Iconoclasm and response on Dublin’s Sackville/O’Connell Street, 1759–2003

The residents of Dublin, Ireland have developed a robust commemorative infrastructure throughout the city since the early eighteenth century. A prominent site in this landscape is at the centre of O’Connell Street (Sackville Street from the late 1700s to 1924). Today, the Spire of Dublin (2003) is located at this site. But it projects an ambiguous connection to both the city’s and the country’s factious history. Two other statues previously stood on the site, both commemorating British imperial military figures: the Blakeney Monument (1759) and Nelson’s Pillar (1808). Both works were intentionally destroyed in acts of urban iconoclasm. An analysis of the changes in the monumental public art on this site over the centuries demonstrates that iconoclasm has been a factor in shifting Irish attitudes toward the British and themselves, Irish associations with power and memory, and a potent symbol in Dublin’s urban landscape. This is established by using an expanded conceptualisation of iconoclasm that incorporates a series of post-fall responses to a monument and its site’s physical state and context over time, the site’s continued symbolic meanings, and the site becoming home to new monumental or other symbolic expressions. The result illustrates that this site has been significantly inscribed into British imperial and Irish national iconography regardless of the monument or public sculpture it has held.