Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- Twentieth Century (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
Iron
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Archival history
29/03/2017
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Black, iron door knocker from Gills Bookshop on Upper O'Connell Street with a hand and a wreath.
This iron knocker is from Gills bookshop formerly on Upper O’Connell Street. The building was one of the few in the street to survive the bombardment of 1916 and remained unchanged from its construction c. 1790 until the shop front was remodelled in 1965. The building was destroyed by fire in September 1979.
The knocker will have been used by a host of famous writers, academics, politicians and churchmen who were either published by Gills or visited the bookshop. Among these were Patrick Pearse, Arthur Griffith, W.B. Yeats, William Carleton, Eoin MacNeill, William Bulfin, Daniel Corkery, Douglas Hyde, Sinéad de Valera, Canon Sheehan and Sir William Wilde.
During the War of Independence the basement of the building was occasionally used as a practise firing range by Dick McKee and other members of the IRA. The target was a framed picture of King George V of England. McKee worked in Gills as a printer and the sound of gunfire was absorbed by the thousands of books stored in the basement.
Gill is mentioned twice in James Joyce’s Ulysses and the company features briefly in Finnegan’s Wake.
