ARAS AN UACHTARAN –
Bridewell – a prison. from a large mansion built for King Henry VIII near an ancient Holy Well called St. Bride’s (or St Bridget’s) on the banks of the Fleet River, then outside London, depicted in Holbein’s famous painting The Ambassadors. The City of London acquired the palace from King Edward VI for use as a hospital, orphanage and prison. Later it was used mainly for the short-term confinement and punishment of petty offenders such as vagrants, itinerants, vagabonds and loose women. The name Bridewell was later applied to the hundreds of others that were set up throughout the country on the same model, for which an alternative name was Houses of Correction, though these were in practice mainly prisons for the poor and indigent. The term was also taken to the British colonies. Bridewells had a shocking reputation. In a biography of the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, Mrs E R Pitman wrote, “They made a point of visiting most of the jails and bridewells in the towns through which they passed, finding in some of them horrors far surpassing anything that Newgate could have shown them even in its unreformed days.” The term is now only historical, as the formal distinction between bridewells and prisons was abolished in Britain in 1865, though much of the work of the old bridewells had by then long since been taken over by the Workhouses. But the term lives on in the names of a few police stations that were once attached to a bridewell, such as those in Bristol and Leeds; in Ireland it is still used as a general term for a block of holding cells.
BHS – British Horse Society
BUNREACHT na hEIREANN
Cairn CIE –
CoI – Church of Ireland,
Cromlech
DAIL EIREANN –
DCU -Dublin City University, a veritable marvel of modern architecture in the northern suburbs of Ireland’s capital
DIT – Dublin Institute of Technology, soon to be unified on a single campus on the former site of Grangegorman Mental Hospital, and already nicknamed the Loony Uni.
Dolmen
DU – Dublin University
DUBLIN CASTLE –
DUP – The Democratic Unionist Party
FAI – Football Association of Ireland
Fianna Fail –
Fine Gael –
GAA – Gaelic Athletic Association
Gael Linn –
GUI – Golf Union of Ireland
IAFF – Irish Amateur Fencing Federation
IRA – Irish Republican Army
IRB – Irish Republican Brotherhood
IRFU – Irish Rugby Football Union
ISPCA – Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
ISPCC – Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
NCAD – National College of Art & Design,
NMI – National Museum of Ireland
NUJ – National Union of Journalists
OIREACHTAS na hEIREANN –
PSNI – Police Service of Northern Ireland
Pobhlacht, An –
QUB – Queen’s University Belfast
RC – Roman Catholic
RDS – Royal Dublin Society. Founded as the Dublin Society in 17xx,
RHA – Royal Hibernian Academy
RIA – Royal Irish Academy
RIAC – Royal Irish Automobile Club,
RIAI – Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland –
RIC – Royal Irish Constabulary
RNLI – Royal National Lifeboat Institute. Founded
RSAI – Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland –
RTE – Radio Telefis na hEireann, the
RUC – Royal Ulster Constabulary
SEANAD EIREANN – Sinn Fein –
SPUC –
TAOISEACH –
TANAISTE –
TCD – Trinity College, Dublin U
UCC – University College Cork
UCD – University College Dublin
UCG – University College Galway, now NUI Galway UUP –
Ulster Unionist Party
(More soon!)