of all kinds from politics to Buddhism.
Now only one bookshop exists and that a new one. Hen parties ill consort with high art or introspective poetry.
Brewery
The originator of the book, Michael English, contributes an essay the Guinness boats than once ran between the brewery and the port, taking “the black stuff” to thirsty folk abroad from Liverpool to Nigeria (where they long believed the slogan “Guinness gives you power”); and a finale that captures just how the constant changes and variations of weather and light and time of day around the bridge create an remarkable atmosphere of their own.
The Ha’penny Bridge, which is dedicated to pedestrians and flâneurs, inspirers the hope that in the near future the publishers of this book will take courage in their hands and ban motorists entirely from the historic city centre, from Parnell Square to St Stephen’s Green.