Dublin, Ireland - St. Stephens Green - Valentines postcard c.1910

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, Ireland
• Publisher:  Valentines
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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St Stephen's Green (Irish: Faiche Stiabhna)^[1] is a city centre public park in Dublin, Ireland. The current landscape of the park was designed by William Sheppard, which officially opened to the public on Tuesday, 27 July 1880.^[2] The park is adjacent to one of Dublin's main shopping streets, Grafton Street, and to a shopping centre named for it, while on its surrounding streets are the offices of a number of public bodies and the city terminus of one of Dublin's Luas tram lines. It is often informally called Stephen's Green. At 22 acres (89,000 m²), it is the largest of the parks in Dublin's main Georgian garden squares. Others include nearby Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square. Phoenix Park is the largest park in Dublin city, but is not in a Georgian square.

The park is rectangular, surrounded by streets that once formed major traffic arteries through Dublin city centre, although traffic management changes implemented in 2004 during the course of the Luas works^[3] have greatly reduced the volume of traffic. These four bordering streets are called, respectively, St Stephen's Green North, St Stephen's Green South, St Stephen's Green East and St Stephen's Green West.

Until 1663 St Stephen's Green was a marshy common on the edge of Dublin, used for grazing. In that year Dublin Corporation, seeing an opportunity to raise much needed revenue, decided to enclose the centre of the common and to sell land around the perimeter for building.^[4] The park was enclosed with a wall in 1664. The houses built around the Green were rapidly replaced by new buildings in the Georgian style and by the end of the eighteenth century the Green was a place of resort for the better-off of the city. Much of the present-day landscape of the square comprises modern buildings, some in a replica Georgian style, and relatively little survives from the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1814 control of St Stephen's Green park passed to Commissioners for the local householders, who redesigned its layout and replaced the walls with railings.^[5]

After the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria suggested that St Stephen's Green be renamed Albert Green and have a statue of Albert at its center – a suggestion rejected with indignation by the Dublin Corporation and the people of the city, to the Queen's chagrin.^[6]

Access to the Green was restricted to local residents, until 1877, when Parliament passed an Act to reopen St Stephen's Green to the public, at the initiative of Sir A.E. Guinness, a member of the Guinness brewing family who lived at St. Anne's Park, Raheny and at Ashford Castle. He later paid for the laying out of the Green in approximately its current form, which took place in 1880, and gave it to the Corporation, as representatives of the people. By way of thanks the city commissioned a statue of him, which faces the College of Surgeons. His brother Edward lived at Iveagh House, which his descendants gave in 1939 to the Department of External Affairs (now the Department of Foreign Affairs).

During the Easter Rising of 1916, a group of insurgents made up mainly of members of the Irish Citizen Army, under the command of Commandant Michael Mallin and his second-in-command Constance Markievicz, established a position in St Stephen's Green.^[4] They numbered between 200 and 250.^[7] They confiscated motor vehicles to establish road blocks on the streets that surround the park, and dug defensive positions in the park itself. This approach differed from that of taking up positions in buildings, adopted elsewhere in the city. It proved to have been unwise when elements of the British Army took up positions in the Shelbourne Hotel, at the northeastern corner of St Stephen's Green, overlooking the park, from which they could shoot down into the entrenchments.^[4] Finding themselves in a weak position, the Volunteers withdrew to the Royal College of Surgeons on the west side of the Green.^[7] During the Rising, fire was temporarily halted to allow the park's groundsman to feed the local ducks.^[8]

The park is now operated by the Office of Public Works on behalf of the Irish state.^[9]

The landscaping of the park has undergone three major changes since its inception. Its first major change occurred in 1670: two rows of lime trees were planted around the perimeter, functioning as its first enclosure. At this time, the park was only accessible to the wealthy residents who owned plots around the park.^[2]

In 1815 the park was redesigned by the Dublin city surveyor Arthur Neville. In his redesign, he added winding pathways and iron fences. At this time, the park was still closed to the public.^[2]

During the 1860s, the campaign to make the park publicly accessible was underway, and the city engineer, George W. Hemans,^[10] proposed a new design to make the park as walkable and as functionally practical as possible. This included creating four gates at each corner of the park that would be linked by the extant pathways designed by Neville. This plan was eventually abandoned, most likely due to the fact that Hemans' was employed by the Dublin Corporation. However, many of Hemans' designs, like the addition of the gates and connecting pathways, were included in the final plans submitted by William Sheppard, the principal designer responsible for the landscape of the park as we know it today, and engineer A.L. Cousins, sponsored by Lord Ardilaun. Ardilaun also played a significant role in the planning and importing of the exotic trees and plants what would be installed in the park.^[2]

type=printed

city/ region=dublin

period=pre-1914

publisher=valentines

postage condition=unposted

number of items=single

size=standard (140x89 mm)