Guild Halls which reflected industry in the city. The Tailors’ Hall and Merchants’ Hall were joined by Weavers’ Hall in the Coombe and the Bricklayers Hall on Cuffe Street. As Frank Hopkins has noted, it seems almost every group of skilled Dublin workers were represented by a Guild. He points towards “the Goldsmiths Guild, the Guild of Carpenters, Millers, Masons and Heliers, the Cooks and Vintners Guild, and the Guild of Tallow Chandlers….”, not to mention “the Guild of Barber-Surgeons and Apothecaries”.

Depictions of Merchants’ Arch historically have been less than flattering; take William Orpen’s painting ‘The Knackers Yard’ from 1909. It depicts a rundown and shabby passage. Notice what appears to be the royal coat of arms above the archway itself. The passage continued to excite Dublin artistsin subsequent decades, with Harry Kernoff among the other artists to depict it.

Following the disbandment of the Merchant’s Guild, the hall served a number of purposes in subsequent decades, with historian Maurice Curtis noting that these roles “included a shirt-and-poplin factory…and a Protestant boys school.” The name R. Atkinson & Co adorned the building during its time as a poplin factory.

One figure associated with the archway was Thomas Traynor, originally from Tullow in Carlow. An active member of Irish Volunteers and later the Irish Republican Army, he was executed in Mountjoy Prison in 1921, following his capture for involvement in a raid on Crown Forces. Traynor ran a shoe and boot repair company in the archway. There was a lot of activity in the area during the War