The Custom House

This guide to The Custom House in Dublin returns to the twenty-fifth of May, 1921, when roughly a hundred and twenty IRA volunteers walked into the building at lunchtime under a plan drawn up by Oscar Traynor that was meant to be brief. You'll hear how Auxiliary forces arrived faster than expected, how a seventeen-year-old volunteer named Daniel Head bought his comrades time to escape, and what the fire that followed did to centuries of Irish government records inside. Best heard standing on the quay outside, looking up at the dome above the entrance.