Sitting Pretty
There are worse ways to waste an afternoon than sitting on a bench.
It is one of the few activities left in Dublin that requires neither a reservation nor the purchase of a €4.50 coffee. You can arrive alone, stay for three minutes or three hours, eat something, read, people-watch or do absolutely nothing. The only real requirement is finding a good one.
And not all benches are created equal.
Some earn their place through location alone. The benches on Dalkey Hill have an almost unfair advantage. On a clear day, you can sit looking across Dublin Bay, towards Dalkey Island and out over the Irish Sea. It is the kind of view normally accompanied by a gift shop and an admission fee, except here you can bring a coffee up from the village and occupy it for as long as nobody starts hovering expectantly nearby.
Then there is Howth Head, where the benches along the cliff walk provide a considerably more welcome seat. The best are those around the stretch overlooking Baily Lighthouse, perched below on the edge of the peninsula. After enough uphill walking, even a concrete block would probably look inviting, but sea, cliffs and a lighthouse certainly help.
Dublin also has benches worth seeking out for reasons other than the view.
Patrick Kavanagh made sitting beside the Grand Canal into something of an art form. In Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin, he imagined a canal-side seat as his memorial. After his death, his friends installed one, inscribed with words from the poem. Today, there is also John Coll's bronze sculpture of Kavanagh sitting on a nearby bench, permanently engaged in the same activity.
On the Royal Canal, Brendan Behan has similarly been immortalised sitting down. His bronze figure occupies a bench near Mountjoy, leaving enough room for visitors to sit beside him. Dublin's literary history, apparently involves a surprising amount of loitering.
There are benches for nearly every version of doing nothing. St Stephen’s Green is difficult to beat for people-watching, particularly at lunchtime when office workers, students, tourists and increasingly confident seagulls all compete for space. Blessington Street Basin is better when you would prefer fewer people and more ducks. A bench along Sandymount Strand works for staring moodily at the sea, while one in Iveagh Gardens is useful when you want to disappear from the city centre without actually leaving it.
A bench can be a lunch table, reading chair, meeting point, smoking area, first-date venue, phone-call location or somewhere to sit with a friend when neither of you particularly wants to go home yet.
It can also just be a bench.
Perhaps that is what makes the good ones worth knowing. They let you occupy a piece of Dublin without needing a reason to be there. No table turnover, no waiter wondering whether you are ordering another drink and no need to buy something simply to justify sitting down.
Some come with Dublin Bay. Some come with dead poets. Some just happen to catch the afternoon sun.
All you have to do is sit.
Written By: Holly Warren
Edited By: Hazel Hunter
