ROUTES & ROOTS
With JONATHAN BEAUMONT
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Several sites in Dublin are of interest, not only to those tracing ancestry but also because that’s where we’ll start on our upcoming IRISH BY ANCESTRY Spring Tour 2026. We will plan to explore the city before heading out on the luxury coach for a nine-county journey. Want to join us? Find out more HERE … then come on back to learn more all about the first sites we’ll enjoy together in April.
Permission to Board
Our tour’s first stop is the Jeanie Johnston Emigrant Ship, moored along Dublin’s Custom House Quay (pronounced “Key”, not “Kway”! 😉 ).
This is a replica of a real emigrant ship, which, during its working life between 1847, the single worst year of the dreadful Irish Famine, and 1855, carried several thousand starving refugees from Ireland to Canada, clocking up no less than sixteen crossings in the process.
She was never intended for this type of work. She was built in Quebec as a cargo ship for a firm in Co. Kerry who intended to use her for carrying cargo, parcels, and mail.
In 1858, new regulations prohibited the use of cargo ships for carrying passengers, so the Irish owners of the Jeanie Johnston sold her to an English merchant. However, no sooner had the new owners started using her than she began to take on water en route from England to Canada with a cargo of timber. The ship slowly sank, as the crew climbed up the rigging to escape death. For over a week they clung on, before being miraculously rescued by the crew of a Dutch ship, and the remains of the Jeanie Johnston sunk.
The replica is true to the original design and shows the conditions that Ireland’s poor had to endure for up to six or eight weeks at sea between the mid 19th century and the early 20th century. Many, if not most, of the ancestors of America’s 37 million citizens with Irish ancestry (this could be you, dear reader!) travelled this way. More did not make it alive.
Why is it a must-see?
It tells the story of our massive emigration very graphically. More than 2 million people—a quarter of our 8 million population—left the country in these times. Another 2 million died here. Ireland’s population would decline from roughly 8.4 million down to just under 4 million by the early decades of the 20th century.
Tickets prices are €15 for adults or €10 for children, and tours take place daily every half hour from 10:00 to 15:00.
Take an EPIC tour through time
Nearby is the next destination for us to visit. It’s a few minutes’ walk from the Jeanie Johnston ship and five minutes’ walk from Connolly Railway Station and Busaras (the central Bus Station). It is near the CHQ building—a local landmark around the Docklands area. The Red Line Luas tram serves the area too, coming in from Heuston Station and the west of the city.
This is EPIC, in my opinion one of the most important sights to see while you are in Dublin. EPIC tells the story (stories!) in bright and graphic display, of all aspects of the famine and its effects on all around it. It shows how the Irish diaspora changed the world and contributed so very much to the countries where most went—Canada, Britain, Australia, the USA, and even places like New Zealand and South Africa.
Why is it a must-see?
Like the Jeanie Johnston, the displays are so well put together that you get a real, immersive feeling of what it was like to be in the circumstances people found themselves in, at the time.
Ticket options vary from €10.50 to €23 depending on your status, and discounts can be obtained for families or groups.
There are a lot of coffee shops and cafes in the general area, and those who like real ales might drop into the Brew Dock pub, up the road opposite Connolly Station and beside Busaras. Or, cross the Liffey and sip a pint in the historic Mulligans pub in Poolbeg Street, untouched since the 19th century and mentioned in James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
Get your Viking on at Dublinia
The third place I recommend is up in the city center. Not so much about the people who left Dublin, but more about those who CAME here —centuries earlier. This is DUBLINIA, beside Christ Church, one of the two large medieval Church of Ireland cathedrals in the old city centre.
Travel back to the heart of Viking and medieval Dublin, from the year 988 or thereabouts, onward!
As their website says, “Walk where Vikings walked before, step into Medieval Dublin and find out about Dublin’s rich past and even climb an original Medieval tower. See Dublin from a new perspective and come away knowing more about its citizens through the ages.”
You go through various rooms in what, years ago, was the old Church of Ireland Synod premises, attached physically by an ornamental bridge over the road to Christ Church Cathedral—these each vividly and expertly creating scenes from the past going back to when Dublin was a small medieval settlement on the banks of the (then) meandering River Liffey. It guides you through the centuries, showing how the life along the river developed to the north, and the fledgling city, our capital, grew and grew as merchants and boatmen gathered and set up stall. It shows how Christ Church itself presided in mute witness over daily life … a “must-see” indeed. No, scrub that – a “MUST-see”!
Why is this a must-see?
What I like most here is what you build up to and see at the end—an absolutely fantastic AI-style “bird’s-eye view” of Viking Dublin, where a narrator of the time takes you down, intimately, through the narrow streets that surrounded the spot you’re standing on, back in the 12th century. Of all the sights we might call “graphic” or “immersive,” this one has it all with bells and whistles on!
Ticket prices €9.50 to €16, with the usual discounts for families and groups. Open Daily from 10:00 to last entry 17:00.
Bonus stops: Christ Church and Darkey Kelly’s Pub
When you’re finished, nip next door to see Christ Church, a staggeringly beautiful cathedral dating from 1030 AD in its original (wooden) form, later rebuilt in stone in the early 1100s, and built in its current form around 1870. When you’ve seen that, just down adjacent Fishamble Street is Darkey Kelly’s Pub, where there is music, usually traditional Irish music but not always, most nights, with some daytime sessions, too. Great food there, but you’ll have an appetite now!
We’ll see all this and so much more on the IRISH BY ANCESTRY SPRING TOUR 2026. We’ll pick you up at Dublin Airport, pop you on a luxury coach, and get on our way through nine counties, including Dublin, Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, the Kingdom of Kerry, Clare, Westmeath, and Galway, before coming back to Dublin for our final celebrations before we, sadly, let you get back to your real lives. FIND OUT MORE HERE
If you are up for an Irish adventure with us, we will give you the tour of a lifetime, showing you the places your ancestors knew well. It all takes place April 26-May 3, 2026. See you there? I’ll put the kettle on for you now …
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