7 Eccles Street | |
---|---|
General information | |
Status | Demolished |
Type | Row house |
Town or city | Dublin |
Country | Ireland |
Coordinates | 53°21′28″N6°15′52″W / 53.357816°N 6.264493°W |
Known for | Home of Leopold Bloom |
7 Eccles Street was a row house in Dublin, Ireland. It was the home of Leopold Bloom, protagonist of the novel Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce. The house was demolished in 1967, and the site is now occupied by the Mater Private Hospital.
In 1769 Isaac Ambrose Eccles leased a parcel of land on the north side of Eccles Street to Daniel Goodwin, carpenter. This became the site of numbers 6–8 Eccles Street. John Darley, stone-cutter, leased the adjoining land, the site of numbers 1–5. The two men seem to have collaborated in building a row of houses, each 20 feet (6.1 m) wide, with three storeys above a basement. [1] Margaret Reed acquired the property at 7 Eccles Street from Goodwin on 29 April 1771, [1] along with Numbers 6 and 8 (the entire premises measuring 60 feet fronting Eccles Street with 200 feet to the rear). [lower-alpha 1]
From the mid 19th century the wealthier residents of Dublin began to move further from the city center, and the houses in the area often had multiple occupancy. [1] Before World War I (1914–18) the street was still part of a quiet, respectable middle-class neighborhood. In 1904 the house was not occupied, so Joyce was able to make it Bloom's home. [2] 7 Eccles Street was designated "Tenements" in Thom's Directory in 1937, indicating a very poor condition. In 1958 the building was occupied by seven very poor families. [1] Flora H. Mitchell painted 7 Eccles Street in the 1960s. [2] Anthony Burgess spent three days in February 1965 with a film crew to make part of a BBC television program on Joyce. The building was abandoned, with holes in the roof and windows at the rear gutted. [1]
The house at 7 Eccles Street, now owned by the Dominican College, was demolished in April 1967. In July 1975 the property and others beside it were sold to the Mater Hospital Pools Society. [1]
Joyce first saw the row of three-story brick houses when he visited his friend John Francis Byrne at 7 Eccles Street in 1909. [2] Byrne was a friend of Joyce from their college days, a journalist and amateur numerologist. Joyce visited him one day in 1909 in a very emotional state over a rumor about Nora Barnacle's infidelities. Byrne was able to calm him down and he stayed for dinner and then for the night. Byrne lived at 7 Eccles Street for two years, then emigrated to the United States. [3]
The novel describes one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, 16 June 1904. Bloom is an advertising salesman. He makes tea and toast for his wife, Molly, then leaves the house to get a kidney for his own breakfast. [4] He leaves the door ajar, because he had left his latch key in his trousers in the "creaky wardrobe" and does not want to disturb his wife. [2] The novel continues, describing a day in the life of a modern Ulysses, a family man whose wife is being unfaithful. When he retires to bed in 7 Eccles Street that evening he has to remove crumbs of potted meat from the bedclothes, presumably left there by Molly and her lover. [5]
Before the house was completely demolished John Ryan, a Dublin artist and writer who had organized the first Bloomsday in 1954, managed to rescue the front door and the surrounding brickwork. He installed it in his pub, the Bailey, a rendezvous for Dublin writers. In 1995 the door was moved to the James Joyce Centre on North Great George's Street. The door knocker had been removed by a visitor from New York just before the house was demolished. In June 2013 he returned to Dublin at the James Joyce Centre's expense and restored the knocker to the door. [2]
Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. Parts of it were first serialized in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement." According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking."
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in Homer's epic poem: The Odyssey.
Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, observed annually in Dublin and elsewhere on 16 June, the day his 1922 novel Ulysses takes place in 1904, the date of his first sexual encounter with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, and named after its protagonist Leopold Bloom.
Palmerstown is a civil parish and suburb in western Dublin on the banks of the River Liffey. It forms part of the South Dublin local authority and the Dublin Mid-West parliamentary constituency. The area is bordered to the north by the River Liffey and the Strawberry Beds, to the west by Lucan, to the south-west by Clondalkin, to the south by Ballyfermot and to the east by the village of Chapelizod. Palmerstown village is situated near the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. The area is situated near the major junction of the M50 motorway and the N4. It lies approximately 7 km west of O'Connell Street in Dublin city centre. The Old Lucan Road, once the main route from the city to the west, passes through the centre of Palmerstown village.
