Reading the Phoenix Park bylaws requires a time-travelling dictionary. The traffic rules, still on the statute book, permit vehicles that transport people, “not including omnibuses or charabanes”.

Charabanc (n., from the French char à bancs, “carriage with benches”): a cart with rows of seats, horse-drawn then motorised, hired by the day by groups of factory workers for their outings.

So in 1926, the Irish State banned exactly two vehicles from its largest park: the two that carried people together, while private cars were waved through. How crass the charabanc must have seemed, arriving by the coachload with workers on their day off. Mass movement was thus restricted – all, presumably, to preserve the idyll of a people-free park.

Lo and behold, a century later, les chars à bancs have vanished from the world, while our obsession with individual transport has swallowed the park whole – up to 25,000 cars a day, per the Office of Public Works. But is it still idyllic?

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