Chalice from Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford's Kilmainham wedding goes on public display

The chalice that stood on the altar during one of the most poignant weddings in Irish history has returned to the prison where it was used. More than a century after Joseph Plunkett married Grace Gifford in the chapel of Kilmainham Gaol, the sacred vessels from that ceremony have gone on display at the Dublin museum, just yards from the yard where the leaders of the 1916 Rising were shot.

The chalice, ciborium, and paten have been loaned to the Office of Public Works by St. James' Parish and the Archdiocese of Dublin, which have preserved them for 110 years. They will remain at Kilmainham Gaol Museum through December 31.

Plunkett, the youngest of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, was 28 and gravely ill with tuberculosis when he took part in the Rising. On the night of May 3, 1916, with his execution set for the following morning, he was brought to the prison chapel to marry his fiancée, the artist and cartoonist Grace Gifford. The ceremony was performed by candlelight by Father Eugene McCarthy, a priest from St. James' Parish. British soldiers stood as witnesses, and the couple was allowed only a few supervised minutes together afterward before Plunkett was returned to his cell and shot at dawn.

The story is likely to be familiar long before the history books, thanks to the ballad "Grace," written by Frank and Seán O'Meara and recorded by Jim McCann, The Dubliners, Rod Stewart, and countless singers in bars from Boston to Chicago. The song has made the Kilmainham wedding one of the most recognizable episodes of the revolutionary period, and the vessels now on display are the physical objects at the center of it.

Joseph Mary Plunkett and Grace Gifford.

The items will be shown in the museum's "Last Words" section, which, according to the statement from Heritage Ireland, explores "the final days of the 14 leaders executed in Kilmainham after the 1916 Rising."

Two further items have been added to the display. One is the diary of Rose McNamara, an officer of Cumann na mBan, describing Mass in the gaol on May 7, 1916, when she saw Con Colbert, Michael Mallin and Éamonn Ceannt in the chapel shortly before their executions the next morning. The second is a letter Mallin wrote to his wife, Agnes, that same day.

The connection between the parish and the prison did not end in 1916. Priests from St. James' continued to minister to prisoners held in Kilmainham through the War of Independence, an association recorded in an inscription on the base of the vessels themselves.

Grace Gifford Plunkett would later be jailed in Kilmainham herself, imprisoned during the Civil War in 1923, when she painted a Madonna and Child on the wall of her cell. That painting remains in the building today, and visitors can now see it on the same trip as the chalice from her wedding night.

Kilmainham Gaol Museum is on Inchicore Road in Dublin 8, roughly two miles from the city center. The museum is open seven days a week from 9:30am to 4:30pm. For more information visit KilmainhamGaolMuseum.ie.