Page 89 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 8

dignified, intellectual and aloof’, the archbishop was evidently a
dead ringer for the austere revolutionary, and was only released
after a retired clergyman turned up to vouch for his identity.

The Station is an appropriate spot to end our walk, both
because of its convenience for present-day visitors, and because
of its significance in Greystones’s story. Prior to the arrival of the
railway, Greystones was little more than a fishing village, off the
main routes and unlikely to attract any but the most intrepid
travellers. The coming of the railway and easy access to Dublin
and to the east coast heralded something of a building boom,
with a growth in the permanent population as well as in the
numbers of summer visitors. The areas of the town which we
have visited today will have given some idea of that process.
There is, of course, much more of Greystones’s story to tell – but
that will have to wait for another day, and another walk.

Sources

Much of the information on which this trail is based was
contained in Greystones: its buildings and history, vols 1 and 2
(2012 and 2013), produced by the Greystones Archaeological
and Historical Society/La Touche Legacy Committee. GAHS
member Colin Love, architectural editor of those volumes, also
alerted me to the account of the Elverys’ residence in Dorothy
Kay, The Elvery family: a memoir (1991). The account of J M
Synge’s childhood stays is from Rev Samuel Synge, Letters to
my daughter: memories of John Millington Synge (1931), and
that of the Beckett family’s holiday home from James Knowlson,
Damned to fame: the life of Samuel Beckett (1996). Peter McNiff
recounted the story of Elizabeth Grundy’s murder in a paper read
to the Society in March 2010, and further information on this
episode was obtained from contemporary newspapers. Hanna
Sheehy Skeffington’s account of her confrontation with the Chief
Secretary is from ‘Reminiscences of an Irish suffragette’, Field
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