My 2023 programme year began today with a visit to the UCD college campus in Belfield. I used my new Sony FX30 camera and that is what I intend to use when I visit Kilkenny in a few weeks, Belfast in April, Cork in May, Galway in May and Cork for a second week in August.
Unfortunately programme is limited, compared to previous years, as I am unwilling to pay the asking prices for hotel rooms in Limerick and Waterford.
Belfield is a small enclave, not quite a suburb, in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Ireland. It is synonymous with the main campus of University College Dublin.
Belfield is close to Donnybrook, Ballsbridge, Clonskeagh, Goatstown and Stillorgan and takes its name from Belfield House and Demesne, one of eight properties bought to form the main campus of University College Dublin. It is adjacent to the R138 road.
UCD originates in a body founded in 1854, which opened as the Catholic University of Ireland on the feast of St. Malachy with John Henry Newman as its first rector; it re-formed in 1880 and chartered in its own right in 1908. The Universities Act, 1997 renamed the constituent university as the "National University of Ireland, Dublin", and a ministerial order of 1998 renamed the institution as "University College Dublin – National University of Ireland, Dublin".
Originally located at St Stephen's Green in the Dublin city centre, all faculties have since relocated to a 133-hectare (330-acre) campus at Belfield, six kilometres to the south of the city centre. In 1991, it purchased a second site in Blackrock. This currently houses the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.