Padraig Pearse Wall Plaque.

Padraig Pearse was the founder of the Irish St. Enda’s School, a poet, and a nationalist. It was Pearse who stood outside the G.P.O. on Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) to read aloud the 'Proclamation of the Irish Republic' on Easter Monday 1916 which signalled the start of the 1916 Rising. After a week of intense fighting, surrounded on all sides and after witnessing the death of three elderly civilians by a British barricade, Pearse had a note delivered to General Lowe stating his wish to surrender to “prevent the further slaughter of the civilian population and in the hope of saving our followers, now hopelessly surrounded and outnumbered”. Pearse was executed weeks later along with fourteen other leaders of the Rising. This act would eventually re-ignite a wave of nationalism leading to the War of Independence which would be led by some of the survivors of the Easter Rising including Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera.