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| Detail
of the central staircase at Dunsink [Photograph | Tim O'Riley] [click on the image to progress] |
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| The stairs in the house are very gentle in inclination with deep and shallow
risers. One climbs up and descends almost effortlessly. Silence pervades
the building. Within this muffled space, a strong room in the cellar is home
to a number of curiosities including fragments of scientific equipment, bits
of telescope,
a sextant, and memorably, a fine brass orrery in
full working order. To find a model of the solar system in the confines of a
tiny, windowless room was a surprise indeed. But apart from a beautifully curved
wall demarcating the base of the telescope mount which rises to the dome three
storeys above, there is little sense of the outside save for an aerial photograph
of the observatory taken in the 1960s or 70s. The drafty confinement of the upper
dome is in many ways an opposite to the cellar's inwardness, its shutters opening
onto the vastness
of the sky. |
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| Interior
of the upper dome at Dunsink [Photograph | Tim O'Riley] |
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