The cruel past

Kilmanhaim Gaol (Jail), one of Dublin's most notorious prisons and most haunted sites, was built in the 18th century and seen as a then-modern, new way of holding prisoners that aimed to better reform and benefit the persons they intended to keep within their walls.



The single cells were intended to hold prisoners and separate them from the world, and reform them through sensory deprivation. Overcrowding soon occurred though, and up to five prisoners a cell were often placed in a single tiny cell with just one window and a candle which had to last them for up to 2 weeks to provide heat and warmth in the cold limestone walls.



Walking through the prison and being told about the prisoners, you can't help but look into the cells and wonder about the lives of the people who lived there. Children, women, and men, arrested for petty crimes, alongside political prisoners such as Joseph Plunkett and later also his wife Grace Gifford.



This, the East Wing of Kilmanhaim Gaol, is the only section of the jail where visitors may enter cells, and is the best restored section. Prisoners were sometimes given things to pass the time with, crayons and paints, and the result is sometimes humorous - painting "To Let" and "Hotel" in their cells - and sometimes leaves the kind of visual reminder that haunts and stays with you.





Grace Gifford's painting of the Madonna and Child, in particular, makes you painfully aware that looking through the eye-hole, you are looking into the life of a person who lived, who led a life, and who died.

Grace Gifford married Joseph Plunkett less than a day before Plunkett was executed at Kilmanhaim; they were married at a chapel in the church before an altar with only two guards as their witnesses and were not allowed to speak to each other except to recite their vows.



The black cross here marks where prisoners were privately executed by firing squad, as opposed to public executions by hanging.

Walking through Kilmanhaim is like walking through the lives of a thousand people - each the result of some circumstance in their lives that made them come to Kilmanhaim, sometimes even voluntarily submitting themselves to the jail by committing some petty crime and be arrested to guarantee food rations and shelter in winter, if nothing else.

It is a place that makes you think about living and about the people who have lived before us. It is a place of tremendous sadness and tremendous awe. And in some strange way, it is also a place that makes you become somehow attached to these people you have never met, as if you have even for the briefest of moments been there as they lived.

Access to Kilmanhaim Gaol is by guided tour only; tickets may be purchased at the gate.

Bus Route(s): No. 69, 79 from Aston Quay Dublin 2; No 13 & 40 from O'Connell St. Dublin 1 or College Green Dublin 2.

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