#OTD in 1864 – Roger Casement, British consular official and Irish nationalist, is born in Sandycove, Co Dublin.

01/09/2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Fuar siad bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann. Roger Casement was born in Sandycove, Co Dublin to a wealthy protestant family, he initially served in the British diplomatic corps mainly in Africa. Described as the “father of twentieth-century human rights investigations”, he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted […]

#OTD in 1974 – A group of protesting women invade the Forty Foot, traditionally a male only swimming point in Sandycove, Dublin.

20/07/2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

A group of about 10 women calling themselves the Dublin City Women’s Invasionary Force invade the Forty Foot, a traditional men only public bathing preserves in Sandycove, Dublin. The bathing place, made famous by James Joyce in Ulysses, had been exclusively male until then and the women were greeted with sexist abuse and male nudity, according to one […]

The Forty Foot and Christmas Morning

24/12/2022.Reading time less than 1 minute.

It is traditional to swim in the sea on Christmas morning. This is often done in aid of charity. The Forty Foot is a traditional venue for this where hundreds brave the cold temperatures and jump into the sea. The Forty Foot is a promontory on the southern tip of Dublin Bay at Sandycove, Co […]

Christmas in Ireland

12/12/2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

The greeting for ‘Happy Christmas’ in Irish is Nollaig Shona Duit or Nollaig Shona Daoibh (plural), the literal translation of this is ‘Happy Christmas to you’. If ‘Nollaig, Shona, Duit/Daoibh’ was literally translated, word for word, into English, it would be “Christmas, happy, to you”. Christmas is also a time for remembering the dead in […]