Sketching@ Ranelagh Gardens this Sunday at 2pm


Hi everyone,

apologies about getting the email late but my Internet connection keeps going down.

This Sunday for a change we will sketch at Ranelagh as suggested on our Facebook website. Opposite the luas station there is a lovely park which we can sketch in or you can sketch the village itself. We will meet at 2pm outside the park and back here again at 4pm to decide where to go for a coffee. If it is raining during sketching there are many coffee places in Ranelagh.

A little about the gardens:

Located in Ranelagh and extending to 1 hectare (2.47 acres), the gardens were originally part of 5 hectares of pleasure gardens developed in 1775 by a businessman who called them after Lord Ranelagh from Co. Wicklow.  Lord Ranelagh had similar pleasure gardens beside the Thames in London.  The first hot air balloon flight in Ireland was launched from the pleasure gardens by Richard Crosbie.  The gardens were later sold to a teaching order of nuns and in 1840 the convent there became totally enclosed and the gardens forgotten.
When the lands were developed for housing in the mid 1980's, the current small park was designed to include an ornamental pool thereby restoring the two-hundred years historical connection with the original Ranelagh Gardens.

Directions to Ranelagh:
get the luas from Stephens green (it takes 10minutes) to the Ranelagh station. Ranelagh Gardens lie at the North end of the village, and can be accessed by an arch under the Luas line. Another gate gives onto Chelmsford Road, via a short alley, and a third (not always open) into the housing off Northbrook Avenue

Hope to see you all there!

Sarah