I was in Dublin over the summer, and went for an early morning stroll down to the Docklands. On the way there, I came across this little door tucked away under a railway bridge not far from Pearse Station.

It caught my eye because of the contrast of the rough textures of the wall around the brick archway in which the door is set and the grubby looking bars above the door itself. Looked very much like some kind of secret passageway into some realm of ne’er do wells or some such Hardy Boys inspired malarkey.

Of course, it’s probably more likely to house some street cleaning equipment or a back up generator or something far less exciting, but does everyday life always have to be so prosaic?

As it turns out, the answer is very much a resounding no.

The green graf tag up in the top right of the door is actually obscuring artwork that you might not instantly perceive. But if you look up to the left side, you’ll see the words “Seefin Passage Tomb” written vertically on the door frame.

The painting comes into focus now you know what you’re looking for.

Seefin is a mountain in County Wicklow and at the top of that mountain, is a stone cairn that served as a tomb. It was empty when it was excavated so either nobody ever ended up inside it or it served some other purpose lost to the mists of time.

And that’s what somebody originally painted on the door – the entrance to the tomb.

This raises a question in my mind: this door right here, under this railway bridge in the centre of Dublin, if you were to open it and step inside, would it take you to the top of a mountain in Wicklow, into the heart of this tomb? Would it throw you back to when the tomb was built?

Maybe the tomb stands empty because nobody has actually gone through this door yet. Perhaps the first person to travel through here will end up being the first person to be buried in the tomb, five thousand years in the past.

You can read more about the Seefin Passage Tomb at wikipedia.