X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Four Courts


Dublin Castle administration

The Castle did not hold the judicial branch, which was centred on the Four Courts, or the legislature, which met at College Green till the Act of Union 1800 and thereafter at Westminster.

Liam Deasy

When fighting broke out in Dublin, in June 1922, between pro and anti-Treaty forces, Deasy sided with the anti-treaty IRA in the ensuing Irish Civil War, however, he was reluctant to fight his former comrades and voiced the opinion that the fighting should have ended with the Free State seizure of the Four Courts.

Philip Bragg

The English records of this period contain no reference to Bragg, but in a set of Irish military entry-books, commencing in 1713, which are preserved in the Four Courts, Dublin, his name appears as captain in Primrose's regiment, lately returned from Holland to Ireland; his commission is here dated 1 June 1715, on which day new commissions were issued to all officers in the regiment in consequence of the accession of George I.


King's Inns

In 1790 the Inns Quays site was acquired for the purposes of the Four Courts; the foundation stone at the present building at the top of Henrietta Street was laid on 1 August 1800, with James Gandon being commissioned as the architect.


see also

Fionán Lynch

Lynch fought in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 in the Four Courts garrison with Commandant Edward Daly in North King Street.

Francis John Byrne

Smyth, Alfred P. (ed.), Seanchas: Studies in Early and Medieval Irish Archaeology, History and Literature in Honour of Francis J. Byrne. Dublin: Four Courts, 1999.

State papers

Following the assassination of the British Field Marshal, Henry Hughes Wilson by anti-Treaty forces on 22 June, the pro-Treaty IRA came under pressure from Britain to attack the Four Courts or else British forces, still occupying Ireland, would take action.