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.

QUICK VISIT TO GLASNEVIN CEMETERY[SONY F2.8 70-200 GM LENS]

My favourite lens is a 70-200mm because it allows me to stand well back and take photographs without people being aware of what I am photographing. I had a Canon 70-200 lens and I really liked it when used with a Canon 5D. In theory the Canon lens could be used with a Sony A7RM2 [via a Metabones adaptor] but in practice I found the combination to be unusable. When Sony introduced the F4 70-200 I was considering getting it but by the time I had raised the cash  Sony announced an F2.8 70-200 so I decided to go with that instead.

There are a few downsides - such lenses are inclined to be very heavy and they do attract a lot of attention [especially if they are white or cream rather than black]. Today five people asked me about the lens and much to my surprise two of the people had Canon 70-200 F2.8 lenses. Also one can end up with photographs containing unexpected detail. For example while photographing in Glasnevin Cemetery today I managed to photograph in great detail the interior of an open family vault. I have never seen an open vault before and I was a bit surprised as it looked like a lockup containing a large number of coffins all of which were in very good condition [they looked new but they varied very much in size and style]. The vault was also packed with statues, wreaths, pictures and dried flowers.

I deleted the photographs as they were an intrusion into someone’s private life.

---

VIEW THE COMPLETE COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS

---