Molly Bloom is a fictional character in the 1922 novel Ulysses by James Joyce. The wife of main character Leopold Bloom, she roughly corresponds to Penelope in the Odyssey. The major difference between Molly and Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not. Molly is having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan. Molly, whose given name is Marion, was born in Gibraltar on 8 September 1870, the daughter of Major Tweedy, an Irish military officer, and Lunita Laredo, a Gibraltarian of Spanish descent. Molly and Leopold were married on 8 October 1888. She is the mother of Milly Bloom, who, at the age of 15, has left home to study photography. She is also the mother of Rudy Bloom, who died at the age of 11 days. In Dublin, Molly is an opera singer of some renown.
Shelbourne Road is a road in Ballsbridge, in the southeast part of Dublin, Ireland.
Davy Byrne's pub is a public house located at 21 Duke Street, Dublin. It was made famous by its appearance in Chapter 8 ('Lestrygonians') of James Joyce's 1922 modernist novel Ulysses, set on Thursday 16 June 1904. The main character, advertising canvasser Leopold Bloom, stops at around 1 p.m. for a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy while wandering through Dublin.
The Mater Private Hospital is a private hospital business. Its main hospital is located just to the east of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. In addition to the main hospital in Dublin, the business has a hospital in Cork, cancer treatment centres in Limerick and Liverpool and various out-patient clinics.
The James Joyce Centre is a museum and cultural centre in Dublin, Ireland, dedicated to promoting an understanding of the life and works of James Joyce. It opened to the public in June 1996.
The James Joyce Tower and Museum is a Martello tower in Sandycove, Dublin, where James Joyce spent six nights in 1904. The opening scenes of his 1922 novel Ulysses take place here, and the tower is a place of pilgrimage for Joyce enthusiasts, especially on Bloomsday. Admission is free.
Clanbrassil Street is a street in Dublin south of the city centre. It runs from Robert Emmet Bridge on the Grand Canal to New Street. It is served by several bus routes. It is divided into Clanbrassil Street Upper and Clanbrassil Street Lower.
John Ryan (1925–1992) was an Irish artist, broadcaster, publisher, critic, editor, and publican.
Agharaskilly is a townland in the civil parish of Tomregan, County Cavan, Ireland. It lies within the former barony of Loughtee Lower.
Fumbally Lane is a narrow and historic street in Dublin, Ireland, south of the city centre in The Liberties, 'In name and character perhaps the most evocative of all the Liberties' streets.' It connects Blackpitts to New Street and is close to St Patrick’s Cathedral.
Mary Street is a predominantly retail street in Dublin, Ireland on the northside of the city contiguous with Henry Street.
South Great George's Street is a street in south-central Dublin, Ireland.
Eccles Street is a street in Dublin, Ireland.
The Amory Grant is the name given to a stretch of land on the north side of the River Liffey in Dublin that was leased to Jonathon Amory in 1675 on a 299 year lease. The annual rent was set at 50 shillings and two fat capons each Christmas to the Lord Mayor of Dublin. When the lease ran out in 1974 the value of the land had increased to millions of pounds.
Winetavern Street is a street in the medieval area of Dublin, Ireland.
Achmet Borumborad, or Achmet Borumbadad, was the assumed name of an eccentric con-artist operating in late 18th-century Dublin, who succeeded in gathering financial support for the construction of a Turkish Baths on the banks of the River Liffey. Purportedly a doctor, he claimed to have been born in Constantinople (Istanbul) from which he had subsequently fled. In reality, he was the fictitious creation of Patrick Joyce of Kilkenny, or possibly William Cairns of Dublin. Adopting the persona of a native Turk, his unusual dress style, turban, and exotic affectations attracted much attention in the city at the time, and he was noted as "the first Turk who had ever walked the streets of Dublin in his native costume."