College Green 3.78

College Green is a three-sided plaza in the centre of Dublin. On its northern side is the Bank of Ireland building, which until 1800 was Ireland's Parliament House. To its east stands Trinity College Dublin. To its south stands a series of 19th-century buildings that are mostly banks. Streets leading onto College Green are Dame Street to the west, Grafton Street to the south, and Westmoreland Street to the north. College Green has been used as an assembly point for major political rallies. In the mid-1990s, United States President Bill Clinton addressed a mass crowd, during his Irish visit. President Barack Obama spoke there in a major address during his visit to Ireland in May 2011.The area was once known as Hoggen Green from the Old Norse word haugr meaning mound, or barrow. The cemetery at College Green consisted of several burial mounds, which are thought to have contained the remains of some of the Norse kings of Dublin. Between Church Lane and Suffolk Street the Norse had their Thing, an assembly and meeting-place, which was still to be seen in the 17th century. All along College Green, called Hoggen Green by the English, lay their barrows. Hoggen gave its name to the convent of St Mary de Hogges, which stood roughly where the Bank of Ireland is now, and was a major landowner in the area until the Reformation.