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NELSON'S PILLAR

Britain's Admiral Nelson continued to dominate Dublin's main street, O'Connell Street, from the top of his column for almost half a century after Irish independence. In March 1966, in the dead of night, the IRA blew him up, fortunately without loss of human life. I observed the subsequent deconstruction of this Dublin monument over the days that followed.

After a week of clearing up the debris from the original [IRA] explosion the Irish army was brought in to blow up the remainder of the pillar. This was done in the middle of the night [15th March] at around midnight/one am. It was attended by a large population of onlookers, including some Welshmen over for a rugby match. The pillar - what remained of it - was floodlit and there was a countdown on a public address system, based at the GPO, then the headquarters of Radio Éireann.

The html slideshow which follows is still in draft form. I have scanned in all my photos, including some preceding the explosion and some depicting those who temporarily took possession of Nelson's head for use in a fashion photo on Killiney beach.

There is still some cleaning up to be done on the photos and the number needs to be reduced to a more discerning collection. However, as they are presented in HTML form you don't have to look at them all and can dip in, via the index sheets, wherever your interest takes you. I intend to rename the shots (at present they have the default filename titles] and add some commentary where it might be of interest.

Click to see the show.

Click for a Nelson Calendar .

Programme for sizing the pictures and thumbnails and generating the required HTML code
is freeware and is available online from Web Album Generator

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