Forty Foot
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The Forty Foot is a promontory on the southern tip of Dublin Bay at Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, Ireland, where people enjoy swimming in the Irish Sea all year round. In former times it was kept solely as a gentlemen's bathing place, but it is now open to women and children as well.
It came to be called the Forty Foot after the 42nd Highland Regiment of Foot (now known as the Black Watch), a regiment of the British Army, which built a fortress here in 1747 when it was sent over to repulse any possible Napoleonic invasion of Ireland. The fortifications including 'the battery', the massive granite walls and the Martello tower, where James Joyce resided for a while and from which some of his characters set out on the morning of June 16, 1904 in the book Ulysses on their Homeric odyssey through Dublin; these features are still extant here. The Forty Foot also featured heavily in the novels At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (1939) and At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill (2001).
[edit] External links
- Fortyfoot.org - map
- Information about tides and conditions for sea swimmers at Fortyfoot
- Dublin bay information
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