Westland Row

And we were just thinking that actually, let's be mindful that people are starting into a week's work and all of that and getting into town.

So you can come into town into the Royal Irish Academy, which is on Westland Row.

Loads of beautiful little cafes and places for a bite to eat, if that's what you would like to do.

A fabulous Georgian building.

As shocking as the deaths of Leo and Mary were, a second and eerily similar tragedy was about to befall the city just ten days later, one that would send many tenement residents into a state of fear and panic.

Across the city on Westland Row, two marriages took place in the church of St. Andrew.

Two hopeful young couples eager to embark on a life together but each unaware that within just a few years they would stand together in grief in the same church at the funerals of their young daughters.

In 1939, Matthew Byrne of Townsend Street married Annie Hudson, and the couple moved into a room of the tenement building that Annie's family already lived in, No. 24 Hollis Street.

Linda and Marion were so inseparable.

that we knew that where one little girl lay, the other would be right beside her.

The rescuers cleared a hollow in the rubble where the girls lay, and in what must have been the most heartbreaking scene ever witnessed on Fenian Street, Reverend Byrne of Westland Row administered the last rites to the two young friends as their family members and neighbours looked on in shock and disbelief.

Linda and Marion were taken the short distance to Sir Patrick Dunn's hospital where there was little more they could do than to lay them out in the mortuary chapel.

Opened in 1871 by John and Michael Gunn, the Gayety was a really lavish undertaking and it was really ambitious as well in terms of the scale of the theatre.

The Gunns had made their name and their money in Dublin, selling pianos and sheet music on Westland Row.

The family were much respected in the city.

They would describe themselves as home rulers.

really good night around the country, too, isn't it? And there's so many freebies in libraries and everything.

I'm going to give a little shout out and plug to St. Andrew's Church in Westland Row, around the corner, really, from the Mansion House, if you were there, which is also free.

And the reason I know anything about it is not because I'm remotely religious, which I'm not, but my dad was the choir master there and I've always kept in touch with the choir.

And they have stuff on, including they have, it's the church referred to as All Hollows in Ulysses.

So again, sorry, Dublin is where I usually go to mass.

Again, Westland Row, um, the church very associated with, uh, Daniel O'Connell, The Liberator.

He's one of the big promoters of it.

And that you might as well be in one of the churches of the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, um, when you go into that space.

46.

Born in Westland Row, family later moved to Merrion Square, where, of course, there's that magnificent statue to him.

You could talk to Oscar about anything.

And indeed, I'd say your problem might be to get him to shut up because he would dominate, I would say.