Wolfe Tone Square

Definitely not the most beautiful part of Dublin and usually a bit away from my usual track.
But I’m still always a bit taken when I’m there — simply because of its history.
Seeing that the Church is just beside it it’s not surprising that this used to be a graveyard. I forgot what made Dublin City to transform it into a square where most people don’t even realise that there are gravestones /​tombstones to the side at the wall and on the ground at Wolfe Tone Street.
So whenever I am here I try to bring back this being a graveyard — even though I wasn’t even born when it became a Memorial Park.

Thorough marks down for this public space gone to seed. While I love a summer lunch outside at The Church, inevitably an outdoor seat means a front-​row view of the muck going on in Wolfe Tone Square. Vagrants, shady characters, alkies and their ilk nodding out on the marble block seats or PUBLICLY VOMITING in absolute torrents (that last part I’m nowhere near close to joking about).
The area has gone up and come down in its time, and despite the better efforts of the local council bringing fairs and crêpe stalls in at the weekends, this place remains a very open issue to be dealt with –and in no way a spot to rest unless you’re in a group.

Yep, definately NOT a park. And not really much else either. There’s no real point in it from what I can tell. A few benches used predominantly by a) tired shoppers, b) teenagers or c) drunks. A couple of ‘trees’ tha are more like struggling saplings. It’s just a bit random really.

Park seems to be a strange noun to describe the piece of land dedicated to Theobald Wolfe Tone that used to be the graveyard of St. Mary’s Church on Mary St. The word «park» evokes a verdant area with grass and trees and such and such. Wolfe Tone Park is bereft of such amenities consisting as it does mainly of a slightly sandy, hard surface, and as such I feel that it would be more accurately described as a square.
The place is not without it’s positive attributes, I guess; I’m not sure if I care for the headstones stacked against the wall personally, but some might find them of interest. And there is a market that takes place there at weekends (an activity more fitting of a square than a park, wouldn’t you think?).
So Wolfe Tone Park: while not actively unpleasant, not really actually a park.