Nationwide Celebrates 100 Years of O’Connell Street

Broadcast Details: Monday 27th May, 7.00pm

On the 100th anniversary of the naming of O’Connell St, Nationwide finds out how the name change from Sackville Street came about, visits a jewellery story that was in the heart of the action in 1916 and is still going strong and finds out more about the leading figures immortalised in the street’s many statues and monuments.

Programme One – Presenter Anne Cassin

Nicola Pierce who wrote a book on O’Connell St gives us a guide to statues and monuments including Parnell, Daniel O’Connell and Sir John Gray, William Smith O’Brien and Fr Theobald Mathew (the temperance campaigner) and the Spire, formerly the site of Nelson’s Pillar.

In Pearse St Library Anne talks to the Dublin City Council historian and archivist about the official changing of the name from Sackville St and O’Connell St. These documents have been sourced for Nationwide. The councillors attempted the name change in 1884 after the unveiling of the Daniel O’Connell monument but residents objected and the local chamber of commerce. In 1890 the law was changed to give the corporation power to change street names and on the 5th of May 1924 the corporation moved to change the name from Sackville St to O’Connell St. The street was already referred to in advertisements as O’Connell St in the years before the official change.

A family business still in operation on O’Connell St – the Happy Ring House – McDowells Jewellers founded in 1870 in Mary street, moved to what was then Sackville St in 1902. The owner, Jack McDowell and the porter stayed in the shop in 1916 to stop looting. Jack was shot and injured on Cathedral St and the porter was shot dead.

Nationwide Special – O’Connell Street Celebrates 100 years, Anne Cassin with Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire – Chair of Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies, Technological University of Dublin