Seamus Heaney and Heritage rhyme at remarkable €5.2m restoration of Dublin's historic 11 Parnell Square

Tommy Barker gets an advance tour of 11 Parnell Square, a home to heritage and Poet Laureate Seamus Heaney’s library....and a bargain basement €16.5k bike shed

Did you ever see the Parnell? Dublin's No 11 Parnell Square has links to James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Charles Stewart Parnell, WB Yeats, the Nationalist Club, Dublin County Council and heritage bodies Irish Heritage Trust, and the Irish Landmark Trust. It now houses Seamus Heaney's poetry library

‘Done by the book’ just about sums up the remarkable conservation and new lives given back to Dublin’s 11 Parnell Square – during its long years of standing to date it has featured in James Joyce’s 1914 Dubliners short story Ivy Day in the Committee Room; the 260-year old building also housed Dublin County Council for 75 years, and it now is a secure home for the private poetry libraries of both Seamus Heaney and Austin Clarke.

And, doing the other books, and as impressive, the two-years’ long €5.2 million restoration and adaptation of the four-storey house to A3 rating on one of Dublin’s oldest Georgian squares just two minutes from the top of O’Connell Street to new cultural space came in on budget, and even includes a substantial bike shed that cost just €16,500… unlike a certain one at Leinster House that infamously cost €336,000, the price of a small semi-d.