It is the cut lower lip in the great open-mouthed gape of Dublin Bay - a pitiless shapeshifter conjuring up a dead pharaoh or a lurking whale. Through earthquakes and ship wrecks, its jagged cliffs have borne stony-faced witness to lives teetering between life and death. Many souls, working or living under its shadow or simply out for a day’s stroll, met violent ends there or had their lives changed forever. The Queen of Romania climbed it and, if reports are true, so did the

Georgina Manning was the youngest daughter of Susan Gibson and Robert Manning, chief engineer to the Board of Works. The Mannings, a prosperous Church of Ireland family, had strong links to Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow and to Waterford City. Robert had been born in Normandy in 1816 where his father, William, had been an adjutant at the Battle of Waterloo.