Madam, – I am one of the vast majority of Irish people who welcome Queen Elizabeth on her first State visit to the Irish Republic next month. I read with interest her itinerary – the National War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge and Croke Park, for instance. All very laudable.
But why, oh why, is she going to a commercial enterprise, namely the Guinness Storehouse? This, I feel, is inappropriate when we know the association of alcohol and the many problems which beset this country especially our young people. This commercial company should not form part of the royal visit. There is still time to change it. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – There is poignant symbolism inherent in the impending visit to Dublin Castle by Queen Elizabeth II, who unlike her forbears, shall be attending the ceremonial complex not as a presiding monarch greeting subjects, but as a visiting head of state of a neighbouring nation. During her visit to the former centre of British administration in Ireland, she shall be surrounded by countless architectural and decorative interventions executed for two centuries of royal visits.
The most obvious legacy of these alterations is the bombastic gilded throne in the throne room installed for the visit of George IV in 1821, whose attendant footstool was subsequently made to cater for the diminutive figure of Queen Victoria upon her first visit to Ireland in 1849. Curiously unknown to most of the Irish public, the Throne Room comprises one of the most important ceremonial interiors in Ireland, loosely modelled on the Throne Room in Buckingham Palace, with many of its unique court furnishings tailor-made by Dublin craftspeople. The magnificent set of five gilt chandeliers commissioned for the room in 1839 feature intertwining shamrocks, roses and thistles, and while sadly mostly distributed amongst various State buildings today, including Áras an Uachtarain, they will no doubt serve as an ice breaker in diplomatic conversation. A further parallel with the queen’s London residence is the elegant ceiling of the castle’s State drawing room, whose papier-mâché decoration was supplied in the 1830s by the same Charles Bielefeld who decorated the ceiling of the contemporaneous state dining room in the palace. It was immaculately reproduced in plaster in the late 1960s following destruction by fire in 1941.
In former times, the queen would have availed of the series of state bedrooms in the state apartments during her visit, where her great-great-grandmother slept in the 19th century. While Farmleigh House nowadays caters for the exacting needs of dignitaries, similar visits in the 19th and early 20th centuries sparked flurries of efforts to improve accommodation, sanitation and electrical provision for hosting the huge royal entourage in the increasingly decrepit castle – a charming Victorian lavatory decorated with the feathers of the Prince of Wales survived as late as the 1980s as a reminder of such improvements.
The timely ending of the Moriarty tribunal has also finally reinstated one of the Castle’s largest rooms – George’s hall – built in 1911 as a handsome supper room to accommodate the vast demands of the visit of the queen’s grandfather, George V, as well as to avoid repetition of the embarrassing spectacle of three temporary marquees in the castle grounds that had accompanied a previous royal visit in 1903. The construction of the hall in a remarkable 18 weeks, and ahead of schedule, places our complex modern-day preparations into more muted perspective! – Yours, etc,
A chara, – I will not be protesting at the presence of Queen Elizabeth in the Irish Republic, but neither will I go out to welcome her for, by so doing, I might be seen as endorsing and accepting the undemocratic partition of my country.