Barracks

The National Monuments Service's description

Richmond Barracks / Inchicore Barracks

 

Richmond Barracks was recorded in 2025 in the ‘Our Shared Built Military Heritage: The online mapping, inventorying and recording of the Army Barracks of Ireland, 1690-1921' a project that was funded by the North South Research Programme 2022-2024 and co-led by University College Dublin and The Open University' (Forbes and McGrath 2025).  The barracks was described in the inventory of the ‘Army Barracks of Ireland - Our Shared Military Heritage, 1690-1921’ as follows; ‘The barracks at Inchicore was constructed between 1807 and 1810 and was first occupied in 1814. Named Richmond Barracks after Charles Lennox, 4th duke of Richmond, the incumbent lord lieutenant at the time of construction, it was built both in response to the rebellions of 1798 and 1803 and the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, and out of a desire to consolidate and reduce the number of new smaller barracks that had proliferated in Dublin in the intervening years. The barracks was occupied by the British Army until 1922 when it was handed over to the Irish Free State. A relatively large complex, it was an infantry barracks with a capacity in 1867 for 67 officers and 1,439 infantrymen and 20 horses. Approximately 3,000 suspected rebels and sympathisers were held at Richmond Barracks in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, with the leaders being held in the barracks gymnasium prior to their courts martial. The barracks was briefly renamed Keogh Barracks after Tom Keogh, an Irish Republican Army volunteer killed during the Irish War of Independence. The military handed the barracks over to Dublin Corporation in 1924 and parts of it were then converted into social housing in what became known as Keogh Square. In 1929 three of the buildings were purchased by the Christian Brothers in order to establish St Michael’s School. In the 1960s the Keogh Square housing was demolished and replaced with St Michael’s Estate, which in turn was demolished in 2013. However, the barrack buildings of the Christian Brothers school, which had closed in 2006, were thereafter refurbished along with the original barracks gymnasium as a visitor attraction and cultural centre in 2016 as part of the commemorative programme for the 1916 Easter Rising'.

 

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien based on description taken from inventory of the ‘Army Barracks of Ireland - Our Shared Military Heritage, 1690-1921

 

Date of Compilation: 11 November 2025

References

Forbes, S. and McGrath, C. I. 2025  Army Barracks of Ireland, 1690–1921: Barracks Dataset and Supplementary Files (version 1.0). The Open University. Dataset.