The tree that eats a bench: the Hungry Tree at King's Inns in Dublin

In the grounds of King's Inns, on Constitution Hill in the heart of Dublin 1, there is a London plane tree (Platanus x hispanica) that has been slowly devouring a bench for decades. It is no figure of speech: the trunk has swollen around an early-nineteenth-century cast-iron seat, engulfing its armrests and part of its structure as if it were digesting it. Hence the nickname by which Dubliners know it, the "Hungry Tree".

The tree

The specimen itself has nothing monumental about it. About 21 metres tall, with a girth of a little over three and a half metres, it is estimated to be between 80 and 120 years old: by botanical standards it is an ordinary plane, one of the thousands planted across Irish and British cities during the nineteenth century. It is the extremely slow embrace between living wood and cast iron that makes it interesting. The trunk's secondary growth has swallowed the metal year after year, in a process you can observe with the naked eye: you can still see the lines of the bench emerging from the bark, deformed in places by the push of the wood.

An ambiguous monument

The recent history tells well why it is an ambiguous and somewhat forgotten monument. In 2017 Green Party councillor Ciarán Cuffe proposed a protection order for the tree, calling it a "hidden gem" of the city. The request was refused: the plane already stands within the grounds of protected historic buildings, so it is formally covered by their protections. Curiously, the idea of listing the bench as a protected structure was also rejected, because protecting it might have obliged the council to remove the tree in order to "free" the iron. So today the Hungry Tree is recognised as a "Heritage Tree" by the Tree Council of Ireland, but more as a curiosity than for any botanical value. It has appeared on the cover of the Secret Dublin guide and in Robert Ballagh's 1981 book Dublin, yet it stays off the classic tourist trail.

The setting helps. King's Inns is the oldest legal training school in Ireland and its main building is the work of James Gandon, the architect of the Custom House and the Four Courts on the Liffey. The grounds surrounding it, a quiet green strip between Constitution Hill and Henrietta Street, are a space frequented mainly by residents and office workers on their break, rarely by visitors. Henrietta Street, a stone's throw away, is one of the most intact Georgian streets in the city and is worth a detour: it is also home to the 14 Henrietta Street museum, devoted to the history of Dublin's tenements.

How to get there

The tree stands just inside the south gate of King's Inns, on the Constitution Hill side. The grounds are open to the public every day, roughly from 7 in the morning until 7:30pm, but it is worth checking before you go, since it is after all a working institution. It is an easy walk from the centre: from O'Connell Street it is about ten minutes to the north-west. The most convenient Luas (tram) stop is Broadstone-DIT on the green line, very close by; alternatively, several buses run along Constitution Hill and Phibsborough Road.

Once there, it takes very little: find the bench, step closer, and look at the exact point where the iron disappears into the wood. It is a visit of a few minutes, but it is the kind of detail that changes the way you look at a city park. Paired with a stroll among the Georgian facades of Henrietta Street, it makes a short, different stop in the north of Dublin.

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