Resident guides

Four voices, one shared standard.

Each of our guides has either trained as a historian, worked in a Dublin archive, or holds a Fáilte Ireland National Tour Guide badge — and every one of them has walked these streets in November rain.

Celtic Penitentiary is a small company — on purpose. We keep four resident guides on the rota, all on long contracts, all paid on a flat per-walk fee rather than commission. Below is the rota in full. The guide for your walk is named in your booking confirmation; if you've travelled to walk with someone in particular, ask in your enquiry and we'll do our best to match you.

Lead Guide · Dublin social history

Síle Donnelly

Síle joined Celtic Penitentiary in 2016 after twelve years as a senior archivist at the National Archives of Ireland on Bishop Street, where she catalogued the convict transportation registers and the early Free State records of Kilmainham. She holds an M.Phil. in Modern Irish History from Trinity College Dublin and a Fáilte Ireland National Tour Guide badge (issued 2014).

She walks the Kilmainham route most weeks, the Rebel Mile two or three times a month, and is on the rota for bespoke walks for family-history visitors looking for the parish or workhouse a great-grandparent left in.

Languages: English, Irish (some), conversational French.

Senior Guide · Penal & legal history

Dr. Cormac Brennan

Cormac wrote his doctorate at University College Dublin on the architecture of nineteenth-century Irish prisons — specifically the panopticon-influenced east wing of Kilmainham Gaol and its near-twin at Mountjoy. He still teaches a part-time seminar at UCD on penal history, and joined us in 2018 because, as he put it, "the standing tour didn't have time for the gate."

He carries the gaol committal registers in his head: who was held in which cell, on whose authority, for what offence. On his Kilmainham walks, he can usually point at a specific window and tell you exactly who was looking out of it on a given evening in 1881, 1916, or 1922.

Languages: English, Latin (academic), Welsh.

Guide · 1916 & political history

Aoife Ní Mhurchú

Aoife came to us in 2019 from a long stint in the education team at the National Museum of Ireland, where she ran the secondary-school programme on the 1916 Rising. She has written a short book on the women of Cumann na mBan, published by the Cork University Press in 2021, and was a contributor to the RTÉ Atlas of the Irish Revolution documentary the year after.

She leads the Rebel Mile most weekends and is the guide we send when a school party wants the 1916 story told without flag-waving on either side. She is firm about pace: "we never run on a walk through a place where people died slowly."

Languages: English, fluent Irish, Spanish.

Guide · Architecture & stonework

Brendan Hayes

Brendan trained as an architectural conservator at the Dublin Institute of Technology and spent eleven years on the building maintenance team at Christ Church Cathedral — a job, he says, that taught him every limestone block in the city by name. He walks the Castle and Liberties routes for us and carries a small magnifying loupe for stone-mason marks.

Walkers who book Brendan are often architects, surveyors, conservators, or simply readers who've spent a lot of time with old buildings. He goes slow, points up a lot, and is happy to spend twenty minutes on a single arch when the group is willing.

Languages: English, German.

Standards

What we promise on every walk.

Of every guide

Either a relevant postgraduate qualification, fifteen years' professional history work, or a Fáilte Ireland National Tour Guide badge
A reading list, sent the week before, that they'd actually defend over a pint
An explicit, unhurried pace — we never run a walk to keep on schedule
A working knowledge of the city's accessible streets, sit-down spots, and dry-shelter doorways

Off every walk

No interior visit to any historic building — that's the whole premise
No commission-driven detours into shops, cafés or museums
No photography of guests' faces without explicit consent
No guests under twelve unless privately commissioned with a paying adult

Ask for a particular guide

If you've come to Dublin to walk with someone, tell us.

In your enquiry, name the guide. We'll match where we can; where we can't, we'll tell you in the same email what dates work and offer a substitute from the rota above.

Request a quote