THE CROPPY'S ACRE [SOME CALL IT THE CROPPIES ACRE]

There is some confusion as to the name of this memorial park as there is a nearby park known as the "Croppies Memorial Park" which includes a pond.

The good news is that this park is now open 24 hours a day but I would exercise a degree caution if visiting after dark as it is still a magnet for anti-social behaviour.

It was closed to the public for quite some time now, owing to anti-social problems. However, following discussions in 2013 with the Office of Public Works it was agreed that the management of the 4.3 acre Park would transfer from the Office of Public Works to Dublin City Council.

There is a memorial park near the site of Collins Barracks Dublin (now a part of the National Museum of Ireland) known as the "Croppy's Acre", beside the Liffey into which the bodies of executed rebels were flung after the 1798 rebellion.

Croppy (sometimes spelt croppie) was a derogatory nickname given to Irish rebels during the period of the 1798 rebellion.

The name "croppy" derives from Ireland in the 1790's as a reference to people with closely cropped hair, a fashion which was associated with the anti-wig (and therefore, anti-aristocrat) French revolutionaries of the period. Those with their hair cropped were automatically suspected of sympathies with the pro-French underground organisation, the Society of United Irishmen and were consequently liable to seizure for interrogation by pro-British forces. Suspected United Irish sympathisers were often subjected to torture by flogging, picketing and half-hanging but the reactive contemporary torture, pitchcapping, was specifically invented to intimidate "croppys". There is evidence of United Irish activists retaliating by cropping the hair of loyalists to reduce the reliability of this method of identifying rebel sympathisers.