Tuesday, November 8, 2016

ARBOUR HILL - PRISON, CHURCH AND CEMETERY

Arbour Hill Prison is a prison and military cemetery located in the Arbour Hill area near Heuston Station.

The military cemetery is the burial place of 14 of the executed leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Among those buried there are Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Major John MacBride. The leaders were executed in Kilmainham Gaol and their bodies were transported to Arbour Hill for burial.

The graves are located under a low mound on a terrace of Wicklow granite in what was once the old prison yard. The grave site is surrounded by a limestone wall on which the names are inscribed in Irish and English. On the prison wall opposite the grave site is a plaque with the names of other people who were killed in 1916.

The prison was designed by Sir Joshua Jebb and Frederick Clarendon and opened on its present site in 1848, to house military prisoners.

The adjoining Church of the Sacred Heart, which is the prison chapel for Arbour Hill prison, is maintained by the Department of Defence. At the rear of the church lies the old cemetery, where lie the remains of British military personnel who died in the Dublin area in the 19th and early 20th century.

The church has an unusual entrance porch with stairs leading to twin galleries for visitors in the nave and transept.

A doorway beside the 1916 memorial gives access to the Irish United Nations Veterans' Association house and memorial garden.



ARBOUR HILL [PRISON, CHURCH AND CEMETERY]-123035

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