Many of us will recognise the unique Irish lettering which can be seen in historic signs across Dublin city and throughout the country. “You see it everywhere across town, on your street signs, on your pub fronts, on tourist signs”, says Dr Volmering. Through her project, ‘The cló gaelach in the Irish Streetscape (CLÓSCAPE)’ she is probing the cultural value of this signage across the greater Dublin area, having received funding from the Trinity Long Room Hub’s Research Incentive Scheme.

“‘Cló gaelach’ simply means Irish typeface”, says Dr Volmering.

“It's important because it imitates Irish script, and by doing so, it draws on a very long history of how Irish used to be written.”

This innovative project aims to collect photographic evidence of signs, past and present, and reconstruct the historic placement of Irish typeface signs with the aim of also preserving existing signage.

Dr Volmering explains that at the time when the Irish state was founded, there was “huge pressure to use Gaelic in educational materials, on street signs, in books” as a symbol of reinforcing “Irishness in Ireland”. But long before that, this Irish font was used as a form of “silent rebellion” against British rule on green and white Dublin street signs.

However, despite this historic significance, cló gaelach signage is not protected or preserved outside of architectural conservation areas. Many signs are subsequently replaced by modern blue and white signs with Roman font, with no provision for the use of cló gaelach in the current Official Languages Act.

“Every time we lose a sign, we lose a little bit of that history of Dublin and that history of Irishness.”

Exchequer Street sign, Dublin. Photo by Nicole Volmering

“One of the things that we're trying to do with the project over the coming months is reach out to residents of Dublin to ask if they have any information about these historic signs.” Dr Volmering is interested in hearing from people who may have pictures of original street signs in the area that they live, or from when the street or houses were first built.

Her partnership with Dublin City Council’s Culture Club is instrumental in accessing these residential communities and Dr Volmering says this kind of information “is really important for reconstructing when they [the signs] first went up.”

In the longer term, the project aims to capture all of this evidence in a new ‘Irish Historic Street Signs Archive’ to be published by the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI). Dr Volmering also hopes to roll this out nationally and create a street sign archive for the rest of the country.  

“I'm hoping that with this project, both locally and nationally, we'll think maybe a little bit more closely about how we create signs…I think that signs containing the cló gaelach are something quintessentially Irish.”

Do you have historic photographs of cló gaelach street signage?

Find out more here: http://www.nicolevolmering.ie/closcape/ or email Dr Volmering at closcape@outlook.com

Dr Volmering is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of History in Trinity College Dublin. She is also the Principal Investigator of the Research Ireland Pathway Programme project ‘Early Irish Hands: The Development of Writing in Early Ireland’ and co-PI of another project, ‘Wandering Books’. She recently published an article on ‘Gaelicisation, Education and the Gaelic Script’ in, editor(s)Nicole Volmering Claire Dunne John Walsh Noel Ó Murchadha, Irish in Outlook: A Hundred Years of Irish Education (Peter Lang, 2024)