This wonderful old Palladian style building was originally home to ‘Saint Enda’s’ (Scoil Eanna) the school for boys set up by 1916 leader Padraig Pearse. Visiting the headmaster Padraig Pearse’s study, the school-rooms, dormitory and the magnificent grounds, it is easy to see how it became the ideal place for Padraig Pearse to put his new type of Irish education for boys into practice. He first opened Saint Enda’s school in 1908 in Cullenswood House in Ranelagh, which was close to Dublin city centre.

A pioneering headmaster, Pearse believed that instead of just following the British curriculum, Irish boys and young men should learn about their own country; its history, geography, literature, poetry, music and culture. At St Enda’s he and his brother, the artist Willie Pearse, and teachers Thomas MacDonagh and Con Colbert set out to educate the boys in the Gaelic tradition. The pupils were bilingual and were made to feel proud of their Gaelic heritage and tradition and played traditional Irish games and sports.

The Gifford sisters first visited St Enda’s school with the well-known journalist and suffragette Norah Dryhurst. She introduced Muriel, Grace and Sidney to Thomas MacDonagh, telling him about how beautiful they were and advising him to marry one of the sisters. He gallantly remarked how difficult it would be to choose one of them.

In 1910, Padraig Pearse decided to move St Enda’s to a much larger property at The Hermitage in Rathfarnham. Situated on almost fifty acres of grounds there was plenty of space for the boys to play sports and for Countess Markievicz’s troop of boys, Na Fianna, to train and drill and exercise.

The Gifford sisters, like most of Padraig Pearse’s friends, were very impressed by his wonderful new school.

The Pearse Museum opens daily and gives a great sense of Padraig Pearse’s School and contains a selection of his writings and some Irish art work.

There is no entrance fee.

2 Dawson Street Spring 2016

It’s hard to believe that this modernised building was once headquarters of the Irish Volunteers. At one stage they had over a hundred thousand members training and drilling all around Ireland.

It was in 2 Dawson Street that at Thomas MacDonagh, Sean MacDiarmada, Padraig Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and many of their friends met and made their plans for the upcoming rebellion. The building was under constant surveillance by the police, who watched and marked down the comings and goings of the rebels.

Nellie Gifford ran her small employment bureau in a room there which Thomas MacDonagh and his fellow volunteers kindly agreed to let her use. She was determined to help young Irish men avoid being conscripted in to the British army. Nellie interviewed Michael Collins in her office in January 1916 and introduced him to Joe Plunkett, who offered Collins a job to help with the financial accounts and affairs of the Plunkett family.

It is easy to pass this building on Lower Dawson Street, across from Trinity College, without any awareness of its important place in history.

I am hoping that in time Dublin City Council will mark it with a plaque or some form of recognition.