Arbour Hill – the 1916 leaders' grave

The grave behind the prison

Most people who come to Dublin for the 1916 story go to Kilmainham Gaol, where the leaders were shot. Arbour Hill is where fourteen of them actually lie, and far fewer visitors make the short hop across the Liffey to see it. After the executions in May 1916, the British rushed the bodies here to the yard of the military prison, dropped them into an unmarked pit and covered them with quicklime – partly to speed decay, partly to deny republicans a grave to gather at. It had the opposite effect. The grave lay plain for decades before the State raised the memorial that stands over it now.

This is the resting place of fourteen of the sixteen men executed after the Rising. (Roger Casement was hanged in London and Thomas Kent buried in Cork.) The plot itself is a long, low bed of greenery. The drama is the curved wall of Wicklow granite behind it, into which the letter-cutter Michael Biggs hand-carved the full text of the Proclamation in Irish and English. The fourteen names are set out plainly: Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas J. Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, John MacBride, Éamonn Ceannt, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Con Colbert, William Pearse, Michael O’Hanrahan, Michael Mallin, Seán Heuston and Edward Daly.

If you only do one 1916 thing after Kilmainham, make it this. It takes twenty minutes, it’s free, and the quiet does more than any exhibition.

The chapel and the old cemetery

Beside the grave is the Church of the Sacred Heart, built as the chapel for Arbour Hill Prison and now the official church of the Irish Defence Forces, maintained by the Department of Defence. It’s used mainly for Defence Forces services and isn’t reliably open to the public, but its odd Celtic round tower rising from a square base is worth a look from outside. Behind it, a small memorial garden honours Irish United Nations peacekeepers, with a cedar planted in 2003.

At the rear of the church lies the old cemetery, with rows of weathered regimental headstones to British soldiers and their families who died in Dublin through the 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s an honest counterpoint to the 1916 plot a few steps away, and it tends to be the part that shows its age – expect some untended corners.

A working prison and a State ceremony

The setting takes some explaining. The cemetery sits behind Arbour Hill Prison, which opened as a military prison in 1848 and still operates as a civilian prison today, so this is a memorial tucked into a live institutional site rather than a landscaped park. The area’s name comes from the Irish Cnoc an Arbhair, ‘corn hill’, after the medieval grain store Christ Church Cathedral kept here long before any barracks.

Every May the grave is the focus of the State’s annual commemoration of the Easter Rising, with an interfaith service and a wreath-laying attended by the President, the Taoiseach and relatives of the executed men. The most famous wreath, though, was laid by a visitor: in June 1963 President John F. Kennedy came here with Taoiseach Seán Lemass and became the first head of state to lay a wreath at the memorial, a few months before his own death.

Getting there and visiting

Arbour Hill is in Dublin 7, directly behind the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks. The nearest Luas Red Line stop is Museum, a few minutes’ walk; Heuston Station and Parkgate Street are also close. Dublin Bus routes 37, 39, 39A and 70 from the city centre stop nearby. Street parking is pay-and-display and scarce, and the on-site car park is tiny – come on public transport or on foot from Stoneybatter if you can.

Guided tours run every Friday at 2pm from April to October (book through the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre). Otherwise the cemetery is free, needs no booking, and is open year-round on the hours below. Note the early close: the gates shut at 4pm daily.

Dogs are welcome on leads in the grounds but not at the 1916 grave itself; assistance dogs go everywhere. The paths are uneven gravel and grass, which makes wheelchair or buggy access awkward in places. The obvious pairing is Collins Barracks next door, where the National Museum’s military and 1916 collections fill in everything the silent grave leaves unsaid – do the museum first, then walk round to the grave.