Signed print of the poem Valedictory Verse by Seamus Heaney ‘composed for the Carysfort Graduation Exercises, 1988’ with an illustration of Carysfort College, Blackrock, Co. Dublin in the top right corner. Dated June 2011.

Séamus Heaney wrote this poem to mark “a significant moment in the history of Dublin” – the closure of Carysfort College in Blackrock. The Nobel-prize winning poet taught at the teacher-training college between 1975 and 1981, before he took up a position at Harvard. Carysfort was founded in 1877 as a college for Catholic girls who wished to become teachers. Other lecturers at the college included Éamon de Valera and Eoin MacNeill, co-founder of the Gaelic League and founder of the Irish Volunteers. The poem was written, as Heaney notes, “to mark the end of an era.”

A print of a black and white photograph of Sinéad O’Connor taken in 1995 with two Lock Hards by Bill Doyle.
Lock-hards were a fixture of Dublin life for decades. They would shout unsolicited parking advice, hoping for a fee. Peaked caps lent them a spurious air of authority. Sinéad O’Connor is an Irish singer who won fame with her cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2U’. She has often been a figure of controversy, expressing strong views on organised religion and women’s rights, most famously tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on US television. A Dubliner is someone who loves to remind you that Sinead O’Connor once worked as a waitress in the Bad Ass Café.

Framed green poster promoting Il Florilegio Circus' show in Dublin Booterstown (in front of Black Rock College)

Gay Byrne's Honorary Freedom of the City of Dublin awarded on 11 May 1999. It has a picture of the Late Late Show owl on the bottom.

Gay Byrne hosted RTÉ’s flagship talk show, the Late Late Show, for 37 years from its first broadcast in 1962. Byrne was a major catalyst in the transformation of Irish society, riffing on abortion, contraception and homosexuality. The Late Late Show featured an owl on its opening credits, hence the owl’s appearance on Byrne’s freedom of the city award. Byrne retired in 1999, but still pops up on Irish television.

Paper booklet for University Drama Association Festival

Copy of Paul McGuinness's Honorary Freedom of the City of Dublin, awarded on the 18 March 2000. Has a drawing of a Joshua Tree at the bottom. Signed by Lord Mayor Mary Freehill and City Manager John Fitzgerald.