Barracks

The National Monuments Service's description

Cope Street Barracks

 

A 19th-century barracks on Cope Street 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; ‘There was a small barracks situated in the Temple Bar area for a short period in the early nineteenth century, close to the eighteenth-century parliament building on College Green. This barracks was a leasehold and had capacity for eight infantry officers both in 1801, when listed as Crampton Court, and in 1813 when listed as Cope Street. Given that these two locations are about 250 meters apart, it may have been that in fact two different buildings were utilised during the period between c. 1798 to c. 1815 to house a cohort of officers in the area. There was also a temporary barracks in 1801 in the old customhouse close by on Essex Street with capacity for 81 private soldiers, who may have been under the command of the officers billeted in the Crampton Court / Cope Street area.   As in other instances of temporary or short-lived barracks during this period of rebellion and international war, it was likely that all of these soldiers and officers were billeted in pre-existing structures. The exact location of the barracks is unknown'.

 

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.