1700s to 1920s - British garrison
Save for the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, the barracks is the earliest public building in Dublin, and was built from 1701 by the then Surveyor General under Queen Anne, Thomas Burgh. (Burgh was also the architect of the famous library building at Trinity College, Dublin.)
Built on a site originally intended for a mansion of the Duke of Ormonde, the complex has several large squares, each open on the south side. The largest (Clarke's Square) has arcaded collanades on the east and west sides, and the main buildings are faced with granite.
The oldest inhabited barracks in Europe[1] (and once one of largest), it was originally known simply as the Barracks and later the Royal Barracks, and a mainstay of British forces on the island for several hundred years.
Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of the main leaders of the 1798 rebellion was held prisoner, court-martialled and convicted of treason at the Barracks.
Through the 1800's, up to 1,500 troops of various Regiments of Foot (and up to two troops of horse) were stationed at the barracks. However, by the 1880's conditions of accommodation were dangerously inadequate, and strongly criticised following an investigation by Commissioners of the War Office as levels of disease increased[2]. This included outbreaks of enteric fever which claimed the lives of a number of men, from amongst which were members of regiments of the King's Royal Hussars – predecessor to the current regiment: The Queen's Royal Hussars.
During the 1916 Easter Rising, the 10th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and other forces were deployed from the Royal Barracks[3] to fight the insurgent Irish Citizen Army and Irish Volunteers who occupied strongly-held positions close by on Usher's Island (under Sean Heuston), the Four Courts (under Ned Daly), and the GPO (under Pearse).
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