What do old travel guides tell us about Ireland past and present? ROSITA BOLANDhits Belfast and Dublin, armed with a small library of archaic tourist literature, including the original Rough Guide to Ireland
GUIDEBOOKS are the literary equivalent of flies in amber, where something of the past is captured at a particular time and preserved. It’s a truism, but nothing stays the same. Places change. Things happen. Guidebooks go out of date. But they remain fascinating social documents, reminding us of what we once praised or disliked, of where we ate and shopped and stayed, and of what we observed about those places at that time.
DUBLIN 1965: EXCURSIONS TO LIFFEY VALLEY FOR 12/6
In 1965, Nelson's Pillar was still in one piece, featuring prominently on the cover of Dublin: Official Guide, which cost 3/6.
The Hibernian Hotel on Dawson Street was open; Arnotts Department Store stocked “delicate Carrickmacross lace” made “by the nuns”; Irish beers and lagers being sold in the bars included Time, Cherrys, Idea and Macardle Moore; the “usual charge for a shampoo and set” was 9/6; and the “luncheon bar” at the 16-room Dolphin Hotel catered “for the discriminating male”. There is no mention of where the discriminating ladies lunched.
The Abbey Theatre was playing at the Queen’s “while the old Abbey is being rebuilt”. TWA served “Shannon and 70 American cities”. You went to Kingsbridge Station to catch the “radio train” to the west. Dublin’s “latest and most exciting luxury restaurant” – according to the ad on the back inside cover, anyway – was Chopsticks on 60-61 Dame Street, serving “a full choice of 79 Chinese and European dishes”.
On St Patrick’s Day, there was “an industrial parade through the city in the morning”. CIE offered a day excursion from Dublin to a place called Liffey Valley for 12/6. Football was played at the Phoenix Park, where “Dublin’s biggest soccer playing grounds” were located.
DUBLIN 1990: NIGHTLIFE IS A NON-STARTER
By 1990, 25 years after this guide appeared, the first edition of the Rough Guide to Irelandwas published, costing £6.95. A taxi from the airport in the days before deregulation cost £12: "They are not, on the whole, good value." There was no mention of hostels in 1965 but by 1990, there were several, including the Dublin Tourist Hotel, where a dorm bed for the night cost £3.50, with a £1 hire for blankets and sheets.
Temple Bar was described as suffering from “a benign sort of planning blight”. Nelson’s Pillar had vanished, and O’Connell Street instead had the infamous Anna Livia statue, installed two years previously to mark Dublin’s millennium, and “quickly nicknamed ‘the floozie in the Jacuzzi’”.
The Runner Bean on Nassau Street was “doing pioneering work selling exotica such as chillies, avocados and garlic, in a country of cabbage, carrots and potatoes”. The Pink Elephant nightclub was attracting “models, A&R men, hairdressers and execs” but Dublin nightlife itself was “a bit of a non-starter”.
On Grafton Street, you could shop in Switzers and the “more old-fashioned” Brown Thomas. The Marx Brothers were serving “legendary sandwiches” on South Great Georges Street. Heuston Station was “still sometimes known by its old name of Kingsbridge”.
Ireland was still feeling the recession that had blighted the 1980s, with widespread immigration. Visitors were warned that on the “North Side” of Dublin, “there’s street life all right, but it’s hardly picturesque: an old man in a battered raincoat bending to pick up scraps of firewood from the gutter, children with white, pinched faces and skin breaking out in sores. These are the things that can make you wonder what you’re doing in Dublin as a tourist.”
DUBLIN TODAY: WHITHER THE FLOOZIE?
Today, the floozie has vanished from O’Connell Street and we now have the Spire, also instantly rechristened and variously known as the spike, the stiletto in the ghetto, or the nail in the Pale. The Hibernian Hotel at 48 Dawson Street was gone before 1990. Try looking for 48 Dawson Street some time. There are 46, 47 and 49, all in a row, but no number 48.
