Category: The Four Courts Building

What’s under the Chancery Place Flowerbed?

We have a very nice wildflower display now in Chancery Place, enormously enhancing the beauty of the south-east corner of the Four Courts site, but what lies beneath it? Watch the below video to find out about the lost chapel of Mass Lane, visited by not one but two kings. Was it the original chapel of St Saviour’s Priory, the original occupant of the Four Courts site? Does any of it still remain? Who wants to start digging up the flowerbed first?

A Trip Around the Four Courts, Dublin

Join me on a virtual trip around the Four Courts, Dublin, Ireland’s centre of justice for over 200 years, where most of the events archived on this website took place.

Discoveries at the Four Courts Bookstalls, 1796-1886

The Four Courts, 1885, by Walter Frederick Osborne, via Irish Art Digital Archive. Can you spot the bookstalls? A zoom in may help, or alternatively there is a larger version of the image at the link above.

From the Freeman’s Journal, 19 February 1921:

TREASURE HUNTERS HAUNTS

Reminiscences of Dublin’s Old Book Stores

(By M. M. O’H.)

“The old bookshops of Dublin! What a vista of pleasant thoughts they create.  What delightful experiences of eager prowlings round their shelves, of unexpected ‘finds,’ of surprising bargains, of staunch friends acquired at trifling cost, of jostlings with ardent book-hunters – poets and prosewriters, judges, doctors, artists, musicians, a formidable read more

The Lion, the Unicorn, the Harp and the Little Knobule, 1931-2023

Every bit of the Four Courts has a story and the sculptures over the entrances into the grassed courtyards on either side of the portico are no exception.

Originally depicted with some artistic licence in early illustrations of the Four Courts, the 19th century camera (which never lies) show these sculptures as in fact depicting a lion and a unicorn surrounding a harp surmounted by a crown – the British crown, in fact, with read more

Revolving Doors Require No Hands, 1954

It’s often said that the Four Courts is not a place for children, but sometimes their presence there is necessary, as in the case of 11-year-old Joseph Moloney who turned up in the Four Courts in May 1924 to give evidence in his claim against Mayo County Council. Moloney had found an unlocked box of gelignite belonging to the Council’s building contractor in a field near Barrett’s Forge, Irishtown, Foxford in March 1953. He then lit the tail of one piece of gelignite, held read more