This is Our Place – A Survey of Dalymount Park, the Home of Irish Football: Map and Publication launched
This is Our Place – A Survey of Dalymount Park, the Home of Irish Football:
Map and Publication launched
Visual Artist Dorothy Smith and Bohemian Football Club are delighted to be able to reveal a map and publication that records and celebrates Dalymount Park’s unique standing in sport, music, architecture and Dublin folklore.
Both the map and publication are now available via the club’s online store.
Bohemians’ home ground since 1901, this map and publication come at a time when Dalymount Park in its current guise, as it has been known and loved for generations, is nearing its end.
Dublin City Council, who purchased the site in 2015, plan to demolish and build a new municipal sports stadium and community hub in its place.
It will remain the home ground of Bohs, maintaining the club’s long-standing relationship with the place and its local community.
This map records so many of the finer details of ‘Dalyer’ poised in this moment before that imminent change – details that many of us may take for granted now but will look back fondly on when they are gone.
From its stark but fading Archibald Leitch-designed terracing, its towering 1960s floodlights and its famous cast iron ‘push preventative’ Ellison turnstiles, to its more recent additions of urban art and murals.
The beautiful hand-drawn map has been reproduced in 200 high quality prints, signed and numbered by the artist, is on sale for €150.
The book, supported by Dublin City Council Arts Office, will be distributed to public and specialist libraries and is also available for sale on the Bohemians online store.
The map has been compiled from many sources – sketches made on site, conversations with people associated with the club, from time spent walking and exploring, from OSI, Google Maps and photography.
Care was taken to record place names and the functions of often run down and anonymous structures. The knowledge in this map did not have a prior existence in one place. It is timely that this will have been achieved before demolition.
Direct link to purchase map: https://www.shop-bohemianfc.com/products/this-is-our-place-print
Direct link to purchase publication: https://www.shop-bohemianfc.com/products/this-is-our-place-book
Dorothy Smith is a visual artist, whose practice is concerned with the built environments in which people live and work and in particular the construction and lived experience of public space.
Her particular interest is drawing and how it can interact with contemporary places and concerns. Her practice involves studio-based work and publicly engaged projects.
Dorothy was delighted to be elected to the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) earlier this year.
For more about Dorothy and her work, please visit dorothysmith.ie.
For further insight into this project, check out the Nationwide special below.
Bohemian Football Club is a 100% members-owned club founded in 1890, who owned, developed and maintained Dalymount Park since 1901.
The stadium hosted Ireland international games from 1904 until 1990, with many of the greatest players of all time gracing its turf including Pele, Zidane and George best.
It is known as ‘The Home of Irish Football’. In 2015 Dalymount was bought by Dublin City Council and will be fully redeveloped securing its future as a home for Bohemian FC, as well as Shelbourne FC, and as a resource for the local area and wider city.
Dalymount stadium is a unique place. From its beginnings in 1901 structures have been made, dismantled, amended, adapted; the terraces, stands, ticket stalls, pitch, dressing rooms, toilets, bars, dugouts have been created and maintained by members’ voluntary labour and occasionally contractors.
It is located in a busy urban and residential community in the north city centre. At its peak it held 45,000 people, yet it is almost invisible. Surrounded on three sides by terraced housing and on the fourth by a 1960s shopping centre, access is through narrow and little used laneways.
Football matches have been played there since 1901 when Bohemian Football Club took possession. The only visible signs that something unusual lies behind the usual streetscape are the dramatic 1960s floodlights.
On entering the stadium, you enter a world of space, light and wonder.
In the 1930s, the stadium architect Archibald Leitch was contracted to design the large wooden stand which stood until 1999, where the Jodi stand is now, the 30 ticket stalls which contained the beautiful cast iron ‘push preventative’ Ellison turnstiles, and the concrete terracing, which wrapped the entire pitch. A significant amount of this 85-year-old infrastructure is still extant.
As was recently said to Dorothy by a long-standing Bohs member ‘Nothing was ever done properly’.
While this may not be entirely true, it does throw light on how the stadium has evolved into the anomalous place it is now; everywhere you look traces of its earlier incarnations are evident.
In 2015, DCC bought Dalymount Park from Bohemian Football Club with the aim of developing a municipal sports facility that will remain the home of Bohs but that will allow for a wider community use.
FRAME FX: Support those who support Bohs. For those intending to frame their Dalymount Map, we recommend long-time club sponsors Frame FX, located a stone’s throw from Dalymount Park at 177 Phibsborough Road. You’ll be in good hands with Leo!
