Kevin Street Garda station’s walls hide medieval palace

Hidden behind the crumbling concrete and pebbledash render of Dublin’s Kevin Street Garda station, buried beneath lino floors and above plasterboard ceilings, there lies a medieval palace.

The eerily named Palace of St Sepulchre was for six centuries the official residence of the archbishops of Dublin. It became the first headquarters of the Dublin Metropolitan Police just over 200 years ago, and then became a Garda station on the foundation of the State.

After almost 100 years, the gardaí are moving to a new purpose-built station currently under construction on Bride Street, just over the top of the wall from the palace.

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State architect Ciarán O’Connor: “The building goes back to 1184, and, like Dublin Castle, is one of the few buildings continuously occupied since the Norman period.” Photograph: Sara Freund/The Irish Times

In its current condition, the old Garda station doesn’t exactly scream “magic kingdom”, but according to State architect with the Office of Public Works (OPW) Ciarán O’Connor, all the elements are there to restore it to its former glory, with 800 years of history waiting to be revealed once the present occupants are gone.

“The building goes back to 1184, and, like Dublin Castle, is one of the few buildings continuously occupied since the Norman period, and that is quite unique in Dublin.”

Patron saint

The episcopal palace was founded by

John Comyn

, successor to the city’s patron saint, Laurence O’Toole. The first Anglo-Norman archbishop, Comyn was sent to Dublin by Henry II to “put some manners on the local priests” – Augustinians who were seen as “a bit too Celtic” in their outlook, O’Connor says.

Comyn was a diplomat and administrator in the king’s court, and was only ordained a priest after becoming archbishop of Dublin. Even the name he chose for his palace underlines Comyn’s secular nature: there was no saint named Sepulchre, but the Crusades to the Holy Land to recover Christ’s tomb, the Holy Sepulchre, were popular at the time, and he knew how to keep in with the in crowd.

The position of archbishop of Dublin was political and administrative as well as pastoral. Comyn had his own court and lands and was “at liberty” from city laws and taxes, hence the name of the surrounding area, the Liberties.

“He could imprison you, hang you or put you in the stock. The original cells we believe are under the brick buildings at the corner of Kevin Street. The stock, where you were put in and they threw the tomatoes at you, were just at the front gate and his gallows were up at Harold’s Cross.”

The excavations of the adjoining site for the new station have revealed a tantalising indication of what more could be discovered once the gardaí are gone, O’Connor explains.

“We found when we were excavating, three metres below ground level, almost at virgin soil, there was a decapitated head.” The head had been removed with a sword, and placed on a specially-made mat and was topped with a rotten dog, as was the custom at the time when they wanted to warn others to behave. It was then thrown into the pit beside the footpath.

“It was left open for a period of at least six weeks with the dog sitting on top of it . . . there may well have been a notice planted behind it to say what this person had done. So that was the most grisly thing we found, but we also found some very good French potteryware some German earthenware, [and] Dublin earthenware from the medieval period.”

Hobnob

The development of the palace happened in fits and starts over the centuries and largely depended on the bishop of the time and whether he was keen on being in the city where he could “hobnob with the guys in the castle”, O’Connor says, or whether he preferred the seclusion of the bishop’s country retreat in Swords, where he could carry on with more “secular” activities.

“Parts of the building start from the 12th century and into the 13th. Then there was a pause when it went into decline, then around 1500s and 1600s it took off again. A lot of that depended on the bishop at the time.”

While the gardaí aren’t moving until March 2017, planning for the future of the palace needs to happen now, O’Connor says. “We need to develop a viable facility once the gardaí have left because what we don’t want is a vacant building left to decay. We also want to see something that’s commensurate with its original use.”

Submissions

With that in mind, the OPW has started discussions with stakeholders, including the deans of St Patrick’s Cathedral and Christ Church, Trinity College, the Civic Trust, An Taisce, the Department of Arts and Heritage, The Iveagh Trust and Dublin City Council. Written submissions will be made in the coming months, with proposals for the building likely to be published early next year.

Aside from resolving the future use of the building, the OPW is likely to face competing views over how to treat it and how much should be removed to reveal its earliest elements.

“Some people want to strip back to original medieval,” says O’Connor. “At what point do you say ‘this is what we keep and all the other stuff is irrelevant?’ It’s very hard to just freeze-frame.”