The Royal Hospital Kilmainham
The Royal Hospital has stood in Kilmainham since the 1680’s and is one of the most impressive buildings in Ireland. It has a rich history and has stood witness to many of Ireland’s most impactful historic periods and events. Its history began in 1677 when James Butler, the Duke of Ormonde, who was inspired by Louis XIV’s Les Invalides in Paris, decided to petition King Charles II to build a hospital for military veterans. In 1679, Charles II agreed to a levy on Irish military wages to pay for the construction of a refuge for those who ‘by reason of age, wounds, or other infirmities’ were no longer fit for military service.
The Building of the RHK
The site chosen for it by William Robinson, the surveyor-general and architect of the RHK, was the site of the ruins of the priory of the Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, more commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller, which had stood there from 1174 until it was closed in 1540 during King Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries.
The Duke of Ormonde laid the foundation stone on April 29, 1680. Although its construction was not complete, the RHK received its first residents in 1684. The building was completed, apart from the tower and steeple, at the cost of £23,559 16 shillings and 11d by the end of1686, with the chapel being completed and dedicated to King Charles I, the executed father of Charles II, in January of 1687. The tower and steeple were not fully completed until 1704.
With regards to the management of the RHK, this was the responsibility of the Hospital Master whose role was to oversee its running, while a board of governors was responsible for its day to day running. Among other things, the RHK’s master was to be a Protestant over 50, who had served in the army at the rank of captain or above.
The RHK’s First Residents
The first meeting of the RHK’s board of governors was held on the 21st of March 1684 and the first pensioners were admitted that same year and by March 1686, 20 pensioners were on its roll. The RHK tended to the first casualties of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and although it was designed to accommodate only 250 residents, 1,200 wounded soldiers were tended to here after the Battle of Aughrim in 1691. At such times, the dining hall and upstairs corridors were used as emergency accommodation.
Life for the Pensioners at the RHK
The pensioners who resided at the Hospital included veterans who had fought at Waterloo and in Crimea, India and Afghanistan. The RHK was not a hospital in the modern sense and the sick and insane were housed in a separate building to the north-east.
Four or five pensioners slept in each room, which had a fireplace, an iron musket rack and a small toilet. Bed linens were changed every two weeks and each bed had five yards of linen curtains for privacy.
The pensioners’ diet was good for the time with a meat, fish, cheese and beer intake better than the general public. They received a double portion of rations on Christmas day. They ate their meals at the west end of the long tables in the Great Hall, which is located in the middle of the northern range of the Hospital. Breakfast was served at 8am, dinner at 12.45pm and tea at 5pm. The Great Hall also served for the pensioners as a place of relaxation as well as a venue for state occasions and the northern range also contained the master’s lodging, dining hall and chapel.
Each pensioner had an allowance of three pints of beer each day. This beer was not strong and of around 3 percent alcohol and was served in 5 gallon leather jugs known as blackjacks. Due to the strength needed to carry these jugs and pour from them, the expression ‘more power to your elbow’, which is used to express approval of or encouragement for someone’s efforts, was coined.
The Formal Garden
The Formal Garden, also known as the Master’s Garden, was an important feature of the overall design but was periodically neglected during its history and in the early 1900’s, it was decided to restore it to the classical garden layout of the 17th and early 18th centuries. In the 1980’s a second period of restoration began to restore the garden’s walls, pathways and hedges. Later statues and other sculptures were added and the fountain, which had originally been a fishpond, was restored. The Garden Lodge, a turreted building which lies at the northern end of the garden, was also restored at this time. It may have originally been a garden banqueting lodge but was converted in the late 19th century into a house for the head gardener.
Vonolel, the Hero Horse
Close to the junction of the southern and western walls of the Formal Garden lies the grave of Vonolel, the favorite horse of Field Marshall Lord Frederick Roberts (1842-1914). Field Marshall Roberts was commander-in-chief of Queen Victoria’s forces in Ireland and Master of the RHK from 1895 to 1899. Vonolel had accompanied Roberts on campaigns in India and Afghanistan and had been awarded the Afghan Medal, the Kandahar Star and the Jubilee Star and he was widely known to the British public from photos, paintings and parades.
When Vonolel died in 1899, he was buried with full military honors in the Formal Garden. His burial place is marked with a marble headstone inscribed with the following verse:
There are men both good and wise
Who hold that in a future state
Dumb creatures we have cherished here below
Shall give us joyous greeting when
We pass to a golden state
Is it folly that I hope it might be so?
Restoration of the RHK
In 1922, the RHK was handed over to the Free State Army and the last pensioners left it in 1927 and went to the Chelsea Royal Hospital in London. It served as the Garda HQ from 1931 until 1950 and for a period after that, it was used to store elements from folklore collection of the National Museum.
Various restoration works were carried out at the RHK from the 1950’s until the 1980’s. The RHK opened to the public as the national Centre for Culture and the Arts in 1987. In 1991, the RHK became the home of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), which was opened by the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey. The RHK continues to house the IMMA and its impressive grounds are open to the public year round to explore.
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