page_title: Mountjoy Square
section_title: Period features
hierarchical_section_title: Mountjoy Square / Period features
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the last corner of Mountjoy Square, Dublin, Ireland which has original, continuous granite paving. This is the corner of Grenville Street and Gardiner Street, ie Mountjoy Square West. The house is 54 Mountjoy Square.
context_page_description: Mountjoy Square is a Georgian garden square in Dublin, Ireland, on the north side of the city just under a kilometre from the River Liffey. One of five Georgian squares in Dublin, it was planned and developed in the late 18th century by the Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy. It was surrounded on all sides by terraced, red-brick Georgian houses. Construction began in the early 1790s and the work was completed in 1818.
  Over the centuries, the square has been home to many of Dublin's most prominent people: lawyers, churchmen, politicians, writers and visual artists. The writer James Joyce lived around the square during some of his formative years, playwright Seán O'Casey wrote and set some of his most famous plays on the square while living there, W.B. Yeats stayed there with his friend John O'Leary, and more recently, much of the Oscar-winning film Once was made in the square. Historic meetings have taken place there, including planning for the Easter Rising and some of the earliest Dáil meetings. Prominent Irish Unionists and Republicans have shared the square.
  Mountjoy can boast being Dublin's only true Georgian square, each of its sides being exactly 140 metres in length.
context_section_description: Over the centuries, new features have been added to the street furniture while for various reasons others have been removed.
  The street was originally paved with granite. By now, although the kerbs are generally still (probably Wicklow) granite, most of the paving stones have been replaced with concrete. The exception to this is the south-west corner in front of 53–54 which still has full granite paving and a small section just off of Mountjoy Square in front of the Free Church.
  Many of the houses on the square still have their original coal holes and ornate cast iron covers. These small holes in the street outside each house lead to a coal house underneath the street. These elegantly solved the problem of how to quickly and cleanly deliver coal to the house, allowing the coal men to simply pull the hole open and empty their sacks of coal down through it. The basement of the house then had a doorway into the coal house, under the street.
  The street lamps on the square are of two different designs. Those on the outer sides, in front of the houses are seemingly of the style called The Scotch Standard, dating from 1903 to 1920 when Dublin streets were being electrically lit as part of the Pigeon House scheme. On the inner (park) side of the street, a slightly more modest design is used, apparently consistent with a more recent 1940–50 design. These designs are all 9 metres tall.
  In the late 18th century, mud streets were not uncommon
  and horses were also common on streets. To avoid this muck being tramped into the houses, Boot Scrapers were commonly placed outside their front doors. Many of these were highly elaborate and many remain to this day.
caption: Remaining Granite Paving
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