Distinguished Visitors Gallery
|
|
 Eoghan Keegan Dúnlaoghaire & Rathdown County Manager was very impressed with the Tower. At the time of the visit, the Council had already mounted its exhibition on The Martello Towers of Dublin and has since published the material in book form.  Photo: Niall O'Donoghue
Bruce Davis Australian Ambassador was equally impressed. Well he might be. His ambassadorial residence is well within the range of the cannon seen behind him on the crown of the tower.  Ruth Adler Australian Ambassador, replacing Bruce Davis above, attended the 110th anniversary of Bloomsday at the Tower on 16 June 2014.  Enda Kenny paid a visit when he was leader of the opposition and before becoming Taoiseach. The man from Castlebar is well aware of that town's record in 1798 in the greatest defeat of the British Army on Irish soil, with a little help from the French, of course.  Military Archives, led by Commandant Stephen MacEoin paid an overdue off duty visit to the tower. All in civvies for the occasion, the group included both military and civilian personnel.  The Archives were originally primarily interested in material dating from the foundation of the State. Then this was extended back with the centenary commemorations of the 1916 Rising. Now they are happy to pursue an interest as far back as the Napoleonic era. The visit produced a useful exchange of information and the prospect of some possible future enhancement of the site that I'm not at liberty to discuss at present.   Colonel W H (Bill) Clements, current chairman of the Fortress Study Group (FSG) has published extensively on Martello Towers. His latest book on the Irish towers gives a prominent place to Tower No.7. In addition to his own many visits to the tower, he brought the FSG on a study tour of southern Ireland in 2013 which included a visit to the tower. It was Bill who suggested that Niall enter the tower for the Europa Nostra heritage competition where it was shortlisted and got a special mention from the jury.  Philippe Milloux, Director of the Alliance Française, Dublin, whose first (official?) function after being knighted the previous evening by the French Government, was to attend the 2017 Bloomsday celebrations at the tower.  A distinguished visitor to the site long before the restoration was Archbishop John Charles McQuaid who lived just down the road. The Legion of Mary hall had been on the site since the late 1930s and hosted not only Legion meetings but local dances. The occasion of the Archbishop's visit, which we know about, was a post first holy communion reception Nihil Obstat: Pól Mícheál Antoin Ó Duibhir Imprimatur: + Paulus Rex Infedelium  The most recent distinguished visitor (as of 21/9/2021) is psychiatrist Ivor Browne. Ivor is now 92 and well known to those of us who were paying attention in the 1960s. He was not convinced that either lobotomy or wholesale resort to drugs was the best way to treat mental illness and trauma. He pioneered a more exploratory approach seeking the underlying psychiatric causes of the trauma or chemical imbalance, often with the assistance of psychedelic drugs to overcome repression. This approach did not make him popular with many of his colleagues but he has been vindicated in the long run.  Ivor signs the visitors book under the watchful eye of his daughter in law Máire.  A marathon homecoming. Ivor with his son Ronan and daughter in law Máire on the crown of the Tower and against the background of Ivor's old home across the road from the Tower. That house used to be called Marathon then. It is now the residence of the Turkish Ambassador. The Tower was honoured to host Ivor's visit today. I have done a blog post with some more personal angles in it here. |