Arnotts no longer stocks Carrickmacross lace. The Dolphin Hotel on Essex Street still has its name beautifully carved in stone letters in the facade of the building, but there are no discriminating luncheons to be eaten there: it’s now Dolphin House, where the State court services are conducted.
TWA no longer flies anywhere. The Liffey Valley we know is a shopping centre in a controversial location. If you asked directions to Kingsbridge Station, you’d most likely get a blank stare from anyone under 40. Croke Park has taken over from the Phoenix Park as our largest venue for soccer.
The Runner Bean on Nassau Street still sells vegetables, including avocados, figs and mangoes. On Dame Street, where, in 1965, Chopsticks was the capital’s most exciting new restaurant, there is still a thriving Chinese restaurant, Fans.
The only thing that has changed little in 19 years is the price of a taxi from the airport to Dublin city centre, now an average of €20.
POSTWAR BELFAST: A CITY FREE FROM SLUMS
There is no publication date on Ulster, Northern Ireland, which cost 2/6, but it must have appeared between 1943 and 1963, as the foreword is written by then prime minister Basil Brooke, who held office during that time. “In benevolence and love of their fellow men, Belfast people are among the best in the world.”
They were simpler days, when going to the top of a department store to look at a view for free was the first thing a tourist should do. “The visitor should ascend to the roof of Messrs Robinson & Cleaver’s building in Donegall Place and view the delightfully comprehensive panorama.”
City Hall was “synonymous with Belfast’s history” and the city was the “world’s Linenopolis”, producing enough linen annually to “cover almost threefold Belfast’s city area of 25 square miles”. It was a “live wire” city that was “noticeably free from slums; its expansion has been so rapid that sites in its central area are too valuable to remain cumbered by archaic edifices”.
BELFAST 1990: VERY SECURITY-CONSCIOUS
By 1990, Belfast was decades into the Troubles. The Rough Guideof that year stated flatly: "On the streets roam armoured vehicles and heavily armed patrols, and there are regular searches and checkpoints." There was nowhere in the city you could leave your car unattended, nor your luggage, "due to the obvious security considerations".
The linen industry had collapsed. City Hall continued to be synonymous with Belfast’s history: the “powerfully intransigent” banner that hung high in the building’s colonnades “proclaims the Unionist catchphrase, ‘Belfast Says No’”.
Black taxis to the Falls Road were fixed at 35p a ride. “Of most interest are the partisan mural paintings seen in both Catholic and Protestant areas, an ephemeral art with new murals replacing old ones as the houses they’re painted on are demolished.”
A room at the Europa Hotel cost £90. The Crown Liquor Saloon across the road was the "most famous and spectacular pub in Belfast". You could not get near the dry dock to see where the Titanic– the wreck of which had been discovered only five years previously – had been built because "the area is very security conscious, as its workforce has always been predominantly Protestant, and access is virtually impossible".
BELFAST TODAY: EUROPA STILL COSTS £90
Today, a double at the Europa still costs £90. Robinson & Cleaver’s department store has closed, and it’s ground floor now houses Foot Locker, phones4U, Burger King and a boutique named Harper. You can’t access the top of the building to see the view from there but you can walk across the road at Donegall Square to the Belfast Wheel and, for £6.50 (€7.55), get a view out over the whole city.
City Hall no longer hangs a banner declaring that it says no. The Crown retains the distinction of being the loveliest bar in Belfast.
It’s still difficult to leave your luggage in this city: The tourist office on Donegall Place – rebranded as the “Belfast Welcome Centre” – is the only public facility for left luggage, and then only during opening hours. Shopping centres such as like Victoria Square and Castlecourt now occupy large city-centre footprints where “archaic edifices” once stood.
Belfast Harbour Airport has been renamed George Best Belfast City Airport. The Titanicwalking tour departs daily. There are at least a dozen formal black cab tours of the murals in the Falls and Shankill. One such company declares its tour will "take you back in time on a unique cultural experience".
In the same way old guidebooks do.
